Playa Love

EROS

I awake. I look at Eveline. She’s still by my side. The woman looks like an angel who fell from the sky, too beautiful for the heavens, and wholly out of place here on earth. She somehow alighted on my life here in this burning desert and lit a spark in my sleepy soul.

As I take in every soft feature of her exquisite coffee-colored face, I play with the idea in my mind, again, that that may not be her real name. It could be Allanah or Maya. Many people come here and take on whole new personas, whole new lives that shine for the briefest of moments like a spark in the night in this barren land. It’s what we all come here to do in one way or another, I guess. 

I look up at the roof of my van. It’s our last full day in this dust-bowl-hellscape-paradise. I intend to live it as though it’s my last in the company of this vision.  

She rolls over and her eyes open slowly. “What are you looking at?” she says.

“The most beautiful thing this side of Reno,” I say, kissing her pink, full lips.   

“I bet you say that to all the sparkle ponies.” Her smile is like a thousand flashbulbs igniting at once. I’m blinded, body and soul. 

She caresses my face with her soft hands and kisses me. My mind goes a million ways, blowing on the winds of “will I ever see you again?” She sees the wheels turning. 

“Let’s shower,” she says.

It’s clear she wants to continue riding on the positive waves that this place delivers and has no intention of getting bogged down in “how’s” and “what-if’s”.  

“It’s right outside,” I say.  

The jerry-rigged bathing system sits in the middle of my camp: a few green hoses, some curtains and a plastic tarp to collect the gray water. Most of my campmates are out galavanting on the playa already. So we slip in from my van, naked, with the impish yet innocent smiles of tweenies discovering their blossoming sexuality. Pulsing beneath all of it is the deep carnal longing that we both ache to quench behind the thin veils of this shower, under its trickling waters.   

Eveline and I take turns lathering each other's bodies and caressing the billowy columns of bubbles off of one another’s backs under the cooling drizzle. We free ourselves of society-imposed shackles of modesty and inhibition and make loud, passionate love in the shower.  

I stare into her eyes, the dream, the vision. 

We rinse off and get out giggling, wondering who heard us. We dry each other off in my van. We throw on our playa gear:

Me: camo cargo shorts, red tank top, ranger hat and requisite anti-dust storm accessories (goggles and mask).  

Her: a black two-piece bikini, matching cerulean blue top hat, elbow-length gloves and fairy wings; combat boots, finished off with the required dust repelling accouterments.

Eveline produces a Simply Mints tin from her bag. She opens it.

“Wanna drop?” she says holding a half of a hit of mescaline in her hand.  

“Sure.” I put the fabulously small pill in my hand and tap it with my tongue, picking it up. I let it dissolve against the roof of my mouth. 

We step out onto the burning playa.

MANIA

The playa. It’s both the joy of Dante’s 3rd level of Paradiso and the heat of his 7th level of hell. It’s brutal. A vast stretch of white, smoldering dust reaches out to a squat range of hills on one side, and extends into a sweltering oblivion on the other. 

The barren terrain reminds me of the old-school flick, Mad Max. My first day out here, I half-expected to find screaming, stark, raving mad cannibals hob-gobling through the desert. Instead, I was surrounded by howling, stark, raving mad fun-junkies looking for their next high or adrenaline fix.  

“See if Darnell’s ready,” she says. Darnell is a tricked-out two-person, four-wheeled electric scooter. We’ve been carving swaths of cool across the playa on it.

“Hell yea,” I say unplugging the scooter from the rechargeable cell.  

We jump on, me at the handlebars and her behind me with her arms around my waist. The two of us take off, zipping across the hot silt.

The mescaline settles into my blood under the hot sun.

Art cars roam the playa like Dali thought-forms. One drifts by with neon, strobing fish fins. 

I point to it. “Holy shit!” she says.

Another art car transforms into a dystopian-inspired mechanical beast as it rolls across our path. We both hoot and pump our fists.

Sprinkled along the silted plains are stilt walkers and fire breathers, jugglers and acrobats; people spinning like unleashed tops in giant, steel hoops. Everywhere adults are frolicking in childlike dreams.

A bass line closes in on us. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM it rattles my ears.

A mobile DJ booth towed by a red and white, dust-covered pickup zips past. Close behind is a swarm of single-wheeled playa heads. The team of ONE-wheels and unicycles looks like an undulating school of future-tech fish as it engulfs us. The lights, costumes and hues melt, and weave into a single rippling skin. We join the itinerant dance party.  

I can feel it on my face, the Perma-Grin. I look at the faces of our fellow EDM fish. They have the fixed smile fashioned on their lips too. Yes, trips are for kids – or kids at heart.

‘This reminds me of an EDM party in Marseilles I went to a few years ago,” she screams over the thumping bass.  

“You went scootering in a desert chasing a DJ on wheels in France?”

“No, the music! You feel that?” Eveline yells. She grinds her hips into mine, winding her waist to the beat.  

Yea I do, girl.

Eveline grips me harder and hums and moans to the music in my ear. Sex courses through my being. The thought of dismounting the scooter and mounting this beauty right there in the hot dust, crosses my mind. She keeps dancing. I keep lusting.  

We cruise with the roving boom-bap for thirty-minutes. Or maybe it was two hours. It's hard to tell. Sun, silt and time are melting into a single sensual experience now.  

I look across the playa. A massive upside down V glows in the distance like a blinding spark in the desert sun. I’m drawn to it like a curious hand to a flame. I split from the undulating mass, a renegade fish leaving the safety of the group and thumping bass and I head for it.

“Where are we going?” she says.

“I don’t know. I see something.”

“Mmmm, I like it when a man takes control,” she says.

I laugh. “BULLSHIIIIIT!!!” 

We both cackle into the wind.

The two of us wind across the old lake bed. In my mesc-induced haze, my hands fully fuse with the handlebars. The ground looks like alabaster ocean swells rolling underneath our wheels. The people dotting its expanse are like sea sprites guiding us towards the Temple of the Upside Down V in the distance.  

We get to the installation and plant our feet in the undulant ashen turf. My feet melt into it with each step. I look at Eveline. Yea, the Perma-Grin fairy has visited her too.

“What are you looking at?” she says.

“That Perma-Grin.”

"Mine? You should see yours!" She snorts a giggle. 

“Meditation Beam” the sign says. The mammoth installation is about twenty feet tall at its highest point, and 60 feet in length. It's made of two I-beams about 12 inches across that meet in the middle. The peak sits at a less acute angle than an actual upside down V, making it scalable. Even in our shape.

“Let’s go,” she says.  

“Après vous,” I say. It’s reflex, something I always think but never say. But, this time? Well, drugs. Immediately, I’m walloped by a wave of self-consciousness. In a more sober state, I would crumble under its weight and wash up on the lonely shores of my self-pity days later. Under the influence of the psychedelics, I laugh it off. 

“Merci,” she says. I’m flush with lust and infatuation.  

Eveline gets on ahead of me. I watch her hypnotic hips as she climbs. I follow. The walk up, though easy, has me incredibly focused on my feet. Which in turn makes me incredibly focused on my surroundings. Then my boundaries disappear for a moment. My incessant mind-chatter stops. The wind blows gently on my face. I can feel it graze against my skin. Colors brighten. I reach the pinnacle. Eveline grabs my hand. The landscape shines so majestic from this vantage point. Serene, eternally present. I can feel the age of the earth in my bones somehow. The earth speaks to me, to parts of myself I scarcely know exist. I embrace her words and return the utterance. I take a deep breath of the warm air encircling my body. We sit.

“This place is amazing,” I say, staring out at the rocky ridge.

“It is a pretty special place,” she says. “But it’s what you make of it.”  

“Well, I know I’m having a blast.”

She looks at me with piercing hazel eyes. “I can see that.” (Perma-Grin). She looks back out at the playa. Her hat is off, and her frizzy mane is carelessly waving in the breeze. “I think this place shows you parts of yourself that you may not be able to see in the non-playa world. Parts that are waiting to be explored, developed. I think you’re starting to see those parts… and you like it.”

I smile. I love listening to her speak. She sounds so free, so sure.  

“So, what happens when you leave this place?” she says.

“I start a volunteer tour with Unity Mission Initiative next week. I’ll be in Nepal teaching English and music to kids for the next year.”

“Wow, sounds incredible.”

“Yea, I’m pretty hyped. I’ve wanted to do this for a few years, but I wanted to get some things in order before I pulled the trigger.  

“Sounds amazing.”

“Yea, you?”

“I’ll be in Oakland teaching 3rd grade art again,” she says.

“Shit, that sounds cool.”

“Yea, I love it. Just being around those kids… everything is always so new to them. I love seeing life through their eyes. I feel privileged. I also get to help shape young Black minds. Pay forward some of the blessings that I was given.”

“Fuck yea.”

“Yea this world is pretty fuck up. But we gotta change it in any way we can in our little corner of it.”

“Got that right.” I stare at her. Brains, beauty, heart. I’m melting. And it’s not the dope.

We sit in silence and look at the playa for a while.  

“Look, I really like you,” I say, “and I’m gonna be out of the country for a year. I’d really like to see you when I get back.”

She looks at me. “I really like you, too. I just want to enjoy this now. I don’t like putting expectations and boundaries on things. Especially not out here.”

Her words crush me. And she sees it. It’s my own fault. I let the mushroom-courage run the show for a second there, and now my heart is paying for it. I should’ve waited till I was straight to talk about this. 

“Look, I’m not saying no,” she says “I just like my playa loves for what they are, baby,”. She caresses my face. “I come out here, let my soul release whatever it needs to, I let it drink in what it needs to. I’m just here, present, rolling with whatever comes.”

She smashes the little bits of me that are left into playa dust. I bite my bottom lip. She kisses it. Then grabs my head and kisses me again. 

I want to press the issue. But I decide to keep quiet and just roll with this too.   

AGAPÉ

We galavant across the playa, me, the hazel-eyed vision, and Darnell the scooter. Raves in strobe-lit geodesic domes have our names on them; laser hoops with cascading music beckon the two of us with Darnell going through them at max speed; interactive, holographic, Shiva-inspired light installations call. Playa magic, magic mushrooms and a lust for life is a potent mix. It’ll get your soul right.  

We play into the evening. The sun descends behind the horizon in a magnificent, golden display, the temperatures drop, and the stars scatter over the dried up lake bed like a sea of diamonds. Darnell sputters out mid-revelry and I have to drag it around like an petulant, tantrumming four year-old. 

The night and the festival will be punctuated by the man-burn. We slowly make our way to the burn site, and it’s like a religious crusade. Throngs of attendees flock through the desert to the destination. 

When we arrive, thousands are already encircling the 100-ft figure, like pilgrims groomed to worship their towering, wooden deity.

The man stands atop a platform beneath the of blanket stars. Its arms are raised as if calling down the spirits of virtuous vibes and jubilation. The tall figure is covered in LED lights and will burn in a symbol of renewal and rebirth tonight. We look out to it amongst myriad, eager onlookers. Eveline stands in my arms, her head leaning in the crook of my neck. 

I kiss her cheek, and the first set of fireworks spews from the platform.  The crowd erupts in a collective roar of exhilaration. Eveline and I lean back in awe. Another crackle of fireworks lights up the sky. And excitement ripples through the masses. The display continues, its intensity mounting, the crowd’s bubbling energy tethered to each skyrocket.

BOOM, another “AWWWW!” 

Another BOOM. “WOOHOO!“

The exhibition soon rivals that of a small town Independence Day show. And with each crackle the crowd’s high intensifies.

Finally, an explosion engulfs the man. It’s chest is a brilliant ball of fire. More fireworks spew out from his body out into the night sky and spread out like massive, fiery wings. The energy continues to bubble and whips through the crowd.

Eveline and I get swept away in the current and throw our fists in the air. We cheer with thousands. A feeling of lightness overcomes me and I have trouble catching my breath. I look at Eveline and there is a sparkle in her eyes. And a smile on her face that reaches her eyes. I looked at the people around me and they all share the same look, the same gleam.  

A week of frolicking like children is coming to a head. And the sense of unity and inclusion that this place engenders is palpable. I feel so good that I’m about to burst, when the man becomes totally immersed in flames. The orange blaze reaches out meters in the sky above it and roils into an accumulating, darkened mushroom cloud.  

Just as the flames reach their pinnacle, DJs slap infectious EDM grooves, spurring on the high vibes. The place is bumpin’. Smiles, night-glow lights and expressive silhouettes jounce about in the ancient human rite of celebration.

I look into her eyes. The angel and I dance into the night.  

****

I awake. I look at Eveline. She’s still by my side, the sprite that fell from the sky and into my arms in this burning desert. She’s still in my life. But for how long? 

She rolls over. “What are you looking at?”

“The most beautiful thing this side of Reno,” I say.   

“Deja vu." 

We laugh. She giggles like a cherub drunk on ambrosia. So innocent, so pure. Her hazel eyes dance in the half-light. I caress her face. 

“This was fun,” she says.

“It was… Thank you for opening up my mind to new possibilities, new ways of seeing the world. Being raised Catholic in the suburbs can really fuck up how you view things.” She smiles.

“I didn’t awaken anything that wasn’t already there,” she says. 

 I’m not floating free on hallucinogens now. There’s no way around the question.

“Next year?” I say.

She smiles. “Yea,” she says, nodding her head. Her words lack the same conviction that I have weighing in my heart, pulling the strings of my marionette-like lips. 

“You promise?” I say. 

“Uh-huh.”

 “You know how to get a hold of me.”  

“Yea, I do,” she says, running her henna’d hand through my hair. “I do.” 

"Let's at least stay in touch while I'm in Nepal. I'm not sure what the connection's gonna be like but maybe we can do zoom while I'm out there."

"I'd like that," she says. I look for the assurance in her eyes. It's fleeting.

I peck her on the lips and I pull her close to me. I hold her. After some time, we separate and kiss again.

When we emerge from her RV, camps are breaking down all around us. She and I dismantle the makeshift patio that sat in front of her camper. We pack up everything in her RV.

“You all set?” I ask. 

“Yea, I think so.”

One final embrace and one final kiss and I release her to the winds of fate. 

My eyes don’t leave hers as I close the door of her RV. I tap on the door twice and slide my hand down it. 

I drift back to my camp, my head hanging low, my heart heavy. It’s unready to release the love that has carried me these last three magical days in the Black Rock desert.  

I turn around one last time and watch her vehicle get swallowed by the swarming, undulating mass that’s slowly winding its way out of the playa.  

I count the days till next summer.