Man Question Four

Learn something new about yourself? Rediscover anything old? – Jodie

I learned I can discuss the challenges and practicalities of designing and building a huge custom multi-geared tricycle with a man who is naked but for three brass cock rings and not be in the least bit fazed or even notice, really.

I learned that men’s erotic dance seems derived mostly from karate moves I learned two decades ago and that I still have a looser, shakier bootie than most guys (my age who don’t dance much).

I learned that no matter how much friendly and half-naked pulchritude swarms the streets during the day and after dark I am emotionally unequipped to pay significant attention to anyone but my wife.

But none of that is new, really.

I rediscovered a great appreciation for artworks made with metal scraps and welding machines, especially if they also have wheels and drive motors and electronically controlled valves on great propane-fueled gas jets.

I rediscovered my appreciation for good music, which you’d think I would rediscover every day and wouldn’t be news, but you have to consider how strongly you will rediscover this in an environment where the “music” booming from all directions at every hour of the day and night is either techno electronica or electronica techno. Boom boom boom!

I rediscovered love for all my family, but especially for my brother Jimmy, whom I wrote to on the temple wall, in a message that went to him when the temple was burned.

But none of that is new, either.

So it really wasn’t a place of discovery or of rediscovery. It could be, I suppose. However, the vast majority of participants were not the latter-day new-age hippies of Burning Man’s popular image, always learning and growing in directions mysterious to the wider population, but instead relatively well-heeled urbanites and suburbanites who just want to have a good time; and being typical in most ways, I was just another one of them.