Because I can't think of another title that fits this conceit

The focus of my last two posts have been mostly about things that I did during Firefly, which is an occasional pitfall of how I tend to write about these sort of things, but seems out of keeping with the spirit of the event. There were over thirty theme camps at Firefly, and most of them had at least one thing about them that was positively stunning. Camp Totenkitten featured a torch standing possibly 40 feet tall which delivered a burst of flame from one or more of 9 nozzles facing in different directions when you pressed the arcade buttons on the control panel, and a cuddle-pit filled with pillows featuring a projector and screen which showed prior footage from a webcam pointed at the selfsame pit. Camp Retarded Lions had hammocks hanging one over the other, and a gigantic net suspended up above that people could hang out in. Bring a Cup was a theme camp devoted to delicious homebrew beer.

I spent quite a bit of time at Bring a Cup.

Many of the camps had outdoor nightclub-ish setups (including ours, though the extent to which we were outclassed in that regard is part of the reason I didn't serve many drinks). Some featured space for object manipulators and firespinners to perform. One camp had a suspension rig set up between two trees.

A lot of people experienced things for the first time there, both because there was quite a lot to experience and because we were in a safe space surrounded by people who genuinely wanted every single person they encountered to have a good time. Some of those things were chemicals. You would be surprised by the relative lack of people freaking the fuck out because of this. And the extent to which people were ready to care for the few marginal cases.

In addition to group projects, there was quite a bit of individual art that kicked ass. To be quite honest, cataloging any significant portion of it would be beyond the reaches of my memory, but I will share with you my favorite bit of performance art of the week, courtesy of a new friend I made at the Bad Faerie camp.

In the wake of the Republican Speaker of Michigan's lower house denying speaking privileges to State Representative Lisa Brown-- a Democrat who took to the floor and give a speech that ended with "I'm very flattered to see how interested you all are in my vagina, but no means no," in response to the latest local skirmish in the Republican War on Women-- this self-described Sparkle Warhorse (a reclamation of "Sparkle Pony," which refers to someone who shows up under-prepared for survival and over-prepared for general fabulousity) decided that this could not be allowed to stand. So she suited up to proselytize about the beauty and wonder of the vagina.

After explaining to people what she was on abut, she proceeded to knight those supportive to the cause who swore an oath to uphold and defend the rights and awesomeness of vaginae everywhere. She then bestowed upon them a vaginal name. I was the first person to be so dubbed. I am now Sir Spam Purse of Camberville.

There's a reason why I've seen fit to fill three posts about this event. For four days in the woods, I was able to experience what it's like to exist in a space where there are no constraints on expressing oneself except that I not ruin the space or hamper anyone else's self-expression. Does that mean that the person who people met at Firefly, who was often wearing nothing other than underwear, a hat, a pair of black faeire wings, shoes, and stockings is the real me, and way I present myself in public is just a costume? No. Well, not exactly. We take greater advantage of freedoms we don't always have when we have them, which is why at the moment I'm typing this I'm not wearing anything at all.

Also, it's not like the limits placed on my behavior and my self-expression here in Somerville, MA are exactly smothering.

This is uh, how I dress about 80% of the time that there's a party to go to.

When I go out for a walk dressed like that in Cambridge or Somerville, most people I see on the street don't bat an eyelash, and when they do say anything about my attire the positive comments vastly outnumber the negative. Which isn't actually surprising, when you consider that if you divide the population of Somerville by profession, artists make up a plurality. Of course, it's a relatively small bubble. In Boston proper an old man once did a double-take as I walked past and exclaimed, "Holy Toledo! A he-she!"

I can't tell you how much I love the fact that I was there when an actual person actually said that..

I've been extremely happy with the place I live now, and the people around me, but spending time in an autonomous zone beyond the grasp-- if not the reach-- of the law and of societal convention threw the compromises I make every day in order to participate in civilization into sharp relief. Of course, my access to white hetero cisgendered male privilege means that I get off relatively light in this regard, but that doesn't make it appreciably less frustrating. Four days in the woods once a year isn't enough. I want real life to be this beautiful.

The problem with this, of course, is that Firefly is made up of people who consented to spend four days without (many) rules or currency. As the right to smoke a plant that grows in the goddamn ground has only recently become a majoritarian proposition, women still can't take their tops off in places where men rarely keep them on, and the populace has quietly acquiesced to the notion that being photographed with a drink in your hand can disqualify you for a job, I doubt that the glorious revolution of self-dominion is just around the corner. And, I mean, even I don't want all of the conditions of Firefly to exist everywhere, at all times.

Still, I'm not going to give up on the idea of imbuing my new hometown-- if not the rest of the world-- with some measure of what I found out there in the woods with all of those wonderful naked people.

I'll let you know when I figure out how.

Because I can't ever just tell a goddamn story in the right order

This continues the story I started to tell in my previous post

For me, the extent to which I find myself entangled with people I know because of things that happened on the Internet has served as a kind of constant reminder of the forces of chaos constantly at  work in our lives. Hell, the result of the random number generator behind the "Next Blog" button has led to palpable real-world consequences for me. Which, in the scheme of things, is unremarkable. Random events govern what happens on any given day in any given life, but individually they can be easy to miss. On the Internet, however, there are records, and you can find your way back to the literally random input that changed everything with a good enough memory and, of course, Google.

As it happens, the story that I kind-of-sort-of started to recount the other day happened because of a hat. More specifically, because I decided to change my profile picture on the dating site that I only ever joined because of a test that Bone posted about on his blog, which Pia also took and posted about on her blog.

Did uh, did anyone else do anything with that site besides take the quiz?

The photo in question is the one that I've been using for my avatar. As it happens, when you change anything in your profile on OKCupid, its algorithm gives you a bump. One of the people to whom my profile was bumped clicked through specifically because of the hat, the long hair, and the pirate flag. Her name is Emily, and she's a human statue performer, a leatherworker, a filmmaker, and a firespinner. The first time we hung out, about a year or two ago, we spoke for two solid hours sitting atop a 300 year-old crypt. The second time was at Figment Boston, where we sat in a dome littered with rose petals, pedaled to keep the music playing while people danced, and just generally appreciated the fuck out of the various works of guerrilla art taking up temporary residency on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. She told me that there was a sort of bigger, week-long version of Figment that happened every year out in the woods of Vermont called Firefly, and that she'd be going for the first time next month.

A month later, it did not take very long at all for her to convince me that I needed to be at the next one. Really all it took was the name drop of the camp I mentioned in the previous post. She and a few others had formed a small sub-camp within it called the Bad Faeries, a concept which she intended to visit upon next years festival in full form. A plan slowly took form over the course of the year, and three art grants were applied for and received. There would be a hookah lounge, a faerie wing creation station, a dj setup, a dance floor, a bar, and a horde of mythological creatures shrunken and suspended in light-reactive liquid hanging in jars all over the camp. The bar was my responsibility.

At first, when I thought I'd have funding (or the spare cash to underwrite the project myself), I'd intended on building a machine out of wood, rope, and pulleys that would, from the perspective of the thirsty visitor, pour measured amounts of uncooled booze at the pull of a lever into a bubbling cauldron spewing colored mist, from whereupon a straight-up, undiluted, cold drink would be conjured. It's a marriage of barcraft and stagecraft I had wanted an excuse to build for some time, but which ultimately wasn't in the cards. As plans shifted, it also became clear that there wasn't room for, well, anything else in any of the cars or trucks going up to Vermont. I would be heading up with six buckets, some twine, some duct tape, and twelve pounds of dry ice. I would, presumably, figure it out when I got there.

I was riding with Helen, who I would also be bunking with for the trip.

Oh, that's right, I haven't introduced you all to Helen. Dear readers, this is Helen. We've been together since November of 08

She moved to the Boston area after having traveled to the city the previous September, along with about a thousand other nerds (myself included) from various locales who showed up at the coordinates cited in this xkcd comic. She and five other people who met there moved into an apartment in Somerville, which became one of the main places where people in the newly formed social circle of xkcd fans in the area gathered. Yadda yadda yadda now we live together. Anyways, there was time during the drive up to experiment with the excess dry ice that didn't fit inside the foil-and-styrofoam box that actually stood a chance of keeping it in solid form for the duration of the trip. I learned two things.

(1) dry ice is awesome

(2) carbonated iced coffee is weird.

Because the Heavy Metal Strippers Will Keep the Bears Away

A SECRET, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN THE GREEN MOUNTAINS

And that's the last of it!

The heavyset man behind the camp stove bellowed to all that would hear. He emptied the final bag of uncooked bacon onto the oversized cast-iron pan he was laboring over. Over four days, fully 92 pounds of bacon had been prepared on that stove, in that camp. Cheers went up as people briefly turned away from the firebreather (who had until then been the center of attention) to sample the latest output. Teriyaki bacon, roasted garlic bacon, and Cajun bacon were laid out for any present to consume.

92 pounds? That's about what I weigh!


I looked down to see a pixielike woman standing dressed in tiny black shorts, a scarf, and some bellydancer jewelry.

She put her arm around my midsection. "I hope you don't think this is weird, but I just love tall people. I'm so jealous... do you think you could let me ride on your shoulders?"

Naturally, I obliged. We went back down to the performance pit, where a long-haired man in a black Utilikilt was swinging a flame axe to Aenima by Tool, flanked by a shirtless muscley dude and a tall, skinny woman in a bikini, each of them working a stripper pole. We joined crowd of onlookers gathered at a safe distance wearing varying amounts of clothing who were dancing as they watched the performance.

When the song was over I knelt to let her off of my shoulders. Her feet touched the ground and we were at eye level.

Now you know what the world looks like to me


Actually, I assume this position all the time

Really... do you do partner acrobatics?


Huh? no, I just have a lot of friends who I'm closer to eye level with when I kneel

Oh, because you look like you have the build for it. Put your hands right above my knees for a second


She proceeded to teach me a number of tricks that involved lifting her over my head as she balanced in a pose, and ended by doing a handstand on my shoulders.

You really haven't done this before?

Onlookers did not act as if anything was out of the ordinary, and it wasn't. Not at the Firefly Arts Festival, and certainly not at Camp Heavy Metal Bacon Strippers. Here, 3/4-naked people being casually awesome was expected in very much the same way that, on a normal day, one might expect to drink coffee in the morning. And this in no way detracts from the individual experience of doing awesome things.

The rules of the road of any given burn (the catch-all term for events like Firefly) are designed to create that kind of atmosphere Aside from the ten principles of Burning Man, there are three main rules that govern Firefly:

(1) Leave No Trace (admittedly, one of the ten principles)
(2) Have Fun
(3) Safety Third

This would explain why someone would trust their safety to a complete stranger whose sobriety was never explicitly confermed

When she was done teaching me things, we formally introduced ourselves and parted ways. There was much more adventure to be had, and only a day and a half left to have it.

More to come...