I Am So Popular: If You Can't Shit In Public, Stay Home
Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.
In early 2001 I told my son we were going to Japan. His immediate excited response was this: Well mom, you’re going to have to learn how to shit on a plane.
I don’t recall that I actually emptied my bowels on that seventeen-hour flight, but Henry had a point. The idea of crapping away from a familiar toilet, particularly around a bunch of strangers, and in a situation that involves not-real-plumbing is usually enough to stop me up, sometimes for days on end.
Which was the case last weekend, at least until my intestines couldn’t stand it anymore. Warren, my hot young boyfriend, had invited me months prior to attend Flipside with him, the local version of Burning Man, that annual festival in the desert where thousands of people set up a tent city and experiment in… well, let’s just say all sorts of things.
*** Some embedded photos of Flipside may not be entirely SFW viewing, so watch your back to make sure your boss isn't hanging around before you jump! ***
By which I mean, my only prior inkling of Burning Man was that it was something that had interested my Extremely Bad Ex-Boyfriend from the late ‘90’s and a guy I went to college with who grew up to lead a life that I find pretty fucking creepy. So rather than think, in a mature and logical fashion, that perhaps not every BM attendee was like these guys, I threw the baby out with the bathwater, deciding with no true evidence that BM was something for goofballs.
Then along came Warren, nine months ago to the day. (Happy anniversary, baby.) He introduced me to his burner friends, who are fond of throwing theme parties and burlesque shows, dressing up in wild costumes, and cutting loose on a regular basis. How new this was to me and, at first, how awkward. Sometimes I’d stand on the edge of a party, very happy to be there, but too shy to interact as much as I wanted to, and way too self-conscious to dress up or join in the dancing.
But Warren’s friends embraced me, coaxed me by example, and somehow over the course of the last three seasons, I have evolved-- if not into a totally all-caution-to-the-wind-at-all-times sort— at least into someone with a pretty fun collection of goofy lingerie from thrift stores and a willingness to shake my batonkis on the dance floor when Warren holds out his hand and leads me there.
As we drove into Flipside, which was held on private land out in Hays County, Warren asked me if I’d read the online survival guide. Survival guide? He was kidding, right?
No, he wasn’t. And he told me I might be quizzed at the entry to make sure I understood the rules. So he gave me a little crash course, which I think went like this:
You will arrive for four days of camping with 2,000 other people, many of whom will be naked. You will not spend money. You will not even barter. You will share what you have and others will share with you. You will not cross other people’s boundaries but if you do, they will tell you and you will listen. Similarly, you may tell others when your boundaries are crossed.
So we pulled in and were greeted by the official greeters who were in varying states of creative dress and undress. Welcome home, they said. This is something you hear a lot at Flipside. Welcome home welcome home welcome home.
Now would be a good time to point out that, in addition to being shy—something hardly anyone believes about me but it is so true—I am also introverted. Which means I don’t just want but need many hours of alone time every day. A typical day for me will find me away from all other humans for at least ten hours, seventeen if you count sleeping. Large groups make me very nervous, perhaps because I was raised with eight siblings and the chaos of so many people forever having to share limited resources left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
And yet… I trusted Warren when he invited me. Or maybe it was more like I didn’t give any thought to what it might be like to spend so much time around so many people.
Let’s examine the nudity factor now. It’s not about the nakedness Warren told me on the drive in.
Then why does everyone bring that up when they mention Flipside? I asked.
I don’t want to be one of those people with hang-ups about my body but I was raised with an intense, if false, modesty I never shook. Though Warren was looking forward to letting it all flap in the wind, I had firm plans to keep covered the entire time. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I had some anxiety about all this no clothes stuff—concern I might be judged for choosing to stay ensconced in fabric and fear that I’d be all uptight about others going the opposite direction.
In the end though, the external nakedness didn’t faze me, not one bit. When you are surrounded for days on end by people with no clothes on, you get used to it really quickly. But what I wasn’t expecting, not at all, was an internal nakedness—my own—that would confront me over the course of ninety-six hours. My brain, in the raw.
Because while I was not stripped of my clothes, I was certainly stripped of all those things I typically rely on to hide behind and distract myself from introspection. Here at Flipside I had no computer, I put my cell phone away, and only twice did I break down and attempt to do some reading. (I did bring my knitting with me, but that’s more of a meditation thing.)
We camped with a group of eighty, known as Ish, responsible for one of the most elaborate theme camps. All across the land there were these temporary set-ups—dance floors and sound systems, bars with free flowing booze, places to lie down, make out, get it on, whatever you wanted to do. Ish had a two-story genie bottle set up, this year’s theme being Wish.
Seven of us formed a nearby sub-camp, called Yidd-ish, featuring yarmulkes, free bar mitzvahs, tunes from Meshugga Beach Party and once, even, a little bullhorn-enhanced Yiddish commentary from Warren.
The temperatures last weekend were record breaking and utterly brutal. I have a high tolerance for heat but even still found the only way to cope with the pounding sun was to sit very, very still, preferably in the creek, but sometimes back at camp for hours on end. Note that I am about as good at sitting still as I am at not checking email. Doing nothing is a huge challenge for me.
So there I sat, stripped of all things I count as daily ritualistic comforts—alone time, distractions, running around—and I immersed myself in an attempt at slow and calm. When people dropped by our camp, we talked to them. Face to face, no running away.
When Warren and I wandered around looking at the various dome and scaffolding sculptures, the fire shooting creations and all the rest of it (culminating in a burning on Sunday night of an enormous effigy of a hula girl) I couldn’t help but note that rather than be excited at all these things, my first thought was, That’s dangerous! Someone could get hurt!
I hated this about myself. I wanted to be free and silly and as effortlessly joy-filled as so many people around me seemed. I made a vow to try to let go a little, to have fun, to trust that it was all going to work out, to roll with my surroundings and co-campers, to fucking lighten up already.
Warren is a great teacher when it comes to lightening up. If he were any more relaxed he’d be in a coma. He coaxed me along. Which is how I found myself standing in the middle of a dance floor looking first left then right, bursting with unadulterated giddiness as I observed Warren dancing in a cage on one side of me and Garreth dancing in a cage on the other side.
But the real challenge to all that I hold so very uptightly and close to my chest came when, at long last, after three days of holding my shit literally inside, I finally had that one cup of coffee that got me to the tipping point.
I’m going in, I said, grabbing a roll of toilet paper and heading off for what I figured would be a futile attempt at public shitting.
A few moments later, as I sat in that plastic sauna upon the flushless throne, I heard Warren’s voice outside, gently asking, Spike are you in there?
I am, I said
Which he when he busted out the bullhorn. Ladies and Gentlemen, for the first time ever, Spike Gillespie is shitting in a port-a-potty!
A loud cheer and big applause erupted from the nearby Ish camp. Warren went on for a few more minutes. I’m not one to blush but I could see in the fakey porta-pottie mirror that the redness in my face wasn’t mere sunburn.
But I did it, people. I let my shit—both real and metaphorical—fly in public. I can’t recommend the experience highly enough.
Spike Gillespie is popular with and without clothes on. She blogs for Launchpad Coworking and at www.spikeg.com. She is also the headmistress of the Dick Monologues.
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