thunderdome: an excerpt from burnout, a novel

by james iredell

    Before the Event, Curly put in weekend time at the work ranch. He poured a slab for a new Burning Man fabrication shop. He brought out a crew (including Shawn) to form the slab, pour concrete, smooth it in hundred-degree heat. Burning Man needed his expertise. As a non-spectator event, the festival relied on participants to put together their collective skills, and through this Black Rock City rose out of the alkaline dust.

    He drove out on Saturday morning, spent most the day working, then finished by Sunday afternoon and made his way back to Reno, Barb, and Jared. Saturday nights he partied at the Kamissary with other Department of Public Works employees and volunteers.

    Curly began volunteering for Burning Man in 1996. He came across the festival (comparatively small at that time, around seven thousand participants) while driving through the desert, tripping on acid. He ended up staying a few days, watched the Man burn, helped clean up, and got invited to return the following year. He’d spent so much time on construction sites pouring concrete. Most important: Curly could read construction plans. Burning Man offered him a job heading up a DPW crew.

    Curly’s usual occupation: the fence. After 1996, the population of Black Rock City spiked upwards and the Event drew attention from authorities. As soon as Burning Man had to buy Event permits, they needed a way to pay for them. Gone were the free festival days in service of radical self-expression. Curly could blame whomever he wanted for that: sometimes it pissed him off that more people learned about Burning Man, ruining it for old timers, like himself; other times he blamed the government for imposing the permits; sometimes he blamed Burning Man for wanting the Event to grow larger and larger each year. Either way, Burning Man started charging admission and Curly built the fence that kept the non-payers out, and the gate that let participants in.

    But everything changed after Jared’s birth.

    Curly had been at work on a side job when Barb talked with her parents. Curly would frown on the idea of them seeing his son. More than once he’d expressed anger at their disinterest since they knew of Barb’s pregnancy.

    Curly walked into the house after finishing the side job. He carried the mail. Barb sat on the couch in front of the television, nursing Jared. “Your favorite newsguy’s on,” she said.

    “Oh yeah.” Curly didn’t look up at the television. He flipped through the stack of envelopes in his dirty hands. He walked, eyes on the mail, into the kitchen, and returned to the living room with a beer. He sat on the couch next to Barb, leaned in to kiss her cheek, then Jared’s head.

    “How was work?” Barb said.

    “Tough, baby, real tough.”

    Barb rubbed Curly’s neck and back.

    “How’s he been today?”

    “Fussy,” Barb said. “We’ve had a tough day too, haven’t we?” Jared sucked along, eyes closed. “Anything good in the mail?”

    “Just bills, and this.” He held up an envelope from Burning Man, “Tickets. We get this every year. But we’re not paying, oh hell no. After all the work we’ve put in for those motherfuckers, we ain’t paying to go.”

    Barb shifted Jared. “No, of course we’re not paying, because we’re not going.”

    Curly stopped drinking his beer, looked at Barb. “What are you talking about, not going? Shit, I’ve been putting on that damn festival for eight years. Of course we’re going.”

    Curly didn’t want to have to talk about this now. But there was no way that he would miss Burning Man. Barb said that he wasn’t going with her, without her, at all. They’d made the commitment to have this baby. Raising Jared did not include a two-month hiatus living in a trailer in the dusty desert. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Barb said. “But we’ve got a baby. We’re not going to Burning Man.”

    Curly stood from the couch, above Barb and the baby. “I know we’ve got Jared. I’m not an idiot. But Burning Man’s not until August. He’ll be almost six months old by then. We don’t have to go for the whole week, but at least for the night of the Burn.”

    “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Curly, but we’re not going, and that’s that.”

    “Well, then,” Curly said. He slammed the rest of his beer and set the empty can on the coffee table. “You don’t have to go, but I’m going.”

    Jared started with a whimper. His muffled cries sounded over Barb’s shoulder. “Listen,” Barb said. “I don’t want you going out there. I know what goes on, and it’s not the kind of place for the father of a baby, whether we’re with you or not.” 

    “I wasn’t even planning on working for them this year. But I’ve put so many years into the DPW that they’ll give me free tickets. Even if you don’t go I stand to make at least three hundred bucks a ticket by selling them at the gate. Besides, I’ve got friends that I only see out there. I never see them here when we’re in Reno. It’s the one thing I’ve got.”

    Jared wailed uninhibited now. Barb balanced him on her shoulder, rocked him, patted his back. “I know you really want to go, sweetheart. But that’s not the best environment for us.”

    “What the fuck are you talking about?” Curly said. “I brought you out there. You would never even be the person you are if it weren’t for me taking you.”

    “Please, stop cussing,” Barb said.

    His hands found his hips, his head bowed, defeated. “All right,” he said. “I’m sorry about cussing.”

    “Thank you,” Barb said over the baby. She shushed to him.

    “You want me to hold him?” Curly held his arms out to Jared. Barb turned away. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m going to try and put him down.”

    “No, it’s okay,” Curly said. He was following her down the hall to the baby’s room. They’d set up the room with a changing table, crib, and toys. Curly even wallpapered a colorful light blue. The nursery emanated peace. “Really,” Curly was saying behind her. “I’d like to hold him.”

    “Not now, okay.” Barb laid Jared wailing in his crib. “It’s just that you’re really upset, and I don’t think you should.”

    “Yeah,” Curly said, unutterably hurt, “okay.”

    She dangled a stuffed candycane in front of Jared’s face but he continued crying. Barb kept trying to shush him. “Oh, my poor baby,” she said. Jared was starting to calm. Curly shuffled, his steel-toed work boots scraping the hardwood.

    “Yeah,” Curly said again, and he was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “Well, I’m going.”

    “What are you talking about?” Barb turned, looking up at him.

    He was crying. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I’m going to have a couple beers.”

    Barb held up her palms. “Why don’t you just stay here?” she yelled.

    Curly waltzed out of the room. “Forget it. I’ll be back. I won’t stay out late. I’m just going to have a couple beers.”

    “Fine,” Barb said. “Go ahead.” Curly was already out the front door, keys dangling in his hand. “You’re just a couple stooges short, you know Curly?” she said. “You need to find yourself a Moe.” She slammed the front door.

    Curly started his truck and pulled away. Later, when he came home, filling the house with the smell of Budweiser, Barb said she and Jared would fly to Chicago the week of Burning Man.

    Now he couldn’t live in the desert for two months without returning to Reno. Someone else took over Curly’s job heading up the fence crew. Curly still gave time by pouring concrete, and for that he received free Event tickets.

    But he missed the desert, the Eighty Acres, all the friends he’d worked with since the beginning. There was Mr. Clean, the DPW chief of staff. He’d been with Burning Man and the Founder since the 80s. Maid Marion ran the radios, communicating with the heads of the work crews. Pearl and Sitka ran the gate. Playground was in charge of volunteer and staff insurance; she made sure everyone signed their “death waiver,” which freed Burning Man of liability for injury or death while working the Event. Participants did so at their own risk. Smiles ran the crew that erected med tents throughout the city during the Event. Bean and Disco ran the Kamissary at the Eighty Acres, and the Café during the Event. Demolitia was in charge of the dragon and most DPW welding. And she was downright beautiful.

    Demolitia hadn’t any qualms about showing off her petite body, especially in the desert heat. She wore miniskirts, sans panties, knee-length platform boots and a bra, along with a cowboy hat atop her bright red-dyed hair. Her shoulders were inked up. A hoop ran through her nose. She wore a welder’s mask and heavy leather gloves to protect eyes and hands from the arc welder. She nodded, the mask falling over her face, as she leaned in to piece together the slabs of metal that made the dragon’s body.

    Always, the crazy ones worked the dragon. It was an art vehicle, a train of linked-together cars with fabricated metal cut and shaped, welded together, so that, when finished, the train resembled the body of a Chinese New Year dragon, giant-sized and hollow-bodied to carry Event participants. Demolitia’s baby.

    No drinking until five PM. An Eighty Acres rule. There were few rules, and this one was sometimes enforced. People gathered for the morning meeting at 7:30. Staff members divvied up volunteers into crews then jostled off to work. Lunch at noon. Finally, five o’clock rolled around and the kegs went on ice, dinner served. The Kamissary came alive as work crews filtered in from a day in the sun. As night fell the lights in the Kamissary came up. Joints passed. Good times were had.

    Curly sat on a picnic table in the Kamissary, his boots dusty from the playa, his fingers covered with dirt, his T-shirt sweat-heavy. He smoked a bowl and passed it to Cowboy Bob. Cowboy Bob’s smoking pot was a rare occurrence, considering his meth appetite. If pot brought anyone down or relaxed, it had the opposite effect on Cowboy Bob, which was quite entertaining. Cowboy Bob had his guitar and he strummed distractedly, the instrument out of tune, the chords in random progression. His Mohawk-mullet ran down his neck and he still wore sunglasses, though it was nearly dark. He sang hoarse-voiced, and toothless, about a six pack:

“Thirty-five dollars and a six pack to my name, spent the rest on beer so who’s to blame!”

    Demolitia passed the pipe to Curly. “So you’re a weekender now?” She was a virgin, compared to Curly, when it came to the DPW, so she meant this as a joke.

    “I got a life. I got a kid.” Curly paused to smoke the bowl. “I can’t live out here for months at a time like you hippies. I’ve got responsibilities.”

    “Wow,” Demolitia said. “You sound responsible and everything. You have a picture of your kid?”

    Curly withdrew his wallet and pulled out the photo he and Barb had made of Jared at three months. He lay on a cloud-like blanket and wore Curly’s favorite black T-shirt, silk screened to read “My Daddy’s Tattoos Are the Shit.”

Demolitia laughed. “Awesome, huh?” Curly said.

    “He’s cute.” Demolitia leaned in, rubbing against Curly’s shoulder. Curly leaned away from her body. “I like the T-shirt,” she added.

    He felt himself growing hard. He sipped his beer. “He’s a lot of fun,” Curly admitted.

    He got up off the picnic table. Cowboy Bob had changed bands and songs. Instead of Black Flag he’d moved on to Bad Brains. “I came to know with new dismay, that in this world we all must pay, pay to write, pay to play, pay to cum, pay to fight!” Bob’s voice had almost failed him. It came in a screaming whisper.

    “Where are you going?” Demolitia asked.

    Curly shook his head. “Nowhere. I mean, I think I’m going to turn on a light in my trailer so I can find my way. It’s dark.” He’d kept a trailer at the ranch for a few years. The ranch was divided into roads dotted with junk piles for the Event, and trailers where DPW crew shacked up in the month leading to the Burn. A couple weeks before the Event all festival materials and the DPW crew trailers moved onto the playa, the festival site. It was dark in the desert, and Curly was already buzzed. He didn’t want to wander the ranch blackness trying to find his trailer. With a light on (his trailer came equipped with a built-in generator) he’d have less trouble.

    “I’ll come with you,” Demolitia suggested.

    “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She was coming on to him. They’d always flirted, even last year, when Barb had been here with him. Their flirting had been playful and harmless. But now that Curly was alone, and that he and Barb weren’t doing so good?

    “I won’t bite,” Demolitia said.

    She had his hand in hers; they were already walking toward the Kamissary’s exit. He and Barb didn’t sleep together for a month after Jared was born—doctor’s orders. Even though Barb had a C-section, those parts of hers still needed healing. Then they’d started fighting. He and Barb hadn’t had sex in months. Still, Curly hadn’t given up. He imagined Barb’s face, crumpling into tears when she learned of his infidelity. He couldn’t stand to see her like that.

    “Listen,” he said, pulling his hand free of Demolitia’s. She stepped forward and leaned in, her face soft in the fading holiday lights strung round the Kamissary fence. But Curly stepped back, tripped on a stake that held up a large military-style tent, and fell, squat in the dust on his ass. He’d forgotten that Smiles’s crew had set up the tent that day to make sure all the pieces fit together before the Event.

    “God, are you okay?” Demolitia bent forward, her arms outstretched to help Curly out of the dust.

    Curly pushed her hands away and scrambled to his feet. “I’m fine,” he insisted.

    “I’m sorry, Curly,” Demolitia said.

    “I’ve got a girlfriend.” They had a child together. Didn’t she see that? He’d just showed her the fucking picture. Did she want to go breaking up a family? Who the fuck did she think she was? Just because she worked in the desert in her skimpy clothing with her dyed hair and tattoos didn’t mean she could go around fucking whatever guy she wanted. Curly had standards.    

    His weekdays looked like this: He woke at five AM, sliding from the lonely warm embrace of his and Barb’s bed. Barb might stir only a little, no doubt exhausted from caring for Jared. He did not disturb her, unless of course Jared was awake or woke while Curly dressed. When his son’s whimpers drifted from the room across the hall, Curly nudged Barb’s shoulder, waking her to attend to the baby while he slipped on his Carharts, a T-shirt, his steel-toed work boots. Barb would murmur drowsy, “got him,” as she stepped around Curly. Sometimes, briefly, he woke at four o’clock or four-thirty and thought of snuggling next to Barb and waking her with a gentle rub. But lately, he’d rather take advantage of the extra hour or half-hour of sleep. Besides, Barb often complained about how hard it was taking care of Jared. Curly knew she needed the sleep as much as he did.

    With the sun edging the Carson Range to the east Curly would stop at the AMPM at the corner of Wells and pack up his one-hitter for the day’s first smoke. Stoned, he stepped inside the convenience store for Gatorade and a donut. Healthy breakfasts did not abound in Curly’s life, but concrete was hard, physical, and he needed the sugar and fat. He burned it off quickly and nothing (except maybe the beers he drank on the weekends, when he considered his rounding, but still muscular belly) seemed to make him fat.

    He worked his crew all day, took lunch (first he, and usually Shawn with him, smoked from the one-hitter) at a bar where he ordered a burger or chicken wings. The crew finished up the afternoon by three or four. In the unbearable three o’clock August heat the sun scorched his bare back. His skin had gone golden then dark brown over the summer. Then, on the way home, he and Shawn (he still drove the kid home to his dad’s trailer) smoked from the one hitter again.

When he returned to his house he usually found Barb sitting up on the couch, asleep, Jared cooing in his bassinette. When he walked through the front door Barb would wake, circles under eyes. The house would be littered with piles of clean clothes waiting for folding, bowls and plates caked with food, glasses with milk and juice drying in their bottoms and littering the dining table. “How was your day?” Barb would say.

    “Fine,” Curly said, picking Jared out of the bassinette. “Hey buddy? Did you have fun today?” Curly would play with his son for twenty minutes or so before hunger called him away. By now it would already be six at night. For dinner: microwave burritos from the 7-11. Curly drank a Miller High Life tall boy and watched the news while Barb tried putting Jared down. Getting Jared asleep in his crib took at least half an hour. Barb’s weight as she settled back on the couch awakened Curly from a slumber. His eyes blurry from the daylong sun burning into them, from the pot and beer, the news credits would roll down the screen like snow falling on a dark night, and Curly hadn’t a clue how long he’d been out. Curly let his heavy eyes fall closed again. Next he knew it was one thirty or two o’clock in the morning, the couch’s opposite end where Barb sat had emptied, the television turned off, the living room dark. Curly felt his way along the wall to the hallway and into his bedroom. Three hours later his alarm sounded, waking him for the cycle to repeat.

    Through the month of August his reprieve from this routine came in the form of weekends spent at the Eighty Acres with the DPW.

    Finally the last weekend before the Event. Curly stayed home. Jared and Barb flew to Chicago on Sunday. Curly drove them to the airport. Barb had strapped Jared into his car seat secured on the folding chair in the truck’s extra cab. The baby lay quiet, Curly and Barb rode silent. The quiet had pervaded their existence for over a month.

    “We need to talk.” Barb finally broke. They were pulling into the pick-up/drop-off lane at Reno-Tahoe International and Curly hardly let Barb finish the sentence.

    “I know. I agree.”

    “Now we’re here.” Barb indicated the airport, their port of departure.

    “I know.” Curly wished he had said something days, weeks ago.

    “I’ll call from Chicago?”

    “That sounds good.”

    Curly pulled the truck against the curb next to the sign for American Airlines. He set the parking brake, hopped out and unloaded Barb’s suitcase and diaper bag from the truck bed and unfolded the stroller. Barb had stepped from the cab and lifted Jared gently from the car seat, trying not to wake him. She set the baby down again in the stroller, covered him with a blanket (even in August, because the airport would be air conditioned). Curly slipped the diaper bag over her shoulder, extended the suitcase’s handle and leaned it toward her. She was ready, leaning into Curly’s hug.

    “Have fun at Burning Man,” she said.

    “You have fun with your folks,” Curly said. “You have the Ranch number, just in case.”

    Barb nodded, turned to the electric doors wheezing open for coming and going airline passengers. Curly watched her. He walked around to the driver’s side of the truck, putting the vehicle between him, Barb, and his son. He looked back to Barb who was about to pass through the sliding doors. “Hey,” Curly called.

    Barb looked over her shoulder but kept walking, her cheeks stained with tear trails, as if twin snails had slithered down her face.

    “Love you.”

    Barb nodded, still walking and crying, the doors closing on her like a mouth.

    Later that afternoon, by the time he’d had a few beers in an attempt to forget Barb’s image as the airport swallowed her away from him—a look like she’d lost something precious—he realized that he would never shake the image of Barb leaving, nor could he forget Demolitia in the dim white Christmas lights strung around the Kamissary, mouthing, I want you so bad. A little drunk, depressed, both missing his family and wanting to forget them, Curly started his truck and made way for the desert.

    Because he thought it was what he wanted, Curly tried to fuck Demolitia, but he couldn’t finish. In fact he had barely started before he rolled off, sat on the edge of the mattress in his trailer, held his head in his hands, and cried. He couldn’t get the image of Barb out of his head. He knew he shouldn’t be here with this naked chick in his trailer. He should be with his girlfriend, at home.

    Demolitia sat up, rubbed his shoulders, tried to pull him back to her, but he shrugged away. “Jesus,” she said.

    “You should probably go.”

    “You think?” Demolitia was pulling on her tank top and skirt. Even in the darkened trailer her red hair stood out. “I bet I can find someone here to fuck me good.”

    “Yeah,” Curly said, defeated, not caring, just wanting her gone. “I bet you can.” He held the trailer door open for her, and a hot breeze blew through it.

    As she stepped past him she stopped, touched his chin with her fingertips. “You sure you want me to go?”

    “I’m positive.”

    “Fine.” And she was gone.

    Curly turned on the light. He found his pants on the floor and in the back pocket he found his wallet. He found the photo of Jared in his “My Daddy’s Tattoos Are the Shit” T-shirt. It had only been five days and Curly couldn’t wait to hear what things Jared might have done since he last saw him.

    He had this moment of near-clarity, a late-night period of almost-sobriety, before he passed out and woke in the morning, and Burning Man still raged on around him, and Curly, caught up in the mix of the festival, did not forget about his baby and his baby’s mother, but could do nothing to contact them until he returned to Reno from the desert, and they returned home from Chicago.

    That had been three days ago. Now it was Saturday, the last night of the Event, the night of the Burn. Demolitia had continued to hound him. She flirted, played grab-ass. But Curly got away easily enough. Earlier today she decided to move on and grabbed Smiles and kissed him right in front of Curly in the middle of camp. She had looked at Curly first, as if to say, last chance. But Curly didn’t care. She could do what she wanted. What was funny was that Demolitia and Smiles were probably perfect for each other, the two sluts sucking like leaches. 

    Curly tried to forget about Barb and Jared, both of whom he missed terribly. He focused on getting as drunk and high as possible. And in doing so, on this last night of Burning Man, the Man’s arms still stock and rigid at his sides. Soon they would slowly elevate from the hips to above the head as if in colossal joy, anger, regret, before burning away. Curly and Shawn stood on the outside, looking into the Thunderdome.

    The Thunderdome was a real-life version of the Mad Max-famed Tina Turner bitch-goddess extravaganza. Looking at it Curly envisioned Mel Gibson flinging around in his bungee-corded harness and blowing that fucking dog whistle. Here was the real thing, only rather than fighting with razor-sharp battle axes and spears, the combatants dueled it out with Nerf bats.

    The dome (a geodesic dome constructed of welded steel) stood on the outskirts of Black Rock City, its sign lit neon in the night, and Curly and Shawn, without realizing it, had drunkenly wandered into the fray.

    They’d left camp just as the sun set, buzzed from whisky and beers, high from pot and playing mystery pill, the tank of nitrous. By the time they reached Thunderdome it had fallen full dark and participants gathered to fight or scour the dome for a good view. The participants wore boas and bikinis fixed with glow sticks. They waddled like pastel geese. From the dome bars camera flashes shot lightning into the dark, temporarily illuminating two women who flew in a frenzy of exchanged blows, a cloud of dust stirred like a bomb had exploded. The crowd roared at especially ferocious attacks. A tank rumbling through the desert.

    The next thing Curly knew he was fitted with knee and elbow pads. The women finished their fight and Curly slipped into a vacated harness. The folks running Thunderdome buckled him in and recited the rules: 1. We are always right; 2. Find your own opponent; 3. Sign up to fight; 4. Start and stop when told; 5. Fights last as long as we say; and the most important rule: Don’t Bitch. Everything happened so fast Curly didn’t know if he’d followed them. He didn’t remember signing up to fight, nor picking an opponent. But he certainly wouldn’t bitch.

    His opponent was Shawn. The kid hopped lithely, the muscles of his chest and arms exposed as the bungee harness pulled his T-shirt. He’d gotten toned up in the army, all those months eating MREs. Music started, heavy metal that rattled Curly’s brain, amping him. The whistle blew. The fight began.

    Curly and Shawn flew at each other, awkward drunken warriors who didn’t know what they were doing or why they’d ended up fighting in the first place. But Curly figured he could blow off some of the piss spoiling his insides, angry over his fight with Barb, that she’d ditched him during the Burn.

    The crowd roared with anticipation, egging him on. Curly knew they wanted to see someone get hit; they wanted an epic battle. They booed when Curly and Shawn’s blows missed each other; they cheered half-heartedly when the Nerf bats struck each other, or landed a glancing blow on a cheek or shoulder.

    Curly grew impatient. The music thundered the Thunderdome. The Nerf bat was bullshit—an ineffective weapon in a war that demanded cheap shots. Shawn hit the ground on the opposite side of the dome. Curly hopped, got momentum, and sprang. Shawn came right back at Curly. But when they neared, Curly dropped the bat, grabbed Shawn’s harness and began throwing punches.

    “Take that, you fucking bitch!” Curly yelled. “Take that shit!”

The cheers rose. Shawn seemed surprised. But he laughed and dropped his bat.

“All right,” he said. His muscles flexed; a vein stuck out on his shoulder like a snake. “It’s like that, then.”

    They hit the ground running. Curly imagined Barb’s face when they fought, turning away when he wanted to hold Jared, the boy’s tiny chubby body like a worm. Her thick purple lip had twitched. A drop of sweat that had coagulated from the beads on her forehead dripped over her dark eyebrow. Her kinky hair had frizzed with the summer heat.

    Shawn himself was lighter skinned, but brown and whooping, Indian he was. They hurtled though the air, with smiling, flying fists. When they finished, after their epic warrioring ended, both of them stumbled off, panting for more beer, happy friends, and Curly, at least, was no longer hurt on the inside.      

James Iredell is production editor of New South. Poetry, fiction, and nonficiton appears, or is forthcoming, in Elsysian Fields Quarterly, Descant, The Literary Review, Zone 3, The Chattahoochee Review, Weber Studies, ISLE, Terminus, and GSU Review, among others. This excerpt is from "Burnout," a novel about family, addiction, and the countercultural experiment of Burning Man. Many of the author's friends, currently living in Reno, Nevada, still work for the Burning Man LLC's Department of Public Works.