Friday 11 October 2013

Kind Of Gross, Feel Free To Skip!

Ready To Go by foundimagination
I wrote myself a note the first or second day I was at Burning Man.  It was this:

Things you get immune to at Burning Man
- naked boobies
- other people's poop

The second one usually grosses people out, but seriously, it's really not that big of a deal.

There are portapotties.  Probably twenty (?) in a row, scattered throughout the city.  And they're cleaned a few times a day. (I think you probably should pay those guys a lot of lot of money.)

But when you go to use them, they don't... or, I should say, the ones near us didn't stink.  They weren't necessarily pleasant, (although there was one that had a special something or other in it that made it smell great, and I did hear of some that played music or had other awesome things added on to make the experience nicer) but quite honestly, the nastiest bathrooms I encountered on the trip were the ones in the parks and forests we stopped in while on the road.  Those smelled like porta potties.

So when you went in to the portapotties, if you glanced down, and I must say, now that I'm writing it, I'm not sure why I do glance down? Anyway, if you glanced down, you'd see poop.  And it's just kind of not a big deal after the first time of going "huh.. that's someone else's poop!"

Maybe it's because you know you're going to be dealing with it for the next week, and it's just always there, but it's really just kind of... shrug.

As for the boobies, I suppose there were people who did not ever become immune to naked boobies, but I sure did.  It was like, oh, yeah, there go some more.  It just kind of becomes another shrug moment.  Oh, she's got no top on. Shrug.

I guess it's also true that you become immune to the dust, but that's not entirely true.  You certainly become immune to it being everywhere.  But my skin wasn't immune to it, finger and toe skin anyway.

I also didn't particularly notice the noise.  I mean I did, but it didn't bother me as much as it would if I were at home and my neighbour wouldn't stop blasting techno music all the damn time.  That would drive me bonkers.

Or if someone drove around my neighbourhood with their car stereo cranking out random songs?  I would be SO annoyed?  But at Burning Man?  It's like... oh... loud art car.  Shrug.

Or sometimes it's, sweet!  Loud art car!  Or... OOOOH art car with blinky lights!  And fire!  MAKE MORE FIRE! Ooooooh!

But, yeah.  I certainly became pretty quickly immune to naked boobies and other people's poop.

Don't think that would happen at home either.

2 comments:

Jonathan Beckett said...

I think I became immune to nakedness when I was at college doing art - and later taking photos of friends (yes, I have taken photos of girls I knew with very little on) :)

Of course once you have kids, all bashfulness gets knocked out of you...

Victoria said...

Fair point!