My boyfriend Travis has two housemates: Beth (in her thirties, very attractive, something of a bohemian) and Pat (in her eighties, still very active, socially and politically progressive). Neither of these women approves of me. They know I'm married, and they can't figure out why Travis is wasting his time with me.
On Monday morning, I had a conversation with Beth. She was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, all decked out in her Lycra biking gear, inquiring about our weekend. She wanted to know what we'd thought of Decompression, a regional Burning Man event held every fall. Travis had joined me, my husband, and our two children for this event, which means he'd gotten to drive five hours, then interact with a bunch of strangers, then try to hula hoop while getting sunburned, then wait around for the effigy to burn, then sleep alone (in a tent that didn't zip up properly, right near a sound stage with loud music going all night), then go through the trauma of having to use a port-a-potty that was literally overflowing, and then drive five hours back home. I don't think the fact that he and I managed, at one point, to have sex in the back seat of his car nearly made up for what he went through this past weekend. But Travis is a good sport.
“It was really interesting,” he said, telling Beth about the fire, the fireworks, the dancing and the dressing up.
Beth heard his recap without really listening to it, and then delivered her verdict, which was directed at me rather than Travis:
“I just don't understand what people get out of big 'creative' gatherings like that,” she said, with the subtlest of sneers. “I have no interest in going, myself. I mean, sure, there's stuff to see, but how enjoyable is it when everyone there is just showing off, putting all this effort into their project, their self-expression, trying to look good?”
Now, I'm not a major Burning Man devotee. I've been to a few regional events in the past couple of years, mainly because my husband has become a major Burning Man devotee, and I want to support his interests.
Nevertheless, I felt compelled to set Beth straight, so I launched into a fairly impassioned speech on what I get out of Burning Man events. I told her about the nexus of the sacred and the profane, the authenticity and spontaneity of the proceedings, the sheer likeability of most of the people there. I got a bit preachy about the Burner principle of Radical Inclusion.
I felt a little funny delivering this manifesto, given that I myself had been bitten, pretty severely, by the judgment bug at Decompression.
Exhibit A: Man eats unheated ravioli straight out of the can, using his fingers. Food snob that I am, I repress a shudder. Travis notices my reaction, and ribs me a little: “What wine would pair best with that meal, do you think?”
Exhibit B: I offer a plate of bacon to a group of guys who've been up all night, all of whom are very, very stoned and/or inebriated. Some of them have trouble locating the piece of bacon with their fingers. One of them holds up the plastic inner liner of a boxed wine, which still has a little bit of red liquid sloshing around in it, and gestures in my direction. I politely decline to drink from the communal spigot. Understand: it's 9 a.m. In my book, red wine is simply not breakfast fare.
I looked at those people and, in my mind, said the same thing Beth was saying: “I just don't understand what you're getting out of this.” I looked at them and thought, “You are uncool, unclassy, and – worst of all – unhealthy.” I looked at them and thought, “I'm better than you.”
So why was I jumping to the defense of Decompression, Burners as a group, the whole Burning Man code of ethics? Simple: because Beth wasn't really attacking the notion of “big 'creative' gatherings” – she was attacking me. There was a subtext to her dismissive comments, and it was this: “I'm better than you.”
Listening to Beth's critique, I discovered something I genuinely like about the Burning Man events I've attended, something I find truly valuable: the almost complete absence of judgment there, the near-freedom from one-upsmanship. I say “almost complete absence” and “near-freedom” because, after all, I was there, along with my holier-than-thou snobbery.
Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes.
When it comes right down to it, we're all hypocrites – at least until we realize that Radical Inclusion means seeing OURSELVES as whole beings. It means accepting that the parts of ourselves we like and approve of are intimately entangled with parts of ourselves we dislike and wish to disavow. Radical Inclusion could just as well be called Shadow Integration.
And this brings me to another observation: it has always seemed to me that the people who are most judgmental of me and my polyamorous “lifestyle” are people who are struggling with desires they can't accept, fantasy scripts they can't bear to see actually acted out by someone else.
Maybe Beth's real issue with me is that I remind her too much of herself. Just a guess.
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