To the Night I'd Rather Forget
We've all experienced something we wish we could bury deep in the desert.
I’m on the road, friends, connecting with friends and family (and making sandwiches) on an epic summer road trip for three months! And, I’ve started a summer podcast with my friend and fellow Substack author
! On the High Road is an adventure show for travelers — Michelle and I are catching up weekly while I’m on the road with my pup Archie to dive into where I can find great food, legal cannabis, and safe access to reproductive care as I criss-cross North America. We’re putting the "fun" into fundamental human rights!Archie and I are traveling from Los Angeles to Newfoundland and back, with plenty of incredible stops along the way. Follow @onthehighroad on Instagram and here on Substack to track us as we go. Episodes will be available wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and we’ll be updating with lots of content on IG as Michelle and I chat about where I should go, what I’m missing while I’m away from home, and which animals we’d prefer to encounter in the woods (I saw a fox at my campsite this morning, hot damn).
I left LA a week ago and drove through Utah and Colorado to Denver, where I spent some time with my friend Nicole’s brother Zach and her mom Linda. If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know that Nicole was a defining person in my life. She was murdered on January 27, 2005. I’m starting to write about our friendship, and how her death 19 years ago blasted a hole in the lives of all who loved her. It’s taken me a long time to get here.
This week, I’d like to share the first thing I ever wrote about the night Nicole was killed. I wrote it a decade ago for an event called Women of Letters, at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Each performer had been asked to write and read aloud a letter “to the night I’d rather forget.” Many of the letters were later included in an anthology titled AIRMAIL: Women of Letters. It’s a little weird for me to read mine now, because I can see that I couldn’t really get my arms around what had happened. But here’s my first attempt to write about Nicole’s death, a long time ago.
Dear Night at Burning Man,
Will you forgive me? I asked too much of you. I asked you to be the perfect night, and you found yourself somewhat wanting. When I shoved that enormous handful of dried mushrooms into my mouth as Scott and Natasha signaled their exits to bed, I thought that you would reveal yourself to me in a way that would make me understand the truths and beauty of life, and death. That evening, I had donned the rawhide armor that Natasha had made for me to symbolize my warrior-hood, and I had seen… oh, I had seen many things. A little child at the controls of a walking robot filled with light, a Mad Max Thunderdome dust battle, a giant version of Mousetrap — yes, the game, but instead of a marble, there was a one-ton ball that set of a series of events in motion that culminated in a car being dropped from a 50-foot height and crushed with an anvil. These are the things you see out there. You might see a car made out of spiders, or a spider made out of cars… Oh, it’s all there.
Anyway, at that point in the evening, in my rawhide armor, full of mushrooms and all alone, all I wanted was to be one with the playa, one with the creator, one with god. Instead I came to looking into a sky full of stars, lying in front of the toilets on my back, with a concerned Burning Man ranger asking me if I was ok.
It’s not even that I would rather forget you, Night that I ate way too many mushrooms at Burning Man. That subject is so very... rich. There are many nights we’d all rather forget; the night we told the worst lie, the night we said yes when we should have said no, the night when you wish you’d said, hey. Hey. Hey, friend. Let’s not go that way. Let’s go a different way, or let’s have another drink, or let’s walk slower. Hey, let’s just stay here. If we go that way, something terrible will happen.
With you, That Night, I would like to clarify what happened. There I was at Burning Man, and I thought that I knew what the deal was. I had been to the playa before, and I knew: hydrate, moisturize. Always wear socks and pack wet wipes. Emergen_C and Pedialyte are your friends. The day I saw Scott hammer off his fingertip with a mallet when he was building our shade structure out of discarded billboards, and we went to the med tent where a volunteer medic put Neosporin and a sock on it and sent us off into the searing heat, where we promptly sought out a cold cocktail, I thought, I “get it”. The desert — Burning Man — is a mad and wondrous place. I thought I knew what I was in for.
But, you, That Night. I treated you, and myself, badly. It was a night in 2005 when I had sadness hovering around me. Patient ghosts that would not leave. The recently departed. My dearest, funny, beautiful, talented friend, killed on a January night that year. And I did not know how to honor her, properly. I was trying to honor, and grieve for her. At Burning Man. Oh, I should have known I was fucked.
That Night, I’m so sorry. I asked to be taken to a place that was not within your scope, or within any night’s scope. I asked of you, and the stars and the moon, to take me to a place where I could understand what had happened. You could not. Instead, you took me to… well, to a place where I was lying on my back in front of the toilets with a concerned citizen asking me, in a very sweet, complacent Burning Man way, if I was alright.
That night, you left me cold. Literally, and figuratively. I was frozen and shaky when I peeled myself off the playa and made my way to safety in the icy rays of the morning desert sun. I couldn’t control my face for days. You, That Night, took hold of me, shook my psyche’s shoulders, and made me see that properly honoring someone is something that just happens; you can’t prepare for it, or orchestrate it.
But you know, Night at Burning Man, as I wrote this, I realized that I have a deep appreciation for you. This is why everyone should write letters. That night, I knew that I was forever lost, and yet, I was loved, and I was found. The next day, I donned a filmy yellow negligee, neon pink face paint, safety googles and a dust mask, and I rode my bike in a very wobbly way to the LampLighters camp, where I drank a Bloody Mary full of booze and pickled okra and about a metric ton of alluvial dust. As I sat twitching under shade cloth, trying to adjust my crazy, crazy face into what I hoped was an expression of deep peacefulness and shamanic wisdom, as the Bloody Mary worked its way into my system and set my nerves on fire, I looked back at you, Night, and I was grateful that you and I had made it through something together. You saved me, in a way. I was lonely to the bone out there in the dust and cold and yet, I felt contained by you. There was no real danger out in the darkness, and there was endless space to capture the pinwheels of light and mad dancing shapes that surrounded me. I was as high as fuck for hours, and it was over in the briefest of moments. And when I re-entered my frozen body, lying on the hardpan in front of the Port-a-Lets, I knew I’d seen the other side; I had peered through the torn veil. I was a wiser and better person for having tripped balls with you.
So thank you, that night. I’ll never eat that many mushrooms again. But every time I lie on my back and look into a field of stars, I will think of you.
Love, Mary Jane ❤️