The Land of Misfit Toys

"Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft."

Though this seems entirely too obvious as a lead - as this column is named what it is - I was hanging out with a friend of mine the other day when he reminded me of this quote. In 1997, the preceding quote was part of a larger article that cyberswamped the internet, passed on from peer-to-peer as an email forward. Toting itself as a commencement address made by author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) earlier that year, the actual attribution was off as it was passed along the ports. Vonnegut never wrote it and never delivered that commencement address. In fact, it was an article penned by Chicago Tribune columnist, Mary Schmich who was "high on M&Ms and coffee" when she wrote it. In 1998, the year that I received my undergraduate degree, the Baz Luhrmann pop song, "Sunscreen" used the whole article as the lyrics to his first single for general mass media consumption. It's been six years since then, and one year of NorCal, but when do I know when I'm all wussy inside?

In his last Negative Waves State of the Waves address, my colleague Mr. Fertig implied that having a broad around would be a breath of fresh air in the Negative Waves sausage party - I mean, empire. Our tireless Editor-in-Chief, Mr. DeRosa, probably initially felt that adding a chick would soften the edges a bit, and improve our marketability as a viable entertainment product. I'd have to say that it's a lot of pressure. It's kind of like being Gwen Stefani except I've never dated the bassist, don't write our bands' songs about the bassist, and I'm nowhere near as much of a trendy bitch.

That being said, nothing is a greater equalizer for mankind than dropping trou around your buddies. When I say that, I mean it in a figurative sense (so don't you hoes be gettin' any ideas) where you let down your defenses and get all vulnerable even though it makes you feel weird. Characters are a bit more three-dimensional that way, aren't they? To the credit of my collective colleagues, they are very much in tune with the sensitive men within themselves, but softness? From me? You didn't come here for softness - that's what quilted Northern bathroom tissue is for. Try Bi-Coastal Disorder two years from now. I'm all staunch, hard, cutting, and bitchy, like a New Yorker, like the quote above suggests, and the Bay Areans aren't going to sandpaper my splinters. Are they now?

There is, however, nudity involved in this article - which is why I've been challenged.

On with the show.

I was at a pow-wow the other week where someone had told me that San Francisco was much like the "The Land of Misfit Toys" from the claymation Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Their theory was roughly outlined in liberalism, in that everyone ends up in this fishing hamlet of 800,000 people when the rest of the country never understands them, their politics, or their way of life. They explained to me that when here, everyone in SF is left to seek out other people that have similarly bizarre liberal views (see http://www.usoutofsf.com/usoutofsf.com/ for an example), and that after living in SF, you are completely unfit to live in the rest of the continental United States having been exposed to the unstructured, ever changing, free-for-all, neo-hippie poetry slam that is the San Francisco Bay Area.

It appears that not only does the weather spoil you quite a bit out here (as there's only three months of rain in a year and you know, that fog and stuff, but that clears up for the sunny days that make you feel like you're in the movie Groundhog Day), but the kind and gentle nature of people does as well. This leaves me suspicious and sets off alarms, because in New York, someone being nice to you "just because" is really just probably a plot to coerce you into something you would normally never be involved in. Knowing this about myself, it appears I still have adjustments to continually make. A year later, people on both coasts STILL ask me:

"Do you like it?"
"Are you gonna stay?"
"When are you coming back?"
"Which do you like better?"

I never have a response to any of these confuckulated questions. I usually whip off some lame answer that includes the phrase "apples to oranges." Blah blah blah. I then go on to mention while both cities are undoubtedly spectacular and beautiful for what they are in each of their own rights. All Frank Sinatra songs aside, just look at the landscapes even - New York City is phallic and San Francisco is all vaginal. New York will never be as gorgeous and delicious, and San Francisco will never be as grand and glorious. (Random: You know what "Don't mess with Texas" actually means? It was an ad campaign regarding litter on Texas interstate highways. I hate quoting former New York City Mayor, Rudy Guiliani - mainly because, well, I hate him and I always have - but there was once a failed city public relations campaign in which the slogan was, "Our city can kick your city's ass." He said it represented NYC's resilient fighting - or rather, I'd say dog-eat-dog - spirit. A real winner there, Rudy. Way to win over everybody, you big guido!)

Am I really the regimented, rhino-skinned, hard-hearted, carcinogen-induced, adrenaline-pumped, meat-eating, soulless, clench-fisted, pizza Nazi pinnacle of a New York hardcore speed-driven insomniac? Or is everyone else here a "fruit, nut, or flake"? Since I'm the lone East Coast kid in a department of West Coasters at my day job (because, you know, I fight crime and write for Negative Waves by night), I usually horde all of my vacation days year-round, knowing that I'm going to use them to spend the holidays back east.

Hi, my name is Glenda, and I have a disorder.

I was up for some socialization on my year anniversary of being in the Bay, which was Labor Day weekend this year. I had asked some of my Bay Area friends what they were doing around then, and it seemed like everyone was going to Burning Man that weekend, and until then were going to spend preparing for the event for weeks. Not only was everyone busy, and doing stuff to expressly prepare for that event together, but no one had asked me to come along with them and I felt really left out. It was sort of a weird moment for me where I wouldn't really ask to come along for their secretive, cult-like activities. Instead, I just prepared to launch myself into a token New York fall-back-and-retreat method for me - which would be to hole myself up in my sensory deprivation chamber and alienate myself into a production mode for something.

I'll give you a very biased run-down of what Burning Man is for those who don't know. Burning Man is a 5-day festival in which approximately 25,000 people go out to this big fucking dried up lakebed in the Nevada Desert. Droves of psychofanatics hang out there, do drugs, whore their asses out for water (as it is a commodity at the event), and have mud-coated raves. They make art shelters, ogle boobies and lower regions on both sexes, have threesomes, live in a communal environment, do "art," and make like Mardi Gras without the booze (which is preferable, since you don't want to dehydrate yourself in the desert). Basically, a big flaky excuse to go blow off "reality" ("Wake up Neo, the Matrix has you.") and your lameass cubicle job and act like a bunch of hippies who paid a $300 entrance fee to a grassroots arts festival cleanse themselves of yuppie guilt. Not very grassroots, is it?

Since its'1986 inception on San Francisco's Baker Beach, Burning Man LLC (that's right, it's an LLC) has grown to cult-like proportions not unlike Scientology, in my opinion. I've been to multi-day religious retreats while doin' time in Catholic school, and they do the same fucking shit to get you to have some sort of spiritual catharsis. At the crux of this event is the "burning of the man," or "The Burn," which is obviously how this event got its' name. A man is built on top of a temple structure and burned in effigy and symbolic of· something. I'm sure it's very personal and deep and profound for everyone and shit that's involved, but I can't help imagining the horrible clichˇs run through my head: the taping of photographs of dead relationships into the temple to go up in flames, as a vow to start anew; poetry offerings to send up in smoke to the gods that be, so that they hear unanswered wishes and prayers; just plain stuff that you'd rather rid yourself of as an early New Year; or whatever. Or maybe there's that intimate, touching verbal account told around a smaller fire, which is really an intense game of "I never" with friends that are suddenly closer since you needed the "totally free environment" to get something off of your chest.

The Burning Man website says: "Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind."

"Are you fucking kidding me? How fucking pretentious is that? Eat my shorts! Whatever, I don't need to pay $300 to go have a motherfucking catharsis in the fucking desert. Grassroots festival, my fuckin' ass!"

Man, people. You don't need $300 to have a catharsis. Give me $300 and I'll give you something to do. Here's one for free: Do something like sit in your room and listen to Radiohead or whatever. Jesus. You could have just gone to Vegas to have a catharsis and blew it like a rock star, but you decided you needed to commune with a whole 'nother bunch of suckered jackasses like yourself. And I'm just saying it's all just fucking stupid and lame. And maybe that makes me cynical and dreamless, but I don't have that kind of money to blow on depriving myself of water and lying around in 104-degree heat with no shelter. As a result of not going to Burning Man, however, I do know how to sit in 114-degree water without scalding myself, though - all for the price of gas to drive to sister city Berkeley, California and back.

You want grassroots?

Fine. Instead of Burning Man LLC (insert trademark and registered logo here), I was sitting in my house, probably listening to Radiohead. My friend Tara (not her real name) had called earlier and I'd been playing phone tag with her all afternoon. For the social-working, tofu-eating, commune-living, patriarchy-smashing hippie that Tara has been in the seven years I've known her (and God bless her), she did not end up going to Burning Man. She theorized that people like her that would probably enjoy and get a lot out of events like that don't really make the kind of money that enable them to go to events like Burning Man LLC (insert trademark and registered logo here). I agreed, being that she is not a yuppie douchebag that needs to cleanse herself of yuppie-dom by setting it ablaze in the Nevada desert amidst all the body art naked people.

So instead, Tara and I made plans to get naked in someone's backyard, and camp out in her backyard in The Haight.

I don't know what it is about everyone out here in California, but these people are really into hot tub culture, especially naked hot tub culture. Why is this, and more specifically, why does everyone have to be naked? My guess is that it's the weather and free-spiritedness that allows people to pull stuff like this off. Regardless, I'd never done it before and it was one of those "this only happens on the West Coast" things that I had to at least do once in my life. That was the plan when I left my house, and that's what we set out to do. I guess the only surprise was that she brought along her housemate, Rollin (not his real name)· who was male. Uh. Uhm.

OK, I was getting a bit bashful at that point and the Catholicism was kicking in. My east coast conservatism was getting the best of me and I really had to be brave enough to do this and not chicken out. While driving us all out to Berkeley, I had warned them that maybe I'd turn wussy or something and bolt for the car.

"You mean this hot tub has been around for like 20 years?" I say.
"Yes," Tara responds.
"And they do this for free?"
"Yup. You have to have a secret code to get into each of the gates. I have the secret code. You have to know someone that has a code in order to be let in."
"We're going to someone's house? A residence?"
"Yes."
"Do you know this person who lives here?"
"No, I don't."
"So how do you have a code to their gates? They do this for free? Aren't there like infrared cameras set up all over the backyard? What if naked pictures of us end up on the internet or something?"
"Stop, ohmygod, you're being paranoid."
"I still don't get why they do it?"
"The most important thing is that you don't talk when you're there. That's the house rule. Out of respect to everyone there, you just don't talk. It's a place to relax and meditate. No one talks. Everyone that comes through is anonymous, and you will be in the tub with people you don't know. It's not a singles' bar; you're not there to pick people up. Everyone is there to chill, and you can't talk to them. You can't talk, period. Not to me. Not to Rollin. Not to anybody. Complete silence."

We park in front of the house and get our towels and flip-flops out of my trunk. We park quietly down the quiet residential street and to an unassuming duplex with a lone light in the living room. Tara punches in the codes into three different gates, and we enter the dimly lit backyard. As soon as I do so, I'm immediately hit with the image of an anonymous flaccid penis in the moonlight. I don't really know what to make of this.

Everyone's junk is out in the wind.

I secretly panic, and then quickly head behind Tara to the shed next to the hot tub. She hands me a F.A.Q. sheet to read about the place under what seems like a yellow-tinted 20-watt bulb, and then strips herself naked. I read the sheet she has handed to me slowly and try to digest all the information amidst my sensory overload. It's comprised of various topics such as: why the tub is kept that 114-degrees (for a high turnover rate); showering before one gets into it each time and why (debris); exploring the benefits of using vegetable-based glycerin soap in said shower; why there is a code of silence (respect); the male-to-female ratio in the tub; the history of the hot tub and the why; whether or not you can get gate codes for yourself and other stuff like that.

There I am. I'm done reading the sheet and I have to drop trou. I have a mini-anxiety attack. Tara hops into the shower to rid herself of debris. There's one shower in the shed and Rollin is standing right next to me, waiting for Tara to jump out of the shower so that he can hop in. I'm still fully-clothed at this point and feeling a little Virgin Mary of sorts. I have to sit there and psych myself up to take off a frickin' t-shirt or something, and then I realize about a minute later how ridiculous I'm making it all out to be. I just end up saying "fuck it" in my head and take off all my clothes for the first time in a completely unfamiliar place in less than a second -- kinda like ripping a band-aid off - I figure it'll be less painful that way. Now that I've gotten over the initial anxiety, I'm standing there buck naked and it's just a little breezy and all.

The hot tub is right outside, under the back porch of the house, and is also lit with what seems like a pink-tinted 10-watt bulb. I just put myself right in, instead of easing myself into the water, which is my first mistake. The thing is that not only is the water in the hot tub hot enough to boil you, but it really gets the blood pumping. I would stay in for five minute spurts at a time, or less, until I'd feel my fingers' capillaries about to burst. They'd go numb, and I imagine a minute more in that hot tub, and they'd blimp out like Nathan's frankfurters about to snap open with pork juices.

Tara, Rollin, and I sat there for our own intervals. Sometimes we'd all be in together, and sometimes we'd be apart. People came in and out of the hot tub freely, and I mainly kept to myself. I think I must have sat there at maximum with eleven other girls, but I pretty much used the guys' bathroom rule to avert my eyes downward. Two couples came by, a guy and two girls came by, then three guys came by. The minute three guys came by, they'd offset the balance and I had the option to get out of the tub if I felt uncomfortable and I didn't. But there's always that guy - that one guy that enjoys it way too much. That guy was Rollin.

It wasn't an "ahh" as in relaxation, but rather more like an "ungh" - a grunt that Mr. T would make while getting off. Those types of grunts, you know, that sort of led me to wig out. They struck me as a bit pervy and I knew that having just broken up with his GF he was in a very dependent, very bad place. I'm sure naked chicks being around didn't help anything, as were both sitting at opposite sides of the tub and he just had just sighed. A couple of girls had come by and at that point, I think he must have been imaging lesbian hookup scenarios in his head because he was the only guy in the tub and he'd "ungh-ed," kinda disguising them in relaxation, twice. I was imagining Charles Manson scenarios, so I just had to get the hell out of the tub and put my clothes back on at that point. I didn't stick around to see if the other ladies jumped out after me.

Don't be That Creepy Guy. You just ruin it for everyone.

It doesn't really get any better of a story from this point, because for the rest of the night that I'm hanging out with Tara, I pitch my tent so both she and I can sleep outside in her backyard under the stars. Since he just saw our goods, he hangs all over us and Tara extends the invitation to sleep outside. This is a bad move, as I don't even know who actually is pitching the tent here. As much as I want to snarl at him and tell him to sleep in the house because he freaks me out, I can't because I don't have the heart to rip out his spleen and hand it to him because he needs to be around people.

Eventually, he ends up sleeping in the tent with us - all dependent, fragile, and insecure. I ball myself up in a corner of the tent instead and become the epitome of tolerance because the major I have in Brutal Honesty from the The School of Hard Knocks is not required for this situation, or this coast. Who's the misfit now? It appears that I have flunked Hands Across America camp.

Someone told me that there's Prozac in the water, and that may very well be -- even at 114 degrees.