Bro-The God is in Venmo

Burning Man, SiddMartha, and Marshmallows

I’ve never been to Burning Man.

I’d like to.

But I can’t afford utopia.

That’s reserved for Google executives and CEOs cosplaying as seekers for the weekend. Rebellion, like everything else, now comes pre-ordered, sterilized, and sponsored. Now even counterculture wears a wristband.

I met a group once at a street fair in Long Beach—microdosing mushrooms in rainbow eyeshadow while taking puffs from their inhalers, thanks to environmentally induced asthma. They invited me to Burning Man. Said I could ride with them and live in a U-Haul. Sounded more like a true-crime podcast waiting to happen. It wasn’t exactly forty days in the desert—more like forty hours—but I’m already battling that demon sugar at 7-Eleven. I didn’t need a psychedelic vision of the devil offering me Tastykakes that wouldn’t make me fat.

Burning Man has commandments, too—ten of them:Radical inclusion. Gifting. Decommodification.Radical self-reliance. Radical self-expression.Communal effort. Civic responsibility.Leaving no trace. Participation. Immediacy.

A gospel of glitter. A tabernacle of LED rope and dust masks. Tech prophets in nipple clips blessing Bluetooth bikes and grilled cheese on solar griddles.

From Kumbaya to Kombucha.

Maybe if I weren’t scared of acid, I’d understand. Maybe it really is Willy Wonka’s spiritual retreat. But someone has to clock in and ring up jerky, ice, and sunscreen for the people finding themselves.

My Burning Man is a Jersey barbecue.

The scent of honeysuckle in the air. The first lightning bugs flickering like static. A kitchen door swinging open to the yard. Women peeling potatoes at the sink, yelling toward the pool. Paper tablecloths flapping on folding tables. The cousin who swears I ran into that tree on purpose—when she pushed me. Hard. I still have the scar. The dad who keeps tripping over that same cracked step. The American flag in buttercream on a sheet cake sweating in the kids in floaties screaming through plastic squirt guns.

Rita was there too.Sorry—SiddMartha.

She used to trade notes with me behind the coat rack in second grade. Now she’s bedazzled her new name down her jeans. Did it herself. As she roasted a marshmallow, she warned us about the demon sugar. I nodded and slid two onto a stick I found by the chestnut tree.

She’s leaving in the morning. Her boss is footing the bill. Camper van. Steampunk goggles. Six-inch platform space boots. She says it’s a “true spiritual experience.” In a crop-top net shirt.

And maybe it is.

But I’ll miss this.

The squirt guns. The honeysuckle. The sticky lawn chairs. People who remember your name without needing to reinvent themselves. No curated commandments. No LED redemption. No WiFi epiphanies. Just a backyard. A cracked step. And a marshmallow catching fire while the sky turns purple.

As my marshmallow caught fire, I watched it burn, then blew it out too late. That “someone just walked over your grave” shiver chills me —I’ll toss it off. But how many graves are out there in the desert? And how many of them are being roller-skated over in a crop-top and goggles?