In response to recent comments and moving into Avocasa, a house I share with my friend Kristen, I decided the time was ripe to repost this story. It takes place in Pyropolis, home of Burning Flipside. It was originally posted in my LiveJournal on June 6, 2006.
Shredded Hate Bacon is a heavy metal band consisting of a number of Flipside’s finest. Kristen was the head “Baconette” (the SHB go-go dancers). Another Baconette and I were helping her unwind and Pyropolize after her arrival Friday evening when a crazy plan was hatched. At first, Kristen invited me to be a male baconette, an amusing concept to be sure but then we arrived at a far more brilliant notion. I could be the “bacon bitch” and cook actual bacon for the Shredded Hate Bacon show.
Most of you know I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian. Not only do I not normally eat bacon, but I usually go out of my way to avoid even touching meat. It’s kind of like dealing with cat litter — it’s OK if I gotta, but I hurry into the bathroom to wash my hands up afterwards. The idea of volunteering to cook bacon for a few hours was definitely across my boundaries. So that’s just what I did.
I didn’t just cook it though — I danced around with it. My face was bathed in the bacony smell rising off the pan for two hours. I waved the grease covered spatula in the air like a madman. I grabbed fistfuls in my bare hands. I ran through the crowd yelling ‘Bacon!’ and offering it up like the finest ambrosia. Near the end of the set while I cavorted between the Baconettes in front of the stage, bacon bowl atop my head, I lost my balance and dumped the greasy bowl on the ground and splashed it on myself.
I remarked on it to Kristen at one point as she took a break from dancing. It went something like this:
Kit: This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done. I don’t even eat bacon!
Kristen: But look at all those happy bacon-eating faces!
So now am I going to start eating meat? No. You can bet that after the show was over and I’d given bacony hugs to my fellow performers, I ran back to camp and changed my bacon-stinking clothes, and attempted to scrub off the copious amounts of grease that had accumulated on my hands and arms. I was glad I could look forward to the next day’s Human Carcass Wash. But fuck if I didn’t have a fantastic time. And lots of Baconettes and SHB members thanked me for my work.
So, I have resolved to continue to explore my own boundaries by identifying ones I didn’t know I had and pushing the ones that seem ripe for expansion. I don’t have a lot of boundaries, and of course some of them are there for a good reason, but if I can push this boundary and have so much fun in the process it seems like maybe I ought to try to see what other new territory can be explored.
For more of Kit’s writing about Burning Man culture, see A Burner Lexicon.
