I hang out with boys who wear make up. I am comfortable nude in front of recent acquaintances. I try on different personalities like fish net thigh highs, just for the fun of something new. I'm a thespian, friends: do not be alarmed. On stage, in the dressing room, at auditions (show me your legs), I have seen sights and lived lives that make torn thigh highs look like Catholic knee socks.

Precisely why when I arrived at Burning Man, the United State's rival to Brazil's Carnaval, the intentional community (of 35,000) that hatches like a host of hydrated sea monkeys in the barren desert every year for one week in the name of art, humanness and setting-things-on-fire, I was not impressed. First of all, Black Rock City is an Official Desert - not like when I call LA a desert because of the 4” annual average for yearly rainfall, but the Official kind. The kind with cracked barren white sand, flat as far as the eye can see. The kind that keeps you in long sleeves even though it is 100 degrees. The kind that after I was initiated by ringing the Burning Man Virgin gong bell and hollaring like a crazed barbarian at the top of my virgin lungs, swallowed me in a blizzard of sand whipping through the sky tearing flesh from bones. I had to halt all movement, grip my eyes, hold my breath and urgently seal any other precious orifices that might be exposed.

Tonya Kay in the desert.... Not impressed.

It's not to say that challenging my grace at a full sized roller skating rink built in the middle of a playa didn't make me squeal like a little girl. It's not to say that standing on the second floor of an elaborately hand carved temple inside which thousands of visitors had signed, written poetry, or otherwise made an offering, didn't leave me feeling like I was a part of something vast. It's not to say that watching a sunrise from the wrong side of day, after a nite steeped in passionate dancing, exploration of art installations, and vulnerable conversation didn't make me feel brand new, though in reality had slept only 14 hours in the past 4 days. Yes, those things were actually quite moving, especially when you consider that this rich detailed counter culture theme park was all created without electricity, in one week's time, and was burnt to the ground before it was all over.

But still, as I wandered the playa studded with blinking lights, alien vehicles giving out snow cones and the sound of life vibrating like horny fireflies, I listened to my friend, Big Al, relish in awe "how surreal it all is" and how he'll "never be able to put Burning Man into words" for the lawyers or other 9 to 5er's he works with. And I thought to myself how fortunate my current lifestyle that Burning Man might seem "normal” to me. Or else how unfortunate my current lifestyle that not even the world's wildest art party might surprise shock transform me in some small way.

And then I saw it – finally something that changed my life, something that threw me for such a loop that all my casino jobs, limo rides and even that one time I got arrested, could not compare to this jolting vision of catharsis: there are no trash cans at this event.

I've seen a boy in a dress before. I've been a boy in a dress before (and all the glorious implications). Singing at the top of my lungs for the whole world (or at least all of Walgreen’s) to hear is an everyday kinda thing. I personally don’t need a festival to give me permission to self-express. But I've never existed within a community so responsable to one another, so respectful of their effect in society, that they did not tuck the gum or toss the butt. Perhaps the ultimate act of consciousness is to be aware of what we don't need.

Shower me with gifts, spoil me with massages, fly me to Thailand - to Mars. But festivals and communities, gurus and potential lovers, if you really want to impress this overstimulated thespian, find out how to not make garbage. I will remember you until the day I die.

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