Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

by Brad Listi

  “Standing here in the desert,” Lynch said, “waiting for an epiphany.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s ten words.”

  I counted the words on my fingers. It came out to nine.

  Next, Lynch went around, one by one, asking each of us to describe how we were feeling in one word.

  Everybody thought it over for a while.

  Henry started out, saying he felt titillated.

  Blair closed her eyes and said she felt awed.

  Horvak said he felt discombobulated.

  I looked at Lynch and told him I felt pregnant.

  20.

  It happened suddenly, without fanfare, well before any kind of official crescendo. A pyrotechnical glitch. Spontaneous combustion. One minute we were standing there, waiting. The next thing we knew, one of his arms was on fire. There was no announcement, no musical accompaniment, no drumroll, no crash of cymbals, no dramatic ignition. Just a sudden fire.

  The Man was burning.

  At first nobody believed it. Nobody reacted. But then the fire spread. Sparks shot forth, and the reality of the situation took hold. A gasp moved through the crowd like a secret. Then there was a period of confused conversation. And then the cheering began.

  Next thing we knew, he was a torch in the night. His body was packed with fireworks, and he was crackling with successive explosions. Sparks were pouring from his frame like electrified confetti.

  The Man was burning!

  The crowd roared and surged forward, all of Black Rock City shifting in the direction of the fire, as if drawn by a magnet. I moved involuntarily, pulled by the Man and pushed by the force of the people behind me.

  “Holy shit!” said Henry.

  “This is it!” said Blair.

  The cheering grew louder. Whistles and battle cries. Drums in the distance. Everything was happening fast. All around me, people were jumping up and down, screaming and hollering, letting off steam. It was a frenzy. The response felt a little disjointed to me. I couldn’t match the crowd. Didn’t have it in me. I was feeling a bit drier, a bit more subdued. The excitement seemed to have a manufactured edge to it. The moment had happened before anyone knew what was what, and then it took off into the night and left everybody behind, and now everyone was racing to catch up to it. I couldn’t bring myself to jump up and down, couldn’t bring myself to scream. All I could do was stand there.

  Another crackling explosion. A shower of red embers burst from his chest like rose petals. Henry elbowed me in the ribs and raised his video camera above his head.

  “Would you look at that!” he said.

  I looked at that.

  I looked around.

  I was standing with approximately 26,000 people, in the middle of nowhere. A forty-foot-tall wooden man was on fire. Pyrotechnics and flammables were igniting throughout his frame. Raging flames and showers of sparks. A bright orange blaze against the black of night. People were going bonkers. People were feeling holy.

  The Man was inside of the fire now. The flames had overtaken him. They were more than him, they were consuming him. He was engulfed, swallowed whole. He looked like a shadow of himself inside the blaze. The longer he burned, the more he got lost within the smoke and flames. He was disappearing.

  As his legs burned away, he began to wobble back and forth, like a prizefighter with his bell rung. His knees swayed side to side, weakening. As the wobbling worsened, the roar of the crowd rose in anticipation. I felt anxious. My heart ran up into my throat, and my lungs went empty. An enormous wave of emotion welled up within me, suddenly, catching me off guard, and a kaleidoscope of memories swirled through my mind. Amanda. Pamela. My parents. My sisters. Benton MacKaye. Tony Robbins. Henry’s mother. Uncle Brian. I stood there staring into the glow of raging flames, trying to maintain my composure. There was something tragic about this. There was something hypnotic and beautiful about this.

  “He’s gonna go!” Horvak screamed.

  “Get ready!” said Henry.

  The Man lurched to one side, fighting. He tried to stay up, but the fire was too much. He went. His legs gave out at the knees, and then the rest of him toppled over, his upper half falling over to the earth like a redwood tree, collapsing into a heap. It looked like it was happening in slow motion.

  The hay bales ignited in a massive fury.

  The crowd cheered and rushed forward. A hard charge.

  My friends and I had no choice but to move with the flow. We all rushed in. The heat was fierce. I could feel it against my face as we got closer to the burn. Up ahead I saw the silhouettes of jumping, dancing people against the bright yellow light of the fire. Objects were sailing into the flames. Smoke and embers were rising up into the night. Women were on men’s shoulders. People were hugging and kissing. The smell of marijuana laced the desert wind. A champagne cork went flying. People had tears in their eyes.

  Lynch grabbed me by the arm. “Holy fucking shit!” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  That was all I could think of to say.

  We never reached the fire. We got within about ninety feet of it, and then the forward momentum stopped. It was too hot on the front lines, and people stopped moving. There was no place else to go. The crowd was too much. Everyone was body to body. Getting up closer to the blaze would have taken work. None of us felt like battling our way in. We stood where we were and watched the burn unfold for about thirty minutes, and then we turned around and wove our way out of the crowd in the direction of the open playa. We needed space. Blair was feeling claustrophobic. So was Henry. So was everyone.

  I lit a cigarette and looked heavenward. A wave of fatigue washed over me. It was nice to be out on the playa, nice to be out in space. It was colder out there, but that didn’t really matter. At least there was room to move, room to breathe. Several smaller fires were flaring up all over the desert. People were burning whatever they could get their hands on. Impromptu gatherings were forming anywhere there was light and heat. Pyromania all around.

  We headed toward one of the smaller fires. Some guy had set off a bunch of two-by-fours and plywood, remnants of a decimated installation. People were standing around it, warming themselves, watching it disappear. Music was blaring from two giant speakers hooked up to a generator—woodwinds and a harp. I felt it was a fitting selection.

  It wasn’t long before people started tossing things into the fire. My friends and I were soon to follow, stepping up to the blaze with our offerings. We each had something to burn. Horvak had decided to burn his American Express card. Blair had brought along an old diary. Lynch had a box of playing cards and one of his grandfather’s old stogies. Henry brought his favorite T-shirt, the one that read THE FUTURE IS IN YOUR HEAD. I had the coverage and the bear.

  Blair went first, tossing the diary like a Frisbee. It sailed into the flames and went up like a marshmallow. We all watched it go.

  Afterward she turned to Horvak, kissing him on the cheek, and Horvak hugged her. He then walked up to the fire, laughing, and tossed his credit card atop the blaze. It disappeared almost instantly.

  After that it was Lynch’s turn. The stogie and the playing cards were offered to the blaze at the same time. Lynch did the sign of the cross half jokingly while it burned, and spat into the fire. Then he stepped away.

  Henry’s T-shirt went in next. It went up in a burst of fire and fell between a pair of two-by-fours. Henry watched it for a while, stone-faced. Then he turned his head to the sky and howled and sprinted out across the desert floor into the darkness, skipping like a little kid.

  I was the last one to go. I walked up to the blaze, took the coverage out of my coat pocket, and dropped it in. All in all, it was pretty anticlimactic. I didn’t feel much. The moment was too orchestrated, too forced. The heat was intense up close to the fire. I grimaced and watched the paper burn. It curled up at the edges and turned to black. Then it smoldered into ashes and vanished. I thought about Malcolm Faltermeyer and the tenets of acciden
tal comedy. My belief in the concept was wholly undiminished.

  After a while, I walked back over to my friends.

  Blair asked me what I’d burned.

  “Hate mail,” I told her.

  She asked no further questions.

  I was still holding the bear. The bear was supposed to have gone in after the coverage. All along, I’d figured I would burn it, convinced it would be a nice, destructive, melodramatic thing to do. But now that the moment was at hand, I seemed to have lost all interest. I didn’t really want to do it. The bear seemed too innocent, and the fire was too final.

  Henry came back from his run.

  “Go on, Fencer,” he said to me, panting. “Chuck that fucker in.”

  “No way,” I said. “The bear lives. I’ve granted her a pardon.”

  To our right, a few feet away, a girl was dancing by the fire, spinning around in a long flowered skirt. Her hair was tied up in a bandana, and she was wearing a big rainbow-colored scarf, and she was all alone. Her eyes were like saucers. I walked over to her and handed her the bear. She smiled and took it in her arms.

  “For me?” she said.

  “For you,” I said.

  “Thank you!” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  She held the bear above her head, giggled, and did a pirouette. She wasn’t alone anymore.

  “Thank you!” she said again. “Thank you so much!”

  A guy walked over. He had a big beard and mustache. Her boyfriend, I presumed.

  “Look,” the girl said to him. “A teddy bear!”

  She handed it to him. He looked at it. His eyes were like saucers too.

  The guy looked at me and smiled. So did the girl.

  “Thanks,” they said.

  “Merry Christmas,” I told them.

  Then I walked back over to my friends.

  21.

  My soulmate’s name was Caroline LeBlanc.

  She was a member of the Stanford University swim team, and she wanted to be a pediatrician one day.

  pediatrics n.

  The branch of medicine that deals with the care of infants and children and the treatment of their diseases.

  I had stopped by the Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet earlier that afternoon, shortly before the burn. Caroline had left a note for me. The note was written in pink ink:

  To my soulmate Wayne:

  Please be advised that my friends and I are going out on the town tonight, right after the burn, and we would be delighted if you would join us for cocktails, etc. If you’re interested, be at the Center Camp Café at 10:30 p.m. sharp. If not…FUCK YOU!

  I’ll be wearing a big purple hat.

  XXOO,

  Caroline

  Caroline was six foot three, 165 pounds.

  My first thought when I saw her in person was: I’m not attracted to her.

  I walked into the Center Camp Café a few minutes early, nervous and alone. My friends had offered to come along for the ride, but I had declined their offer. I didn’t want an audience. It would’ve made me more nervous than I already was. Meeting my soulmate seemed like something I should do on my own. I figured if I was going to make an ass of myself, I should do it in private.

  The café was crowded. Caroline was standing there in her big purple cowboy hat and platform shoes. She was huge. The platform shoes gave her another three inches. It was nothing short of startling. She towered over every girl in the café, and she towered over most of the guys, too. She was like a sunflower in a wheat field, and you could hear her all the way across the café. She had a big, booming voice and a big, booming laugh. I told myself that it wasn’t her, that it couldn’t be her, searching the café for another girl in a purple hat. No such luck.

  Her face was somewhat attractive. Her eyes were big and brown, and she had nice skin, healthy-looking skin, skin that tanned easily. Her hair was dark—shoulder-length and straight. Her nose was long and thin. Her smile was enormous, and she he had a tiny space between her two front teeth. She was wearing bright orange bell-bottoms and a big blue puffy jacket. I couldn’t see her chest. Her legs went on for miles. In a way, she kind of reminded me of Wonder Woman.

  It crossed my mind to turn around and walk out, but I never really had the chance. Caroline caught me looking at her, and once we made eye contact, that was it. She said my name. My face gave me away. She screamed and waved me over. Two of her girlfriends turned and waved at me too. There were others around, some guys, some girls. It was a big group of people, and there was nothing bashful about any of them. They were all in costume—rhinestones, face paint, feather boas, glitter. Most of them were Stanford students. They had strength in numbers. I was all by myself.

  Nervous, I walked up and said hello. Caroline smiled and greeted me with a mammoth hug. She had to crouch down to get her arms around me. I had to get up on my tiptoes to avoid sticking my face in her chest. It was pretty uncomfortable.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a giant.”

  “It’s no problem,” I replied.

  I had to look up at her to make eye contact, which was awkward. I didn’t know what to say to the girl. My stomach was in knots. I felt like my uneasiness was visible on my face.

  One of Caroline’s girlfriends was standing off to the side, eavesdropping. It wasn’t long before she stepped in, handed me a glass of champagne, and introduced herself as Tori, Queen of the Magpies. She was wearing a red Lycra bodysuit, an Indian headdress, moon boots, and a blue-jean miniskirt. She asked me where my costume was. I told her I didn’t have one. I told her I wasn’t aware that a costume was necessary. She told me that a costume was always necessary. I apologized and told her I wasn’t aware of the rule. Tori turned her nose in the air and walked away. A few minutes later, she returned with a blue PUMA headband and a pair of big pink earmuffs. She told me it was the best she could do on short notice. She handed them to me and ordered me to put them on. Naturally, I obeyed.

  The three of us talked for the next hour. The conversation went all right. I smoked an endless series of cigarettes and tried to be polite. All throughout, the girls kept introducing me to a steady stream of friends, upwards of fifteen people. Some of the girls were on the swim team. One of the guys was on the baseball team. A couple of other guys were strangers, new to the group, soulmates just like me, recruited off the streets. And one of the girls was a soulmate too.

  A little while later, the group made motions to leave the café and head out into town. By then, it was about 11:30. I had arranged to meet up with Lynch and the rest of my friends at the absinthe bar at midnight, just in case the soulmate thing didn’t work out. This was officially the point of no return. Making a break for it sounded like an enticing option, but leaving would require a kind of social delicacy that had always eluded me.

  “So,” said Caroline, “are you coming along for the ride?”

  “Of course he’s coming along for the ride,” Tori said. “Look at him, for God’s sake. He’s wearing your earmuffs. There’s no turning back now.”

  “You want me to come?” I said. I’d been hoping for a total rejection.

  “Of course we want you to come,” said Tori. “You passed the test, Wayne. Didn’t you hear? We’ve decided you’re not a sociopath. That’s our only real criterion.”

  “You’re more than welcome to join us,” said Caroline.

  They looked at me and smiled. I told them I’d love to go along. The girls squealed and hugged me at the same time. There was something highly obnoxious about them, something manic and uncontained. I couldn’t decide if it was endearing or annoying. They seemed to lack all manner of self-consciousness.

  I lit a cigarette and asked for another glass of champagne. Tori handed me the bottle she was holding. There was hardly anything left. I drained it.

  A few minutes later, the group started moving. We fell into the pack and moved out of the café, out into the darkness of the open playa. The weather was terrible, windy and cold, but nobody seemed to
care. Some people in the group were singing “Riders on the Storm.” A couple of the girls hooked arms and started skipping. There were more bottles of champagne going around and a bottle of whiskey. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. We were headed for the dance camps at the outer reaches of town.

  Somewhere along the way, one of the guys in the group started scurrying around, distributing little white pills to everyone. He was a tiny guy, about five feet four inches tall, a Stanford biochemistry student. His name was Gregg. He was wearing a bright white fake fur coat, and he moved and talked at an insanely rapid clip. Next to Caroline, he looked like an elf. I’m pretty sure he was gay. “Treats for everyone,” he said. “Happy travels, happy travels.” He kept repeating that over and over again. Tori took one, as did Caroline. I took one too. I watched as Caroline and Tori washed their pills down with champagne. Then they passed me the bottle. I popped the pill and washed it down in one motion.

  “This is going to be fun,” said Tori.

  “I can’t fucking wait,” said Caroline.

  “What did we just take?” I said.

  The girls looked at me and died laughing.

  22.

  The “Godfather of Ecstasy” was a man named Alexander Shulgin. Years earlier, I’d read a magazine profile of him while sitting around the Denver airport, waiting for a flight back home.

  Shulgin was born on June 17, 1925, in Berkeley, California, the son of two public schoolteachers. His earliest passions included marbles, stamps, and books. At around the age of seven, he became interested in chemistry. He set up a small laboratory in his parents’ basement and started paying frequent visits to a local chemical supply store. He rode there on his bicycle. He was a very bright boy.

  In 1942, at the age of sixteen, Shulgin went to Harvard University on a full scholarship. He really hated it there.