The Armpit Of Nevada

By Joel Stein

If it weren't for the effort, I'd have joined a cult long ago. I long for the sense of community, the built-in belief system, the catchy nicknames. On TV they make cult joining look easy: show up and chant a little, and some guy gives you a uniform and feeds you porridge. But my experiences have proved otherwise. After wading through three-quarters of the multiple-choice admission test for one cult in L.A., a monitor caught me copying off the guy sitting next to me and threw me out. I was the only person rejected from a cult on the ground of laziness.

So I knew I'd fail in my promise to be a full-fledged, art-producing participant at this year's Burning Man festival--the temporary Mad Max-inspired city made up of 30,000 neo-hippies camped out on a lifeless, mud-caked playa in Nevada the week before Labor Day for no better reason than they forgot to get a beach share. And as I feared, I showed up at the desert last week hopelessly unprepared, without so much as an alien costume or a didgeridoo.

So I went in search of a group to offer my services to, and in full self-flagellation mode, walked past the tent of people body-casting women's breasts, the human-foosball table and even the circle of naked tai-chi practitioners. Instead, I went to Penelope's Pit Stop, a tent dedicated to those who enjoy the smell of male armpits. This, needless to say, was not me. And after three days of camping, it was not for anyone with food in their systems.

The tent was run by four incredibly nice 40-year-old guys in skirts from West L.A. who called themselves the Staggering Libido Sisters and at a prior Burning Man ran a tent called the Pamela Anderson Lee Celebrity Badminton Tournament and Glamour Workshop. It wasn't until I allowed them to take a picture of my armpit and felt Carmen Libido raise my arm, inhale and shout "A+!!" that my gaydar blipped. When Shaboom Libido started videotaping and said, "This is Joel, our straight man, whom we are going to convert or at least use before this weekend is over," I realized these guys were gayer than the 1890s.

But I wasn't going to let a little man love stop me from becoming a joiner. In half an hour I had snapped 28 armpit Polaroids for their bulletin board, including a woman whose claim that her armpits smelled like vegetable curry was confirmed by Carmen. Then he turned to me and said, "I was just supporting her reality." These guys knew from cult running.

Their best brainwashing tactic was making me feel comfortable with my armpits, which I am so embarrassed about that I swim in a manner that might give my new friends the wrong idea. I felt even more liberated when Shaboom introduced me to an admirer of my picture. But when I asked him what exactly he liked, he said, "It's a funny face you're making." Seeing my devastation, he concocted a weak compliment--"nice growth formation of the hair"--but I was already woefully deprogramed.

I went back to my RV and stared out the window at the nudist woman next door who hadn't shaved her armpits since she arrived and whom I now referred to as Princess Little Stubble. No matter how much I long for a community, I prefer sitting alone and making fun of people. Next Burning Man, I plan on forming a cult devoted to that.