I had never even heard of Burning Man until two years ago, when I started dating a man who was preparing for his Virgin Burn. The more I read, on tribe and elsewhere on the internet, the more I wondered what it was that I was NOT understanding here. People spend months and untold amounts of money preparing for two weeks in the desert. What to wear, what to bring, what to wear, what to eat, what to wear, how to survive, oh, and did I mention what to wear? Then they come home and it starts all over again: everything in their lives leads to getting prepared to go there again. After a while I began to feel like the biggest dork in somebody's entire junior high school because everyone "got" Burning Man except for me. I am obviously just not one of The Cool People. He and I are no longer together and although I still consider him one of my dearest friends, this was just a part of his life that he was never going to be able to share with me. The two times that he went were some of the hardest weeks of my life emotionally, and I certainly will not miss those feelings this summer.