Free Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch

non-boyfriends are the SNL guys, good friends like Will Forte or Seth Meyers or writer dudes you absolutely love and they love you too and you can laugh all night in a big group, stay out late, and even flirt, but that’s as far as it goes. They serve the purpose of a sparkly and fun boyfriend in your life without the actual relationship or intimacy. I knew them so well that we were like siblings, so anything beyond that would be highly weird, and I’d always opt for the ease and fun of hanging with them rather than going out and trying to meet strangers.
    As for gal pals, I had an array of quality ladies to hang with that were funny, wise, and entertaining. Basically, I could go out with a different lady friend every night of the week … to a movie, to dinner, for drinks. I could have a really fun time and dish the dirt and be out on the town, but rarely did I meet a guy on one of these evenings.
    Gays? See: gal pals. The evening typically had the same outcome.
    Imagine my glee when forcing myself out of the comfort zone gave me results: A cute guy who seemed nice and funny asked me out. I had been invited to a holiday party by a friend named Henry, whom I met at Burning Man a few years back. Yes, I, Rachel, went to Burning Man—odd, since I’m not into doing drugs or walking around without my shirt on, which are the two most popular activities that occur at Burning Man.
    I went one year with one of my best friends, also namedRachel, who has gone to Burning Man every summer for eight years. If you aren’t familiar with Burning Man, it’s a festival out in the middle of a desert in Nevada, where you have to bring in all your own food, supplies, tents, RVs, what have you. Forty thousand people descend on this spot and it becomes an encampment for a week. Like I said, drugs are big there. There are also seminars. The favorite description I saw was for a seminar on oral sex that you were supposed to attend with your partner. It advised, “Bring wipes. The desert can give you that not-so-fresh feeling.”
    The coolest part about Burning Man to me were the huge art installations, some several stories high, which are truly amazing. There are also “art cars”: Someone will take, say, an old school bus and magically transform it into a light-up dinosaur that, when driven through the desert at night, is absolutely beautiful. That said, one Burning Man was enough for me. I’m not an eight-timer like my friend Rachel. I’m no high-maintenance traveler, but being out in themiddle of the desert with inconveniently located port-a-potties when you are not high on some drug to make you think you are somewhere else just isn’t really my jam. You had to trudge to the port-a-potties because, environmentally and hygienically speaking, you just can’t have forty thousand people peeing in the middle of the desert, even if there is nothing around for miles for the rest of the year. One night, though, we were out on the Playa, as it’s called, the huge miles-long stretch of desert, where everyone’s looking at the light-up art installations and art cars and generally checking out the scene. It’s completely dark except for people’s encampments and the art cars, so you need to carry a flashlight and wear lights on your clothes in order to not get flattened by a moving art vehicle or by a naked person on a bike. I didn’t know where the heck I was or where the nearest port-a-potties were located, and I had to pee. So Rachel told me to bend down right there on the Playa. Even though there are people everywhere, you are in almost complete darkness. One of the dangers of peeing in this situation that never crossed my mind was the possibility of an eighty-foot metal robot just happening to shine it’s megawatt beam of light down upon me at that moment. But let me warn you now, that can happen at Burning Man. It wasn’t the Pee Robot Police. It was just an accidental intersection of art and human need. Flooded in bright white light as