A Day at Bonaroo, Part One: Waking Up

I wake up in my tent and realize my entire body is sweating. Not just sweaty, mind you, but sweating. Every pore is perspiring; every sweat gland is working overtime. My face, my chest, my stomach, my legs, in between my toes, in the corners of my eyes; I can feel each corpulent area secreting precious fluids, which then drip down onto my already soaked pillow and sleeping bag.  

Bear in mind, this isn’t ordinary sweat either. This is two days of drinking sweat. Two days of dancing sweat. Two days of jumping sweat. Two days of not showering sweat. Two days of hugging strangers sweat. Two days of dancing with pretty girls sweat. Two days of singing songs as loud as you can sweat. This is laughing-so-hard-you-can’t-breath sweat. This is chaotic-anything-goes debauchery for the next four days sweat. This is Bonnaroo sweat, motherfuckers, and I’m drowning in it.

But I deserve it.

Because everybody knows the Bonnaroo Sun is a cruel sonafabitch, and I defied him last night by drunkenly tucking myself into my heavy sleeping bag. Now I must rectify this immediately or get roasted alive.

So I peel my soaked sleeping bag off me and crawl towards the tent door. As I crawl I can feel the sun standing just outside my tent, with a blowtorch in his hand and a middle finger raised just for me. Jesus, it’s ten in the morning and he already wants my blood.  

With a shaky, dripping wet hand, I grab at the zipper and pull it up just enough to make a hole big enough for me to escape. I throw myself out into the world and gasp for air. It’s still quite hot outside but there’s a breeze, and that makes all the difference in the world. My sweat-soaked body now sticks half way out of the tent, with my head and chest resting on the cool farm grass. In the distance, I can hear a couple of acoustic guitars being played somewhere among the thousands of campsites that surround me. This makes me happy for the first time this morning; a nice reminder of why I came here.

 And then the breeze picks up and it feels so good on my body, I just want to stay here, lying in the farm grass, forever.

But I can’t because I have to poop.  

Click here for Part Two.