Summary

The article describes the author's experience at the And Then There's Only Love (ATTOL) theme camp's Orgy Dome during the Burning Man festival, highlighting it as a well-organized, clean, and comfortable space for consensual group sexual activities.

Abstract

The author enthusiastically recounts their experiences at the Orgy Dome, a feature of the Burning Man festival hosted by the ATTOL theme camp. Located on the Pleistocene-era Lake Lahontan in Nevada, the Orgy Dome is praised for its exceptional organization, providing a safe and welcoming environment for attendees to engage in sexual activities. The camp offers amenities such as air conditioning, clean bed sheets, and essential supplies like wet wipes, condoms, and lube. The space is divided into areas for different preferences, including "Just Us" for private encounters and "Open to More" for those seeking larger group interactions. The author emphasizes the importance of enthusiastic consent and the camp's efforts to educate participants, as well as the camaraderie and friendliness of the attendees. The Orgy Dome is described as a highlight of the festival, contributing to the overall magic and community of Burning Man, despite the challenging desert environment.

Opinions

The author believes the Orgy Dome is the most exciting and enjoyable sex party they have ever attended.
The ATTOL camp's organization and hospitality, including the provision of necessary supplies and maintenance of cleanliness, are highly praised.
The author appreciates the division of space within the Orgy Dome, catering to different comfort levels and preferences for sexual encounters.
The importance of enthusiastic consent is emphasized, with the camp providing educational talks and issuing red wristbands to indicate understanding and participation.
The author values the sense of community and openness to conversation among participants, both in the Orgy Dome and throughout the Burning Man festival.
Despite the inherent challenges of the desert environment, the author finds the Orgy Dome to be a comfortable and appealing aspect of Burning Man, contributing significantly to their repeated attendance at the event.

An Orgy on a Pleistocene Lakebed

This is a good idea? (A very good idea!)

By far the most exciting, fun, and reliably enjoyable sex party I’ve ever been to takes place in the above location.

What you’re looking at is what’s left of the Pleistocene-era Lake Lahontan in Nevada. You may know it as The Black Rock Desert and if you know that, then you may also know it’s where 70,000 of us weirdos show up at the end of every August to build a temporary city and engage in some serious immediacy.

Yeah, I’m talking about Burning Man

But really, this time anyway, I’m talking about And Then There’s Only Love (ATTOL), one of the best-organized and most popular theme camps at Burning Man. For 16 years ATTOL has been erecting (yes, I did) and maintaining The Orgy Dome at Burning Man. What this inspired bunch of lunatics brings to That Thing in the Desert (TTITD) can’t be praised too highly.

For one thing, setting up a camp, any camp, out there on the playa is dirty, complicated and really tricky.

But every year ATTOL sets up a welcoming space in which to roll around and have loads of great sex and then hosts thousands of enthusiastic perverts. They provide expert monitors who can tactfully step in should a scene go awry (it happens) while also making sure everyone has wet wipes, condoms, lube, and towels. They must bring about 10,000 bed sheets because they are constantly zipping soiled sheets off the beds (yes, beds) to make sure everyone gets to do it on clean sheets. Talk about hospitality!

They also have Aphrodite’s Garden, a bit of a lounge area where there are nightly burlesque performances and where people can chill and hang out a bit before having at it like animals in the Dome.

Another wonderful touch is that the Dome is divided into two spaces: Just Us and Open to More. Just Us is for couples or moresomes (three or more people playing together) who don’t want company and Open to More is just what it sounds like. We’re fans of Open to More.

Ideally, we get to the Dome the first night or two before the full hordes have descended on the city. By Friday and Saturday night, the last two full-on party nights of the week, the lines stretch out to the street and you take a number and wait. Another reason to get there early in the week is to take in the obligatory Enthusiastic Consent Looks Like This chat and collect your red wrist band which allows you to bypass that on subsequent visits.

It also serves as a bit of a signal for the rest of the week. When you see your campmates sporting the red wrist band, you may now know something about them that you didn’t before.

Safety Third

On the Magic and Madness of Black Rock City

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This will be my eighth trip out to TTITD and while the Orgy Dome isn’t the be-all and end-all of why I keep going, it’s certainly a major attraction.

For one thing, it’s clean and really comfortable

Unless you’re a tech gazillionaire being flown in to your already-assembled plug and play camp complete with flush toilets and fresh veggies trucked in daily, Buring Man is a dirty, difficult, even dangerous undertaking (which paradoxically is part of the attraction; yeah, I know). There are countless ways to get hurt setting up camp, biking across the playa, zipping into a porta-potty without paying due attention or just walking around at night without wearing lights.

We stay in a tent and even though it’s probably the easiest tent in the world to get up, it’s still a guaranteed hour of stress especially if the wind is up. Once the tent is up, the futon is made, the lantern’s hung and the suitcases are hauled inside the tent, it’s not exactly all fun and games. Nothing is simple out there and everything takes a lot more time than you ever think it can. Plus, you’re just covered with dust all the time. There’s no escape.

But the Orgy Dome is cool in the daytime when it’s cooking outdoors. Yes, that’s right. The Orgy Dome is air-conditioned. ATTOL brings ten or fifteen of those portable AC units on wheels and has them set up throughout the Dome (no one ever confused Burning Man with a “green” event). It’s also usually comfortably warm at night unless we get one of those really icy cold nights. There are many of us generating a fair amount of body heat every night in that Dome.

There are also some of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet in the Dome and that’s saying something.

One of the most magical things about TTITD is that you can nearly always just walk up to anyone and start chatting about almost anything. Waiting in line for ice or Vietnamese iced coffee or just hanging out at Center Camp always turns into several layers of great conversation. And double that for waiting in Aphrodite’s Garden for your turn in the Dome.

So, yes, speaking as someone with a fair amount of sex party experience to go by, I can state without fear of contradiction that ATTOL’s Orgy Dome is well worth whatever it takes to get to (which is quite a lot actually).

Maybe I’ll see you in the dust?