Black Rock Cock

The Black Rock Cock

Where did that dust storm come from? It was a clear and windless day when you left camp, and now there you are, far out in the deep playa, coughing curses at your stupid decision to leave both goggles and dust mask in your tent. You sit down with your t-shirt wrapped around your face, but you’ve got to breathe and your impromptu t-shirt-mask is no good. After a gruelling half hour, you realize that this storm could go on for hours, and your lungs will be playdough unless you get back to camp. So you set out in what you think is the right way and wish for the best.

Sylvia (aka vagina), Dick, Jeff, Me, Don, Jamison

What is that in the distance? Visibility is bad –real bad– but you can still make out two small red lights a bit away. You head towards them and find a waist-high wooden structure. It’s shaped like the letter T, or… The storm abates for just a second, but that’s long enough for you to see what it is: a four-by-four foot dick, lying down, complete with balls and shaft. You walk around it and see an entrance at the top of the shaft. You’re saved!

The shaft is lined with silver and LED lights. You crawl through the shaft and enter what you assume is the ballroom, lined with dark fur and the ceiling is studded with little glistening lights, like stars.

“Hello stranger,” says the person in the corner. “Hiding from the storm? Me too. I’ve got water if you’re dehydrated or tequila if you need a pick-me-up.”

“What is this place?” you ask, still a bit disoriented by the white-out.

“I think it’s called the Black Rock Cock, at least that is what it says on this journal I found here. Pretty cosy, isn’t it?”

It was. The storm soon abated, but you and your new friend didn’t care, and it was hours before the two of you crawled back out of the cock and walked, hand in hand, back towards camp with the rising sun in your back.

Erecting the Black Rock Cock

Don Kendrick is the father of the Black Rock Cock. He got the idea after having been saved from a white-out by a randomly encountered warming hut in the deep playa. But no man is an island, and Don enlisted friends to help him out. Jamison Goei created the visualization video, Dick and Jeff helped with the construction and painting of the dicks and I helped with the paperwork. On the playa, we were joined by Sylvia (a.k.a. vagina) and all helped erect the cock!

The Journal

What happens when you place a cock box in the deep playa, open for a week’s worth of burners to mix and mingle within? A great number of things, of course! And we wanted to find out what, so we placed a journal and a pen in the ball room where visitors could write down anything their little heart desired.

Having dismantled the cock, we brought the journal with us and laughed all the way back to California, reading the bizarre journal entries. Naturally, this treasure belongs not to us but all the wonderful people of Black Rock City. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did.

If the embedded journal to the right doesn’t show up properly or is too small to read, then click here to download the PDF and read it on whatever PDF reader you have.

Did you visit the cock, but forgot to write down your story? Perhaps you missed the Black Rock Cock all together, but have something else to say about our little project or Burning Man in general? Go ahead and leave a comment on this page. We’d love to hear from you.

We will be back in 2013, so come find us then!