She's protecting them as best she can, a screamy laugh across her face. As I'm wondering if they'll get it off, I'm kicked in the back of my head by a muddy sneaker belonging to an amused, tubby Asian kid who was hoisted up behind me as I watched the blond. In another moment his massive butt is directly in my hands. I am his center of gravity. His direction is mine to choose. I hurl him forward, into a patch of males who don't want to be bothered. He lands feet first and immediately begins trying to climb up again.

I scan again for the blond; she's being tipped to one side by a couple of head-shaved guys, one of whom sports a black tattoo over the ear and across the right temple. They're tipping her so they can get at her boobs better, and when they finally land a feel, she's laughing no less but manages to snake out of their hands. A sudden shift of direction and she's launched away from them. All around her, now at the shoulder-riding level, girls are perched and bouncing to the song. Many are flashing boobs, the crowd no longer individually cheering them on but appreciative nonetheless. The display is, frankly, stunning. Opalescent gems, carved from shimmering droplets of spring water: breasts that calm the savage music. Guys who could be throwing punches and jabs are slack-mouthed at the scenery.

In rhythm now with the tidal surges and flesh sailing overhead, I grab and pass the incoming torsos, keeping my arms ready for any size and weight class. The falls are numerous. I'm close to the stage, where the crush is the tightest, but small gaps of a third to a quarter of a human width are still to be found. An orange-haired girl flips feet over head and is about to splatter, but a chivalrous pair of football-looking types catches her before she can hit. They exchange glances, her eyes indicate she wants back up again and they sweetly comply. No gratuitous manhandling of vulnerable breasts. Up in the air it's a game; down here rules apply. Or maybe it's just the luck of the draw.

I am impressed by the following sociological phenomenon: Guys are allowed to fall while girls are rescued. Civilization is hard to kill, even in the pit. They a woman was gang-raped in front of the stage at Woodstock '99, but that was three days into it. Maybe it takes that kind of time to sever the ties. You just can't get that primitive over the course of a single afternoon. Medieval, yes. Primitive? Nah.

A sudden gust of shoving backward, accompanied by a massive Doc Marten boot planted firmly across my sandaled feet, snaps my attention to another phenomenon immediately ahead. A clearing, an open ring, maybe 7 feet around, has suddenly materialized. Three guys with huge arms, shoulders and beer guts are violently charging and flailing at one another like rams or bulls. As they prepare for or emerge from one of these collisions, they whip around the circumference of the circle, careening off bodies lining the circumference. A bloodied, sandpaper-headed dude, goatlike patch of hair under his chin, has been going at it more viciously than the others, and the wild steam from his eyes suggests he's about to get out-of-control ugly. His arms, a detailed masterwork of thorny branches and snaking vines, pump to an internal beat. As he swings past, a colossally detailed emblem taking up the northern half of his back, black and complex with a central red orb, flexes and pulses as if alive itself.

Oh, shit. His head whinnies and snorts in bursts, hunting for a new partner to charge, and slaps at his chest, menacingly. He repeats this, then, with a quizzical look, stares down at his chiseled pecs. His studded metal collar is missing. He throws his arms up to halt the proceedings, eyes scanning the ground. The other guys get the message and begin pawing the ground, too. It looks like they're searching for a contact, until someone holds the necklace up. Distracted by a new song and a new pair of flashing orbs, they lose interest in body-butting one another and the hole closes.

It's hot, satanically hot, and each body's odor rises up in distinctive wafts. The guys carry a rank, sweat-mixed-with-fart aroma; the girls smell not so bad. At 6-2, I'm considerably advantaged by the occasional breeze that circulates in. A half-foot below me, a purple-haired girl and a green-haired girl make nauseous faces at each other in a wave of warm air, fan at each other, then, as if simultaneously possessed of an unbearably urgent notion, lock faces in an extended, tongue-wrapping kiss. They continue as the first drops of rain drizzle down, then break to catch the raindrops as they bear down bigger and harder.

There was only one way to add another dimension to the revelry, to the animal contact high, and that way was rain. The thousands of bodies already electrically connected to one another at the hip, belly, leg, chi-chi now are slithery and slick, body oils and sunblock, sweat and spunk. Vibrating, blasting guitar chops hack away at any final remnants of intelligent thought, drums pulverize, bass chords grind. Nirvana, bodhisattva. Hello cowgirl in the sand.

A billowy cloud of steam rises off the sea of bodies, and even more suddenly ascend to shoulder-ride, to surf. The blistering aural assault from the stage continues without cease, the visual details blur and shift in the thick fog and in a moment there will be a total disconnect from the mothership. When that happens, all there will be is the music and the crowd, eternal and infinite, and no other reality except the humid, sultry now. Which is the avatar of cool.

What the fuck. A nod of my head to the dudes by my side, signal-response, and I'm up. The rain pounds me from above, hands and heads swipe and push at me from below. I attempt to spread my arms in the sheer joy -- and am bonked hard onto the ground, first a shoulder, then the flat of my back. No worries, I'm headed up again and ready to sail, for real, once again.

But the set ends and with that the moment and people are turning away and heading out. The sudden cessation of concussive noise leaves a migrainous void, pulsing and aching. Each muscle in my body has been pulled and stretched; floral bruises are in bloom. Time for a beer. Definitely. Rage is gonna be on soon and I can't wait to get back.

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