Things I’ve been up to – The Base

Remember how I said I was going to write a catch-up about things I’ve been up to this year?  Here’s another installment. 

It was a crazy thing I had to do.  I woke at 1:30am to be there on time, and caught a night bus into the city with some women I got chatting to at the bus stop.  Two of the women – twenty-ish, uni students – were a sweetly affectionate couple.  You just don’t see that around this end of the suburbs, but hey, this was part of Mardi Gras.  I surprised myself by feeling horribly jealous.  So young!  So unashamed!  Why should they have such happiness together? 

We trickled through the city’s empty streets.  It was silent and still and lit with warm yellow streetlights.  The first day of autumn.  We arrived before 4am; there was a queue.  We got tickets for the lucky few.  And we waited.  We talked, and yes, strangely enough people were talking to one another.  Some time before 6am the streetlights went out and the grey sky arched above. 

At dawn the call went out and a cheer went up.  I stuffed things frantically into a bag, and when I stood up, there was a sea of naked all around me.  Naked people running up the stairs in the chilly morning air.  People look so much better without their gaudy clothes.  Like themselves, but more so.  Don’t you think it’s strange how people’s bodies look just like their faces?  You can read the same personality in either; they don’t disagree. 

Sydney people at the end of summer are beige and pink, with tan-lines and tattoos.  Oh yes, lots of tattoos.  And you know what?  You can have five thousand two hundred people stark naked together and nobody misbehaves.  Nothing weird, nothing silly. 

We thought it would be just us and the artist, but most of us had forgotten that the Sydney Opera House is right next to Circular Quay ferry terminal.  A few minutes after 6am, the first ferry arrives.  That ferry was greeted by the waves and calls of five thousand naked people laughing hysterically.  I hope a few early commuters wondered what they’d put on their cornflakes that morning. 

So here we are, blanketing the opera house steps with our bare selves on a slightly shivery morning.  I’m somewhere in the middle, but I’m not sure where.  After this, those of us with tickets did another shoot inside the concert hall, but those pictures haven’t been seen.  In there, it was warm.  It seemed such a pity to put clothes on again.  You feel so real, so part of a place and one of its people, bare. 

Well, here endeth my little naturist rave.  I wonder if this breaks OD’s rules on posting naked pictures of yourself.  😉