The two of us swap text messages during the week leading up to the Sydney Naked Bike Ride event.

Celestial Halo:

I have the morning free also. Maybe we can get together before the ride. I’m OK with anything, outdoors if the weather is nice.

I already know she likes being outdoors. We met at an adventure event in the Blue Mountains during the winter and bumped into each other a few times at open air events this summer.

I like how she says she is OK with anything.

Me:

Here’s a suggestion. In keeping with the theme of the day, I pick you up around 7am from your place and we drive to the Otford end of Royal National Park. We walk down thru the rainforest to Werrong Beach (legal nudist beach) and have a swim, before walking back up again. I usually do most of the walk naked, it feels good esp. being surrounded by such beautiful forest. We drive back to your place and then cycle together to the start of the bike ride.

Celestial Halo:

I accept the idea. And yes to nakedness as the theme for the day.

I meet her outside her house around seven in the morning. She is wearing a cotton slip that reveals her long, strong legs and shows just enough that you know she is not wearing a bra.

After an hour drive, we descend through the rainforest of the National Park, I naked, she stepping along the path barefoot and topless like an Amazon girl. Down, down to the wild, wave-torn beach below, stopping every now and again to hug each other’s naked bodies, our lingering kisses inflaming our senses and attracting the attention of waiting leeches that inch their way up our legs, despite which the day remains perfect.

We make love amongst the trees and then plunge into the rough and tumble of the open ocean. Her round buttocks and her naked tumescence form a perfect oasis of eroticism as I follow her up the path on our return walk up to the cliff top.

All too soon, we are back in the urban world. I lift my e-bike from the back of my car and slot the front wheel between the forks. She retrieves her own e-bike from the back of the house. We mount our steeds and wend our way along the maze of cycleways, inner city streets and parks that make up the route to the harbourside start of the Sydney Naked Bike Ride.

Arriving at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, we are met and greeted by around twenty other riders. I am surprised to see that there are also two uniformed policemen together with their police pushbikes.

“They’re here to help control traffic and keep any rowdy spectators in line,” explains the ride organiser.

Unlike similar rides in Byron and Melbourne, wowser Sydney does not allow us to expose our genitals. Some guys tie a sock over their cock, others wear skimpy underwear. I’m wearing tiny lacy black briefs, the cops pretend not to notice that the lace reveals more of my cock than it conceals. Celestial Halo wears her G-string and sandals.

We take turns decorating each other with painted slogans and swirling patterns before mounting our bikes and meandering through The Rocks, Barangaroo and the City Centre. Celestial Halo plays music on her portable speaker and our two bikes dance together near the front of the little group as we thread our way through throngs of people variously delighted, surprised and shocked by the passing parade of flesh. The freedom is intoxicating.

Our group returns triumphant a couple of hours later, ringing our bells to the waving onlookers who share with us the welcoming beauty of this fig-tree shaded peninsular, flung out near the Opera House adjacent to scores of fluttering boats jigging and jagging across the water.

The two of us sink into the plush green grass near Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and look up into the endless sky where a floatplane bellows and roars as it jostles to land amongst the harbour traffic.

“I know the cops said to get dressed before leaving here. But I’m tempted to cycle back just like this,” I say.

She laughs and pauses to consider. “Okay, I’ll stay in my G-string.”

The two of us cycle in our near-naked state through the inner city, our clothes tucked away in our pannier bags.

We feel as free as fuck.

“How about we keep on going down to La Perouse, there’s the nudist beach there,” I say.

“Yeah!” she cries, pumping a fist in the air.

We dance our bikes to the boom-box and parade our near-nude freedom for all to see. Pedestrians and passing cars show their appreciation with cheering and hooting. Our uninhibited joy must be infectious, no-one bothers us.

We lock our bikes to the La Perouse bike stand and make our way down to Little Congwong beach, where we bathe naked like we did at the national park in the morning.

“This is heaven,” murmurs Celestial Halo.

We are ensconced in our own little cocoon of sensual oblivion, our bodies fused together on a couple of sarongs laid out on the soft sand. My fingers render long caresses across her receptive skin and trace along the taut curves of her buttocks, brushing away any sand still clinging to her sun-warmed naked flesh.

“The whole day has been perfect,” I say.

The combined spectacle of Bare Island, its causeway and the whole western backdrop of Botany Bay are rolling up towards the sun as the earth rotates like a slow spinning top with us on it. A fortuitous low tide gifts us and our fellow sun seekers an extra generous expanse of sand, the beach soft-lapped by the hissing and slapping of wavelets from the bay.

“Here’s to the freedom of it,” she says.

“And to the spreading of love,” I say.

The glittering mirror of water casts an extra glow, lighting us up like we’re in an evening photo shoot.

“To the joyfulness of it.”

“To being accepted for who we are.”

“To our cycling endorphins.”

“And to our love-making endorphins!”

“To having fun and adventure with new friends.”

The smell of salt and seaweed hangs pegged out on the air.

“If only the whole world could be like this,” says Celestial Halo.

“You mean like some kind of Utopia?” I ask.

She nods.

My hand glides across her sun-kissed back. The energy coils and ripples between us, intimate and sensual. She has an enquiring, intelligent mind – something I find irresistible in general and très sexy in women.

“Well, let me think what today reminds me of. Okay, it reminds me of when we are at a camping retreat in a loving, caring, non-judgemental community where we can be our true selves, safely held in our community love bubble.”

In the distance, passenger jets glide down towards the airport one after the other like alien spacecraft from another planet.

“Then, alas, we have to return to the real world. We feel exposed and unsafe, all of a sudden we are competing with each other, spending money on clothes to try to look as good as, or better than, everyone else, always in a rush, driving faster, walking faster, trying to earn more money so we can buy more gadgets and keep up with the Jones’s.”

Celestial Halo rolls onto her side and pulls me in. Our arms fold around each other in embrace. Her breasts and nipples are touching my chest.

“So you think that if we could only rid ourselves of the need to compete with fellow human beings, that we could transition into a loving, caring, non-judgemental world where we can be our true selves?” she asks.

“Yes,” I whisper into her ear.

“But that’s been tried before, think socialism and communism. It hasn’t worked. People pretend to be comrades but are always secretly undermining each other,” she says, bringing my head towards her face and kissing me.

“Well yes that’s true. But there is a solution,” I say after kissing her back.

“What’s that?”

I’ve been reading a book called Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To by David Sinclair. The author is a tenured professor of genetics at Harvard and head of the Ageing Labs at the University of NSW. His thesis is that ageing is a disease that can be cured and that emerging technology can deliver on this promise within 20 years if properly funded. And just the previous day I came across The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant by Nick Bostrom a sophisticated allegory showing how indoctrinated we are into thinking that ageing is inevitable when it is not ­– and the need for urgency, since every year we delay, costs the population of Canada in unnecessary deaths.

“Death is the reason we are so stressed out. It is this literal deadline that makes us desperate and competitive. Whereas if we knew we could live a healthy life for as long as we liked…well, then we’d know we have as much time as we wanted to achieve the things we want. So we would be relaxed and supportive of other people. We would find it natural to love all. The whole world would be a love bubble.”

“So you’re saying we need to live forever in order to achieve Utopia?”

“I’m saying that we should live a healthy life for as long as we want. Then, when we’ve had enough, we stop taking our healthspan pills. At which point we age and die.”

“Time for another swim,” she says.

Celestial Halo saunters to the water’s edge. She dives into the welcoming embrace of the bay. Her head pops up like that of a seal, joining a handful of other bathers cast off from the beach. I follow. The water caresses my naked body as I swim, dive and roll with sensual abandon. I breast stroke underwater towards her, slowly sliding up against her naked body and emerging to breathe while she folds her legs around me and squeezes.

“The Earth would be in terrible shape if people lived longer lives,” she says. We’re back on the beach, lying side by side, our hands clasped together. The sky is turning golden. “There would be too many people.”

“Not necessarily,” I say. “Even today, the birth rate in developed countries is well below replacement rate. And if we knew we could live a healthy life for as long as we liked, well, we might not feel the same pressure to have children as is the case when we have a fixed lifespan, like now.”

“So you’re saying it takes just one step to get to Utopia, that the only thing we need to do, is to cure ageing?” she asks.

” We just need to be able to unhitch that bookend of human life called Death so that we can place it wherever we want in our lives. Scientists are already extending the healthspan of experimental mice by 50%, there’s no reason we can’t do the same with humans,” I say.

“Sounds good, even if taking another twenty years means it’s too late for me. But who cares, we have our own little Utopia right here, right now,” she says, stretching out luxuriantly.

The day has ended, the western shores of Botany Bay have rotated up to eclipse the sun and the few remaining beach goers are shaking the moist sand from their towels in the coolness of dusk.

“Now that it’s getting dark, I dare you to cycle back naked to the city, without even your black lacy briefs,” says Celestial Halo with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

“I dare you to make love to me right here on the beach,” I counter.

“I accept your challenge.”

“And I yours.”