Naked No.1

O’ Portland! The city of roses and… the World Naked Bicycle Race.

The purpose of the WNBR is to protest non-renewable energy and fossil fuels, hence the mass of people riding bicycles, all while empowering the movement for body-positivity, hence the mass of people riding bicycles in the nude.

Me and this girl I had previously ventured on a camping trip with (more on this later) made our way to Portland on a Saturday evening in late June. Beforehand I had never been in public with nothing on save for my socks and dirty white converse, but I am always down for new experiences.

We started with painting our breasts which was quite the bonding experience (you are not living until you’ve paint a pair of titties), then attempted to make our bikes look presentable (in the gay-curious Portland approach).

While it is recommended that bicyclists take alternative forms of transportation to Cathedral Park (the starting point of the race), we drove until we decided to park and ride our bikes the remaining three miles (we didn’t want any naked strangers to be angry with us). It wasn’t until we dismounted our bikes and stripped that the shock of this mass of nudists began to set in.

I had never seen so many pairs of breasts, halfsie boners, and bare booties in my entire life, there was easily 10,000 bodies crammed into that park. The coolest thing was, everyone embraced their birthday suit, at that moment no one cared what they looked like. Even at my most vulnerable (its either when I’m crying or unclad) the one thing that didn’t cross my mind was my self-deprecating self-image.

My friend and I barely spoke, I remember trying to in an effort to make the situation a little more, dare I say, normal, but I gave up as soon as words managed to escape from my throat. This was something we had to completely embrace.

I had to force myself not to look at the body parts we make a great effort to cover up, but it was difficult for me, because, like our painted breasts, people did things to their things to make them a little more fun to look at (My apologies to a few of the men reading this, but penises are not that pretty). For example, wrapping a couple glow sticks around the cock and balls, phrases painted across bare backs or chests (i.e. “I got hair and I don’t care” with an arrow pointing down to a rather bushy vagina), or completely painting a penis to make it glow-in-the-dark.

The shock-wave of the plethora of naked people subsided only slightly as soon as we left the race. It was a buzzing feeling that lasted well into the night (it was slightly similar to an adrenaline rush). There were so many people that it took awhile for the race to actually get started, even then it was a slow stop and go so the hoard of nudey bicyclists could avoid crashing into each other. We had only made it about half a mile in when we decided to take a side street and not finish the race or we would have been there all night.

When we finally slammed the doors to the cab of my truck we could agree on one thing,

“Wow.”

By Camille Bliss