It was a sweltering night. Darkness gave the baked earth a chance to free itself of the heat it had absorbed during the day. Despite the air conditioning in my apartment, I felt restless. I had showered, brushed my teeth and was lying in bed waiting for sleep, but I just couldn’t settle.

This is ridiculous,I thought as I rolled from one side to the other in an attempt to make myself comfortable.

Finally, in exasperation, I got up, pulled on a pair of shorts and grabbed my car keys. It was the perfect night for a drive and, let’s face it, I wasn’t the least bit sleepy. Despite the early start I had in the morning, I pulled out of my driveway and headed for the main road. I had no idea where I was going, nor did I care.

I turned on the car radio. “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush was playing and suddenly visions of me at eight years old, sitting in the family room watching “Countdown,” the iconic Aussie music show, filled my head. Kate was in a red dress, dancing and spinning in a field of green like something from another world. That voice. Those eyes. I couldn’t help but sing along.

I ended up driving along the West Coast Highway. How I got there I didn’t know. Perhaps it was an instinct. I’d always loved the beach.

I found a car park and pulled in. After turning the engine off, I sat in moonlit darkness deciding whether I wanted to stay in the car and stare blankly off into space or go down onto the beach. The water was hidden by sand dunes, although I could hear the waves crashing onto the shore. It was a lonely sound, and yet it lured me from my car and to the shore’s edge.

With bare feet and nothing but my shorts on, I waded through the white, foamy water, loving the feeling of it splashing against the bare skin of my legs. A few spots even made it to my unclad torso.

I looked up and down the beach and toward the dunes, listening and watching for any signs of people, but there were none. I was completely alone. Only then did I peel my shorts off. I felt powerful, wild and free, my naked flesh exposed to the elements. I knew I’d feel like shit in the morning, but for the moment I was exactly where I wanted to be.

I began to walk through the breaking waves. My shorts were scrunched up in my hand and every inch of me below my nipples was drenched. I shivered a little as the breeze picked up before it died again, leaving me feeling refreshed and exhilarated.

After a short while, I got the feeling that I was no longer alone, which unnerved me. I stopped walking and looked behind me, though the beach appeared as deserted as it had been earlier. Once more I checked the dunes, which were so shrouded in darkness that a whole army could have been there and I wouldn’t have detected them, but as far as I knew no one was there.

My heart began to beat a little faster. My muscles had become tense.

Should I turn back?

What would be the point? I wasn’t ready to go home yet, and besides, it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Twice I had looked, and twice I had not seen a single soul.

In the belief that I was completely alone, I squatted down in the surf and enjoyed the sensation of the waves splashing up against my arsehole. Every little drop was like a tiny kiss that tickled. I sat down in the surf and let the waves run over me before they were pulled back out to sea. Again and again they broke against my naked flesh. Their relentless desire to erode might have worked on the rocks that had been there for millennia, but I was made of sturdier stuff.

It occurred to me how uninhibited a person could be when alone with just their senses. The ease with which I reverted to a childlike state surprised me, and yet I found the experience gratifying at the same time. Who cared that I was a thirty-nine-year-old man sitting down in the surf and laughing at the waves as they crashed over me? Who cared if I was sliding this way and that because of the action of a few waves?

“I completely agree,” said a deep voice from behind me.

I gasped and twisted around; the hand holding onto my shorts dropped to my crotch.

Shit. Now they’re wet!

“What?” I said.

“I don’t understand why people let go of that part of themselves so easily,” said the man.