Jungle Boy

Jungle Boy

by GGDC

Author's Note: This is a tale of a young exhibitionist in Hollywood and his utterly improbable adventures in the movie business. It is set a couple of decades in the future when research and vigorous public health measures have eradicated STD's, and social norms have evolved along trends visible today.

It contains graphic descriptions of the male human body, of sexual activity between adult males, the youngest of whom is nineteen years old, and some light bondage.

If any of this would offend a reader, read no further. This is not intended for persons younger than an age where they may freely and legally select their reading matter in whatever jurisdiction that applies.

It is offered for entertainment. If it manages to both amuse and to provoke prurient interest, it will have succeeded in its aim. Writing this tale has been the most fun the author has had wearing clothes in a very long time.

It is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead. The encounter with yellow-jackets, very briefly referred to, is an autobiographical echo of the author at ten.

Address comments to georgegauthierdc@yahoo.com, and before you ask, a sequel is already in the works.

Chapter 1. Nemesis

Jason, listened calmly as the announcer introduced him as the next guest on a popular late evening show.

"Tonight's guest is a rising young Hollywood star whose first four pictures were all financially successful. Meet Jason Eberly."

Jason stepped through the curtain, bowed his blond head to the studio audience and took his seat on the couch across the desk from the host of the long running show, talk-meister Hal Browder.

Browder launched right into the confrontational style that had made him rich and famous.

"So Jason, four pictures in a row and all in the black, but were any of them really worth watching?"

Nothing for it but to tackle this head-on with candor. He could never win at the man's own game of patter, innuendo, and accusation.

"No, none of them is worth watching if you're trying to pick next year's Oscars. They're just entertainment. But they did do $142 million box office in North America alone"

"OK, let me ask you. These pictures are pretty low budget aren't they, especially in the costume department?"

Jason flushed. Always the same point came up in his interviews.

"OK, what you really mean is that they did not spend much on my costumes."

"I don't see how they could, Jason. No offense, but in your first movie, the one that catapulted you to stardom, you wore a shirt for about two minutes, and afterward just that pair of cut-offs. Isn't it fair to say that you got by the rest of the picture on the strength of a pretty face and killer abs? In your second movie, except for a brief flashback your character wore a skimpy bikini and in the sex scene you were nude. We saw a good shot of your tush, ass cheeks clenching and unclenching as hips thrust forward and back. In the third.."

"Wait, wait, wait. I wasn't fully naked in that scene. As you know very well, actors do scenes of simulated sex wearing a modesty pouch, to keep, well... genitals from actual contact."

"Like this one, eh?" Holding one up. "It's almost sheer and kinda small, isn't it?"

"Big enough."

"Should we take that as good news or bad" [Chuckles from the audience]

Jason was mortified. Browder was practically undressing him on stage.

"In your third movie set in the Amazon rain forest, well a G-string is the best description I could give of that costume. What did that cost the producers?

"That was a G-string and feathers." Jason countered, indicating where bands of feathers had encircled his upper arms. "Look, that was what the script called for."

"Do you usually run around in next to nothing?"

"On the set, yes, when that's what's in the script."

"What about when you're not on the set, maybe at the beach or running cross-country?"

Jason gaped. How had this man known?

"Isn't it true that you frequent a notorious nudie beach?" [Whistles from the audience].

"Isn't it true that the state park next to it is clothing optional? You look like you keep in shape young Jason. I understand you still run cross-country, just like you did in high school two years ago. I have some candid shots of you running several of the trails there. Different trails on dates months apart. You aren't wearing a stitch in any of these photos." [Laughter and whistles]

"Hey do you have to poke into my private life?"

"Private? You're out in public in broad daylight on public lands."

Jason hung his head. This guy was making him look ridiculous.

"Look, can't we just talk about my pictures?"

"Sure, what do you have in the works? I hear you landed a three picture deal."

"Yes," Jason said, brightening, "only one project set so far, a survival epic."

"Let me guess, in the opening scene a tornado tears all the clothes from your body. Just kidding folks."

"I am trying to broaden the kind of pictures I'm in. I don't want to get typecast"

"As a latter day jungle boy in a loincloth, if that much." The audience ate this up. Jason was getting killed.

"Do you get offered good scripts?"

"Some, others from the slush pile are kind of bizarre."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Well, one of these scripts has me windsurfing in the islands. My 'costume' consists of the sail; it's the only thing that covers me and that's just for the first reel. After I get dumped in the drink and swim ashore it's just me and whatever low bushes or ferns happen to be growing nearby."

"And you jumped at the chance."

"Hey, give me a break. I'm nineteen years old. I'm trying to make a living here."

"And with that, we pause for these messages.."

During the break Jason could tell that much of the audience was sympathetic. They saw a kid who was trying to make it getting dumped on by a big-name celebrity. People like an under-dog. Browder was a big beefy man, Jason a little guy. Barely five-seven [170 cm] when he was being honest. His publicist claimed he was five-nine. Let's see if he could win people over.

"All right we're back with Jason Eberly, the clothing challenged actor. Jason, as you know there is a time honored set of questions interviewers ask actors. You are pretty young to have worked out a philosophy of life, but let's give it a try. What is your favorite word?

"Sex".

"Favorite as a word or as a concept?", Browder said leaning forward. Jason flushed.

"What is your favorite curse word?"

"One I can't say on TV" [approbation from the audience]. "It begins with the letter 'S'".

"If Heaven exits, what would you say to God?"

Jason paused. Honesty warred with caution. What the hell. "What is so damn important about belief? Why don't you just show us proof. You expect us to believe fairy tales then punish us when we can't" There, he'd said it. Well he was a rationalist. If someone didn't like that, too bad.

"Do you wear pajamas in bed?"

"No."

"Nor anything else I'd wager. OK, the sixty-four dollar question: are you gay?"

"I'm an actor. I played a cop on screen, but I never went to the academy. I played a psycho; I've never killed anyone. I played the first mate on a sailing ship and I can hardly read a compass. Look this is all about make believe. Was Arnold a cyborg or Bruce a cop? No, it's just pretend."

"Fair enough. That's actually a very good answer, and it's a point that often gets lost in this town. But you did evade the question. All right, I have been cued, so let's cut to these messages."

Close call, Jason thought. Yes, he was gay. A real bottom boy if the truth were known but nobody else's business. He had got his break in pictures because he was very young, good looking, in great shape and, most of all, willing to work in those skimpy costumes or in nothing at all.

"Now Jason, I think you would agree that you are not up for he-man roles. You're not six-two and two-ten; you didn't go in for football in high school; I'm betting you never fired a gun for real. What is your niche?"

"Well, I like to think I am versatile. Alan Ladd was only five-four. Nothing says I can't play a tough guy."

"Yes, but when I think back to you in that G-string, I didn't see manly chest hair. I didn't see any body hair at all and there was very little of you that wasn't visible." Jason shook his head, fearing what would come next. "In those candid shots I mentioned earlier at the beach and running cross-country, I don't even see hair at the, um, fork of your legs."

"Hey lots of guys go smooth these days."

"Yes and for different reasons, but what was your reason? Why permanent depilation? Isn't it because you know body hair is for real men, and you're just a shameless bottom boy, a little pussy-boy faggot? And before you answer, look at some of these photos, which we cannot show on TV, but which are being posted to our website even as we speak."

Jason glanced at the compromising photos. It's not that he had been reckless really. Most of these were from when he was seventeen or eighteen, just before he got into the movie business, when his then boyfriend had insisted on the smooth hairless look. He got up and walked slowly off the stage. He had just been outed on national television.

Chapter 2. On Set

"Don't worry about that clown", Marty Fletcher told him. Fletcher was Jason's producer for his next picture. "You know what they say, all publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right. I called Browder and he told me to tell you that it wasn't personal, just business. That's the kind of show he does. You should have known that before you signed up for it." Browder had also said that Jason had impressed him with his coolness under fire. He was welcome back on the show.

Ironically Jason was playing a role akin to a jungle boy. This was a remake of the old movie about an explorer in darkest Africa who is stripped by the natives and given the chance to run for his life. It was being remade to 'suit modern sensibilities'. Evidently that meant that, unlike the original, they didn't have to use all those coy camera angles. If the shot called for a clear view of his bare ass or even the full monty, then OK.

Jason was perfect for the role. He really was a cross-country runner and used to running barefoot and naked. He wasn't body shy, rather a bit of an exhibitionist. Although not very tall, his body was incredibly toned, taut and trim with a surprisingly muscular upper storey for a runner. Add in those killer abs and all-over tan, he was poetry in motion. They were planning on several slo-mo shots to show off Jason's athleticism and raw animal appeal. No need on this picture for a body double or stunt double, except maybe for that swing on a vine across the river. They were still in negotiations with the insurance company; it might cost them their completion bond if Jason did the stunt. Jason wouldn't mind if he skipped it. Let Charlie get the gig. He was a good guy. Jason did not want to take bread out of his mouth.

Jason's character wasn't a rough tough explorer type; 'Jean' worked as the personal assistant of a district officer of the French colonial government in the late nineteenth century. Jason was the right age and if he was better looking than most colonial officials of the day, well that was Hollywood. Jason had the kind of pretty-boy good looks that made people on the street do double-takes, thinking. "How can anybody be that good looking?" Everyone agreed that his was the prettiest face in any of his pictures. But it was a face capable of displaying strength of character. Critics and audience had seen a cold killer in those green eyes.

They were shooting interiors on the back lot and would go on location next week. Brazil was standing in for the heart of darkness. Jason already had all his immunizations and was researching local flora and fauna. He wanted to know what snakes or venomous animals to look out for and what vaccines they should take along. Not his job really, but his ass was on the line. He would be running barefoot over rough country. Actors had died before on jungle locations. He was also practicing savatte since a French colonial official might reasonably be familiar with that martial art. Savatte was his character's edge in his struggle to 'escape the howling savages and return to civilization'. Corny, yeah, but this was entertainment. Jason made movies not 'films'. He was in the movies not in the 'cinema'.

Everyone in the production liked working with the young actor. He had not let his early success go to his head. He had a good work ethic and was always on-time. He hit his marks and knew his lines. No drugs, no tantrums, no attitude, and no entourage either. Like other actors he was tooling up for future roles. He was still shaky on horseback, but would improve with practice. It wasn't just for westerns; you also had your period dramas, sword and sandal, even life styles of the rich and famous. You never knew when a producer would put a character up on a horse.

He had worked on his French accent for this role. Jason actually spoke French as a native but with his mother's Canadian accent. A coach had helped him to speak Parisian French. There was little scope for dialogue, Jason's had two scenes with the district officer; these would be in French with subtitles. The rest was virtual monologue as Jean shouted at the tribal warriors or cursed his fate: The actor still slipped back into his Canadian French accent, but that was what retakes were for. The warriors would speak a fake African language with their meaning obvious from the action. A gesture and grunt from the chief directs a warrior to cut the captives bonds. The chief then points his spear at Jean and then at the horizon, and thrusts it up and away. Translation: Run for your life!

The thing that bothered him most about the location shoot was bugs. Some could give you diseases. OK he had his shots. Others could bite or sting or swarm all over you. As a kid he had once stepped on a nest of yellow-jackets and had had to run like hell to get away from them. He was taking along a variety of repellent, but even those might have bad chemicals. Don't forget about the caimans either. Well you could never reduce risk to zero, but it did not hurt to prepare and learn what you might face.

The shoot would last almost two months with Jason's guy basically naked for most of it. The young actor decided he would remain in character on location. If they had to change a set up, he wouldn't pull on a robe for modesty's sake. For crying out loud, the makeup lady would be applying body paint to his ass every day with forty others watching and making suggestions. This kind of thing happened on every picture. Whenever Jason took his clothes off, suddenly everyone in the crew, even the lab guys, were right there just out of frame, taking snapshots, if not for themselves then for their girlfriends. Besides, those pictures from Browder's show were all over the internet. No, that was one train that had already left the station.

This picture had him frontally nude a lot. Jason was gratified that his genitals didn't look all shriveled up like with so many guys. His cock was smooth not gnarly with purple veins. Yes, he still had his foreskin; it hung about a finger's breadth past the tip of his cock head. Cock and balls were reasonably large but he wouldn't be scaring the horses. It took both his small hands to cover his erection, but only one when it was soft. That was just fine when you were running cross country bare ass with your dangly bits bouncing about.

Chapter 3. On Location

Jason patiently waited out the rain delay, waving away the umbrella guy. It was hot, the rain felt good, and he was naked anyway. After three weeks they were making good progress. They already had done the scenes near the 'district office'. Those were at the beginning of the story where Jason's character Jean gets sent by his boss on the mission where he gets captured and stripped. The tribal warriors rape him and torment his manhood. Also in the can was the last scene where Jean, having taken a loincloth off a dead African finally gets to wear clothes again. For the rest of the shoot he would be naked in every scene.

The rape scene was graphic. With arms tied behind his back and a rope around his neck, poor Jean wasn't going anyplace. He could only suffer when that first huge warrior bent him over a tree trunk and slammed into him. The young Frenchman's struggles were as piteous as they were useless. The brute slammed into his ass again and again, then pulled the boy up to reveal his own damning arousal. That led inevitably to cruel games with the white man's tool, so much smaller than their own manly members. The young actor's face portrayed a mixture of the pain and fear and shame poor Jean must be feeling.

Too bad the performance of the big chief was so lousy. The guy had been picked for his size and muscles, but he just couldn't act. In a burst of improvisation after several bad takes, Jason volunteered to take one for the team, though off camera. No acting required there. Although the other actor-warriors who followed the big chief in the saddle used a modesty pouch and merely simulated sexual assault, that first time was for real. It still was a masterly bit of acting on his own part. Jason gave no hint he took any pleasure during the proceedings and much of the pain on his face was fake. Yes, the guy had a big one but nothing a boy like Jason hadn't taken before. With that dress rehearsal behind them, they got it perfect on the next take.

Naked on set, Jason also went naked off camera most of the time. Like always, he slept naked. If he got up in the night to go to the can, he didn't bother getting dressed. He did not get dressed for swimming parties in the river or to throw frisbees either. Jason was very good at that too, quick and nimble. He practiced savatte that way too, just as Jean would do on camera. Same for makeup, walk-throughs etc. If he couldn't think of a definite reason not to, he stayed naked. That was the default setting. He did dress for dinner slipping a silk sarong around his narrow hips. Some people thought he looked even sexier in it. The sarong rode low, maybe five inches below the navel and the bulge in the thin fabric left little to the imagination. Not that anyone had to imagine anything. They had personal video cameras not to mention 8 x 10 glossies.

Now why couldn't he get royalties for all those pictures? He had mentioned that as a joke and got a lecture from the director of photography, no less. If photons bounced off his body into a camera, it was no different than if they bounced into the eyeballs of onlookers ogling the teenage star. You don't own the photons that bounce off you. Anyway, if it bothered him, he could go put some clothes on. Some people can't take a joke. Actually it gave the crew a tag line. 'Bouncing photons' got thrown into conversations a lot for a while. If he ever wrote his memoirs, he would use that name for the chapter about this movie.

For the next scene, he had to swim across the river to escape his pursuers. By now they knew this river had no piranha in it. Jason shuddered at the thought of swimming in a river with the carnivorous fish. They traveled in large schools that could strip a man to the bone in an hour, or so it was said. Jason was more worried about the first tender morsels the fish would go for.

You really got a different perspective living naked. His feet, though toughened from two years of running barefoot, had taken a beating. He had stepped on rotting logs, stones, shells and glass. Six teen stitches so far and half as many stubbed toes. He had bruised his ass on a split tree trunk and got a splinter in the other cheek from a crate. Once he sat down on a rough rock ledge and caught his nuts in a vice. He had rocked back and forth holding himself till the pain went down, with the crew looking on with expressions of polite concern. Jason told himself it was all part of keeping in character and would pay off during the shooting. He was getting a much better understanding than the scriptwriters had about the plight of a young white man traveling naked in the jungle. That would inspire his performance later on.

In defense of his sincerity about the rationale for staying in character, the actor could point that he alone of all the cast and crew slept in a small tent. No trailer and no air-conditioning. He was the star, and he was roughing it. His shower was a canvas bag he filled himself from a jerry can of water and hung from a tree branch. No indoor shower for him nor any a sheet or partition to screen him. And he always air-dried. When he had to take a dump, he took a shovel himself and dug a cat-hole latrine or slit trench if they were in camp. He did his business, if necessary in plain sight, then threw earth on top. There were plenty of candid shots of him grimacing as he defecated including a video which came out at the height of the wave of criticism Jason had to face back in the States.

His only concession to the twenty-first century was that he used toilet paper, and only then because he might get a rash from the leaves of strange plants. Also reaching about on the ground might just put his hand with reach of the strike of a snake. His only luxuries aside from the spartan tent was ample nutrition and all the soap and water he could use.

He never went into anyone's trailer. In fact, the only time he was indoors was what little time he spent in the tent. No, he did not sleep on the ground; he had a cot to fend off snakes and scorpions and a mosquito net. And no, he did not pitch and strike the tent himself. Aside from when he was asleep or reading in his tent, he was always outdoors and always barefoot and naked. About the only time he used a chair was at dinner so he could share the meal with his friends. Otherwise, he parked his bare ass on the ground. If while away from camp he needed to actually lie down to rest from his exertions, he stretched out on some likely patch of ground, bare skin pressed to earth no pad no air mattress no ground cloth.

Except at night in the tent his only protection against stinging and biting insects was repellents of varying degrees of efficacy. He could not count the times he had been stung or bitten nonetheless and often was unsure whether it was a sting or a bite and many were on quite tender portions of his anatomy since he had no cloth between him and the insect world. For the sake of verisimilitude he endured this scourge of bugs entirely so he would look like a hapless young man plagued by such denizens of the jungle. Away from camp he dug latrines for others instead of standing by idly while others set up, just to be useful and to keep up his upper body strength. He didn't even come in from the rain. He was dead serious about this.

His main rationale for this regime, aside from authenticity, was surprisingly his health. He had to toughen up feet and hands and hide to do the physical part of his job as an actor. He did all his own stunts. Top priority was to acclimate to the hot climate and stay acclimated or run the risk of keeling over from heat stroke. You cannot do that spending half your time in airconditioning. And if sweltering is bad, then going back and forth was worse. He would not let himself give less than everything to a scene. No begging off yet another take out of longing for the cool air of a trailer His role was strenuous. Five of the supporting cast of warriors and two of the crew had had heat injuries already, mostly heat exhaustion or heat cramps, with one near miss from heat stroke.

Fortunately Jason was on hand to nix the ignorant notion of covering the victim with a blanket and 'making him comfortable'. That really would have killed him. With heat stroke you had to get core body temperature down fast, any way you could. With no time to lose and not inclined to argue anyway Jason simply dragged the man into a nearby stream, fending off two bigger men who came at him with a stick and tried to stop him. They weren't going to take orders from "some bare ass faggot", this said with a scornful glance to the boy's hairless groin. Jason dropped them with well-placed kicks. When the first-aid man got back from town and heard what Jason had done, he praised him for his quick thinking. Jason had saved the man's life. Even so, that actor had to be airlifted out and never finished the picture.

One of the men who had tried to interfere, still smarting from his humiliation, grumbled later: "So what would you have done, kid, without a stream handy?"

"Pissed on him" Jason replied frostily. "And invited others to do the same," drawing a nod from the first-aid man. Jason had done his research well and knew how to tell one kind of heat injury from another and what to do about each as first aid.

During the incident, the camera kept rolling and the resulting video was startling. It showed little Jason Eberly, all of 128 pounds [58 kg] and stark naked, dragging a man who outweighed almost two-to-one for 150 yards while fending off 'rescuers' who outweighed him more than three-to-one, and one of them had a stick, and he used it. Jason was a genuine hero. The incident and the dramatic video sealed the young actor's bond with the crew. You had only to watch it to see a small naked boy become a man. Maybe Jason was flighty and naughty, and you couldn't keep him in a pair of pants, but the kid had grit.

Of course that wasn't the only reason for his nudity. If pressed Jason would admit that he was an exhibitionist. The teenager was proud of his body; he was sexy. At home he swam naked but certainly not to reduce hydrodynamic drag. Running cross-country naked had toughened him up, which was useful in this picture, but that wasn't the reason he did it. He had started that before he ever got into pictures.

Still not every member of the crew was blase about his nudity or the rationale he offered for it. Taylor the sound man still frowned at Jason's nakedness. "Put some clothes on" he muttered under his breath, too low to be called on it and too loud to miss. Well the man was entitled to his point of view. He did his job well, so the boy let it go. Once when Taylor was fixing a ground line he turned to stand and came 'face to groin' with Jason. "Talk about in your face! Kid, do what the good book says and cover the nakedness of thy body." Jason bore him no ill will for it, and he knew the man was no Bible thumper.

The local police who patrolled the area for security were amused by the young man. Sometimes they took him along on patrol. The cops never suggested and Jason certainly never asked for a minute to slip into something. It was strictly come as you are, except for the handcuffs locking his wrists behind him to lend credence to their cover story of an arrest. Surprised villagers were not aware that a film company was in the area, and what was the blond American actor doing running around like a naked savage?

He even got a lecture from a traveling padre, more in sorrow than in anger, on the theme of pride goeth before a fall and do not set your mind on earthly things, especially those of the flesh. Jason clearly was of the flesh. The priest did say that he had seen a couple of the boy's pictures and liked them. So, on that note they parted company.

Despite the priest's well meant words, Jason did like the flesh and the pleasures thereof. He did relish feeling wanton and naughty like out here with the police patrol, miles from their base camp or anything to wear, arms locked behind, helpless as the friendly police teased him, goosed him, pinched his bottom, and played with his tackle. They particularly liked to tickle the boy, and they were good at it, leaving him crying, and hurting from the laughter. The sergeant loved to hear the boy's voice rise into the soprano register as he begged fruitlessly for mercy. The way the blond youth's slender body thrashed in his bondage turned the sergeant on, but he would never take advantage of his official position that way and force himself on the boy, nor did he expect him to pleasure them in exchange for squiring him about the countryside. His company and the photos they took were compensation enough. He had never met anyone like this delightful young animal.

If only the sergeant had asked. A fire was building in Jason's belly. He wished the police would pull to the side of the road, throw him over a fender and gang bang him. Not literally of course, but the American boy found the sergeant's dark good looks terribly attractive. He thought of the cute Indian boys in that last village where his arousal had started. He had flushed when a young lady giggled and pointed to his groin. His cock was visibly plumped up and leaking! That was when the sergeant decided it was time to leave. It wasn't much of a village, but there was no shortage of cameras there. The boy wondered if pictures of him in all his glory were even now winging their way around the world. Well plenty more were coming out of their base camp.

He hoped the public would take it for a lark, laughing with him rather than at him. Jason knew he was no saint, but he was sure that basically he was a good kid. He hoped other folks thought so too. As indeed they did. Jason was sometimes flighty but never malicious. If he did not worry overmuch about offending with his nudity, well, that was his juices flowing. Cut him some slack.

On the way back in the jeep, Jason felt happy. Life was good. He was a success before his twentieth birthday. He was making good money. He was known if not famous. He liked what he did and was good at it. He liked the people he worked with, and they liked him. The future looked assured.

The jeep dropped the teenage actor off at base camp in plenty of time for Jason's next scene. The savage warriors were ready to chase Jean through the jungle and shoot arrows at him as he swam the river. This scene was important to the plot. It tells how Jean gets away from the initial pursuit. Desperate to survive, Jean plunges into the swiftly flowing river and struggles across. The warriors turn back. Crossing here is too dangerous. They will go upstream to the log bridge. A plot gimmick like this is essential to every chase flick. The action reaches an early crescendo after which the plot follows separate stories until the close pursuit resumes for the main action.

Everything was ready including the safety divers whom Jason might need to stay alive in the rough water. At least the river water was warm here in the lowlands. He knew that in a jungle picture made a some years before he was born, an actor his age had had to dive into a river fed by glacial melt water. The young actor was even skinnier than he was, about zero body fat, and his G-string and feathers had been no help at all. You could see the poor kid shivering. The director's son no less! What an ordeal to put your kid through. Actually Jason would have denied he was skinny himself. Slender, yes, but muscular. And don't ever call him scrawny. That meant bony, and Jason was muscular.

You have good days and bad days. This was one of the bad days. They did five takes. First the divers were in frame then it was the sound boom. On the third take one of the arrows struck the young actor in the ass. He was so startled he swallowed water and started to thrash around. The divers rescued him, pulling the bedraggled young man safely to shore, spitting and coughing. "Thanks", he smiled weakly.

"Anytime Jase". Hank Altobello the lead diver had a thing for Jason. He helped the kneeling boy bend over and pounded lightly between the shoulder blades . "Sure you don't need mouth to mouth"?

Now Jason really smiled but shook his head. "You just want to lock lips, don't you?"

"Sure, so do you. Admit it" Hank challenged, blue eyes flashing.

Jason laughed and said, "Well, I guess you do deserve a reward" and kissed him right on the lips, slipping his tongue into the diver's mouth. Hank put his arms around the boy and returned the feeling with interest. Hands wandered; the diver ran his thumb over one of Jason's nipples then down to his hip...

"Ahem! Sorry to interrupt this love fest, but we've got a picture to make." That was the director, Jim Nicholls.

"What about me? Don't I get a reward" wailed the other diver, who actually was straight. He was playing this for laughs.

"On your own time, if you please. Or if you don't please." Nicholls said with mock severity. Then turned with concern to his young star. "What about that arrow. Did you get hurt?"

"Better check" murmured Hank, turning his scrutiny to the boy's ass, running his hand over the smooth tanned cheeks. "Looks OK".

"No blood then, no holes?"

"Uhh...Just this one" Hank said, feigning seriousness as his index finger tapped Jason's crinkly brown anal ring. The actor dissolved in laughter as much from relief at his close call as from the banter.

That wasn't the end of it either as crew members called out their observations or advice about how Jason's pretty ass was a target for many but so few had hit the bulls-eye or penetrated. There were puns on arrows as shafts, etc. During all the excitement the cameras kept rolling, SOP for getting footage for the 'Making Of...' video. Jason bet these out-takes did not wind up on the cutting room floor. One camera must have zoomed in for a close up of Hank's finger pressed to the boy's anus and the hairless ball sac below. Personal cameras had also recorded the incident.

"Bad enough that talk show" the boy thought, "stuff like this will give me a whole new reputation. Well such things are bound to happen on pictures with such low costume budgets", he allowed philosophically. The director did manage to get a good take before they lost the light so he declared himself satisfied.

Jason was sore and tired afterwards. All that running and then five takes for the river crossing; that current was strong. After a little cheese and wine that the chef had laid out to tide the crew over till the typically late dinner, Jason took some pain pills then beckoned to the masseur and lay down on the table. As his habit to help him rest, the boy imagined each muscle group relaxing in turn, letting go of their tension starting with the face. The intensity soon left his face, then he told his body to relax like a rag doll, first shoulders and arms then thighs and calves all the way to his feet. He imagined fatigue poisons draining from his muscle tissue into the blood stream for eventual elmination. Relax, relax, you are as a rag doll...boneless, motionless except to breathe.

It was amazing how many people suddenly took an interest in the arts of visualized relaxation and massage. The blond boy gave a wry smile. What else could he expect, running around nude the way he did. So, always a trouper, the boy gave his audience the show they wanted, ironically a show he actually missed himself. Jason closed his eyes, cleared his mind and relaxed, slowly drifting into sleep borne away by fatigue, pills, and the wine.

The boy had a beautiful body, slender yet muscular, tanned, taut and toned with strong shoulders, well defined abdominal muscles, and narrow hips. His hands were small and his legs well muscled with veins prominent under the skin because of a body fat percentage almost in single digits. No hair interrupted the flow of its faultless lines. His sex was in proportion with a smooth cock, foreskin concealing the head and piss slit and extending a finger's breadth beyond, the scrotum the size of a large peach but with the divided curvature of a plum and held close to the belly.

The masseur was a big man with strong hands. The contrast with the teenager's much smaller frame was striking. As a composition the tableau was arresting, the big man upright, the slender teen lying down; the masseur alert and at work; the youth fallen asleep before him, unaware and helpless. The masseur's size and strength should have dominated the composition but that is not how most onlookers saw it. Their eyes were fixed on the boy not on the man.

Minutes passed as those big hands worked on him, kneading his flesh, loosening the knots, stimulating circulation. Jason moaned. The big hands rubbed lotion into the skin soothing it and leaving a sheen. Big hands squeezed and stroked, and yes, caressed the lovely teen. The onlookers were as one with the masseur, making love to this beautiful boy. Those hands traced over the boy's belly and shoulders and chest and hips and squeezed his inner thighs. Pictures of the trip to the village and of the Indian boys passed through the dozing lad's mind. The masseur never touched the boy's genitals, but his breathing quickened; the musculature of chest and abdomen flexed rhythmically, belly rising and falling.

The smooth cock started to plump up, losing its curvature, straightening and lengthening as the head, the only part of him hidden from view, emerged from the foreskin, to point toward the belly button. Then the cock lifted completely off the boy's hairless belly, cantilevered out from the root, rigid but dipping rhythmically with the throb and beat of his heart, all the time leaking a clear fluid which spread in a limpid pool on his belly.

The masseur's hands now openly caressed this exquisite male, stroking the length of his legs, sliding along his flanks, delving between his thighs into his crack making love with his hands but never touching the boy's proud cock. The ball sac pulled tight against the fork of the boy's legs, its globularity in contrast to the cylindrical column of the engorged member. The head purpled, its tiny lips spreading open. It was well past time for the masseur to leave off and turn the boy over to work on his back, but he was not really giving a massage; as all understood by now, this was an act of worship: simultaneously public and intimate, a physical and tactile rite of worship of a boy laid out as an offering on an altar to the gods of carnal knowledge.

Taylor, the sound man came over and saw what was happening and opened his mouth to protest, but a warning finger from the director shut him up. Nicholls looked back to make sure the sound man had not walked in front of the camera, nodding to the cameraman to keep rolling as the late afternoon light painted the boy's skin golden. It was a timeless moment.

Abruptly, with only a quick intake of breath and a tightening around the boy's closed eyes to indicate his climax was at hand, his proud cock engorged beyond its previous impressive girth and began spurting and spitting his white seed onto his chest. Even after six strong spurts, the gism continued to drain from the still tumescent shaft but now in a slow flow, like a lazy river, emptying into and collecting as a pool in the hollow of the belly. The ejaculate glistened with golden highlights from the sun's rays hinting at the furious activity below the surface as microscopic carriers of life in their millions swam and thrashed and corkscrewed in search of an impossible consummation. Jason sighed and fell into an exhausted sleep. The director waved the camera forward for a close-up. The camera lens recorded the ejaculate congealing on pectorals and draining around tiny nipples. It lingered over the limpid pool in the hollow of the belly and in the navel. It traced the milky rivulet draining down the hip.

As the camera kept rolling, Hank and the other diver as if in the role of priests reverently collected relics of that white chrism, the boy's ejaculate, the very stuff of life, pressing lightly at a spot on the boy's belly to direct a rivulet into the tops of small vials. They spread the rest of the precious gism over Jason's chest and groin, smoothing it with the palms of their hands over the firm pectorals, tracing the valley in between with their fingers and rubbing it into the tiny nipples, spreading it from the deep pool in the hollow of the belly up to the ribcage then over and between the prominent ribs on to the flanks, pressing up to the clavicles and down to the flaring hip bones then on to the bare groin, gently drawing his now flaccid cock and ball sac through their hands to coat all the surfaces of the orbs and the shaft whence it had come with his very own male essence, slipping a finger into the opening in the foreskin and lightly probing the tiny slit from which this treasure had emerged. Hank scraped some gism to the navel to fill it as a last small reservoir of the precious chrism, then swirled a glop of it onto a finger and anointed sleeping beauty's brow and nose and lips. He ached to kiss those sweet lips but knew that for a selfish thought. Now was not the moment; he must share this offering with all. It was enough for now that he was ministering to this marvel of creation and vitality.

His pinky spread a small glop just below the nose and pushed lightly into each nostril, leaving a small deposit of the white substance, ensuring that henceforth each breath the youth took would carry some of the perfume of his own essence deep into his body, into his lungs, into his blood, into his heart perhaps. He spread a large dollop of the congealing chrism around the crinkly ring of the sleeping beauty's nether hole, pushing in very gently so as not to wake the lovely youth. Finally, gently laying his cock on the boy's flat belly with a curve in it like a hook to make sure it would not slip down between his thighs and out of sight of the worshippers, the divers stood back.

All watching knew that they had witnessed the sublime. It was an act of sacrifice and a visual poem to life itself, to the powers of generation, to continuity of the flesh and the great chain of being, and, supremely, to the beauty of the sexual male. The youth's masculine climax was like a catharsis for them as they drifted away quietly, leaving the boy to his rest, a few turning back to linger briefly gazing at the rise and fall of his chest, visible evidence of the continuity of the vital processes within and a promise of days to come.

The director could hardly believe his good fortune. He would edit this footage reverently making it into a film short worthy of showing in all the film schools in all the cities in all the world. It would also go to museums of the moving image and to art schools. He would entitle it "Sacrament". For what had just happened was a religious experience. Rooted in biology maybe, the white chrism of this sacrament was indeed a gift of a male's generative organs, but what they had seen was more profoundly religious than any tired ritual with incense. It was also unequivocally the most erotic thing he had ever seen. He felt humble.

Jason himself did not see the footage till morning. He knew at once that no matter how many pictures he ever made, this was his best work and he wasn't even acting. He hadn't even known it was happening. Though personally fastidious, he did not bathe till evening, preferring on that day to inhale his own smell or to scape some of the dried substance off his skin and place it on his tongue to savor. Throughout the day people went out of their way to talk to him, bending their faces to his breast, drawing his scent into their nostrils. They were gentle with him but persistent with their attentions, telling him how grateful they were to have been there. Their gaze dropped to the fine cock they had worshiped yesterday.

More than a few lifted the smooth tube of flesh and stroked it in admiration, pushing back the foreskin to reveal the head, tapping the tiny slit, running a finger around the crown or just squeezing the shaft gently between their fingers to test its plumpness. Others cupped his balls, stroked the smooth skin, and rolled the orbs between their fingers, squeezing just hard enough to make an impression but not so much as to give offense. These scenes drew appreciative audiences. Jason played to his impromptu audience, turning to present himself for their gaze, knowing this was their right as much as his gift, spreading apart his legs and lifting his arms that they might place hands on him everywhere from all directions, as many of them as possible. Jason's manhood stood proud during these ministrations. They loved to stroke it, to bend it forward and watch it bounce back and audibly slap the flat belly. Others approached from behind to stroke the taut cheeks, to bounce the jingly flesh, or to stroke his crack and poke tentatively at his hole.

Jason loved to be treated as a boy toy. He loved to be seen naked and to be touched. He wanted people to see him, to admire him, to pet him, to run their hands over his belly, to slap his buttocks or slip the blade of a hand in between, and to touch him intimately. He was a generous lad, glad to share his youth and his sexuality. Hadn't he been offered up as a lamb on the altar to Eros, the god of love? He was offered up as much to be touched as to be seen. Physical love is tactile and of the flesh. In that sense his cock, his balls, his firm ass no longer belonged exclusively to him. This flesh of his was simply the tangible part of their profound shared experience. And all this too was captured for posterity by the eye of the camera as he submitted to their attentions and ministrations.

Thereafter the crew had no problems with Jason's nudity. Rather they would have been shocked and disappointed if he started wearing clothes. Everyone male or female, gay or straight wanted him naked. They appreciated how his hairlessness heightened the perception of nudity. It made his genitals more visible more vulnerable more available and made his entire body look like a living sculpture. When he dined in his sarong; they dared him to wear it even lower on his hips. After dinner, they delighted in unwrapping it from around his lower body. One day the sarong just disappeared, claimed as a treasured souvenir by some lucky and larcenous member of the crew. No longer did cloth, however thin or soft, come between the young godling and his worshippers. Being in the midst of others, the only one without clothes made the boy feel so much more naked and sexy.

Crew members became more tactile with the boy, putting an arm over his shoulder or around his waist, tapping him on his arm, putting a hand to his heart or to his hip or belly. They talked with him quietly about things other than the picture business, getting to know the boy better. Jason responded to these advances, many from the straight members of the crew. They no longer thought it remarkable to sit on a bench next to a naked youth chatting with him, rubbing his back, stroking his smooth hide from shoulder to ass or from hip to knee or cupping a buttock or even fingering his crack. They knew he liked being touched that way, like a cat likes being petted. If he could he would have purred.

Some liked to lay a hand on his upper thigh, playfully tapping his smooth genitals or bouncing his cock on a finger. A small hairless male was more approachable, less like themselves, perhaps less threateningly male. These men might back off from getting fingers tangled in another man's wiry bush, but this was OK, just a hairless kid with a smooth unwrinkly set of equipment like on a classical sculpture or like the undressed action figures they had played with as boys. And with a face prettier than any girl they knew.

He welcomed their hands when they caressed his buttocks or rubbed his chest or tweaked his tiny nipples. Many of the men ran the tips of their fingers over his armpits and groin, marveling at the smoothness of skin without hair. Not every man who touched him was attracted to him sexually. Some were drawn by his exuberance, his beauty, his physicality, and raw animal appeal. They too couldn't get enough of the lovely creature. Others liked to play to Jason's weakness for being naughty. They knew he got a fire in his belly being openly watched while a fully clothed guy on each side stroked his abdomen or thighs, scooped his tackle from between his widespread legs, or batted his cock back and forth with a finger, or tugged on the end of his foreskin while he kept his hands passively at his side. Naughty boy displaying yourself so!

The two ladies in the crew both liked to tap the nubs of his nipples with a finger and circle them slowly tracing the narrow ring of the red aureole as if trying to ascertain that the nipples of the male were as sexually stimulating as their own. Confirmation of that hypothesis was self-evident as the fleshy tube of his cock plumped up and lifted. It's not that the boy was in any way attracted to either lady, of course, it just made him feel even more naked and wanton being so publicly handled in mixed company, being stroked thus in front while a guy in back squeezed his buttocks, put the blade of a hand in his crack, then ran his fingertips lightly over his hip bones. He nearly swooned with the frisson of his own naughtiness. Such a shameless and wanton youth as himself, surely deserved a good spanking or maybe ass whipping. That thought only made him harder.

The constant stimulation of the generative organs had increased the production and flow of seminal fluid. He leaked almost constantly and sometimes had a string of it hanging to his knee. In time this emboldened other males to press a finger to his cock head. Some of the gay men rubbed the fluid over the head of the cock pushing the foreskin back to give them access. Some caught seminal fluid on the tip of a finger and brought the sweet nectar up to Jason's lips, spreading it over the surface of his tongue, over his lips, to his nostrils.

Others sought a different orifice and brought the fluid around to the boy's lower hole. Politely the teenager dilated his anal ring to let the finger enter him, smiling shyly at others watching him submit to this penetration. His control of his sphincter was remarkable, no need for any petitioner to push or poke to enter his sanctum. He drew the gate open wide for all visitors. The director and crew managed to capture some of these quiet moments on film.

Everyone even the straight guys in the crew could admire the clean lines of Jason's slender form as he chinned from a branch doing pull-up after pull-up or acrobatically skinned the cat, threading his body between his arms and hanging reversed. The posture emphasized the beauty of his form, which was totally visible, undistracted by the beauty of his face, turned away from viewers. The curves of shoulders, back, hips and buttocks led to the straight columns of the legs and the arches of the feet, the entire expanse of skin tanned to the same bronzed hue. The color and taut torso and limbs suggested a wild creature such as a whitetail deer. Jason loved to exercise whether in acrobatics or running or swimming. It made him feel so alive, conscious of his pulse and deep breathing and rhythmic movements. The sweat, the wind at his face, the pounding of his bare feet on the ground, all testified to the sheer physicality of the experience and his own irrepressible vitality.

Perhaps the onlookers sensed that Jason's physique was, in an evolutionary sense, an ideal, the build of man the primitive hunter who stalked or ran his prey down on the open savannah. Primitive man was a natural runner but with enough upper body strength to drive a spear into the heart of a two ton beast. That was Jason: muscle, bone, sinew without a trace of the folds of extra tissue that, on an overweight man, cover and distort the human shape. Bodybuilders too had too much flesh, in their case great slabs of muscle. Jason's was the perfect physique between those extremes.

Jason permitted further liberties to two local hires, slender young Brazilians whose dark good looks attracted him. Their passionate kisses sometimes went farther than heavy petting. The blond boy lay with them, sandwiched between the naked boys. Their tongues invade his mouth in a deep kiss, their hands roamed everywhere. He encouraged them to pinch his tiny red nipples as they locked lips, to stroke his shaft and pinch the head just emerging from its sheath in testimony of how welcome their attentions were. How naughty too to smear a bit of the boy's precum on his own tongue and lips then kiss him again.

Then they stroked him in earnest, letting his gism shooting over his chest. The Brazilian boys knew that Jason was not interested in a real love affair. Still he did let them blow him often and reciprocated in kind. If anyone happened to catch of video of their love making, well no complaints from any of the participants. They got a video record out of it to prove their brags to their friends back home. Anyway he already had a real love affair going with the big diver, didn't he? Once the shoot was over, the actor would leave the country.

Jason's relationship with Hank became closer and he took Altobello to his bed nightly. Their couplings were physically energetic, almost alarmingly so. Though carried out discreetly in the tent, nothing could keep the sounds of lusty sexual congress from carrying across the camp. Once at Hank's urging Jason let the director film them making love, just the two of them in a jungle glade with Hank standing proudly smiling down at the slender boy on his knees, a captive bound hand and foot. who gave himself to worshipping his lover's masculine powers, sacramentally tasting and swallowing the manly seed. Then, with Jason a sacrifice hanging from a branch by ropes around his wrists, legs spread gripping Hank's hips, boy and man face to face, they reenacted the age-old ritual of penetration, thrusting, planting, and fertilization with Jason's own seed spurting high in celebration of their ecstasy. Hank felt no jealously about his young lover's other dalliances. They were no threat to the bond the two lovers had.

Chapter 4. The Pursuit

Of course, they did have a movie to make and now it was time to change locations to an open grassy region for Act II, the extended chase, the dramatic heart of the picture. With vehicles ready the director told Jason that he preferred his star to ride in an open car and to stay in character, completely naked even for the stretch along the highway. So with a shrug Jason took his seat on the passenger side of the land rover, set his feet apart, and leaned the seat back. He looked more than nude; he looked wanton.

He thought about that script he had mentioned in the TV interview. Maybe it wasn't such a silly idea. What if they did that script for his next picture? Start with nude wind surfer and a transparent sail. He falls in the drink and swims to shore bare as Jason was at this moment. Costume budget of zero, literally. These musings were premature. This picture wasn't half over and what about the film short the director was editing? Nicholls had asked a musician back home to score it for him. It wouldn't be released for weeks but the personal videos and stills were all over the net. Not just those of Jason on the 'altar' but all the other stuff people had been taking of him recently. Lots of that wasn't reverent or even salacious; these clips showed him as his usual self: chatty, high-spirited, funny.

Jason had deliberately not sought to learn how the 'world' was looking at him. He wanted no distractions. Were his antics, his open sex play, and his full-time nudity amusing people? Were they shaking their heads but laughing. He would bet he had been denounced from the pulpit. Had shocked elders threatened to tan his hide tearing his clothes off first, were he wearing any, to make the punishment fit the crime? Were some scolding him as a harbinger of the downfall of Western Civilization? The biggest question of all is: what this would do to the grosses for the picture.

They made it in good time to the new location with only one delay occasioned by some narrow-minded highway police. They weren't buying the story about an actor trying to stay in character. And they wouldn't just let him hop out and put on a pair of pants. If he wants to stay in character he could do it in jail and at the same time meet a bunch of other characters in the holding cell. Maybe they should throw him in still handcuffed and let everyone get closely acquainted with the beautiful American youth. Perhaps he could give them tips on personal grooming, said with a nod to his hairless groin. Etcetera. At least all their bluster gave the director and the producer time to get on the phone to persons in authority who smoothed things over and got him released with a warning.

It was a close call. The police actually had dragged him into town handcuffed and naked and hustled him into the jail. What with all the people about and all the commotion, nothing terrible happened to him though he really did spend a nervous hour in the holding cell naked and helpless. The detainees thought this hilarious, and he did have to put up with a good deal of roughhouse as they cracked jokes as his expense, kissed him theatrically on the lips, slapped his face and his ass, scorned his smooth chest and limbs utterly lacking in manly body hair, and especially mocked his hairless genitalia by tugging on his scrotum and snapping fingers at his cock, and even poked two or three fingers up his chute, making him lubricate them first with his spit or even better with his seminal fluid when it started dripping. They even asked the police for a camera to record their interview with the 'famous American actor', a request quickly complied with. In the end, he did not get raped, although, if he had spent the night, it really would have been a gang bang. He heaved a sigh of relief as they crossed the state border out of their jurisdiction, virtue more or less intact.

In the chase scene the warriors use strategy to run the white man down. All but one of the group backs off the pace while a single warrior bounds forward at full speed. This forces Jean to run faster too. The warrior cannot maintain such a pace indefinitely, but neither can the white man fleeing before him. After a while the warrior drops back letting another warrior force the pace. The first warrior lets the others pass him. He will catch up as best he can after getting his wind back. Jean meanwhile has to maintain this killer pace full time. Eventually he must drop from exhaustion.

This is a winning strategy with only one flaw. When a front runner closes on his prey, he is thereby far from his comrades. Jean might be able to overcome him in a one-to-one fight. Of course Jean is unarmed while the warrior has both spear and knife. That scenario is resolved when Jean makes a desperate attack: savatte against spear. Jean is the good guy so he wins. He has to, otherwise the picture would be over.

Jason knows he can do the physical stuff. He can outrun the other actors for real if he has to. Yes, he might injure his foot like before. But actors often have to ignore injuries so as not to interrupt the production. Actors had made love scenes despite a broken foot throbbing out of frame. Another broke his hand in a fight scene then had to do three more takes. One actor playing Tarzan caught some tropical disease and dropped forty-five pounds as the production rolled on. Pulling a muscle though could be costly. You cannot run well that way and a man with a limp could never outrun the warriors or even seem to. You could carry the willing suspension of disbelief only so far. Only Jason could really play this role. The stunt double didn't look enough like him from behind--not with his clothes off anyway. Jason's physique is distinctive. The prior scenes will have made the viewing audience familiar with it. As Hank described it: "It's your skinny ass Jase, it flexes distinctively as you run. Your strides are different too."

"Flexes distinctively?" Jason muttered as he walked forward while trying to look back at his butt.

"When you run, Jase, not walk. When you walk, it sort of twitches."

"Twitches?"

"Yeah, you know, like the dimples in your ass cheeks get deeper or shallower and the cheeks bounce when you walk. Twitches."

"That's as good a word for it as any, Jason" said Charlie the stunt man. "He's right. It twitches, in a chastely sort of way, of course."

"Yeah, Right!"

"Go ahead boy, walk about a bit. let's see it." said the director.

Jason complied, muttering "All this attention to my ass... Twitches...".

"OK, I'm convinced" the director affirmed. "So don't get hurt out there, Jason."

The young actor explained what he thought was needed to make sure he did not get hurt. He wanted the first aid man in the land rover with the engine running, in case of snakebite or attack by wild animals. He wanted him armed too so he could drive up quickly and give him anti-venin or shoot or scare off predators maybe with the aerosol foghorn,, or carry him away from swarms of stinging insects, whatever. It didn't matter much that animals won't usually attack a large party. For most of these shots, Jason would be far out in front, alone and unarmed. "I am not a large party. Kind of a small one really", he said wryly looking down at his physique."

The director agreed all this was reasonable. The boy wasn't trying to give him a hard time. Those dangers were real enough. The best protection against snakes is stout boots. He had to remember that Jason was a kid, just a boy really. Far from home, small in stature, barefoot and naked, and with no way to protect himself. His fists or finger nails were no defense against predators. So there it was.

The director was pleased with how well it went that day and the next four. Jason convincingly portrayed a man running away from bloodthirsty savages. He ran and ran and ran on. Sometimes he ran toward the camera with his pursuers visible behind him. Sometimes he stopped briefly near the camera looking around frantically for some way to shake the pursuit. Many shots were from the rear capturing the distinctive flex (or was it twitch) of his tush. Location scouts had found spots for thirty miles about: wooded hills, grasslands, rocky patches, swamp, rivers and streams. They would do brief scenes at each for a photo montage of the pursuit. They would do aerial shots later for a different perspective.

The director was glad that they could film it realistically without the coy angles of earlier productions. Yes, a man's cock bounced around as he ran; was that news? Yes, a man in hot weather sweats. Some of it drips off his nose. Some of it runs down his torso to his legs; much of it goes does down his belly to his groin, getting it glistening wet; some falls from the end of his cock, each drop hanging briefly from the tip of the foreskin.

And yes, a sweaty young man might look much the same whether from running in the heat or from having sex. OK, so all this was double-entendre and yes it was quite deliberate. The director wanted his audience to see the connection to sex. How in God's name could you look at Jason Eberly puffing and sweaty and naked and not think of sex.

The storm scene was one of Jason's best, though it was unplanned. A sudden squall with heavy rain and lightning took them by surprise. With bolts striking close by Jason had to huddle in place, trying to make himself as small and as low to the ground as possible while minimizing contact with the earth. The camera pit ahead of him was just too far away. The telephoto lens caught every nuance of fear on his face as he squatted and shivered from fear and the cold rain. It caught all his anger as he cursed the sky and the rain and the hail. Unusually for an actor, Jason stared right at the camera looking very small and frightened, as well he should have been.

"This is your fault!" Hank shouted at the director frantic about Jason's predicament. "You sent him out there!"

"Then called up this storm?"

Hank deflated; he knew Nicholls was not to blame. No one was. "I love him." He said simply.

"So do I, Hank. Though not the same way." Then added, "Everybody loves him."

The cameraman held up crossed fingers, then put his hands together as if in prayer. Jason looked hard, shook his head once sharply then stared with a scowl. As the lightning moved off the director signaled for everyone to remain in place. He and Hank rushed up to their star. Before Hank could say anything, Nicholls said,

"Jason, can you finish the scene before the rain moves off?

"What!" shouted Hank, outraged. "He's scared shitless."

"That's why he has to do it now, while he is scared and while it is still raining."

Before Hank could protest further, Jason grabbed his arm.

"Hank, He's right. I'll do it. I've got to do it."

The diver looked hard at Jason as if seeing him for the first time. Then gave a quick nod. They got the rest of the action in the can just before the storm stopped. As they reviewed the rushes with the cameraman afterward, Hank asked what that interchange was all about.

"I was just trying to reassure the kid. You know, praying for him."

"So why the scowl, Jase", Hank asked.

Jason paused, then addressed his answer to the cameraman. In a serious voice he said:

"Nothing against you Phil. I'm not a believer, not any more."

When Phil had signaled, Jason took it as a call to return to his mother's faith. He knew Phil meant well, but it still got his back up. He rejected temptation both Phil's and that spurred by his own fear.

"No!" He told himself. "It's not true just because I'm afraid." Then he just gut it out.

Jason had found out for himself the lie in that old saw about no atheists in foxholes. There were plenty of them. Warfare even made men atheists, like some of the soldiers in the trenches in WWI who looked at the carnage around them and could no longer tell themselves that a benign power would look down on such madness and do nothing.

A very tired nineteen year old boy walked wearily through camp still dripping from his shower. Everyone told him he had done a good job, some adding a pat on the back or a slap to the ass, some gripping his shoulder. Some tapped his belly with the back of the hand. The masseur's greeting was unique. He cupped the boy's genitals in his huge hand and squeezed the package twice. Jason winced as his belly muscles tautened.

The way Jason had let slip that he sometimes thought such naughtiness as his should be punished with a good whipping convinced the big man that there was a masochistic streak in the blond's psyche, and he was trying to bring it out. He had urged the boy to explore his dark side, offering to tie him up spread-eagle fashion, fasten clothes-pins to those tiny nipples, mock him, spank him, then whip his ass before giving him a hard fuck. Jason was intrigued, but was far too professional to get his ass marked with bruises or welts while filming. Maybe after they got back to the States.

"Not today, thanks. I'm so tired, I don't think I could get it up." That got a snort from the man but he walked away with a smile. Jason was tired but it was good tired. He had put in a very full day, and done it day after day. In the pursuit scenes over the last week he had done his job, and, after supper, he was going to rest. "Sorry, Hank but no lovemaking tonight." But Hank did slip into Jason's tent. They spent the night spooned together, pasted together by their sweat. Toward sunrise Hank buried his morning woody in the boy's sweet ass without waking him up. Now that is tired.

The director found them together when he went in to talk with his star. Nicholls was straight. The only guy he'd ever felt the least bit attracted to was the boy making this picture. What a lovely creature. If ever any kid was born to be gay it had to be Jason. A beautiful couple. The strong male arms around the boy, the masculine frame of his lover that practically engulfed the small youth, a cock up his ass looking so right. That's Jason for you.

The next day the director called for a re-shoot of Jean's last fight with a tribesman, where he finally gets a loincloth. He wanted this Jason, hardened by weeks on location for the final scene, not the relatively fresh actor who had done it already. They kept the old footage shot from the back where Jean heads toward the district office. The film editor would put the two halves of the scene together. No need to go back to the old location. Why spend the money?

Filming over, the director reflected on the past two months. He knew their filmed epic of escape would be a sensational picture. On the strength of this success maybe they would do another picture together, like the one about the wind surfer the boy had mentioned. Zero costume budget. The boy would be naked for every scene. What a concept!

Chapter 5. Return

The crew returned to the states with their film in the can. As it moved into post-production, Jason's involvement declined. He worked instead on future projects and dealt with the wave of publicity and notoriety unleashed by the release of "Sacrament". It was all he had hoped for artistically but not everyone sang his praises. He was denounced from pulpits and hanged in effigy. There were any number of volunteers for the job of tanning his hide. Politicians demanded the blond wanton be charged with public indecency, onanism, dissemination of pornography, contributing to the deliquency of a minor, defamation of religion.

Into this mix one sour puss crew member who never got along with anybody and whose advances Jason had politely but firmly rejected released his video of Jason answering a call of nature, straddling a slit trench. It left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The camera tracked the youth from every angle showing the crew going about their tasks so close by that the audio picked up ordinary conversations. There he was, scrotum dangling between his legs, piss arching out of his cock, sphincter cycling open and shut, dark brown turds plopping to the ground. As he finished, the camera got a close up of his deposit. It even caught the moment Jason lost his balance and brought his foot down right in the mess. To make it worse, the bastard used the footage to create a comedy loop, editing out the intervals between cycles and showing a rapid fire machine gun series of expulsions totally divorced from reality. Jason was mortified. Even for him, candor had his limits. Naturally the studio blackballed the miscreant. Over the next three months he got beat up twice by persons unknown, though Jason suspected Hank had a hand in it.

Jason characteristically countered that mean video with candor. He spoke plainly of a commitment to authenticity so great that he had forced himself to live a primitive existence for two months, depriving himself of all but the most basic comforts. He did his own scut work, got his hands dirty, dug holes for his own bodily waste and covered it each time with earth to keep down odors and flies so as not to offend others. He readily dug holes for others who were busy setting up while he had nothing to do but wait. Away from camp they did need a place to take a dump. Why sit idly by just because he was the 'star'? Between takes they didn't need him, and he didn't look much then like a movie star anyway. Small in stature, slender, naked, sweaty, dusty, slapping at bugs, he bent to his task more like a native servant boy than one of the crew. No, he wasn't afraid to let others watch the evacuation of his bowels or the draining of his bladder. He wasn't into kink, but he was not the least bit prudish.

He noted that he was a biological creature with the normal functions of ingestion and excretion of wastes. He had the same orifices as anyone, indeed like any animal. If a camera sometimes caught him in an unflattering pose squatting or bent over looking more a denizen of the forest or of the barnyard, so be it. We cannot escape the barnyard. Physically at least all humans are closer to the barnyard than many would care to admit. He understood this truth better than most, though years older. He wasn't perverse in his attitude to bodily functions. It was just a recognition of the fundamental prosaicness of the human condition. Jason's point was well taken. Reasoned argument plus the public's natural sympathy for the victim of a mean spirited trick and admiration for the young man's humility carried the day.

One of his strongest supporters ironically was Dr. Gordon Jessup, an ordained minister and lawyer with strong ties to major religious denominations. He argued the case in print and in court and from the pulpit. Under the hammer blows of his relentless logic the case fell apart. The sin of Onan is masturbation, that is pleasuring yourself. All witnesses and forensic examination of the video showed the boy was asleep and not acting. He had never touched his cock. Neither had the masseur. It was simply a case of a spontaneous emission, a wet dream. Human sexuality was part of God's plan. As soon blame whatever God you believe in as this teenager for what his hormones led to. It wasn't even specifically gay. Nor was it pornography. In reality it was a professional film from a major studio and a prolific director, a work of art that soon was taught in all film and art schools and garnered critical praise and awards. The tableau of a sacrificial altar did not defame religion. Fertility cults have been part of religion from the beginning celebrating planting, coupling, birth and harvest.

He reserved his heaviest scorn for those who decried the depiction of the nude human figure. We are all created in the image of our God. This shape is His doing, and Jason's flawless shape in particular. Those who don't like it should stay out of art museums. Finally he rebutted those who decried "Sacrament" as ugly. On esthetic grounds alone such notions are ludicrous. It should be perfectly obvious that young Jason Eberly was a beauty, the epitome of the healthy young male, certainly the most beautiful human being of either gender Dr. Jessup himself had ever seen with his own eyes. That beauty was self-evident. Just look at him; how can you not be stirred?

Jason himself deflected calls for a public spanking or caning with jokes. No, he wasn't a masochist but if sadists out there were willing to step forward and publicly instruct him, he might experiment with kink. He would be the judge of who gets to paddle his ass, thank you, so anyone interested send their resume and an 8 x 10 glossy. Some critics he ignored. Let people blow off steam. The zany stuff did have people laughing with him instead of at him. He laughed as loud as anyone when he made the best-dressed list. Jason's irreverent personality came across very well in interviews.

It did not hurt either when the studio released the "Making Of..." video with a chapter on Jason's dramatic role in saving a man's life. The bare facts were already known, that his quick thinking had averted tragedy, but the video told the full story. It mentioned that the bruise on the actor's ribs was so prominent that, rather than try to cover it up with make up, much later, they shot an extra scene set earlier in the timeline showing how he had acquired his injury from the haft of a spear. The crew member who had hurt him was contrite. The first-aid man was heard from and revealed what had not been publicized at Jason's request. The young actor had two cracked ribs, and, while they healed, suffered considerably given his strenuous role. You try running and fighting even in make-believe, with cracked ribs. The hapless youth also found out that there are three things you never want to do with cracked ribs: you do not want to laugh (it's really weird to mix fun and pain); you do not want to cough; above all you do not want to sneeze. Jason's gumption had let the show go on, and his modesty (Jason modest!) over his fortitude won him respect.

The video highlighted Jason's professionalism and none of that was hype. He was the star and only name player in the cast yet he lived like a dog. Other scenes of mishaps, injury, and fear had been caught on video besides the cracked ribs. Voiceover told viewers that the clip of Jean getting snake-bit and later ruefully fingering his wound was real. The camera caught the action with the reptile hanging on to his leg as the actor ran around terrified and disgusted at the same time. This was one of the few times he slipped out of character as 'Jean' yelled and cursed in a mix of English and French. The snake was not poisonous and the wound did not fester, but it did hurt.

Another clip behind the scenes showed the young actor watching a snake 12 feet long slither away. The local guide called it a 'four-pacer'. No need to ask what that meant. Although not particularly numerous, you could find them anywhere in the region. The close-up of the anxiety on the young actor's face said it all. Yet half an hour later, he did his scene. From the distinctive hill just ahead, it was clear that they had shot it no more than a few hundred yards away from where the viper had slithered. There was even audio of a jaguar's roar, an indicator that the alpha predator in those regions was not always human. Jason would have stood little chance in a confrontation. It wasn't so long ago that a cougar killed a man in Los Angeles County. Jaguars are a lot bigger.

A fight scene resulted in another mishap. The shot was taken with the camera directly behind the aggressor as usual in such scenes. Both actors were tired, off balance, and their timing was off too. A warrior's kick aimed at Jason's belly actually connected hard instead of being pulled short. The result was cinematic proof that you really can kick the shit out of someone. The director grabbed Hank's arm to keep him out of frame and yelled for the warrior to keep going while 'Jean' staggered piteously, gaping, and gasping, grimacing in disgust at the brown mess on his legs, then looking up imploringly at the camera. Hank told the director.

"Let go, or I'll kill you." He meant it.

Only second unit work got done for the next three days. Jason had not quite bust a gut, but it was close. He stayed three nights in the hospital from exhaustion as well as the injury. Knowing the boy's wishes, Hank asked the nurses not to draw a top sheet over the boy's nakedness. They obliged willingly. With all the broken, sick, and aged bodies they encountered daily, here was one worth watching--so beautiful. Even knowing the boy did not respond to females could not keep the nurses from rolling his balls gently in his sac or lightly stroking his organ. It looked so attractive that final morning. A full morning woody, and there, on that hairless belly, the stain of a nocturnal emission. For all their days the would treasure the stills and the video they made of the sleeping youth and of the gentle rise and fall of his chest. One lucky nurse even caught the onset of that lovely morning erection, fascinating the way the cock, though rather average in size soft, expanded into something outsized for their patient's small frame. The young American was welcome back anytime.

Relations between Hank and the director were cool for a time. Nicholls didn't fault him one bit.

The director wanted to use the footage in the final cut. A quick rewrite and when filming resumed, the warrior tied up his prisoner mostly cruelly with much cuffing, slapping, and sneering over the hapless boy. This bit of improvisation was a gift for Jason's gay fans who had begged to see their boy in bondage at least twice a picture. It would be a dramatic echo of the early scene where Jean was first captured, humiliated, and raped. The fans were going to eat this up. Next the script abruptly reversed the re-capture (so inconvenient to the plot at this point) when a jaguar sprang on the warrior from behind. All done with stock footage and a stuffed jaguar of course.

Jason had another notable encounter with a reptile. Hank had asked Phil the cameraman to take home movies of Jason dozing with his back against a tree. Hank was prepping a prank with a large dead spider of the tarantula family dangling on a line from a long pole. Suddenly a large constrictor slithered from behind the trunk of the tree and flicked its forked tongue a couple of times at the boy's hip. "Jesus Christ" the video recorded as Hank rushed to the rescue. Ever the professional, Phil moved to the side to clear his camera angle and kept filming.

Jason jumped to his feet with a shout, terrified, and lost control of his bladder as be backpedaled. Hank and the guide wrestled the snake and with some help shoved it into a sack. Not quite ten feet long it might not have been able to kill a man, but Jason was small, so just maybe. Phil caught all the action. Jason was shaking everywhere. His jaw looked liked he was shivering; his hands shook; and Phil got a good shot of the youth's famous ass cheeks trembling rapidly. The boy was terrified. By now he hated snakes. Hank gave him what comfort he could.

"It's OK, Jase. We got it in the bag. It can't hurt you now."

The boy looked dubiously at the writhing bag and confessed his shame to Hank.

"I know, but look at me! I pissed myself! I'm such a baby." The shaken boy burst into tears and hid his face in his friend's shoulder as the big man put his arms around him and hugged him close for reassurance. Hank stroked his hair all the while cooing at him soothingly, then lifted his chin to look into his eyes and caressed his cheek.

The still photo of that moment went into history. It later became the most popular download on the young actor's web site. It showed a close-up of one of the most beautiful boys on the planet, a face marked by anxiety, shame, and love, with tears running from his eyes, and a comforting hand to his cheek. A long moment later, Jason turned to ask the guide.

"What's with that licking anyway," disgust on his face.

"That's how they smell, how they find their prey. They hunt by smell not by sight."

Hank tried a small joke.

"At least that's one snake with good taste."

As a joke it was not particularly successful. Jason just shook his head, still anxious and, in self-reproach, said.

"You saw what I did."

The guide remarked. "Don't be too hard on yourself. You did better than most that I have seen in close encounters with snakes and such. At least you did not wet your pants." This last delivered with a wink.

Second on the download list was a still of that moment in time. It caught the both of them full-length. What a compostion: a big man fully dressed; a smaller and younger one naked; dark hair and yellow hair, concern on one face, a shy embarassed smile on the other. The big man's surname was Altobello, Italian for tall and beautiful, and Hank certainly was that. Everyone knew the two were lovers, that the arms held around the slender youth in comfort were those that daily held him in passion. This was the man that took the boy to his bed, whose big hands caressed and gripped the taut ass cheeks before driving his virile member deep into his body, while the boy's own manhood, though depending disconsolately in this picture, would stand tall and proud in testimony of their shared passion and their love.

The most moving segment of the 'Making Of ' video showed how Jason (or Jean) had been chased into elephant grass taller than he was. Halfway through the scene he was screaming in earnest as the silicate in the blades of grass cut him all over. He emerged trembling, holding back tears, and whimpering softly. They had to stop filming.

Close-ups showed how his skin had been lacerated as if he had been whipped by a cat of nine tails. Viewers saw the first-aid man giving what assistance he could, the boy standing as they treated the wounded hide, trembling and manfully trying to hold back tears, and not succeeding entirely. The aid man stood four inches over six feet and was massively built. The contrast in size with the diminutive actor made him look like a little lost boy. It just about broke your heart. His back was largely untouched, the injuries had been on his front as he pushed through the tough grass. They brought his cot out under the shade of a tree so he could catch a cooling breeze, laying his tortured body on it. Members of the audience cried at the sight of his slashed limbs and chest and belly and yes, of his manhood too. A still of this scene became a best-selling poster! And what does that say about his public?

The video showed the aid man washing the boy's feet, wiping away blood and dirt, revealing the new cuts as well as old stitches and bruises. Jason was fanatic about the hygiene of the feet. Everything depended on them. He had to be able to run. The close-ups showed his thick calluses and a gouge cutting right across. Clearly well tended as they were with nails trimmed neatly and scrupulously clean without any ground in dirt, it was obvious that these feet had taken a beating. It was a wonder how he could go on day after day.

The next morning, Jason dragged himself painfully to his feet and resumed filming. He went back to the same patch of elephant grass so the camera could catch his character as he emerges from it. The stripes on his body were real not makeup. The blood was real too, some from a few new cuts, some re-opened at Jason's insistence by picking at the scabs and against the aid man's better judgment. After he got patched up again, they gave him the rest of the day off while the scriptwriter added the incident to the plot. Luckily the silicate laden blades of grass were so sharp, the cuts eventually healed completely.

This video plus Dr. Jessup's support turned the tide. This was a whole new side to Jason that the public had not seen before. Jason had won their respect. Most of the public had taken the shriller criticisms in stride anyway. Jason had been outed in the TV interview so his being gay wasn't news, and his earlier films had made some suspect and others hope. His antics and exhibitionism were set down by most folks to natural hijinks. What else could you expect from an over-sexed teenager? He'd grow out of it someday, though hopefully not too soon. Meanwhile, it was very entertaining in a deliciously naughty way. More power to him, and could the publicity department send two full-length nude photographs please, front and back?

The box office was stupendous both in North America and abroad, helped by a lenient R rating. At the party after the premiere, a critic playfully inquired of the star and the producer.

"I didn't catch some of those French curses Jean shouted. Of course I don't know French. "What's that 'taber...' something? Do you really speak French, Jason.

"My mother tongue, literally," Jason smiled.

He did not add that some of his ad-libs in French were more Canadian French than Parisian, and more heartfelt for that reason. Thus with 'tabernac' a profane word his mother never cared for him to utter in her presence, thank you. Actually about half of what Jean spoke in the movie after the two early scenes were curses or complaints or shouts at the sky that Jason ad-libbed. He mischievously wondered aloud whether he should get a credit as screenwriter. That got a smile and a slow shake of his head from his producer. The critic continued with his comments.

"A nineteenth century Frenchmen with no mustache or sideburns, maybe, but no body hair! How realistic is that?"

"Tropical disease or shaved off to keep down the lice, take your pick." Fletcher the producer said airily.

"And the over all tan?"

"That reflects Jean's Mediterranean heritage, don't you know.", then continued expansively:

"Jean is the son of a fisherman. In those warm azure waters off the South of France, fisher folk of the day saw no point getting their clothes wet and smelling like fish."

"Mediterranean heritage, Uh huh, with blond hair and green eyes?"

"Barbarian invasions!" Fletcher concluded triumphantly, with chuckles all around.

The critics really were kind to the picture. It wasn't supposed to be a documentary. They were at least respectful and mostly ecstatic about Jason. The DVD came out early to meet the demand and to forestall piracy.

Jason asked for only a small percentage for the commercial use of his image from the private videos. The members of the crew who had made money from him were happy to fork over his share, no problem. Non-commercial users had carte blanche. Naturally some candid shots were deemed not suitable for minors such as when Hank persuaded Jason to let him put video of their tryst in the jungle on the web. Let the public see that beautiful moment in their lives. He had nothing to hide.

This liberality made him well liked in the movie community especially among the folks behind the camera. They respected him as an actor, and they liked his attitude. He certainly wasn't some stuck up boy bitch gone all Hollywood. Obviously the guy was trying to lay the foundation for a long career and to keep in everyone's good graces. He was a professional and hard working actor. If he could never seem to keep his pants on at least Jason didn't do drugs, drink, or smoke and never gave attitude or deliberate offense unless provoked.

He even had a successful return interview on that TV show. They introduced him this time as 'actor Jason Eberly, the Jungle Boy'". The tag line stuck to him, used to refer to the picture itself: 'that jungle boy picture'. Too bad the station could not run the best of his clips and they had to blur parts of shots deemed too graphic. Viewers were directed to a website for uncensored versions. So many logged on, it crashed the server.

Needless to say the gay community were his biggest fans. They took Jason Eberly to their hearts. Their fondest wish was to take Jason to their beds.

One A-list director announced he had changed his mind. He had once spoken dismissively of the young actor: "blond boy, pretty face, killer abs, nice ass with talent to match". He wouldn't take the words back exactly. He insisted the words were still literally true. They just meant something completely different now. He praised the young star as a committed actor. Jason was convincing in his role.

The famous movie man rejected carping critics who claimed it wasn't the result of acting at all. Many of the shots simply caught real reactions to an actual situation. So what, the director countered. Who put him in those situations? Jason did. He stayed in character and took a beating for it. Yes, the fear he showed in the storm was real, but he finished the scene didn't he? He went back into the elephant grass again, didn't he. So those cuts and blood were real. Does that make him less of an actor or more? So the snake that bit him was real and not from the prop department. Same with the leeches. Any director should have enough sense to incorporate lucky accidents like that into the film. Lucky for the picture of course. And the director stressed that Jason kept going on location day after day, barefoot and naked, never knowing when he might again encounter one of those dreaded four pacers or maybe a big cat. That took commitment, more than most actors had in his long experience. With that endorsement, the rest of the establishment came around.

Leading representational artists begged Jason to pose for nude portraits and dramatic tableaux: the Greek runner, the whipped slave boy, waking up, or idealizations and personifications of youth, beauty, and more darkly, submission. You could work with photos up to a point, but to get started and to finish, you needed a live model. Could Jason come to the studio at his convenience for the photo shoot and first sitting?

One request seemed a joke at first blush, but it was serious. It was from a famous sculptor (though Jason had never heard of him). He was blind and had to work by touch. His agent suggested Jason go ahead and do it, provided the sculptor allowed a full video record. This was itself an artistic success. They released two tracks on the same disk, the shorter one without audio of their conversations was basically intro and voice over narration by the sculptor, explaining method unique to a blind sculptor. The version with the lively exchanges between the principals brought out the personalities of the two protagonists. The sculptor had been an adventurer as a younger man, before the loss of his sight, and had a wealth of life experience. Jason was an incessant chatterbox with an insatiable curiosity. The older man became quite fond of the boy, and if his hands lingered on Jason's body longer than strictly necessary for professional reasons, Jason did not mind in the least; though eyebrows were raised when the sculptor's attentions (or maybe ministrations) brought his young model to climax, one time almost certainly deliberately. The young actor's fans accepted this as a tribute to his beauty. The episode was for them but another chapter in Jason's growing legend.

Attendance at the nudie beach and clothing-optional running trails soared. Although the studio production chief wondered out loud if maybe it were not time for Jason to get a treadmill or membership in a health club, his star simply ignored him. The young actor was often seen swimming, sunning, and running in a state of complete undress. Gracious with his public, the actor reminded them that his visits to the trails or the beach were not public appearances, to meet and greet. Keeping fit was part of his job, so please give him room. He did make a point of circulating afterwards for a while. Anyway, he had to wait for his ride. He got dropped off by Hank rather than drive himself. The fans liked it that he was willing to mix with them freely, no entourage or body guards, voluntarily putting himself in a situation where he couldn't very well take off on his own, naked as he was, and without a car or keys or ID or money or phone. They fantasized him as part of the local wildlife, like a wolf boy or jungle boy of legend. As long as they didn't try to drag him into the bushes or off in a cage, that was fine with him. He liked sharing himself and his sexuality with others. If he had to, he could run the 6 miles home, but not all policemen were tolerant of his sartorial foibles.

Gradually the clamor died down to the level of background chatter of the culture and part of the actor's personal back story. He was on his way to fame and fortune.