Jungle Boy

Jungle Boy 16

by George Gauthier

Fair warning: This story features explicit and graphic depictions of gay sex. The story takes place forty years in the future.

Chapter 1. Story Conference

Movie producer Martin Fletcher nodded his thanks as his houseboy, Luis Vasquez, set a tray down on the patio table. It bore pitchers of iced tea and lemonade plus a bucket of ice and glasses, refreshments for his visitors on a summer afternoon. The visitors the movie producer was expecting were all personal friends as well as business associates. Fletcher preferred meeting them in the informality of his Hollywood estate rather than at his office.

"And bring a chair over for yourself, Luis."

The slender mestizo was not only the producer's houseboy but now an fledgling actor and a pretty good one at that. Fletcher had given Luis his debut role in a gladiator picture playing a naked slave boy serving the gladiators both as a body servant and as a joy boy who got passed around as an outlet for their sexual urges. Luis honed his new craft in several small roles after that.

Luis's mixed heritage, Spanish and Zapotec Indian, let him play ethnic characters. With his high cheekbones and light toned reddish brown skin he could play an Indian, a Mexican, a lascar, a Hindu, anything at all. That was how two time Oscar winner Anthony Quinn, himself of mixed Aztec and Mexican-Irish ancestry, got started in the picture business, playing Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Filipino freedom-fighters, Chinese guerrillas, and Arab sheiks.

More than a year later, Luis' career as a supporting player was going well. The critics had been kind about about his recent featured role in 'The Young Musketeers', in which Luis played Planchet, Athos's servant. Though Luis had no plans to quit his day job and not just because it kept him close to Fletcher and the studio brass. Fletch, as he was usually called, was easy to work for and a very nice man. The producer was often away for weeks on business. That downtime and flexible hours left Luis free time for his college courses and his film and TV work.

As usual when the Luis was working around the house and grounds the exotic Latino lad was in the nude. Not that Fletcher was fey himself, but cute houseboys of the gay persuasion were all the vogue in Hollywood these days, the cuter the better, and Luis was prime eye candy. It was something of a naughty game among Hollywood celebrities to see whose houseboy was the most brazen. Fletcher's Luis thought nothing of going out the door in the buff to pick up the paper from the front lawn or to stroll down to the communal mail boxes, fifty yards away. You might also find him on the jogging the trails running through the nature preserve adjacent to the development. Funny thing too how often folks in neighboring houses, houseboys or owners, stopped him on the way back and chatted him up.

By the middle decades of the twenty-first century, nudity taboos were a thing of the past largely due to generational change. The law too had moved with the times, through judicial decisions and enactment of new statutes that recognized public nudity in many contexts as a civil right. Why should other people's prejudices control what you yourself might wear? And with global warming still unchecked, many of the younger sort saw casual nudity as a practical solution to climate change. For many of them, if you were young and pretty, then nudity should be your default condition, at least for males. Young ladies had to be more cautious, human nature being what it is.

First to arrive were Fletcher's friends and colleagues, veteran director Jim Nichols and studio production chief Leon Potter. On their heels came Fletcher's two favorite movie stars, Hollywood's Jungle Boys, Alexander "Sandy" Barnett and Terrence Knowles.

The young A-list actors were far from typical leading men; they were both short and slender rather than tall dark and handsome, a pair of pretty boys really. Though they were in their early twenties they looked more like a couple of teenagers, a pair of super-cute twinks with fine-boned features and toned physiques that were more about quality than quantity. As usual they were dressed only in their trademark garb of the low-rise shorts called hot pants. Neither wore a shirt and both were barefoot. As Terry settled into his chair he gave a nod and a wink to Luis. The houseboy had a terrific crush on the cute red head.

Sandy brushed his hand through his blond thatch, letting the breeze fluff it out, making it look like a golden halo. His red headed lover and costar pointed over to Luis and his total lack of clothing.

"Oh right, Terry."

The stunning blond beauty said shucking his shorts, getting naked. Terry did the same, his blue eyes twinkling at Luis. All the young males were soon on an equal footing.

"First some sun while we talk, then a refreshing swim, explained Terry to the older males, as if their habitual casual nudity, off screen as well as on, required explanation. Actually Terry and Sandy came over two or three times a week to swim laps in Fletcher's Olympic sized pool. They also like to toss a Frisbee or play badminton on the producer's landscaped grounds. Always in the nude, of course. Like many young males, not just those who were gay, Luis, Sandy, and Terry had used a one-time permanent depilatory cream that permanently suppressed the growth of beard and body hair, leaving the trio sleek and smooth all over.

Arriving next to last was the actors' agent Ed Veronese, The last conferee was character actor Conrad Held, who was a walking cliche: tall dark and handsome. A man in his thirties, he usually played villains including the title role in their highly successful Dracula pictures. Nichols looked over at his producer.

"So what is the word of the day, Fletch? Or dare I even ask?"

"My friends, the word of the day is 'Naked Prey.'"

"That's two words." Leon Potter pointed out.

"One or two, either way I am clueless," Jim Nichols commented. "What have you got for us this time, Marty?"

"A concept for a whole new franchise. Think 'Twinks in Peril'."

He hunched in his chair forward, clearly excited about his latest brainstorm, ignoring the dubious looks from his interlocutors.

"We'll do a series about pretty boys fleeing mortal danger. Sometimes they'll be chased by pirates, or maybe Indians on the warpath, Saracen raiders, or headhunters, you name it. And the threat doesn't have to come from humans. It can be a man-eating lion, a grizzly bear or a rogue elephant on the rampage, a saltwater crocodile, sharks -- the list is endless. We'll never run out of ideas."

"Wait a minute," Nichols said. "Didn't Cornel Wilde once do a picture by that name. Hell that must have been eighty years ago."

"Actually it was back in 1966. Although Wilde's character was supposed to be naked in most of his scenes, there were a lot of coy camera angles, strategically placed shrubbery, and so forth not to mention the modesty pouch he wore. We don't have to worry about that stuff these days."

"Though his movie 'Naked Prey' was set amidst a native uprising in Africa, it was inspired by the real life adventures of John Colter a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, usually considered to be the first of the mountain men of the American West. Colter was captured by Blackfeet Indians in 1809, stripped naked, and given a chance to run for his life, chased by a pack of young braves. He killed their front runner and opened up enough of a lead to double back and hide in a beaver lodge overnight, then walked for eleven days to a trader's fort on the Little Big Horn River."

"And the "naked" part is where Terry and I come in," Sandy noted. "We will be running away bare ass, from whatever is chasing us, won't we? No modesty pouches naturally."

"Exactly. Oh there will be some set-up scenes in costume, but then boom. No clothes. It's a natural extension of the 'Jungle Boy' concept to any kind of landscape or situation."

"Just don't expect us to run around naked in the snow. We don't want to freeze our nuts off. Africa, South America, tropical islands are fine. Greenland, Canada, and Siberia definitely not."

"Of course not. Oh, did I mention the we can promote these new pix as action-adventure, spoofs, slasher films, whatever best fits the story. And Luis will feature in these pictures too, either as one of the hounds or one of the foxes. You'll still do your Bomba Pictures of course. You wouldn't be the Jungle Boys if you stopped doing jungle pix altogether."

Sandy and Terry rolled their eyes. Here we go again. Producers and screenwriters seized on any pretext, however flimsy, to get the young actors out of their clothes in front of the camera. The truth is, both stars owed their success less to their talents as thespians than to their physical beauty and their willingness to run around in the skimpiest of costumes or even nothing at all. Terry and Sandy had made entire pictures in the nude including a gay version of 'The Blue Lagoon', already a cult classic.

During the planning for a picture about Billy the Kid, the first question Jim Nichols asked Fletcher was how they were going to get Billy naked. (Answer: Catch the outlaw swimming in a river and drag him out with a lasso, tie him up, and force him to march starkers into Lincoln, New Mexico.) Each of their pictures had a wholly gratuitous bath or shower scene, often featuring grab ass foreplay with both actors. Their slasher picture had them playing go-go boys sharing a room and a bed in a spooky old mansion long since turned into a rooming house. For most of their scenes they were either naked or dancing lasciviously atop a bar in a tiny mesh thong.

Well, there was nothing new in using the delectable physiques of the youthful nude males to attract an audience. Hollywood peddled sex appeal; it always had.

It hardly mattered to audiences anymore that all the pictures the twinks made featured gay romances. Obviously their gay fans drooled over their love scenes and nude scenes. The pictures were hugely popular with straight teens too, always Hollywood's prime audience who quickly became the biggest part of the two young actors' fan base. Terry and Sandy did not threaten their masculinity, not with their short slender physiques and pretty boy good looks not to mention their gay goings on, both on screen and off. Surveys showed that their action-adventure pictures appealed to the straight male audience as action-comedies.

"Now don't fret boys. You will still be doing costume pictures. Screenwriters are at work, even as we speak, on scripts for the next of our 'Dracula' and 'Young Musketeer' pix. With our Bomba pix, that would give us four lucrative franchises going at once. We'll all be rich!"

"We already are rich, Fletch," Potter reminded him.

"Not me, not yet anyway," Luis piped up.

That brought a laugh. Fletcher gripped the boy's bare shoulder reassuringly. "Stick with us kid, and we'll take care of you. You'll make your parents proud, you will."

"But don't quit my day job just yet, right?"

"Right!"

"Here is something else. Last week Universal Television pitched us a TV series about the 'Sons of Monte Christo' where the three of you, that includes you Luis, play half-brothers, all of them sons of Edmond Dantes by different women. Sandy, you would play Albert, supposedly the son of his enemy Mondego but really Dante's natural son by Mercedes conceived before his exile and her marriage to Mondego. Terry's mother would be an Irish lass whom Dantes met in Dublin during his sailor days. Luis, your character's mother would be Haydee, daughter of Ali Pasha of Yannina.

"I don't know, Fletch." Ed Veronese began. "Production schedules in TV work can be brutal. Actors put in very long hours grinding out a show a week for TV. How could they squeeze in a series during a hiatus from features. You're going to work my clients to death. Besides, they're young, their juices are flowing, they need time off for fun. All work and no play..."

"Here's how. Sandy and Terry shoot all their scenes at one go. The rest of the scenes can be shot around them. And you boys won't all work together, in the same episodes. Conrad, you will be in almost every one portraying Benedetto the illegitimate son of Villefort and Madame Danglars, twice over the mortal enemy of all the scions of Monte Christo. Your role and and Luis's will provide continuity while Terry and Sandy headline the series."

Also, the Monte Christo episodes will rotate once every other week with other adventure fare in that time slot. And we will bring in guest stars in each episode. All of which should lighten your workload a lot."

"Guest stars. Like who?" Sandy asked.

"Just about everyone who is anyone in motion pictures wants to work with you kids. You just don't realize what a good reputation you have among your fellow professionals. Unlike some Hollywood brats I could name, you have an old-fashioned work ethic. You kids always show up on time knowing your lines cold and ready to go. No entourage, no demands, no attitude, and no temper tantrums over "creative differences either."

"And you're good sports about all the rough stuff the bad guys lay on you all the time."

The twinks nodded in understanding. In their pictures, the boys' characters get captured rather a lot, usually stripped naked and strung up for a beating or even a whipping. Likely as not, the bad guy's henchmen humiliate and abuse them physically and even sexually. There was a definite S&M subtext in so many of their pictures, though often done tongue in cheek. The twinks might be the protagonists of their pictures, but they were not not alpha males by any means. They were and very much looked like a couple of bottom boys, "beta males" Terry called them with self-deprecating humor, and their on-screen misadventures reflected that.

Still, they were the heroes of their pictures. Bottom boys or not, they always rose to the occasion and saved the day.

"OK, Fletch. I can see how Terry's eyes lit up when you pitched the series. Put a sword in his hand, and he is happy. Send us a couple of scripts." Veronese replied. "Can't hurt to look." he added with a shrug.

His four clients nodded. Sandy in particular had really warmed up to the idea.

"I can't wait to gallop down a road, the wind spreading my cloak out like wings. Did you ever see that old flat movie 'The Shadow'. Wow, that cloak of his was so cool."

As a matter of fact, Terry had seen the movie and knew that much of that cool look of a cape billowing out was a CGI effect and not costuming at all. But he did not want to deflate Sandy's enthusiasm.

"Gosh, maybe Ed was right back there at Fletcher's." Terry commented to Sandy and Luis as they drove home in Terry's battered Ford. Mindful of the twink's recent arrest while driving nude, all had put on their shorts.

"Much as I like the idea of playing a son of Monte Christo, we might be spreading ourselves too thin or risking overexposure."

"No pun intended," Terry added hastily.

"I think we should just wait for the scripts." Luis said. "You know Terry, this could be my big break."

"Exactly right. I think it is just great that Conrad and Luis will be taking point on the project. Luis will star in half of the episodes with the two of us chiming in for essentially supporting parts. We will also do our own episodes too. That way, our star power gets the project launched, and Luis gets his breakout role."

"Like me with Dracula", Conrad pointed out.

That drew a happy smile from the houseboy. Sandy was always so generous. Terry too. Look at the way they had insisted that Conrad get top billing for one of their Dracula pictures. Both were good friends and terrific in bed too, which was where they were all headed that afternoon.

Life was good!

Chapter 2. On the Warpath

The first of the 'Naked Prey' movies entitled 'Warpath' was a war movie and coming of age tale. The action takes place on the western frontier of Colonial America at the outbreak of the French and Indian War in the mid-eighteenth century.

Sandy and Terry portray Axel van Zorn and Johnny Strang, young settlers in the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia. The two eighteen year olds go off to war, marching with a company of militia on a punitive raid against the Shawnee, in a reprisal for raids across the border instigated by the French during the opening phase of the French and Indian War, soon after British General Edward Braddock's defeat in the Ohio country in 1755.

The film was shot in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Central California, standing in, somewhat unconvincingly Jim Nichols thought, for the woodsy Allegheny Mountains. The trees were all wrong, looking nothing like Eastern woodlands. Still this was the best that location scouts could find without crossing the continent to the actual locales which anyway looked much different from colonial days. The ravages of both Chestnut blight and Dutch Elm Disease had radically changed the makeup of those woodlands from back then.

Jed Turner, Captain of militia, is tired of responding after the fact to Indian raids. He decides to go on the offensive, to launch a raid on two of the closest Indian towns and thereby teach the Shawnee that peace is better than war with Americans. Let them worry about their own villages rather than plan raids on white settlers. His company of militia numbers over a hundred and sets off across the Alleghenies intending quick strikes on both villages before the Indians can rouse the whole tribe.

It is hot sweaty work marching up and down hills and mountains against the grain of the land carrying all their gear. No horses on this trip. Just shank's mare. Some of the men wear boots whiles others like like young Axel are satisfied with soft-soled moccasins. They are much quieter for sneaking around the woods.

Axel and one other youth named Johnny Strang, a lithe redhead a finger's-breadth taller than Axel, are dressed much like their Indian enemies. In the heat of high summer, they wear only a deer hide loincloth passed between the legs and supported by a leather thong wound low around their hips. Except for moccasins and loincloth, their tanned bodies are bare for all to see, making them look like naked savages themselves only without the war paint or eagle feathers.

The color of his deerskin breechclout nearly matches Axel's skin tone, bronzed from exposure to the sun. During the summer Axel hardly ever wears clothing while tending the fields and the garden in the rude nude. He likes to display the sexy young body he has so recently grown into. His master, Angus MacCrae, indulges his young indentured servant since there were no females on his farm, just him, his nephew Caleb (Axel's lover), the boy, and his black slave, Noah, the cook.

Johnny Strang has a peaches and cream complexion reflecting his Irish heritage, his tan a lighter nut brown. From any distance, you could hardly to tell that the boys aren't entirely nude. The strip of hide over their loins is only a couple of hands breadths in width and tends to bunch up in back, in the boys' clefts, entirely uncovering their buttocks. From the side, they might as well be naked for all the good their skimpy garment does them. The boys carry matching leggings and hunting shirts wrapped up in a roll perched atop their packs in which they carry provisions: jerky and pemmican and waybread. The young warriors are equiped with long rifle, powder horn, canteen, hunting knife, and tomahawk.

"Isn't that some Indian buck snuck in among us?" one of the men asks with a grin nodding toward Axel.

"He's the right skin color, granted, but small as he is, young Axel there looks more like an innocent fawn than a virile buck," another jokes.

"Oh I don't know," opines another man. "He is practically buck nekkid, ain't he?"

Axel pretends not to hear the good natured jibes.

"Don't mind them, Axel," Johnny tells his friend, "They always tease the new guy. It's an initiation."

Another militiaman opines loudly that Axel's blonde thatch would be quite a prize as a scalp for some Indian brave. Another man weaves a wreath of flowers and places it on the blond boy's head like a crown, amid whistles and cat calls from his friends. Even tempered lad that he is, Axel accepts it graciously, even joking about it. Yes, he will wear the wreath but only till he can replace it with the laurel crown of victory won for his prowess fighting Indians. His comrades in arms are delighted with the spunky lad who has taken their teasing in stride.

Finally one of the teasers asks if he really knows how to use his Pennsylvania rifle, or is he just carrying a spare weapon for Captain Turner. With a big grin on his face, Axel points to a distant target, a dark knot in a tree about the size of a man's head and almost 200 yards away.

"Watch" he says simply, then snaps his rifle to his shoulder and fires in one smooth motion. The Captain is looking through his telescope to observe the impact of the shot. Snapping it closed, he says simply.

"Another dead Indian". The men nod, accepting Axel now as one of them. He has proved not only competent but personable, someone with an even temper who can take a harmless joke or two at his own expense. A good comrade then for the long march across the mountains. Johnny Strang, a veteran of an earlier raid, was already known as a good lad and a competent marksman.

The boys acquit themselves well during the raid on the first village, killing their man. They do their duty without inflicting gratuitous violence on helpless Indian women and children. The aim of the raid is dissuasion, not extermination. Axel admits afterwards that once past the exhilaration of battle, what he feels is simple relief not elation.

"Warfare is a dirty business, maybe necessary at times, but it is a sad reflection on the human species that it is sometimes necessary."

In a key scene Axel and Johnny Strang get separated from the others. The militiamen are crossing a stream too wide and deep to ford so the men have to swim for it, taking off their clothing, then floating their gear across on makeshift rafts made of tree limbs, shirts or leggings stuffed with grass. Part of the rear guard, the two youths strip and wait their turn to cross. When several men get into trouble crossing, the youths, both good swimmers, plunge into the water and drag them to safety on the far side.

Indians attack the rear guard cutting them down. The youths run off, abandoning all their clothing and gear. The men they rescued pass them tomahawks from their own equipment. So the youths have some kind of weapon if only that. Everyone runs off down the trail.

As a pretext for getting the young actors naked, this was not a lame idea as in some of their pictures. In their dinosaur picture, the excuse was that it was set in prehistoric times before clothing had been invented. Right.

In the following scene, shots ring out from the woods dropping the other men with them. Cut off from the main body the boys abandon the trail plunging into the forest, moving away from the ambush site. Coming upon another nearly overgrown trail they run for their lives, putting distance behind them, managing to escape immediate pursuit.

After an hour they pause to catch their breath and take stock. They have run to the west and south of the line of march as was clear from intermittent firing to the northeast, a running battle from the sound of it. Going east, directly toward the settlements, will take them back into the thick of it, not a good idea for lads armed only with tomahawks. They have no guns, no ammunition, no food or supplies of any kind. They are naked and barefoot, their hides already cut by brush and thorns. At any other time Axel would have been pleased to be alone and naked with Johnny Strang. Now he has to worry about survival.

Though the Indians are not right behind them, the youths suspect that the Shawnee know they are out there somewhere and will be on the lookout for them, maybe send war parties after them on their way back from the battle with the militia.

"Southwest, that's the way we must go." Axel says firmly.

"Why, Axel? That takes us away from the settlements in the Shenandoah Valley. Surely we have to go east, across the mountains."

"Yes, Johnny, we will, eventually but not right away. Don't you see Johnny, the Shawnee expect us to head that way. We could never outrun Indian braves by marching east the way we came, against the lay of the land, crosswise to every stream and ridge line. The grain of the land lies south and west. Let's run with it for a day or two before we turn east to cross the mountains. Once we are back in Virginia, we can head north to the settlements."

When they stop for the night it is only natural for the two youths to lie close, arms around each other protectively, like a pair of fawns hiding from enemies, bodies touching at chest and hip and limbs. They are so vulnerable: alone, unclothed, afraid they might be killed or worse, captured and tortured. Axel had not realized how beautiful a young male body could look in the moonlight. As an Irishman, Johnny has only a light tan compared with Axel's late summer color, but his skin positively glows in the light of the full moon. (The cinematographer used filters to enhance the effect of lighting on Terry's bare skin.)

The boys made a beautiful couple. They were fine looking specimens though both were rather short in stature; Sandy barely reached four inches over five feet (163 cm) and weighed only 112 pounds (51 kg). Terry's slender but well-knit physique physique was only a little taller; he stood just under five five (164 cm) and he weighted only 117 pounds (53 kg)

They kept their wiry physiques toned and taut from daily swimming and running and working out with light weights. Theirs were the physiques of boys not quite grown into manhood: short, slender, and slightly built but toned and muscular, a swimmer's build in Sandy's case in contrast to that of a cross country runner like Terry.

Their bodies were completely smooth without any body hair at all thanks to the new permanent depilatories to suppress the growth of hair everywhere on his body, even in the armpits and at the fork of the legs, leaving them permanently smooth and boyish. Both were endowed in proportion with their stature. That was just fine when you were running cross country bare ass with your dangly bits bouncing about.

Both young actors were blessed with the kind of good looks that turned heads, prettier than any boys rightly ought to be. There was Sandy with delicate features, a straight nose, finely arched brows, a chiseled jaw line, high cheekbones, and large green eyes topped by a thatch the color of straw. Terry was no slouch either, a real beauty in his own right. An incredibly cute red head, his face was lightly freckled and he had sky blue eyes.

No wonder then that in the scene Axel's hand slips down to Johnny's hip. He trembles with suppressed emotion. The blond boy is enthralled; his companion lies so close they might easily kiss, but Axel is hesitant to say or do anything, afraid Johnny would find advances from another male repugnant, as so many did. Nervously Axel asks Johnny if he has a sweetheart waiting for him back in the settlements. That puts a saucy grin on Johnny's face as he shakes his head.

"No, Axel. Can you guess why a nice looking boy like myself might not have a sweetheart?"

Axel flushes. The poor kid is so obviously and anxiously working up to making an advance that Johnny almost laughs in his face. Instead he simply leans forward and kisses the younger boy on the lips, drinking in the sweetness of his companion pressing to maintain contact as Axel draws back in surprise. For his part Axel tries to both smile and kiss Johnny back at the same time, rather difficult anatomically.

"Oh, Johnny. I never realized..."

"That I had my eye on you, Axel, running around in next to nothing, in just that skimpy breechclout? Why do you think I copied your garb. I hope you don't think I usually run around showing my arse off to everyone. That's just for the boys I like. Now hush, let's make love. Even if this is the last night of our lives, tonight we have each other."

What follows on screen would be one of their sweetest love scenes ever, a forging of bonds that will last a lifetime, if they survive. Both boys are excited but their joining is tender rather than raucus. They are making love, not just having sex.

Johnny starts off with light kisses, first to Axel's brow then to his nose and mouth. They even rub noses, silly grins on their faces.

"I know you are pretty new at this so I will be gentle with you, my little blond beauty."

He bends his face forward and locks their lips together, slipping his tongue into the younger boy's mouth, poking and prodding and dueling with his lover. Johnny asks Axel straddle him so they can see each other's faces as they make love.

Axel looks so cute, sitting up as tall as his slight stature will allow, his nipples erect, a giddy look on his cute face. Johnny's hands run lightly over the boy's torso, fingers twirling and squeezing his nipples, sliding down the chevrons of his ribs. Axel reaches his hand to flip the other boy's red locks out of his eyes, cupping Johnny's chin and tracing his pouty lips with his thumb.

The boys shift from foreplay to simulated sex as Axel settles himself onto Johnny's cock. Terry thrusts his hips as Sandy lifts himself up and down. Lovers in real life, they are familiar with each other's moves. Of course this is movie sex for a theatrical release after all, not a porno film so no erections or penetrations. It helps that with forty guys in the crew just out of frame, and with all that equipment around them, lights, cameras, crane, cables snaking away, the situation is not exactly romantic.

Other scenes show how the young militiamen use their wits to escape Indian war parties. In one vivid episode it is the next afternoon. The youths can hear the sounds of pursuit getting closer. The war party numbers ten or twelve. No use then to fight so many, not even from ambush, not with just two tomahawks between them against a dozen well-armed braves (one of them portrayed by Luis).

As they run past a steep hill, Axel spots a large wasp nest hanging from a tree just up the slope. He tells Johnny to keep running and to let himself be seen briefly, then scrambles up the slope and climbs the tree. The audience can see that the nimble lad on screen hauling himself up the hill and shinnying up the tree is no stunt man but the Jungle Boy himself, Sandy Barnett, in his trademark costume of a sheen of sweat and nothing else.

As the war party runs after him, Terry in his role of Johnny Strang, ad libs, turning to taunt the Indians by putting his thumbs to his ears and wiggling his fingers, gobbling like a turkey. That draws them up short.

Taking advantage of their sudden stop, Axel chops the wasp nest free and lets it tumble down the hill amongst the Indians. Angry wasps swarm out of their paper nest, buzzing and stinging -- unleashing pandemonium among their pursuers who scatter yelping plaintively. The clever trick gives the boys a chance to open up some distance between them. They laugh as they run, chortling over the way they have at least temporarily discomforted and discouraged the Indians.

Of course, though the nest was a physical object, the angry wasps would be inserted by technicians during post production with CGI. Director Nichols loved Terry's bit of improv and shot a closeup of the comical action.

When the film was released, critics lauded the combination of action-adventure, scenic locations, historical authenticity, and gay romance. No doubt about it. This was the first entry in yet another successful franchise for the Jungle Boys.

One spoilsport critic claimed that the only difference between the new 'Naked Prey' series and regular 'Jungle Boy' pix like the Bomba films was the scenery. They were all about the same thing: "Bare Ass Twinks in Peril." That provoked Fletcher to grumble that someone in their own camp must have talked. That critic's wording was much too close to his own original shorter version "Twinks in Peril."

Chapter 3. Bomba II

Though thee setting of the Bomba adventures was a sleepy British colony of the 1930s, the movie crew travelled to the Yucatan whose jungles and rivers would provide excellent locations for the picture. Sandy portrayed Bomba the Jungle Boy with Terry as his love interest, Bryce O'Hanlon, once a sissy rich boy from New York, happy now to sleep in Bomba's arms when they both aren't running around the jungle bare ass naked getting into trouble.

It seems that someone is always chasing after them whether angry natives, evil witch doctors, Arab slavers, corrupt colonial officials, raiders and bandits, you name it. If not bad guys the Lordlings of the Jungle had to deal with storm and flood and landslides -- even an elephant stampede, the last supplied by stock footage. These days, you couldn't stampede a herd just for a movie.

In this latest installment, Bryce's bull-headed father, intent to wipe out his shame, has hired white hunters to find and shoot the Jungle Boy and to drag his son back to New York to be whipped into some semblance of civilized behavior. If not, then the father will have his son shot full of psychoactive drugs and consigned to an asylum. No son of his is going to share a bed with a male lover, not if Michael Francis O'Hanlon has any say in the matter. He will tolerate no such a blot on the family's escutcheon.

The story opens with scenes of Bomba and Bryce in their jungle retreat. The boys are happy even if jungle living is not all fun and games. Food doesn't just fall from the trees, and even what grows on trees might not be ready to eat without preparation. The boys have to hunt (Bomba's department) and gather (Bryce's task). Bryce prepares jungle foodstuffs in ingenious ways, boiling water by dropping stones heated in a fire into the pot or burying fish and vegetables under sand and building a slow fire atop the cooking chamber. It helps that a friendly tribe provides flour and cornmeal and yams from their gardens. They respect Bomba as a manifestation of the benign spirit of the jungle.

Still hunter-gatherers have a lot of free time on their hands, time for diving out of their tree house into the pool below, swimming, and playing the grab ass games that young males are so fond of. Over the past six months, their relationship has deepened as the boys have come to know one another's habits and personality quirks. Bryce has a quick temper but his anger blows over fast. Bomba is more even tempered though jungle living has made him realistic and even ruthless about killing animals for food. A young antelope might look like Bambi to city folks, but it was fair game for Bomba's arrows. The jungle boy did draw the line at monkeys which looked much too human to go into the pot.

A series of short scenes, almost a montage, shows their life together. Bomba teaches Bryce survival skills like tracking, swimming, swinging on vines, and the use of his knife as both tool and weapon. Bryce learns to climb up palm trees to cut coconuts free and let them fall to the ground. (Terry was a past master at climbing palm trees and did his own stunts here.) In turn, Bryce shows Bomba how to box. They boy's wiry physiques pack a lot more punch than potential opponents might suspect and both lads are quick and nimble and hard to land a punch on.

Naturally the young actors do a sexy love scene, though one played largely for laughs. It starts out with heavy petting and kissing and rolling around and takes a comic turn when the young lovers accidentally roll off the platform of their tree house and plunge into the jungle pool below. A real accident, it was definitely not in the script, but Nichols kept the cameras rolling anyway as the boys improvised incident and dialog, making for a real fun scene.

The boys resume their lovemaking on the mossy verge of the pool. Bomba rolls Bryce onto his shoulders and put the boy's slender limbs over his shoulders. He leans forward for a kiss then straightens up for the fuck, thrusting his hips at the boy's rump, pumping in and out. At least that is what it looks like on camera. This is a feature film, not a porno flick.

In all this the lovers are watched attentively by their faithful animal companion, a young ocelot, even though the pretty cats are not native to Africa at all. But then few in the audience will be zoologists. In a shot executed during post-production the camera even zooms in on the cat's eyeball in which the audience can see the reflection of the hot action between the boys. (This particular shot is a homage to 'Alien', something of an in-joke for film buffs.)

When the men hired by Bryce's father show up at the tree house, Bomba is away on a hunt. Bryce greets the safari led by a big dark haired man named Gunderson and shows them where to set up. Since it is late in the day, Gunderson plans to stay overnight and grab the boy in the morning. Meanwhile he invites Bryce to dinner to pump him for information. All unsuspecting, Bryce agrees. As they talk Gunderson learns that Bomba will be away for a couple of days.

"Off hunting, eh. That's doing it the hard way. Maybe I live rough on safari, but I prefer my creature comforts too. Don't you miss civilization, young man -- the stores, the cars, all the modern conveniences?" Gunderson asks.

"Oh, sure, I miss some things, like coffee and pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast and electricity, but otherwise no, not really. I don't know what we might do in the long run, but for now, this is fine. "

"I see you go around stark naked, like the native boys in the Nilotic tribes in this area."

"That's right. We never wear clothes not even when we go to the villages or to the district station of the colonial government. Funny thing is that I used to be so up tight about nudity -- my Irish Catholic upbringing, you know. My dad threw a fit the last time he saw me, just before he went back to the States. "

"No, the only thing I wear these days is a knife sheath strapped to my right calf."

"Hmnn, that is an awful lot of knife for little guy like you, Bryce."

"Maybe so, but it is both a tool and a weapon. We also use bows and arrows to take game, though you have to creep up pretty close to use it."

"I prefer my 30 ought 6." Gunderson said. "Lots more range and stopping power."

As for Gunderson's men, sure they look like a rough bunch, but so far they had done nothing untoward. The actors who portrayed them were big men with chunky builds, chest hair peeking out of the tops of their shirts, and beard stubble on their cheeks. All had years of experience with film credits like 'Thug #1', 'Lout in the Cafe', or 'Mafia Boss's Henchman'.

Barely eighteen, Bryce is rather naive and suspects nothing from what seems like a friendly interest on Gunderson's part. So he open up with him, happy to see a new face. The boys don't get many white visitors out in the jungle.

The next morning, the jungle boy accepts an invitation to breakfast and clambers down from the tree house. Poor Bryce is quickly surrounded by the white men, shoved to his knees, his wrists bound cruelly behind his back, a choke rope tight around his neck to keep him under control. As the boy trembles in his bondage, his captors mock and abuse their pretty captive.

"What a sorry looking specimen this one is, Gunderson, -- short and skinny, and nary a feather on him, not even down there."

"And pretty as an Irish lass too. Definitely not his father's son. Why would a he-man like his O'Hanlon want a cocksucking runt like him back anyway? We could just as easily shoot him as we will the blond Jungle Boy, when we catch up to him. Bury the both of them."

"Why bother burying them?. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms," (quoting a classic one-liner delivered by Clint Eastwood in 'The Outlaw Josey Wales').

Bryce's look of alarm just makes them chuckle.

"Aw, look at him, the little pansy is worried about his boyfriend. Too bad kid. We'll get to Blondie soon enough. We plan on making you a widow right damn quick."

The men chortle at their captive's reaction.

"Can you believe that both of them live up a tree like jungle animals and run around buck nekkid."

"There oughtta be a law or something. He is one naughty boy. Hey there's an idea. Let's have some fun with him."

With that the boy's captors kiss him sloppily and feel him up in a parody of foreplay, pinching his nipples and squeezing his buns hard enough to leave bruises. The boy squirms and struggles as they grapple his slender body to their hairy chests and make him lick out their arm pits.

"That's it, lick them pits, boy. A real man has hair on his chest and in his pits and on his balls. Yeah, snuffle that man sweat, you shameless tramp."

Next they bend Bryce over a log and strap the boy's butt, not from sexual desire but just to vent their aggression on him. These are cruel men who despise boys who prefer their own gender. Bryce can only kick his legs ineffectually, totally at the mercy of these brutish men as they lay into him. Soon his buns are striped with red welts. When they are finished beating him, the men set the boy on his feet and mock him.

"Such a cry baby! What's the matter nature boy, you want your mommy?"

"Go ahead and bawl. It's all music to our ears."

"Har, What else could you expect from a cocksucking pansy faggot like him?"

The graphic scene was blatantly manipulative, designed to align the audience's sympathies with the young protagonist against the villains who had taken him captive. There was pretty little Bryce, his nude body looking even more slender with his arms tied behind, forced to his knees, just a slightly-built smooth-skinned lad surrounded by big hairy men, brutish louts lording it over their hapless captive, mocking him and beating on a young innocent who had never hurt anyone in his life.

Bryce's only "crime" was to fall in love with another boy, but that was enough for these thugs and the man who had hired them. Which was why the scene did not include a gang rape which would have been out of character for Gunderson and company. Still the gay fans did get to drool over close ups of Terry's rump as the straps fell on his delectable buttocks, making them jiggle and clench from the pain.

Terry's gay fans were sure they would never pass up an opportunity like that, with a walking wet dream like Terry at their mercy nude, in bondage, bent over, pert rump in the air, his dangly bits hanging so vulnerably between his slender hairless thighs. Not that they would ever do such a thing to Terry Knowles, the personable young actor they all loved, but Bryce O'Hanlon, sissy rich boy from New York was a different proposition. After his previous sheltered existence with only his right hand for company, there was a boy who needed to fucked hard and often and by men who knew how.

Far away, listening to jungle drums, Bomba learns of Bryce's capture and of the vicious things his captors are doing to the boy he loves. Bomba takes to the trees, swinging on vines Tarzan style to cover ground faster than the white men can march. He sneaks into their camp at night and cuts his lover free. Together they flee for their lives and their freedom. No way they could win a stand up fight against so many enemies, the white hunters armed with rifles and their native trackers armed with long spears. The chase in on.

The boys pull up short at a deep ravine with a white water stream flowing through it. Desperate to survive, Bomba and Bryce plunge into the swiftly flowing stream and struggle across. The trackers turn back. Crossing there is too dangerous. They will go upstream to the log bridge and try to pick up their trail on the other side.

Most of the whitewater scene was shot with stunt men swimming though a crew stood by downstream to pull them out if they got into trouble. With time on their hands, the boys went swimming in a quiet pool below the rapids. Elliptical and surrounded by rocky slopes, the pool lay in a bowl that an eddy of the stream must have cut during the annual flood.

At first their swim was idyllic, arms and legs sculling lazily under a blue sky, letting the warm waters of a jungle stream lave them, listening to bird calls, as a light breeze swirled around to cool things off and to keep the bugs away. No one except the guy shooting footage for the Making Of video paid much attention as the nude boys swam and gamboled and carried on as youths will do.

Just then a Nile crocodile nosed its way upstream and entered the pool. Only its eyes and the knob of its nose betrayed it presence. The camera guy shouted and waved to the kids. Sandy noticed and poked Terry to alert him to the danger. The twinks swam for their lives, reaching the rocky bank just in time to scramble up the slope. They reached the top of the ravine trembling with fear and anger. Cursing to relieve their tension, the boys flung rocks down at the predator patrolling below, their anxious faces and indeed the entire incident captured by the cameraman doing the Making Of video. Nor would anyone think the whole thing was staged, not with the way their cocks had shriveled in fear and their scrotums pulled up close to their groins for protection. You cannot fake that.

Even after a hunter came up and dispatched the croc with his rifle the boys were still shaky. They hugged, pressing their bodies together, grateful to be alive but badly shaken at how close a call it had been. The thought of losing his lover brought both young actors to the brink of tears. They touched foreheads and held each other for the longest time in a chaste embrace. Many of the crew look on, smiling indulgently at the young lovers. Everyone loved these sweet kids.

"Close call, boys" Fletcher rumbled sympathetically. "A hunter should have been watching over you at the pool instead of gawking at the filming. We had other guards covering that. I have no choice but to fire the man, as an example. We could never face your folks if we lost either one of you. Nor forgive ourselves either, me and Jim. You know how much we care about you both."

Sandy and Terry nodded in acknowledgment. Both producer and director were good friends and had strong avuncular feelings for their young proteges. It made both men sick to think of those beautiful young bodies torn apart and turned into so much dead meat.

Still they were both veteran moviemakers, and their creative instincts kicked in.

"You know, Fletch, this sequence is much too good for just the Making Of video." Jim Nichols said. "We'll splice it into the movie. We need both of the kids to do a voiceover later on. Their language there was too salty for a family film. Tut, tut, all those naughty words."

"Say boys. How about clambering down the rocks but staying just out of reach, talking directly to the croc, maybe say some jungly words of wisdom. I'll get a writer to scribble something down for you."

"Jim, you cannot be serious." Sandy protested in a John McEnroe tone of voice. "We are not getting any closer to that monster than we are now. Count on it. If you want, we can work with a fake croc back in Hollywood , but we are staying away from that animal. You may not have noticed, but he is not exactly a member of the Screen Actors Guild. So I don't think he can be counted on to play the scene the way his director conceives it."

"Right, Sandy," Terry chimed in. "Definitely a method actor. When he chomps on you, he really means it."

The director tried to get his stars to change their minds, telling them it was perfectly safe. Crocs can't climb rocks, after all.

"Maybe not, but I don't know how high he can lunge, propelled by that tail of his. Good Lord, Jim, that croc must be fifteen feet long (5 m). So forgive me if I am less sanguine about the situation than you. In fact, your proposal reminds me of nothing so much as the scene in De Mille's 'Samson and Delilah' (1949) where the Biblical strongman wrestles the lion and kills it with his bare hands. De Mille wanted his star Victor Mature to wrestle a real lion, supposedly a tame one.

"Look Victor," the director urged. "There is no danger. This lion is gentle. Why he was raised on milk."

"So was I, but I eat meat now." came the adamant reply.

"And that was that."

"If you watch DeMille's movie, it is obvious that in the long shots, it is a stunt man who wrestles the real lion. In close-ups, Victor Mature wrestles a stuffed lion. It is actually quite comical if you know the story behind the production."

Afterwards, when Fletcher and the director were alone, the producer told him privately.

"Nice psychology there Jim, getting the kids mad about going on with the scene. Snapped them right out of their funk. You got them angry first, then a minute later they were joking about it."

The two old friends chuckled conspiratorially.

Chapter 4. At the Premiere

To no one's surprise, critics recommended Bomba II only for fans of action movies. That brought a shrug from Leon Potter. Such fans were their target audience anyway. The box office would later vindicate the studio's decision to green light the sequel.

Still the critics were not entirely wrong with some of their observations. The plot is straight-forward, even simplistic. Most of the movie is one long chase. The boys ran and swam and swung on vines, occasionally doubling back or lying in wait to spring an ambush on the native trackers who were out in front of the main party of pursuers. Bomba and Bryce fall upon the trackers before they realize it, getting too close for them to wield their long spears, giving the fugitives a chance to cut them down. The young actors experience with knife fighting in their recent gladiator picture, made these scenes especially realistic.

During one such ambush set on the edge of a grassy glade, they almost got shot as Gunderson and company opened up at long range, but the boys got behind a huge termite mound and kept it between them long enough to scramble to the safety of the tree-line.

And naturally the picture ends with a clear cut victory for the good guys, setting up yet another sequel. At a jungle river crossing Bomba tricks the men into a close encounter with a herd of angry hippos. Those bad guys the pachyderms don't kill outright flee in panic only to stumble into quicksand and perish.

In an earlier scene, Bomba swims out to the lake steamer where the bad guys are holding Bryce prisoner and free him. The boys make a clean getaway swimming underwater as the villains shoot after them. The villains could not follow them to shore because the boys had sabotaged their launch, stranding them aboard ship. To the critics, the scene was wholly gratuitous, just an excuse to shoot the delectable bodies of the two stars in graceful underwater sequences that highlighted their athleticism and raw animal appeal.

Underwater shots had been filmed at Silver Springs in Florida, a movie location favored for its crystal clear waters. In post production, the film editor combined the footage from both sequences. Nichols knew that underwater shots would show off Sandy's prowess as a swimmer. In the water he was in his element. Not for nothing had he been on a championship swim team in high school.

As always the underwater shots used no coy camera angles, sun glare, or strategically placed reeds or fronds, to shield the fork of the actors' legs as would have happened in films made decades ago. To please fans these days you showed it all. In truth there wasn't anything nobody hadn't seen before, just under different lighting, simulating moonlight penetrating to the depths, casting soft highlights on the smooth slender physiques of the principals. And no stunt men please, not for these scenes.

Fletcher took no chances with either the talent or the cameramen. Two divers kept watch below the surface, equipped with rebreathers (which don't release bubbles) and sea sleds and armed with electric stun guns and shark sticks. Up above, three men stood guard with rifles, two of them costumed as bad guys on the bridge of the river steamer. Sonar swept the entire volume of operations, riverbed to surface and bank to bank, for intruders. Finally, just before anyone went into the water, they played recordings of enraged hippos battling for their young, to discourage any of Florida's hungry alligators from approaching.

Jason Eberly, Hollywood's first Jungle Boy, had a chat with to Terry and Sandy at the premiere.

"You guys looked really good wielding those knives against the bad guys, just like when you played gladiators. Isn't it funny the odd skills we actors pick up for our roles?"

"Right, Jason," Sandy replied. "Horseback riding, swordplay, knife fighting, even ballroom dancing, though that picture deal fell through."

"And we have other skills too: martial arts, pistol shooting, escape techniques just in case of another run in with kidnappers or creeps who want to turn us into sex slaves. But you would know more about that than we do, Jason. You and your lovers have had to actually kill men to save yourselves."

"Yeah, that was a long time ago, now. On a happier note, I have to say I really loved your water slide scene, boys. It's what our Jungle Boy pictures are all about: youth and love and fun and adventure. It's the kind of scene I always wanted to do in my day, but things never quite worked out. The franchise is in good hands these days."

"Thanks, Jason we both grew up watching your pictures," Sandy said. "Now we are the Jungle Boys."

"Sometimes I just have to laugh about it all," Terry said. "I mean, it's really silly, isn't it, running around naked in front of the camera? What a way to make a living!"

The trio chuckled companionably.

The final scene in the picture at the water slide shows the happy couple safe at last, gamboling like otters, smiling and laughing as they whoosh down a (mostly) natural water slide to a clear pool at the bottom. When he reaches bottom, a boy hits the water with a big splash and goes under briefly only to shoot up like a broaching whale, thrusting an fist upward shouting his triumph in an expression of life and joy and youthful male exuberance. Then the young actor scrambles up the rocks to the top for another ride, giving the audience a good look at his shapely tush.

The twinks go at it, singly or in pairs toboggan style, one of them sitting between the legs of the boy behind him, leaning back, turning for a quick kiss before launching themselves down the slide. They even go down head first on their bellies, slicing neatly through the water at the bottom.

No complaints from "the talent" about retakes. The young actors did it happily, for the sheer joy of it. No need to reach deep within themselves to create a performance. This was the real thing, good clean fun that any young male could relate to. A diver captured the underwater action too. The scene turned out to be one of their happiest moments ever on a movie set though it did draw a mild complaint from the director.

"Boys, boys. You know better than to stare at the camera much less mug for it. Don't you get it? Your characters are alone in the middle of the jungle. There's no one around to wave to or to smile at."

"Sure there is, Jim. Him," Terry said smugly, pointing to the guy with the video camera shooting candid footage for the Making Of short film.

Jim Nichols shook his head, smiling. The kid had him there, the little smart-ass. Gosh what great kids they both were. All right, maybe the twinks were headstrong and wild, and you couldn't keep either of them in a pair of pants for very long, but they had spunk.

Critics later complained that the movie's water slide sequence was wholly gratuitous, not essential to the plot at all, and entirely derivative of a similar scene in the 1980 version of 'The Blue Lagoon'. Talk about saccharine endings!

Needless to say, the fans loved it.

Author's Note

This is another tale about the lives of a pair of young gay actors in Hollywood and their utterly improbable adventures in the movie business. It takes place maybe forty years in the future. This thirteenth installment continues the story of the pair of protagonists, Sandy Barnett and Terry Knowles, introduced in Jungle Boy 6, in place of Jason Eberly, the original Jungle Boy of the first five tales (who has an occasional cameo in these new tales).

Readers quick on the uptake would be correct in surmising that the plots and scenes for the 'Naked Prey' movies in these 'Jungle Boy' stories were suggested by stories the series by the same name posted to the Gay/Historical section of the Nifty Archive.

This tale is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead. Neither the author nor any of his heirs or assigns has any connection whatsoever to the movies except as fans. Occasional references by characters to real motion pictures and actors and others in the movie business are simply to lend verisimilitude to a tale about persons in show business. None of the real people mentioned in passing is in any way part of the tale.

Readers who like the Jungle Boy series should try either of my series of historical novelettes. The 'Daphne Boy' tales depict an eternally youthful protagonist and his adventures in exotic climes and times. The settings for the 'Naked Prey' series are equally exotic, but each story has its own cute twink protagonist.

My other series are the 'Track and Field' stories in Gay/College and my 'Mer-Boy' stories in Gay/Beginnings. For links to all my stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive for George Gauthier.

If Alexander, the Daphne Boy is "the ultimate twink" then Jason, Sandy, and Terry and now Luis are "the penultimate twinks". I just love writing about them. These kids are hot.

Comments and feedback welcome at georgegauthierdc@gmail.com

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