Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 01:36:43 -0400
From: George Gauthier <georgegauthierdc@gmail.com>
Subject: AJHS: Squirrel

				Squirrel
				Andrew Jackson High 3
				by George Gauthier

				1. A Swinger of Birches

I first took to the trees as a young boy of eight to escape school yard
bullies and an abusive foster father. I do not mean sexual abuse, whatever
Walt's faults were, that was not one of them. No, I mean the kind of abuse
a grown man delivers with a strap or a switch to the bare rump of a
pre-pubescent boy.

I was the designated scapegoat for whatever went wrong in that benighted
household, whether a lost job or a kiss off from the latest live-in
girlfriend. One time, I was outside in the back yard attending to chores
when I heard the crash of broken china.

"Brandon O'Rourke!" came the angry call. "This is your fault for not
stacking the dishes properly. Drop your shorts and bend over!"

Since my shorts were all I had on that fine summer day, I had to take my
punishment naked, stripping everything off and bending over with my hands
braced on my knees. Walt said the welts on my butt were a good reminder of
my latest infraction. So he was not a child molester, but he was a mean
cuss.

One day I just ran off rather than be switched yet again on some trumped up
charge by my drunken foster father. I had long ago learned that trying to
talk my way out of trouble only made things worse. Walt took any attempt at
explanation, justification, or mitigation as so sass. In his mind, any boy
who dared sass his elders deserved to be punished on principle, for that
alone, regardless of the underlying low crimes and misdemeanors.

That day Walt had taken me into the tool shed and ripped my only garment, a
pair of charity drive cutoffs off my hips and bent me over a saw horse,
positioning me for at least ten whacks with the switch, and that was just
for starters, for the sass, not what had happened, or he thought had
happened before that.

Before he could get the first slash in I took off, right then and there,
ducking under his upraised arm, and streaking into the woods. I stayed away
all that afternoon and overnight, driven up a tree at dusk by the arrival
of mosquitos. Mosquitos fly close to the ground which is why primitives
build houses in trees on on stilts. I stayed there long past dawn, knowing
I would face new charges when I returned to Walt's care. Indeed that
morning Walt called the school to report me for truancy. In time a truant
officer tracked me down in my leafy refuge.

"Come down from that damn tree you little squirrel," the exasperated truant
officer shouted at me, the young miscreant perched high above on a live
oak. If I have to call the fire department, it will go worse for you.

"The fire department? They rescue lost cats stuck up a tree. Do I look like
a kitty cat?"

"Damn your bare hide, youngster, for dragging me all the way out here in
this heat. I am just mad enough to ask Animal Control to put a narcotic
dart in that bare rump of yours and let you fall to earth. The drop is only
about thirty feet and the ground is spongy. It's right up their alley too,
removing nuisances like a chittering red squirrel such as yourself."

Well I do have red or rather auburn hair. And I am quick and nimble as a
squirrel. I have a real talent for climbing which is what later led me to
the sport of parkour. Anyway, from that day forward my nickname was
Squirrel. Only my teachers and my foster father called me Brandon. More
than once I lived up to my nickname, and sought refuge in the trees, often
leaving all clothing behind in a symbolic cutting of ties with the
situation I was fleeing. And anyway, I have always really liked to get
naked.

A precocious lad, I had learned the facts of life sooner than most and soon
thereafter the practice thereof. Increasingly dissatisfied with foster
care, I thought about running away and living on the streets. It might well
have happened that way, we me turned rent boy to support myself, the only
work available to a thirteen year old boy. That would have been the start
of a short spiral to hell.

Then I got lucky. The fostering agency found a taker for a difficult kid
few folks wanted in their homes. He was an older man and lived alone, a
widower. This was Pierre Lyautey, a decent man of modest means, from Cajun
country originally, now resident in South Florida. He knew me for what I
was and wanted very much for me turn aside from mischief and to lead a good
life. In other words, to become a decent human being, and that was
regardless of the direction my newly awakened sexuality pointed me
toward. Somehow this good man he saw in me a better boy than the one I
thought I was.

Though not particularly religious, he was a living embodiment of the
Serenity Prayer. He had the serenity to accept the things he could not
change, the courage to change the things he could, and most important of
all, the wisdom to know the difference. He changed my life. No. Make that,
he saved my life by giving it a new direction. He got turned me around. He
made me want to step off the downward path that lead first to the streets,
then to delinquency, and on to a life of petty crime. I will always be
grateful to this fine human being.

When I enrolled at Andrew Jackson High, I realized that many of the most
popular boys had cute nicknames like mine including the towel boy for the
swim team Alex Conlon, the one they call Squirt who is also a student
journalist, and the budding botanist who goes by the name of Sprout,
a.k.a. William Pierpoint Tagliaferro IV, which is a real
mouthful. Collectively Sprout and another boy named Zach are known as the
Nature Boys for their predilection for running around naked as much as they
can get away with. Boys after my own heart! No wonder I fell in with them
so readily.

Things were going well for me at home and at school. I had little trouble
fitting in or making friends with Sprout and his lover Zach. I joined them
at swim meets to ogle the impossibly cute and well endowed towel boy. Too
bad swim team practice was closed to outsiders. It was only in the locker
room that I caught glimpses of Squirt's humongous tallywhacker which looked
even bigger on his petite and glabrous physique.

I am built much the same as Sprout and Squirt, though nearly two inches
shorter, call it five foot zero, rounding off to the nearest inch. So this
is me, all of 60.3 inches (152 cm) and one hundred pounds even (45
kg). Sweat out too much on a long run, and I become, at least temporarily,
that ninety-eight pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face. Actually
mine is a wiry physique with a well-defined musculature that brings to mind
the phrase "hard body" rather than "wimp" or "weakling". I have a
surpassingly strong upper storey and large hands which help me when I
brachiate through the trees.

As the poet said, now I have become a swinger of birches, though birches
are in short supply this far south.

And now I am into parkour, a new sport imported from France. The name is a
variant spelling for the French word for obstacle course, parcours. Only we
do not run purpose built courses. We treat our whole environment as an
obstacle course. The idea is to move from point A to point B as quickly and
efficiently as you can, using the innate abilities of the human body to
run, climb, jump, fall, swing, slide, and tumble. All without ropes, hooks,
or grapnels or other aids.

Normally I wear just a pair of abbreviated bicycle shorts -- very low rise
and with a short inseam. They are made of an airy, lightweight, porous, and
nearly sheer tan-thru fabric. Colorful patterns printed on the fabric fool
the eye into focussing on its surface rather than looking through the
flimsy cloth to see the boy beneath. After a run, when I finally get the
chance to strip the garment off, I am always surprised at how tiny a ball
of cloth it can be rolled up into. There was practically nothing to the
exiguous garment but air and color. Shorts and low-top canvas shoes, that's
it. Not even gloves.

I imagine these techniques would be good for escape and evasion. I mean, I
can run straight at a wall, leap and push my lead foot against the rough
surface, getting enough of a shove off to reach the edge of the roof above
and swing myself up and out of reach of pursuit. Then it is easy enough to
escape across the rooftops, leaping between building and across alleys,
clambering over construction scaffolding, trellises and arcades, climbing
or sliding down drainpipes, dropping onto awnings, my agility and light
weight making it easy to leave lumbering pursuers behind. From that point
of view parkour is a form of applied acrobatics and excellent survival
training in escape and evasion.

The sport gives me a chance to test my nimbleness and strength not so much
against others but against the limits of my own body as I overcame
obstacles like walls, fences, buildings, towers, trees, and ditches. I
always feel exuberant after a good scramble, it appeals to the boy in me,
and what boy does not like to climb trees?

Parkour is not a competitive team sport yet at Andrew Jackson High, but we
do have an officially sanctioned parkour club, of which I am, ahem, the
vice-president.

Just recently and thanks to Sprout and Zach I have invented a new variant
of the sport: Naked Parkour. Call me an exhibitionist if you must, but
taking all my clothes off makes me feel terribly naughty and sexy. Just
like my friends. So I often join them over at a nature preserve and stash
my clothing, skimpy enough to start with, and take to the trees like, oh
with whom should I compare myself?

Not Tarzan, too old and too many muscles. Like Janet in the Rocky Horror
Picture Show, I don't like a man with too many muscles. Not Mowgli either,
a pre-pubescent kid. I am more Bomba the Jungle Boy, like in those cheap
B&W B-pictures from the 1950s. Closer to him in age, though the actor who
portrayed him made his dozen Bomba pictures when he was between 18 and
24. Of course his Bomba wore a generous loincloth and was bigger and more
muscular by far. I always thought Johnny Sheffield had a homely face, but
the producers didn't go looking for better when they cast Sheffield in the
role. He had been Boy to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan in the movies.

Anyway, the three of us, Sprout, Zach, and I go on safari, as we jokingly
call it, as often as we can in hot weather. I take the high road and they
take the low. And yes, I join them in their extracurricular
activities. That's right. Just like those two super-cute twinks I am
gay. Or as Sprout puts it, gay, fey, and more than okay. We have a lot of
fun with each other's bodies, but I am in no way a part of their union.

As to what I look like, I have been remiss in not providing details
earlier. As I said, I am a little guy with a slight but wiry physique. Like
many boys these days I had treatments with those new depilatories that
render the hair follicles permanently quiescent. Hence no beard or body
hair anywhere, not even at the fork of my legs. Which is fine, it makes my
manly parts more prominent and gets rid of that unsightly tangled triangle
we males were traditionally saddled with.

My face is probably too pretty for a male, though a chiseled jawline and
strong chin keep me from looking totally androgynous. I have spiky red hair
cut short at the sides with narrow sideburns reaching below the ear
lobe. They help frame a cute face with a high forehead, straight eyebrows
with almost no curve to them, sky blue eyes, and a perky nose slightly
turned up at the end in keeping with my Irish heritage.

Down there, my ball sac is small and smooth, its corrugations understated,
the whole of it pulled close to my groin. That makes my cock look longer, a
smooth tube that emerges seamlessly from my abdomen, its shaft unmarked by
angry veins like with so many other guys. The foreskin hugs most of the
knob, offering just a peek of the glans.

If I waited so long to describe myself it was not from any sense of
modesty, believe me. Boys who like to run around naked in nature preserves
or go swimming and sunbathing at the nudie beach beyond the jetty, are not
bothered by nudity taboos. By now we expect cameras to be pointed our way,
capturing our youthful beauty for posterity, or maybe for a stroke session
that evening.

I do not mind in the least. As far as I am concerned I have no private
parts. I proudly let it all hang out for my adoring public. Actually all of
us boys (four including Squirt) are proud of the taut and trim bodies we
have so recently grown into. And just from their faces, most of our
onlookers appreciate the chance to look us over, some actually for
aesthetic reasons. We really are worth looking at, a lot more so than so
many celebrated nudes on display in museums.

I make an exception for mythological subjects like Ganymede, Leander,
Narcissus, Hippolytus, Hyacinth, Telemakos, and Hylas, all of them
beardless boys you could fantasize going to bed with. You can keep your
Herakles, Theseus, Odysseus, and Zeus himself, for that matter, anyone one,
god or mortal with a beard and an overdeveloped body.

That goes double for Michaelangelo's Adam in the Sistene Chapel, the worst
male nude I ever saw, with that grotesque weightlifter physique and tiny
infantile genitals, likely due to too many steroids, whether through God's
mistake or Adam's own. (I offer this hypothesis as my very own theological
discovery, the real original sin.) How those tiny organs managed to
engender the human race, I will never know. It would have taken a miracle
for Adam to impregnate Eve. With God on hand to supply it, maybe there is
no mystery after all.

				2. Halloween

Then came the big Halloween party where a group of alumni was offering
prizes for best costume in several categories: historical, mythological,
action heroes, and several more. We intended to compete but not against
each other. Each would take a category. One thing we did agree, we needed a
unique approach to costuming. Nothing off-the-shelf would do. Squirt heard
us talking about it one day and said he had a great idea, only we must
include him in the competition, making four of us going non-competitively
after prizes.

"All right Squirt, care to share your brainstorm with us?"

He nodded, a sly smile on his cute face that soon broadened into a wide
grin.

"You boys are gonna love this, though maybe not right off, since it is so
original. So hold off on your first reaction and think it through. Agreed?"

"Fine." we chorused in reply. "Get on with it, you little imp. The suspense
is killing us."

With his eyes dancing with merriment, Squirt landed his idea on us, then
sat back to let us ponder it.

"Body paint! Our costumes will be made of body paint and absolutely nothing
else."

After a moment of stunned disbelief, Zach asked:

"You mean we go to the school gymnasium to attend the officially sponsored
AJHS Halloween party, girls, boys, and teachers, all of us stark naked
except for a dab of body paint?"

"Exactly! the imp replied and awaited our further cogitation.

At first the notion was so outrageous we were stunned, but then the wheels
turned. It would give us the advantage of originality. Anyone could dress
up as Darth Vader or the Count of Monte Christo. Finally Sprout asked
Squirt:

"Isn't your boyfriend Paul Hansen an amateur painter, a watercolorist if I
remember rightly. What do they call him, Acid?"

"Sometimes, though he is not particularly fond of that nickname, and I
never use it. Still he is just the man for the job, real genius with a
paintbrush, though as yet unrecognized."

Sprout frowned, the gears finally turning over. "Acid? What kind of a
nickname is that. Does Paul do acid?"

Squirt rolled his eyes. "Small p plus capital H. Get it? Potential of
Hydrogen if you remember your Chemistry, the measure of acidity and
alkalinity. pH is spelled with a small p, not all capitals like Paul
Hansen. I called him PH, all capitals, when I don't just call him Paul."

Needless to say we were the hit of the Halloween party, arriving on a
school bus Sprout hired for the occasion so we could ride over standing up
and not spoil our costumes. Spontaneous laughter, guffaws from the boys,
nervous titters from the girls, followed by thunderous applause and
stomping feet greeted our grand entrance. Paul used a handheld electric
megaphone to announce us one by one, as if he were the majordomo at the
court of a king. Tall, dark, and handsome, he was clothed in a real costume
and very much looked the part. The whole grand entrance was his idea and a
fine one it was too.

Principal Degnan rushed over and tried to get us to leave. We stood our
ground while Paul's father, a lawyer who had come along in support, stated
our case. There was nothing in the rules to bar such an unorthodox approach
to costuming. Nothing in school rules generally either, excepting about
going bare, and we were not that. The principal was frustrated, but he had
to concede our right to be at the event and to compete for prizes.

Degnan did tell us that he intended to an eye on us for the remainder of
our school careers. Glaring at the imp's humongous tallywhacker and then
sweeping his glare at the rest of our virile members, he held up a finger
in warning, he added:

"No erections!" then stalked off. At that the crowd started laughing so
hard, some of them holding their sides in pain. From that point on we were
shoo-ins. All four of us took first place in our respective categories.

Squirt was awesome as the Tree of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil from Genesis. His arms were mostly unpainted, the bare skin and the
protruding veins in his arms acknowledging the role that the urgings of the
flesh played in the psycho-drama enacted in the Garden of Eden. The right
side of his body formed the brown trunk of the tree with a crown of green
foliage starting just under his pectorals and covering his shoulders, with
a large red apple centered on his left tit. The rest of his left side was
mostly background, blue sky and fluffy white clouds, except for two small
branches of the tree extending from the trunk to his left side, both
passing between navel and groin.

What really brought the house down was the serpent depicted with
alternating bands of light and dark green, its lower body curled around the
trunk of the tree, with the front end of his body dangling from the lower
branch. The last section of the serpent was formed by Squirt's cock,
painted with the same alternating bands. The head of the boy's cock was
painted like the head of the snake, with two dark eyes and a smile across
the piss slit and beyond.

The poor principal was speechless as Squirt's member plumped up just enough
to stand out at an angle from his groin, emphasizing the
three-dimensionality of the composition, as Paul explained poker faced, as
if giving a lecture on art appreciation. His delivery was a devastating
imitation of the school's art teacher, a man who took himself and his
subject far too seriously in the minds of most folks.

Next up was Zach, his blue-black hair making him a perfect model for
Superboy. Most of his body was painted an even pale blue, actually a shade
much lighter than the Kryptonian really wears, but it was the correct shade
for his costume, doing less to conceal his body than a dark blue would
have. Zach had a large S shield on his chest the top curving across his
pectorals, the point at his navel. Starting at the shoulders a deep red
color covered much of his back though cutting off cleanly at the knees to
represent the hem of his cape. Though his hands were left bare, the lower
half of his calves and his feet were the same deep red to represent
boots. And yes he had the familiar bathing costume, or is it just underwear
worn inside out, a yellow belt and red Speedos, his manly parts painted red
to match.

That left Sprout and myself. Sprout went as a Harlequin, his limbs painted
solid colors, the legs from Adam's girdle to foot, with the left leg a
bright red, the right leg white. His upper limbs were just the opposite,
right arm red, left arm white. Right hand and left foot were white, the
other appendages left bare. His chest and belly were like a jerkin,
decorated with an argyle pattern of six rows of diamond shaped lozenges,
alternating red and white, with a faux pointed collar starting at the
collar bones. He wore a red and white mask around the eyes above red and
white lips. His genitals were also solid white. It was a stunning costume.

My own costume was simpler, with much of my skin left unpainted though not
any great expanse. I went as a work of primitive art, yet almost abstractly
modern in style as well, a design in red and blue with my nude body as the
canvas. Its short stripes and curves and whorls and lines of red dots along
my flanks vaguely suggested Australian petroglyphs. I particularly liked
the red whorls on my buttocks and the red stripes on my collar bones. My
face, and hands were bare. The artist had centered a curvy triangle of blue
on my navel. My balls were red and my cock blue though with a ring of black
half way along the shaft. I never thought I would one day be strutting my
stuff in a packed school gymnasium.

Squirt, as the Tree and Serpent, had the most original costume, Zach the
best match of subject and model. Zach's body is exactly like that of the
original Superboy in the comics, standing five foot nine and weighing
125. Sprout's Harlequin was the best executed design, and my abstract art
the most revealing of the nude boy that formed the painter's canvas. The
others looked like bright costumes with a nude boy underneath. I looked
like a nude boy with daubs of paint on an otherwise bare skin, but my
blatant sexuality wasn't threatening even up close because of my diminutive
size and pretty boy features.

We lined up with Zach the tallest at 5/9 on our right, Sprout and Squirt in
the middle at 5/2, and me at five foot zero. Two blonds in the middle
bookended by raven-haired Zach and me, the red-head. Since we were all
juniors, it was not surprising that we were so close in age, only two
months apart at the extremes.

Paul Hansen had done us all proud, working at a furious pace to get us all
finished and working entirely alone. As we went on stage to collect our
prizes we dragged him along with us to present him to the crowd as our
resident artistic genius. He later told us that he appreciated the applause
from the student body more than any praise he had won on the athletic
field.

As we stood there close together on stage, with everyone looking on, Paul
reached down and cupped my genitals, tsk-tsking and shaking his head. In a
voice amplified by the PA system he mused:

"I got your crown jewels all wrong, Squirrel. Both the scepter and the
orbs. It should be your balls that are blue and your cock red, instead of
the other way around."

Lots of laughter.

I blushed furiously, which only lead to another quip shouted from the
crowd.

"Yes a cock as red as that pretty face of his has turned just now."

"Pretty red back here too," quipped another. "I think this is one of those
full body blushes you read about but are never able to witness, what with
clothing getting in the way, and all."

"No such problem here. My oh my, and would you look at those buns of
steel!"

Actually a couple of guys took the opportunity to touch my aforementioned
buns. What could I do but be a good sport about it? Actually one pair of
hands on my buns had been real strong and had delved into my cleavage
briefly. I wonder which student that hand belonged to.

We circulated in the crowd, dancing with each other and then other
partners. My dance card included some slow dances which allowed my dance
partners a good many chances to feel me up. I am afraid that like Squirt I
rose to the occasion. By popular demand I reprised one of my break dance
routines, another outlet for my acrobatic abilities. I whirled and twirled
and tumbled and slid across the polished wood floor, a wild display of the
human body in furious motion, including my cock flip flopping in every
direction. Fortunately there was no real damage to my paint job.

At that Halloween party, we were sensational. The photos and videos from
countless phones plus the official photographer went viral in no time. Even
the principal relented and showed he had a sense of humor when he allowed
the party organizers to put up several pictures of the five of us on the
school's web site with a link to a site with candid shots of us at the
nudie beach so everyone could see what we looked like under the body
paint. Thus were we immortalized in the history of AJHS.

Actually the notoriety from the party lead to an engagement with a
legitimate photographer whose oeuvre included a line of artistic
photographs of young nude males. That gig lead to others of the same sort.

The money comes in handy, since my foster father, M. Lyautey, is only a
mail handler at the post office. Our circumstances are comfortable though
far from luxurious. Both Zach's and Sprout's families are well off, and
Sprout in his own right, is a millionaire several times over thanks to his
lawsuit against the leather master who enslaved him some months ago.

Anyway the photographers posed us singly, in pairs, or as a trio in a great
variety of poses, virtually all of them with us in the nude, maybe wearing
a prop necktie, bracelet, or a knit cap pushed back on the head. I once
wore nothing but a flower lei around my waist. My foster father didn't mind
any of this though he did raise an eyebrow at a close up of my cleavage and
the brown whorl that lay within. I shrugged it off with some comment about
how we all have one, so it's no big deal.

I never mentioned to that good man that a couple of the photographers
wanted something more than visual access to the orifice in
question. Setting his camera on automatic, a big German fellow picked me up
bodily and crushed me to his chest. I wrapped my legs around him as his
cock sought my orifice. Slipping inside surprisingly easily for so large an
endowment, he had me do most of the work, lifting my body, letting it fall
back, basically fucking myself on his cock, until, in the fullness of time
I started to ejaculate, my jism splashing onto our chests. My orgasm set
off his own as the muscles of my quim contracted spasmodically, squeezing
his cock and sending him into orgasm as well.

The Frenchman, not surprisingly, was more subtle, courting me in the grand
manner, whispering sweet nothings in my ears. I was his petit choupinou,
his bomec, his gamin. He laid me gently on a couch and got between my legs,
lifting them onto his shoulders. Like the German he preferred to make love
face to face. Although not so forceful a lover he was vigorous enough to
earn a coveted two stars in my personal Green Guide of lovers I have known.

Both men assured me that these candid shots of love in the afternoon would
remain in their private collections. Later on, after all the notoriety I
drew for what happened the following spring, they shopped their wares to
anyone interested in splash shots from a boy's cock or onto a boy's
upturned face, as well as professionally composed glossies of a super cute
twink with his face twisted in an ecstatic grimace with a big one clearly
visible sliding into his quim.

Much later, someone actually asked me if I weren't going to give up
clothing entirely since I had nothing to hide, nothing that hadn't been
seen and communicate around the world, and anyway, wasn't I a shameless
slut anyway. Brazenly I retorted:

"Okay, I'll go naked 24/7 365 but for that I'll want blanket immunity from
both prosecution and lawsuits at all levels. Throw in a million dollars,
and it's a deal. Make that three million."

And I wasn't kidding entirely. The exhibitionist in me wasn't kidding at
all.

Soon all of us, and later me a little more, had a growing following
including quite a few of our fellow students at AJHS. Inevitably that
brought us a collective nickname, the Bare-Bottomed Boys, which at least
has the virtue of alliteration, though it never really caught on.

The more artistically minded among them referred to us as a Triptych of
Young Nudes, which I though way too highbrow for a nickname, and anyway
there were four of us, not three. But what else can you expect from the
artsy crowd. I could only shake my head at all their chatter about the
aesthetics of our pictures. None seemed willing to come right out with it
and admit that a large part of our appeal is that our nude bodies aroused
prurient interest from all genders. I mean really, what else would they
expect about Pretty Boys Naked, my personal candidate for a collective
nickname, which has not caught on either.

We have all of us just passed our seventeenth birthdays. I like the sound
of that number, but I will always be fond of my sweet sixteen, when I met
such swell guys as the Squirt and PH and the Nature Boys, Sprout and Zach
at AJHS.

				3. Escape and Evasion

One Sunday afternoon the following spring, with the weather finally warm
enough for it, I was stretched out on my belly on the grass in the back
yard, nude and getting some sun, as a head start on my tan. Actually my
peaches and cream complexion does not tan all that well, but I can build up
a protective tan if I take it in easy stages, avoiding sunburn.

My foster father M. Lyautey was back in Cajun country, on vacation,
visiting. I had to stay home and go to school.

Suddenly a moving shadow made me realize that I was no longer alone. A
fellow student from AJHS stood there looming over me, staring hungrily at
my bared bum.

Carlos Saragossa was a big fellow, several inches over six feet. Strongly
built and crudely handsome, he had a single bushy brow across his forehead,
something I always found a real turn off. His dress was casually elegant, a
designer polo shirt with one of those silly insignia, cargo shorts down to
the knees. The ones with those silly straps were back in fashion, plus
leather sandals with stockings. An overly large gold neck chain and a Rolex
watch completed his ensemble.

Carlos came from real money. Originally mob money though the family had
gone halfway legit a couple of generations back. They ran one of the big
sugar cane operations in South Florida. Just another racket really, if a
legal one. They bribed politicians to block imports of foreign sugar so as
to keep the price of domestic sugar high. The cane growers were in cahoots
with the sugar beet interests too.

"Can I help you?" I asked turning to look up at my visitor.

Carlos kept silent for a minute, then abruptly said: "I want you."

"You want me?"

"Yes Squirrel ever since that Halloween party months ago I haven't been
able to get you out of my thoughts, out of my dreams, out of my mind. You
are my wet dreams come to life. I even have copies of all your photo
spreads and videos.  Now I have come here to make you my own. I must make
love to that exquisite body of yours."

"Whoa there, Carlos. I don't recall holding tryouts for the job of official
boyfriend. And I never sent you a personal invitation to drop by any time
you felt like it. What do you mean coming here onto private property and
coming on to me like that?  And just so you know, you are not my type: too
big, too hairy, and too many muscles."

"Don't you see, little one, you must yield yourself to me, regardless of
your own tastes. It is only my own desires that really count in thi. I am
warning you. The consequences of refusal would be serious. My father is a
man of means and has many friends, some of whom you would not care to
meet."

I stood up and glared at the big guy my fists on my hips.

"Don't try that wise guy stuff on me. And does your gangster pops know that
his eldest lusts after girly boys like me?"

"He knows. He doesn't care. This is the twenty-first century. Gay gangsters
don't bother the mob any more."

"Maybe so, but what is your dad gonna do anyway. Send that big goon I
always see him with to, what is the phrase, make me an offer I can't
refuse."

"No, it wouldn't be that guy. He's my father's bodyguard. A hit man as
well, but he is never sent after civilians. I once heard him justify his
occupation by saying that he never killed anyone who was an innocent
party. They were all gangsters. So don't look for him to come around with a
message. Maybe my dad will just have the bank foreclose on your foster
dad's underwater mortgage. Or maybe have his legs broken. Wouldn't like
that would you? Seeing you and that nice mailman in the hospital or thrown
out onto the streets."

Carlos grabbed for me and kissed me forcibly and tried to wrestle me to the
ground where he could use his weight to pin me in place while he raped
me. I was powerless in the grip of someone fifteen inches taller and more
than twice my mass. It was one of the few times in my young life when I
really wished I were a big guy instead of the short slight twink that I am.

Suddenly a voice called out.

"Hey, what's going on down there? You, big fella, let that kid go or I am
calling the police."

It was a lineman for the phone company perched atop a telephone pole fixing
something or other.

Carlos let me go and stalked off, warning me.

"This isn't over you little squirrel."

The lineman watched the teenage gangster climb into his car and drive away.

"He is gone, youngling. You should be safe now."

"Thanks for the help, and say, would you care for cold lemonade on a warm
day like this?"

"Don't rightly mind if I do."

We had a couple of glasses each, seated around the patio table. I asked
him.

"Weren't you surprised to see me lying out on the lawn bare ass naked? I
mean I didn't even have a pair of shorts handy I could grab. I walked right
out the back door without a stitch on, casual as you please."

He chuckled.

"Son, if I told you a fraction of what I have seen on this job over the
past two decades, it would burn your ears, and likely grow hair on your
chest too."

He paused, frowned, looked me up and down, seeing how smooth-skinned and
glabrous I am, without a feather anywhere, not on my chest not at the fork
of my legs.

"On second thought, in your case maybe not. No offense."

He finished his lemonade then went on to the next job.

I mentioned the incident to my friends and to M. Lyautey. My friends said
they would keep an eye peeled for the big guy. My foster father surprised
me with the vehemence of his reaction.

"That boy would use his father to do those things to us? Rape you and
injure or ruin me? I spit on him and his hit man. I am Cajun. We take care
of our own. If either of them, father or son, carries out those threats or
does worse, my people will exact retribution."

"As insurance, I will phone my cousins tonight and explain the
situation. If anything happens to us, thirty men with shotguns and AK-47s
will surround their house, move in, and kill both of them and anyone else
who gets in their way. That is our law. Cajun law."

Wow! I looked at my foster father with even greater respect and love. What
a good man he was, and so forceful under that mild exterior. Hidden
depths. Or maybe not so hidden. I had seen the Silver Star he had won as an
eighteen year old infantryman at the tail end of our war in Vietnam.

That night I watched as he cleaned and oiled the AR-15 he kept locked in a
gun cabinet.

"Prepping my varmint rifle, just in case." He explained blandly.

Things finally came to a head a couple of weeks later, and not with
guns. All it took was a rock to kill Carlos Saragossa. It was an accident,
but who would believe me. My foster father and friends did. Maybe the
police and the DA, maybe not. It could go either way.

Old man Saragossa wouldn't care how it happened, just that his son was dead
and he had been with me when it happened. I would be a target for the hit
men he sent against me. I would also put the lives of everyone around me in
danger. I wouldn't be safe even in jail, whether as a suspect, a material
witness, or in protective custody. Mobsters have no trouble ordering
killings in jails and prisons. The victims and perps are already locked in
together.

I called Paul Hansen and got his father to come to the scene of the
accident. The scene of the crime as well, the crime of attempted rape or
aggravated sexual assault. Carlos had tried to choke me into submission,
tie me up, and rape me. I pointed to the bruise marks on my throat made by
his large hands. He had also brought a half-dozen condoms with him, so he
must have been expecting to take me again and again.

I realized that he had followed me on one of my parkour adventures. I went
to a derelict construction site, some project left half built when the
funding ran out. Just perfect for a parkour run. He cornered me in the hole
that had been dug for a sub cellar, not yet paved.

What can I say. He snuck up on me and hit me hard, stunning me. I dropped
to the floor, allowing him to strip off my shorts and shoes. As he unlaced
my shoes, intending to bind me with my own shoelaces, I scrambled away, on
my belly like a lizard at first. Then I got to my feet and took off. The
big man pursued. As Carlos reached me, I slipped on mud. My legs went out
from under me, and I pitched forward. He slipped too on the same muddy
patch but pitched backwards, clunking his head on a rock the size of a
cauliflower. A dumb accident though it likely saved my life. I think he
would have killed me after raping me, to ensure my silence.

Paul's father shook his head. Sorry son, but you are a dead man or as good
as. And you too Paul if you are anywhere near this boy when they come for
him. Legally Brandon, you could make a good case for death by misadventure,
though a smart prosecutor, just maybe a bribed prosecutor, could twist the
facts enough to convict you of manslaughter anyway. That is, if you live
long enough to go on trial, which you probably won't."

"So what does Squirrel do, Dad?"

"Damn if I know. This is one mess a lawyer cannot fix."

"I'll go to ground, that's what I'll do. Stay out of jail and away from the
friends whose lives I would put in danger. Wait for some opportunity to
clear myself. Maybe forge a new identity."

Mr. Hansen scoffed.

"What do you know about being a fugitive, on the run from the law, because
that is what you will become if you don't turn yourself in. In the movies
everyone finds it easy to get false ID, but I myself wouldn't know where to
begin. I am a general practice attorney not a criminal attorney."

"Listen both of you. I am going to need help to pull this off. I need you,
Mr. Hansen, to give me a head start, hold off on calling the cops for a few
hours, anyway. Paul, I need you to bring Sprout and Zach in on this, to
take supplies to the locations I designate.

And I will need your artistry to provide me with the camouflage I will need
to stay hidden. What I want from you is another body paint job only this
time with long lasting paints, which won't wear off, but also won't harm my
skin or block perspiration. It must not make it easy for a dog to track my
smell or the paint smell either. Can you do it, Paul. Can you turn me into
Tree-Frog?"

"Tree-Frog!" he asked, thinking back to a classic of children's literature
in which a troubled boy finally takes to the woods stark naked, his entire
body painted green.

It took some doing, but I brought both of them around. Six hours later, I
was deep in the woods, supplies cached in three different locations, out of
sight, and out of reach of wild animals. I resolved to stick to the trees
whenever I could. Over time I might create aerial pathways with vines and
interlocking branches. I would become a squirrel indeed.

Mr. Hansen filled in my foster father about the plan, calming him down and
pointing out that trying to get me to a refuge in Cajun country, nearly a
thousand miles by road, would be impossible. Besides I was better hiding in
country I knew, which was mostly forest and not unfamiliar bayous and
swamps.

And did I look like a sight in camouflage. Paul left my hair alone. Its
natural auburn color would not stand out, not like blond hair would. That
left my face and body. Paul chose an old fashioned camouflage pattern, not
one of those overly busy digital patterns the military favors. He relied on
the age old principles of camouflage, disrupt shapes, lighten what was
naturally dark and darken what was naturally light. His own theory was that
brown was a better basic color for camouflage than green.

"What? But everything in the forest is green: trees, bushes, grasses. The
entire background you want to lose yourself in."

"If green is so great why doesn't Mother Nature use it herself? I am not
talking lizards and frogs but mammals. Bear, deer, otters, woodchucks,
badgers, you name it. Brown. Even the Florida panther is a light brown."

But he went with green and black because that is what I wanted. He
disguised my body with green paint interrupted with long swathes of black
to break up my outline. One large irregularly shaped stripe ran from my
right hip across my chest and over my shoulder. Another slanted across my
upper thighs and groin, leaving my manly parts half green and half black. I
thought Paul spent more time on that region than was strictly necessary,
lifting and swinging the tube of my cock, skinning back my foreskin so that
the head would be the same color green as everything else when it emerged,
using a tiny brush to get down into the corrugations of my scrotum. He even
painted a small brown stripe twisting around my cock and disappearing into
the piss slit, reaching in more than a quarter inch with the bristles.

My arms were whirls of black and green. Even the soles of my feet were
painted solid black. And I had black around my eyes and even on my eyelids,
making me look like a demented raccoon. Or like Schwarzenegger in Conan the
Barbarian. But even though every inch of me was covered, I was really stark
naked, letting it all hang out. Like Tree-Frog.

"Now squirrel, you can expect your body paint camouflage to reduce your
thermal signature some as long as you are still or haven't just exerted
yourself. Also it discourages bugs, though you should make it a habit as
dusk approaches to take to the trees and stay above the skitters."

Yes, I could have worn some clothing. But here was a chance to live out a
fantasy in a way that did not work against my long term interests. Why
shouldn't I run around the woods naked as I had been doing for so
long. Since I was an eight year old, going around naked always made me feel
safe and close to nature. I would really be living up to my nickname this
time.

Squirrel.

				4. Resolution

I spent three months as a hunted fugitive. I cannot say the pursuit never
came close, but when they did they never realized it. The camouflage worked
better than I could have hoped, bless Paul. I also knew the importance of
freezing in place when I knew or thought think an observer might be
around. Like a fawn separated from its mother I held still. One time I even
crawled into brambles, getting pricked and bitten by ants to boot, though
thankfully not fire ants. Still when those tiny mandibles bite your belly
or worse, your cock or scrotum or anywhere around your butt hole, it takes
all your self-control not to jump up and swat at yourself to dislodge them.

Once I hid in a dense patch of poison ivy. It cost me dear, but the county
cops did not care to beat around in it themselves and passed on by. Another
time I came face to face with a Florida panther. Startled at first, we both
resorted to our own best strategies. She snarled and turned sideways trying
to look bigger and more dangerous. (I should explain that cougars do not
have the right vocal cords for a proper roar.) I could and did roar, arms
raised overhead, stomping the ground in a lurching gait, basically
channeling the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas for all I was worth. The
panther jumped back and took off, just as my bladder let go.

I lived off MREs and trail rations, supplemented by what I could gather. At
first I spent all my time in the trees, like a human squirrel. Later I
ventured to the ground to supplement my prepared rations with fish and
frogs from the ponds and mushrooms, wild tubers, fruits and even fat grubs
I gathered. I even killed a few rabbits with my sling with which I soon
became proficient. So that was my life, or better my existence, that of a
hunter-gatherer of old. The technical term is usufructian. Think cave man
but up in the trees.

I avoided dogs and even set out decoys by snaring rabbits and other
critters, rubbing their bodies over mine and staining them with my piss or
semen. The hounds were baffled. All too often the spoor they tracked led to
some animal burrow. My pursuers quickly realized they could not depend on
their dogs.

Lucky for me they could not get access to the very best military
technology. That was barred by the Posse Comitatus Act which dates back to
the end of the Reconstruction Era. The South wanted no more of blue bellies
enforcing the law. Especially since more than half the occupation forces
after the Civil War had been U.S. Colored Troops, which really stuck in
their craw.

Using their restored representation in Congress they passed a law to block
the use of the Federal military to enforce the State laws. The trumped-up
charges against me were all based on State statutes.

I later learned young gay males like me are very hard to track by scent. It
seems the depilatories we use not only suppress the growth of body hair,
they turn off the activity of the sebaceous glands. The oils secreted by
these glands, especially at the groin and armpits, are what turns rancid
from bacterial activity giving us body odor. All our sweat glands produced
is salty water.  What a great thought that is. We, the gay youth of today,
are the first generation that smells genuinely sweet. Maybe there is a god
after all.

One surprising problem staying undetected was the disposition of solid
waste. You might think that was an easy enough task. Bombs away.

Wrong. Our human poop has a particularly strong smell which is quite
distinct. The law could bring in dogs or uses sophisticated people sniffer
tech. I mostly resorted to deep cat-hole latrines being careful to remove
all sign that the ground had been disturbed. Stinky herbs and leaves
disguised the smell too.

I was also bored out of my mind. Remember, I am a brainy kid and like to
read and learn. However in hiding as I was, I took no electronics with me
lest they be traced. I had nothing to read, no entertainment except playing
with myself, and no one to talk to. Believe me, for an incessant chatterbox
like me, that alone was an ordeal.

In time I came to appreciate the old adage that goes "Adventures are
dangerous and uncomfortable and they don't always serve meals on-time."

As Mr. Hansen had feared, a corrupt prosecutor had convinced a grand jury
to indict me. Old Man Saragossa put a public bounty on my head of
$100,000. He also put out a hit, a contract of a million dollars, with me
preferably alive so he could torture me himself.

My friends were sometimes followed as they went their rounds. Good thing I
never asked for a rendezvous or re-supply. Squirt and Paul, Sprout and Zach
were at their wit's ends over what to do to help me. Zach was the one who
came up with ways for both Sprout and Squirt to help out.

He pointed out that as a writer and editor on the school paper, Squirt
could keep my case in the public eye. Let Squirt write a series of articles
questioning the basis for the charges against me, pointing out how weak a
case it really was, that the evidence was just as consistent with an
accident as foul play, maybe more so given our difference in size and
strength. Sauirt even suggested that the DA might have an ulterior motive.

Without naming names, Squirt had reported that:

"A certain organized crime figure, one well-known to the authorities in
South Florida, has reportedly placed a bounty on the head of a teenage boy
wanted in connection with the unexplained death of his son, despite serious
problems with the prosecutor's theory of the flimsy case. Oh and
congratulations Mr. Prosecutor on that nifty speed boat you just recently
acquired, though isn't driving one of those a young man's game? Mid-life
crisis, perhaps?"

Can he turn of phrase or what? But then Squirt is a fine wordsmith with an
inordinate love of wordplay and and an excessive fondness for puns.

The school paper has only a small circulation itself, but the media picked
up the story of the perhaps unjustly accused teenager and his loyal friend,
the plucky high school journalist who had put himself on the line for the
sake of that friendship. The insinuation that a public official might have
mob ties added spice to the mix.

Despite not so subtle pressure, Principal Degnan stood up for freedom of
the press and academic freedom and told all those clamoring for censorship
to go to hell. Good for him. I was too harsh on the man earlier.

Zach's suggestion for Sprout was more audacious still. He told him to act
as a decoy to draw trackers off the scent. Sprout dyed his hair auburn then
went on a series of botanizing safaris across three counties. No one but
ourselves knew about my camouflage. Everyone was looking for an
auburn-haired boy very much Sprout's size, nicely tanned, running around
stark naked in the nature preserves. Sprout gave them himself to track
down, changing his hair color with a temporary dye then washing it out when
he wanted to resume his proper identity.

In his role as decoy fugitive Sprout made a show of avoiding contact with
other people in the woods, with the excuse that they would only trample his
botanical specimens. But he also made sure to be seen in circumstance that
would not anyone get close to him.  As to his change of hair color back and
forth, no ulterior motive there. It was for the sake of fashion and maybe
just a sign of solidarity with his good friend Squirrel, unjustly accused
to a crime of which he was not only innocent but was at worst only a
bystander in an accident. The cops arrested Sprout for obstruction of
justice twice but soon let him go.

Mr. Hansen was not in criminal practice, but he took Sprout on as a client
for the fee of one dollar. He pointed out to the authorities that coloring
one's hair was no crime nor even something unusual for a cute gay boy like
his client, William Pierpoint Tagliaferro IV, aka Sprout. What could be
more reasonable for a boy who was habitually naked than to change the color
of his hair as a fashion statement. It was not like he could change his
clothes, now could he?

While this argument fooled no one, it was also unassailable. The cops were
stymied. In the end, my friends decided to wait for my play, ready to lend
what support they could. Saragossa never struck at any of them.

Sargossa did send four men to Pierre Lyautey to make him tell them what he
knew about my whereabouts and to kill him afterwards. My foster father did
not talk to them except maybe to curse in Cajun French. Though he died in
the shootout, he took two thugs out with his trusty varmint gun. He was a
tough old bird alright. And he died for my sake.

What happened next was just as that wily old Cajun had predicted. Thirty
men with shotguns and AK-47s drove all the way from Cajun country. In small
groups, and by different routes the avengers converged on Casa Saragossa,
surrounded the house, made sure the old man was inside with his bodyguards
and that the servants had left for the day, and moved in, guns
blazing. They killed everyone one and everything including the guard dogs,
but spared mama cat and her kittens. That was their way. That was their
law. Cajun law.

The best part is that they got away clean. The cops have little hope of
tracking them down. Their efforts to solve the death of a mobster
universally hated and feared have been perfunctory at best. Their attitude
is Good Riddance to Bad Company.

The prosecutor no longer had a reason to pursue a case against me and
dropped all charges. That cut the ground out from under the legal bounty
hunters too. Anyone who grabbed me now would be committing a kidnap. With
the old man dead, there was no one to pay off the murder contract. In his
eagerness to get me, Saragossa had not put the bounty into escrow, where he
might have had his revenge even from the grave.

I returned to classes at good old Andrew Jackson High and quickly made up
for my absence. Most of my time on the lam had been over the summer break
anyway.

Meanwhile I am in the process of telling my story both in print and in a
movie. Despite my publisher's preferences for an audio tape debriefing with
his ghost writer, I started by writing an account in my own words as best I
remember them. I think better when I write and can reflect and go back and
rewrite as needed.

As for the movie, we are waiting for permission to film in the nature
preserves on the actual sites of my adventure. With so little dialog and so
hard a role to cast, I will portray myself though I will have to join the
Screen Actors Guild. Not many actors fit my physical profile, have my
epicene look, and can convincingly portray seventeen on the screen or care
for a role that has them stark naked for 95 percent of their screen time. I
had it written into the contract that there would be no bowdlerization. I
would be naked on screen just as I had been naked in reality, starting with
the attempted rape in my backyard. No cute camera angles either just to
avoid the full monty.

Already seventeen and a half, I was cut loose by the state foster care
agency, becoming an emancipated minor. Although I was without a steady
income. I had the money Pierre Lyautey had left me, life insurance, the
balance in his 401k style retirement fund, and the cash value of his unused
vacation time. That would tide me over for a good while. But what to do
afterwards. Ideally I should hang on to what I had as a nest egg and
emergency fund, not just fritter it away on day to day expenses.

That was when Sprout and his pops. Mr Sprout, as I came to call him
jocularly, stepped forward and offered me a place in their home and a job
as their house boy. Their cleaning lady had quit recently, upset with two
teenagers, Sprout and Zach, running around naked all the time. Also, both
Sprouts were tired of takeout and microwave cuisine, and their own efforts
in the kitchen were pitiful. I was a pretty fair cook by that time, having
cooked for M. Lyautey for three years, though just a cook, as I reminded
them, not a chef, so they should not expect cordon bleu meals. As to
quarters, there was a disused room in back with a half shower which would
serve admirably.

For walking around money, Mr. Tagliaferro put me on the same allowance he
gave his own son, explaining that blood ties did not change his estimate of
how much a seventeen year old boy living at home ought to have at his
disposal. I was deeply moved by his generosity.

Also I am moving ahead with my YouTube project. We are all in it together,
and what a cast of characters it is: Squirrel, Sprout, Squirt, and Zach as
the "talent" and Paul Hansen as artistic director. It is early days yet,
but we have high hopes.

Not long ago I had a visit from one of Pierre Lyautey's cousins, a certain
Louis Lyautey. Forty years old with a lined face that suggested several
more decades of life experience, he told me that the old man had told the
clan elders that he considered me to be the son he never had. He asked that
if anything happened to him, the clan should adopt me as a member, letting
me take his name.

I am afraid my reaction wasn't very manly. I burst into tears and relived
the sorrow of my loss. Louis comforted me till I regained my
composure. Louis knew I had studied French and taught me a phrase in Cajun
French that would identify me as to fellow Cajuns as a member of the
clan. I thereby reconciled myself to the death of that good man, Pierre
Lyautey, realizing how lucky I had been when the old Cajun had come into my
life and made me a much better person than I had been before.

First chance I had, I changed my legal name to Brandon O'Rourke de
Lyautey. Though all my friends still call me Squirrel.

				Author's Note

If you have enjoyed this story and others like it, I hope you will consider
making a donation to the Nifty Archive. It is so easy. They take credit
cards.

This tale was inspired by my recent story 'Squirt' and is the third in an
emerging series set in and around a fictitious Andrew Jackson High School
in South Florida. All the stories will have similar titles.

Meanwhile, good news for readers disappointed at how few stories I have
published of late. Folks, help is on the way. I am writing my first
novel-length story, which is already at 110 thousand words.  Mostly I
publish novelettes of 10 -15 thousand words.

The novel is in the genre called heroic fantasy. Like so many stories in
that genre it is set on an imaginary world in an imaginary universe where
wizards and druids and others work real magic, a world populated by several
sentient races including humans, elves, giants, and dwarves. Unlike most
such worlds, this one has an awful lot of cute young guys running around in
the skimpiest of costumes or even nothing at all, and taking every
opportunity to hop into bed with each other and to switch partners.

Sorry, no dragons, but I bet you never read a tale that featured a naked
teenage druid leading the charge of a herd of brontotheres against an army
of Amazons. What is a brontothere? Look it up, but not in the
dictionary. Try the Wikipedia instead.

Look for publication of my very first novel this summer on most of these
same stations.

Readers who like this story might want to try my two series 'Daphne Boy'
and 'Naked Prey' in the Gay/Historical section of the Archive or my 'Jungle
Boy' series of Hollywood tales, posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section.
Also available are my older 'Track and Field' stories in Gay/College and my
'Mer-Boy' stories in Gay/Beginnings. For links to my stories, look on the
list of Prolific Authors on the Archive.

Comments and feedback welcome.