“ It’s called the Dance of the Ravishers,” Dr. Emory said to me as we watched nine male dancers swirling around two small bonfires.

“I can certainly see why,” I responded with a big grin. Dr. Emory gave me a sour look. I’d been warned about that look. In fact, my partner, Steve, had bet me I wouldn’t last two months out here in the upper Nile area of Sudan with Dr. Emory. I was accustomed to being serviced by Steve at least once a day and enjoyed a monthly group sex bout. Dr. Emory, however, was a real stick in the mud and was known to send young assistants home at the least hint of impropriety. I really didn’t want to go home. Emory had gotten rare permission from the Sudanese to excavate this ancient Egyptian tomb on the banks of the Nile near the Sulb Temple, and work on this dig could make my own reputation.

“What in the world are they doing?” the very serious Clint Winston asked Emory. “Why it looks like. . . .”

“Yes, yes, it’s just what you think. But it’s all symbolic, part of the ritual dance,” Emory responded with pursed lips. Just pretend like you enjoy it. The invitation to the ritual dance was an honor, and we mustn’t upset our welcome. The Mitsagusi are an old and proud tribe in this region.”

And in quite good shape and very inventive, I thought to myself, desires building in me that I’d tried to suppress for the past four weeks. And Mustafa wasn’t helping a bit. My eyes drifted across the cloud of sweet-smelling smoke rising from the bonfires to the delectable Egyptian of the soft brown eyes and long curly eyelashes across the dance circle from me. Mustafa’s spellbound eyes were glued to the dancers.

I could easily be spellbound by them too. They were all strapping young bucks, naked for this dance except for a series of woven belts with strips of leather hanging off them so that when they stood still, it almost looked as if they were clothed. One belt surrounded their chests just below their pecs, and the leather strips from this fell almost to their knees. Similar belts were strapped below their biceps and below their knees. Their penises glittered with a golden greasy substance and all were in rock solid erection. Emory had explained with a red face that this was part of the ritual, that the substance covering their penises was from the fruit of the local agwallah bush, which had both lubrication and endurance properties.

Gotta get me some of that, I was thinking. But mostly I was watching the dancers in awe as, to the accompaniment of insistent drums, they went through several tableaus of simulated sexual acts between the fires with an ever-changing cast. First, Two dancers lay prone on the ground, one on top of the other, belly to back, and they undulated in rhythm, their cocks almost touching. During this scene, the other seven dancers whirled around the fire circles, their leather strips swirling around their bodies, showing off their nakedness. A second set of two dancers replaced the first. One of these dancers was really bulked up. He was wrestling with a thinner dancer, who obviously wasn’t going to win the match. And when he didn’t, the master wrestler brought him up to all fours and simulated fucking him from behind. The number of actors in the center tableau increased to three with the