Charlie was a baboon who lived in a tribe not far from a farmhouse in Southern Africa in days of my youth. That was leopard country, too, and the big cats liked nothing better than a tasty baboon for brunch.

Charlie was a gay baboon. We figured that out when he never paired off with a female on the kopje (rock hill) where they lived in contentment as a large family group. The baboons posted sentinels on the ramparts of the rock ledges to hoot warnings upon sighting a leopard or other predator that might be headed their way.

Charlie was often seen sitting in silent communion with a lonely sentinel, his arm draped over the male soldier's back, deftly picking mites from the sentinel's genitalia. What a nice gesture from one "man" to another, a generous de-crabbing. The other "guys" never seemed to mind Charlie poking around down there, and one of my friends swore he caught Charlie stroking a sentinel's hard-on with nary a protest from his heart's desire.

It was high season for leopards that year for some reason. We lived near a place called Leopard Rock, and it seemed the Rock had a lot of tourists because big cats were seen crossing roads and lawns in moonlight in greater numbers than ever before. Probably gone south for vacation.

More leopards inevitably meant less baboons, and poor little baboon body parts were found scattered here and there about the landscape, dragged far from their kopje home. I loved the baboons. I took a gorgeous portrait of a female named Lady Liz with her darling baby and kept it with me for years. I still have it in storage somewhere.

Anyway, the stunning decrease in the baboon population was so sad that most of us around the district cried. I remember a big bruiser of a guy, in whose Land Rover I was a passenger, screeching to a halt and leaping out with his rifle to take a shot at a leopard we saw dragging a still-living baboon across the road. The leopard dropped the creature and fled, but before doing so, we saw it crack the baboon against a stony wall and kill it, just for the hell of it, I guess. Quite a sight, that big old burly guy weeping into his silver beard with our lifeless monkey cousin hanging limp in his arms.

But about Sweet Charlie, it seems that nature took over when the leopards went away at the end of the season, and every female in the decimated tribe came into heat damn near at the same time on the same day. All the "girls" got kittenish and some even came up on the back porch to shake their little wet behinds at us as if to say, "How's about it, cousin, can you handle a babe like me?" Drove the dogs nuts, but they were farm dogs (three Rhodesian ridgebacks) who grew up in baboon country and knew better than to take them on. Baboons have near-human hands and put up a vicious, no-rules, eye-gouging, throat-ripping fight when under siege from a relatively less naturally armed canine.

One evening, before the sun went down, here came my pal Tickey (a small African bearing the name of the at-that-time smallest South African coin, equal to three pennies).

"You got to come see!" he called. "You got to come see!"

So it was that I came to stand among my friends and watch our Sweet Charlie become a legend in his own time. The females of the tribe were all bent over in a row, widespread and ready for love. Along came every remaining male to sock it to 'em in a daisy chain. First to go was the chief baboon, Old Snarly Face, with as glorious a set of whiting whiskers as I ever saw, his blood-red dick at the ready, plunging it into every lady of his court and, from the sight and sound of it, getting off in each one.

In the order of their rank in the community, came his lieutenants and underlings behind him, as prepared and as potent as he. The ladies must have had a lovely time. It was all very interesting, of course, but the best was yet to come.

That was Charlie, bent over at the end of the row, his red rear shining in the sun, raised high in the service of his country and his king. Finished with the last of the ladies in line, the grizzled old chief paid no attention to the sudden change in sex and had at Charlie with as much gusto as at any female in the moments before. The lieutenants and underlings followed suit.

I decided then that being gay is as natural as being straight. When Mother Nature decreed group sex as a means of repopulating the tribe, she made sure that even the non-breeder shared in the joy.

I know, because I saw the grin on Charlie's face!