The Front Runner

by Patricia Nell Warren

  About 3:30, I decided that the only thing to do was put in a really long run. So I pulled on my running clothes and shoes and went out. It was still dark, but light was coming in the east and the first birds were already singing in the dark woods. It was the kind of spring morning that might have delighted me, but I found the bird songs sad and oppressive.

  I ran for three hours, and covered about twenty-five miles. The run put me into the necessary trance, and emptied my mind. But the last six miles, I was nearly falling apart. My legs were hurting and dead. When I got back to the campus, I was exhausted, sick, shaky and more jumpy than ever. I was a fine one to criticize Billy—I was now physically over the edge too.

  That afternoon I had the yoga class for the men's and women's teams. As usual, when the weather was warm, we had it on the grassy infield of the track.

  Billy hadn't inspired this class—we'd started it the year before, when we noticed a few runners elsewhere adapting yoga into stretching exercises. Flexibility is crucial in running, especially for avoiding injury. My kids and I had been happy with the class—I was making them supple, and they could imagine themselves as Siddarthas in sweatsuits.

  So I was walking up and down before the rows of kids. The girls were on the left, in their red gymsuits, and the boys were on the right, in their blues. Neat rows of supple young bodies, doing this yogic con­tortion, then that, at my order.

  "Semi-plow," I said. They all bent slowly backward from a kneeling position and touched their heads to the grass.

  All but Billy Sive. He was in the lotus position, in the second row of the male team. He was sitting a little slumped, slowly picking early dandelions out of the grass, and his face looked strangely vacant. Sure, I told myself, you refused him sexually and you hu­miliated him. He probably hates you now.

  But the sight of him letting himself go like that infuriated me. I was exhausted and edgy, and I lost my temper completely.

  "Billy Sive!" I barked.

  He looked slowly up at me.

  "Semi-plow, on the double!" I said.

  He dropped his eyes and went on pulling dande­lions, making a little bouquet. He put the bouquet to his mouth.

  I walked between the lines. I never showed my three top runners any favoritism before the others, boy or girl, and this was going to be one of those moments.

  "Billy Sive," I said, between my teeth, vibrating with anger. I was furious at him for the mess he was making of my peaceful life.

  Instead of doing the semi-plow, he got up slowly and looked me right in the eye, with his candid, vacant gaze. His lips were yellow with pollen.

  All the kids lost their meditative look, and their eyes moved to us. They waited, kneeling.

  "You're the one who wants to go to Montreal," I said.

  He dropped the dandelions, turned and walked off. There was something in his manner of the battle-shocked soldier. In my anger, I decided that a little military stuff would bring him around.

  I followed him away from the row of kids. "Billy," I barked.

  He turned. I slapped him hard across the face, being careful not to hit his glasses. It was a slap like that famous one Patton gave a soldier in the hospital, that was meant only to be therapeutic. Even Zen Buddhists use the slap. They say it causes "psychic shock," which opens the mind to revelation.

  The crack of my hand against his face sounded like a shot across the quiet track. The kids all gasped.

  Billy's face went white and twisted with anger. The next thing I knew, he had swung his arm and slapped me right back. It was a slap in the highest tradition of the U.S. armed forces, and of the Zen masters. I had been making him do weight training and he was now nearly as strong as I was.

  My face and nose stung. Livid, I seized his arms and he seized me by the front of my jacket. His eyes were about six inches from mine, blazing with fury.

  "You big, stupid Marine," he cried in a strange broken voice.

  He twisted loose from me and walked off. Then he broke into a jog and went off across the wide lawn.

  I turned back to the kids, my face hot with anger and pain. By the expression in their eyes, I could see that I had plummeted in their estimation. Vince Matti was on his feet now, raging. By the expression in Vince's eyes, I could see he was going to kill me.

  "What's the matter with Billy?" asked one of the girls piteously.

  "He's getting his period," said one of the straights on the boys' team.

  Everybody laughed. Instantly Vince Matti started toward his straight teammate to kill him. By the time I got the two of them apart, Billy had disappeared around the corner of the athletic building.

  When the class broke up, Vince hung back, glaring at me. "Look, Mr. Brown," he said, "there's something you ought to know."

  "Since when is it your business?" I said.

  "Billy is acting so crazy because he's in love with you."

  I felt that blow in my stomach, and a roaring in my ears.

  "He knows what my rule is," I managed to say.

  "It's that you're so harsh with him," said Vince, hardly able to control himself. "At first, you were, like, kind to him sometimes. But now he's convinced that you've got some kind of grudge against him. He knows it's hopeless to want a relationship with you, man, but if you aren't a little more human with him, you're gonna lose him off the team."

  I had to turn away. I wondered if Billy had told him of the scene in the locker room yesterday.

  "Did he ask you to talk to me?" I said hoarsely.

  "Christ, no. He'd kill me if he knew. His father knows too, and Billy's forbidden him to say anything."

  I went through the rest of the day in a daze. I was shaking with exhaustion and emotion. The whole cam­pus was talking about the way we'd hit each other in yoga class. Everybody seemed to agree that Coach Brown was a monster. All I could think was: He loves me. How had he managed to hide it so well?

  That evening I went to his dorm. All three of them were sitting silently in his room. Jacques was sitting in the middle of Billy's unmade bed, playing a mournful tune on his recorder. Vince was sitting on the end of the bed, his elbows on his knees. Billy was sitting hunched at his desk in front of his typewriter.

  When I appeared in the door, Vince and Jacques looked at me, then got up and walked out past me without saying a word.

  I closed the door to shut out all the talking, laughing and rock music that echoed up and down the hall. I sat down on the end of his bed by the desk, where Vince had sat, and looked at him. His research papers were spread out everywhere, books, notes in his back­hand script—he had been trying to work. He sat there with quiet wounded dignity, staring at the typewriter, one hand on the keys. The light of his study lamp picked out the gold in his curls and the gold rims on his glasses. He loves me.

  It occurred to me, looking at his emotionless pro­file, that I had better straighten this out to both our satisfactions right now. Without, of course, breaking my rule.

  "Billy, I apologize," I said.

  "Why did you do it in front of the others?" he said, Still not looking at me.

  "It was inexcusable, and you gave me exactly what

  I deserved. I'll apologize to you before the class next time."

  "I keep asking myself," he said, "what I've done to make you so . . .so hostile to me. I know I get you very pissed at me all the time, but somehow that doesn't explain . .."

  "The only way I can explain it," I said awkwardly, "is that I am under some pressures of my own. I've been taking them out on you."

  "Why not on the others too?"

  "Maybe because I expect more of you than the others."

  For the first time he looked at me. His eyes were level, accusing, sad.

  "This has been a lesson to me," I said. "From now on, I'm going to treat you right."

  "You know," he said, unsmiling, "I began to think you hated my guts."

  I shook my head. "No," I said, as softly as I dared. "How could I hate you?"

  Billy's shoulders slum
ped a little. "All right," he said. "I believe you."

  As I got up to leave, I allowed myself the liberty of ruffling his hair—in nothing more than a fatherly fashion. "Get some rest," I said.

  After I left him, Vince and Jacques headed back to his room. I learned later that Billy told them, "so he doesn't hate me. Where does that leave me? He doesn't love me either. What the hell am I going to do? How did I ever get myself into this mess, anyway?"

  7

  We went to Des Moines, to the Drake Relays.

  Vince's knees were hurting him, and the best he could do in the mile was fourth. Jacques won the half-mile. Billy ran poorly, listless and distracted. Con­sidering his condition, the fifth-place 28:35 he turned in in the 10,000 meter was a tremendous effort.

  After the race he was out cold. He had the dry heaves, and didn't recover the way he should have. He complained that his right leg, the one the cramp had hit, was tight and sore. And he had muscle tremors.

  A couple of spectators yelled, "Faggot!" as he walked off the track. Obviously word was finally get­ting around: a little gossip at a meet, a snicker or two at a trackwriters' lunch or an AAU meeting. But Billy was so exhausted that he gave no sign of having heard.

  Billy's father had flown in to see him run, and was worried. "I've never seen him look so bad," he said.

  When the meet ended that Sunday afternoon, we all flew back to New York. I went on up to Prescott with the rest of the team, and Billy stayed in New York with his father. Late the next afternoon, after classes and workouts, I drove down to have dinner with them.

  At the Fifth Avenue Hotel, I found John talking business with a gay activist, George Rayburn, a dark, swarthy and politically vehement guy. Billy was lying in his father's bed, looking as bad as yesterday.

  I sat down on the bed by him and felt his fore­head. He was running a low-grade fever, a typical symptom of overtraining.

  "Did you get any rest?" I said.

  He answered in a low voice, barely moving his lips. "No. I can't sleep at all."

  "I can tell just by your face you've lost weight."

  "I've dropped five pounds."

  He looked strangely apathetic, lying there on his stomach, "the blankets pulled clear up over his shoul­ders, his face half-buried in the pillow. John and George were standing over by the window, each with a whiskey glass in his hand, talking gay politics.

  I sat looking at Billy with a feeling of anguished helplessness. If I wasn't careful, I was going to have a sick runner on my hands. Colds, flu. Or maybe mononucleosis, which a runner takes months or even years to recover from. It occurred to me then that the only way Billy Sive was going to get to Montreal was through my bed. I had to release him from the pressure I was putting on him. As I sat there, my starved body begged me to he down beside him and ease his starved body.

  I put my hand on the back of his neck. He was vibrating with tension, and his skin was burning hot.

  "A little relaxation will help," I said gently. "A good dinner, a movie."

  He shook his head.

  "Come on," I said, putting my hand on the back of his neck again, letting a little of my feelings show in my voice.

  He looked at me guardedly for a moment. I tossed a newspaper onto the bed. "Pick what you want to see."

  He sat up and listlessly flipped till he found the film ads. Then he said, "Song of the Loon is on." After a minute he said, "I love that silly old film. Let's go."

  Billy pulled on jeans and a turtleneck sweater, and we caught a cab downtown.

  The theater was a rundown little place a few blocks east of Washington Square

  . The whole area looked bombed out. The streets were littered with garbage.

  In the small musty lobby, John and Rayburn left us and went up to the balcony. Obviously they wanted to be alone together. That left me with Billy. We sat downstairs, in a side row. Many seats were empty, and the men sat alone or in pairs here and there. The place had that stale smell that tells you it's probably going to be bulldozed for urban renewal. The velvet seat-cushions were ripped, and there were butts and papers underfoot.

  Song of the Loon will never be seen on the "Late Late Show." It is a classic old gay film, very amateurish, very erotic, very hard to forget.

  So Billy and I sat side by side without speaking to each other. Now and then I stole a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting slid down a little, his eyes fixed on the screen. He looked sad and depressed, and had his clenched hands against his mouth. I felt a depression of my own. On the screen, the two lovers were swimming in the lake and looking at each other's nudity, and I was forcibly re­minded of Chris. When they started to make love on the grass, I noticed that Billy looked down. I turned my head and looked at him. He was sitting with eyes shut, his clenched hands pressed against his opened lips, gnawing on his knuckles. He shifted a little in the seat, his thighs apart.

  I reached over and touched his clenched hands. I took them and drew them toward me. He looked at me a little dazedly, his lips still open, as if not be­lieving that I had touched him.

  "I have a lot of apologizing to do to you," I said softly. I was shaking all over. At last I was ready to let go of my self-control. Was there any real reason why I had to live my whole life without having loved a single human being?

  "I've never meant to be cruel," I said. "Maybe you won't understand why I behaved the way I did."

  He was staring at me in disbelief, his lips parted, his eyes glittering with pain in the silvery fight from the screen. A visible shudder of emotion went through his body.

  "Then," he said in that strange broken voice, lowered to a hoarse whisper, "my father was right."

  He pulled his hands away from mine. That was the most terrible single moment of my life. It was all the pain of Penn State telescoped into a single few minutes. I knew I'd lost him. I'd abused him and insulted him. He was a man, with a man's pride. What else could I expect? I thought, I'll walk out of this theater and I'll throw myself on the subway tracks in front of a train.

  He sat staring straight forward at the screen, but unseeingly. His hands were clenched on his thighs. "My father was dead sure you wanted me. He was always taking your side. Even when you hit me! I just about got furious at him." He sat breathing deeply, unevenly, for a few minutes. "How long have you felt this way?"

  I sat bowed and miserable. I was ready to make a total fool of myself to make him stop being angry. "Ever since you came," I said. We were still talking in hoarse whispers.

  He turned and fixed me with those terrible eyes. Now he gave me back the whiplash I'd given him in the locker room. "The things you've put me through . . . I never took from anybody what I've taken from you."

  I closed my eyes. "All I can say is, I hurt myself every time I hurt you. So we're even."

  His eyes narrowed. "What do you want from me? If you're interested in a matinee, forget it."

  I met his eyes and shook my head slowly. I let him see all the feeling that was in me, in my eyes. He saw that feeling, and was still hesitating in anguished disbelief.

  "Harlan," he said. He touched my hand, which was lying clenched on the musty armrest.

  "I'm in love with you," I said. "Do you want it on the dotted line?" I turned my hand up, clenching his so hard that I thought both our fingers were going to crack. We sat there wringing each other's fingers like a couple of uptight high-school students.

  Suddenly, he reached out with his free hand, grasped me by the shoulder. He leaned toward me, drawing me toward him, and he kissed me on the mouth, hard, but only for a few moments. Our hands un­tangled ourselves. He drew away just a little—I could still feel his breath on my lips. My certainty that I'd lost him was still trying to change into joy. I touched his cheek, slid my fingers disbelievingly into his hair. He touched my neck.

  He spoke against my lips in such a low whisper that I barely heard him. "I love you, Harlan."

  We slid our arms around each other, and he kissed me again. The frankness an
d strength of that kiss was devastating. He opened my lips with his own, licking them slowly. His eyes shut, he moved his lips gently back and forth between mine, and then he slipped his tongue into my mouth. We clenched each other as hard as the creaky armrest would permit, and I laved his mouth with my own tongue. His mouth was sweet and clean. We gnawed and bruised each other's lips. He loved the way he ran: hard, deliberate, trance­like.

  Then with a lithe twist of his body, he was over the armrest and into my arms, half-sitting between my thighs, twisted to press against me, his arms around my neck. We held each other with frantic tightness, as if to make up all at once for the five months of pain. We were almost one body just from sheer pressure, and our mouths stayed together in an un­restrained open kiss.

  My hands moved down him slowly, feeling him rather than caressing him, almost as if to make sure he was really there. I felt the long lean back through his sweater, then his narrow waist, a burning bare strip of skin where the sweater was pulled up. He was trying to feel me too, which was more difficult, but finally he got one hand inside my suit jacket, and felt my chest and my side.

  Now and then we looked at each other, as if in disbelief, our eyes black with emotion. I held his head and kissed his face and his eyes, and he kept turning his head to kiss my hands. He precipitated me back to that first time 11 years before, so forceful and tender that he made it all new, except that this time, instead of amyl nitrite, it was love that had me stinging.

  But we didn't do anything more than that. There was a silent agreement that we weren't going to do it in the theater. His hips were clamped firmly between my thighs, but with an unmoving dreamlike pulsing heaviness. We were both trembling with exhaustion, and content to rest against each other, like two drown­ing men who had just hauled themselves up on some floating wreckage.

  Finally I whispered, "When did you fall in love with me, you spoiled brat?"

  "Right away," he said against my cheek. "But I hid it because you were so cold. I thought I was going to lose my marbles."

  I ruffled his hair. We were calming down a little. "You understand the risks, don't you?" I asked.