The Front Runner

by Patricia Nell Warren

  The anti-gay element in track hated Vince more than Billy, because of his impudence and his studhorse pa­rading. After the Millrose, everybody must have de­cided that Vince had to go.

  At any rate, about two weeks later, Vince was barred from all further amateur competition by the AAU, who had just conveniently discovered that he had taken several under-the-table payments from pro­moters in the season before he came to me. They had the canceled checks.

  Vince was furious, then crushed.

  "Everybody was taking them," he said. "I know who, and how much. If I go, they all go with me." And he was planning on talking to the press. I shared to the full his heartbreak at this injustice. But I finally managed to talk him out of naming other names, point­ing out that it didn't make things any better to have a hundred athletes suffer instead of one.

  Vince's tragedy stirred up once again the controversy about the sham basis on which amateur sports are con­ducted in the U.S. But all the soul-searching didn't help Vince. His Olympic hopes were dead. He cried bitterly, and there was nothing Billy or I could do to comfort him.

  A week later he had picked himself up and signed a pro contract with the International Track Association, for $70,000, and would be going on his first tour when school was over. But the sorrow stayed, turning into bitterness.

  Now they had shot two of my three young birds out of the sky.

  I worried about Billy more than ever. It had gotten so I was a chronic worrier. At the very least I was going to come out of this with a nervous breakdown, I joked to myself. At the most, I was going to have a gold-medal runner and a breakdown.

  12

  Early in April, Billy took a good two-week rest. It would be the last rest he'd get till after the Olympics —if he made the team. I cut him down to a couple miles' gentle running every day, and encouraged him to eat a lot and gain a few pounds.

  This rest would be the cornerstone of his Olympic buildup. By the Trials in mid-July, he would be sharp enough to make the team. The six weeks following the Trials would have him peaking by the Games. Billy could stay at a peak for about four weeks, racing flat out every three or four days, so I was hoping that, after Montreal, we could fly to Europe for some post-Olympic meets.

  By now, I had more or less taught Billy how to rest. He muttered a little, but did his daily two miles obedi­ently.

  We both quailed at the thought of the summer ahead. If he made the team, officially he would not be my runner any more, till after the Games. He would be taken away to the Olympic training camp. From mid-July till after the Games, we would be seeing little of each other.

  We were still in our impasse about how to live. I Saw our lives being frittered away, day by day.

  One weekend during that April rest, we managed to have one of our few times alone together. My mem­ories of that weekend are powerful and poignant, and not totally happy.

  Steve Goodnight had a house out on Fire Island. Not in one of the famous little gay communities, as one would expect, like Cherry Grove. He had settled in Ocean Ridge, a little town farther east along the shore. "I couldn't ever get any writing done in the Grove," he had told me. "People drop in. Sexual distractions. The hell with it."

  That weekend he invited Billy and me, Jacques and Vince, and John and Delphine out to the house. He and a strange new friend of his met us on the dock in Patchogue on Friday evening, and we took the last ferry across to the island. This early in the season we were the only people on it.

  We sat on the upper deck, letting the cool wind blow our hair, watching the sun set over the Great South Bay.

  "I haven't been out here since my hustling days," I said.

  "You're not missing much," said Steve. "It's getting to be like Coney Island."

  Billy was smiling at me. "I'll bet you've been to some parties out here."

  I grinned. "I've seen some things, all right." I put my arm across Billy's shoulders, since our group was alone on the deck.

  It was always good to see Steve. He hadn't changed much, though he was forty-three now. His straight brown hair was thinning rapidly, and his good En­glish face looked a little worn. He was working on a new novel and also on some gay pornography because, he said, he needed money.

  The ferry docked. We loaded the suitcases and the boxes of groceries and the cat-carrier containing Steve's cat onto a couple of the rusted red kiddy-wagons that are Fire Island's only private transporta­tion, and started off along the boardwalk.

  We felt uncommonly conspicuous. Since it was early in the year, most houses were still closed up. Only a few windows showed the warm gaslights. We had a few strained laughs about being a little advance unit in this straight town.

  Steve's house was a rambling shingled affair with a lookout tower and a lot of windows and a sundeck all around it. It sat right up on the dunes overlooking the ocean, with the beach grass blowing all around it. I figured the house must have cost Steve $70,000.

  It was a warm clear spring night. Steve let the cat out. We turned on the gas lights, unpacked the gro­ceries, cooked a fast dinner and went straight to bed. Each couple had their own bedroom.

  Ours was airy, with a double pine bed and grass rugs and big windows. Billy and I undressed by can­dlelight, and the soft flame made a flickering tender light over our bodies. We slipped into the clean sheets and made love. The window was open to the sea, and we lay listening to the surf.

  "We're insane," I said softly, "not to live like this all the time."

  "Yeah, two days is really going to spoil us."

  The next day we all got up late. Billy and I ran our two miles. Jacques ran his slow seven. Vince ran a hard ten.

  After breakfast we lay around on the sundeck tenta­tively taking the spring sunshine on our pale skins. Billy spread a blanket on the deck and did his yoga and breathing exercises, tying his supple body into con­tortions. We played some volleyball over a weathered drooping net down on the beach. Steve's huge black tomcat stalked through the dune grass, and we had a few jokes about whether he was a straight cat or a gay cat.

  But the atmosphere among the others was strangely subdued and unhappy. Billy and I found it affecting our contentment.

  To begin with, we were all disturbed by Steve's new friend.

  He was a sixteen-year-old boy, mute, withdrawn, zombie-like. He had a tangled mane of pale, flaxen curls that hung clear to his shoulderblades. His thin waxen face had an unearthly beauty. His sapphire-blue eyes were expressionless. He followed Steve around like a dog.

  As we sat on the sundeck, Steve told us his story. "Here I wrote that book about the Angel Gabriel, and then I met him. I don't even know his name. All I know is, he was a runaway, and he was a chicken ever since he was twelve. The pimp specialized in the S/M trade. Whenever he didn't have the kid out on tricks, he kept him tied up in his apartment. I heard about him from a friend. He was at this party, and they had the kid there, and they were gang-raping him and whipping him and burning him with cigarettes. I couldn't get this out of my mind. So I contacted the pimp and pretended to arrange for a trick. When I got the kid in my house, I wouldn't give him back. I told the pimp if he didn't get off my neck, I'd turn him in. The pimp had Mafia connections, and next thing I know, they're threatening to shotgun me. So I had to buy the boy from him. They said he was getting too old anyway. I paid them $10,000, which was almost the entire advance from the new novel."

  Steve told this story right in front of the boy. He was sitting there on the blanket beside Steve in his swimming trunks, sniffling and staring vacantly, the wind playing with his hair. It was obvious that he was in another world.

  We looked at him, horrified. He might have had a good body, but it was very emaciated. He was covered with whip and burn scars.

  Steve had a hairbrush, and he was brushing the boy's hair gently. He teased out the tangles until the whole beautiful mass spread silkily across his thin back. But if he caressed the hair too much, the boy would absentmindedly pull his head away.

  "He won't let
me make love to him," said Steve mournfully. "He just gets hysterical. And he's a junkie on top of it. I tried to get him onto methadone, but no way. When he's down, he remembers everything, and he just cries and gets hysterical. I finally realized that smack is the humane thing for him. So I get it for him. I just have to be careful that he doesn't OD."

  Billy's eyes were fixed on the boy, and he shook his head slowly. His eyes glassed over with tears, and he looked down. Experienced as he was, Billy had had little taste of the brutal side of gay life.

  "My great dream," said Steve softly, "is that he'll speak to me. I'm reduced to that."

  Sure enough, as we sat talking of the Olympics and track politics, the Angel Gabriel got restless and shaky. Finally he was lying face down on the blanket, crying soundlessly, his buttocks squeezed tightly together as if trying to defend himself. We all fell silent, too de­pressed for words.

  Steve went in the house and came back out with a cut of "heroin and the works. The Angel Gabriel sat up shakily, his eyes fixed on the white powder as Steve expertly melted it down in the metal spoon over the flame and filled the hypodermic.

  "You use shit, Steve?" Billy asked hoarsely.

  "No," said Steve. "I'll stick to speed."

  Gently as a nurse, he gave the hypo to the boy. The Angel's eyes were intent as an animal's now. Very businesslike, he hunted for a usable vein in his thin thigh, working the needle around in his flesh. Shortly he had his rush coming. He lay back down, relaxed, smiling a little at the sky. The sky was clouding over, and Steve threw another blanket over him.

  The sight of the Angel Gabriel made us all think of our own problems, and of that emotional death that always threatened us.

  John Sive talked to me for hours that weekend, pour­ing out his heart about the anxieties of gay old age. Delphine was after him to marry him, but John was past even temporary relationships. "What I need," he said, "is something to make me forget about sex en­tirely, for good, or I'm going to end up making a fool out of myself."

  Delphine spent much of his time that weekend sitting by the window looking out at the sea, and talking to himself in French.

  Vince talked to us a lot that weekend too. I had be­come deeply fond of Vince, and it alarmed me to see how bitter and sad he'd become. Pro track was not working out for him. He said that running an exhibi­tion mile alone against the pacing lights just wasn't the same. The promoters were using him as a sideshow. Step right in, folks, see the real live homo miler with the tattoos.

  For obvious reasons, he wasn't getting the fat prod­uct endorsements that the other top pro runners got. "And I've got this film offer," he said. "But I've seen the script, and my god, it's just one of these slick stereotype Hollywood jobs about gays. And I'm not starving, so I said no. I don't need being exploited any more than necessary..."

  And now, on top of this, it looked like Vince and Jacques were breaking up. I had always assumed that Vince would be the cruel one when the end came.

  But the first night, Billy and I heard him arguing with Jacques in the next bedroom, through the thin paneled wall.

  "You seduced me," said Jacques. "You were in such a big hurry. If you'd just let me find my way, maybe I wouldn't be paying a psychiatrist seventy-five dollars a week."

  "Seduced you!" Vince's voice was breaking, incred­ulous. "You were moping around Eugene just dying for me to feel you up."

  "What you did was, you played on all my insecuri­ties," said Jacques. "You're a really insidious person. You do that with everybody. You're just an operator."

  They went on and on, Jacques cutting and Vince bleeding. Finally we heard Vince crying. Billy and I looked at each other in the dark, and closed our eyes in sorrow and shame at having overheard.

  How long would Billy and I last? We had already had several quarrels. Each time, we were never sure we would make up until we'd actually done it.

  We tried hard to have a good time that weekend. I remember the tapping of Steve's typewriter echoing down the winding ladder stairway from the tower. I re­member all of us cooking dinner together, and the drinking members of the party getting a little wrecked on Scotch and wine. We roasted a huge standing rib roast and Idaho potatoes. Billy made a bizarre salad.

  That Saturday night, a huge spring storm was blow­ing in, and the house shuddered as the wind hit it. The noise of the surf deepened to a bellow. After the dishes were washed, Billy and I pulled on our jackets and went out for a walk on the dark beach.

  We walked slowly along the sand, arms around each other, barefoot. The wind whipped Billy's bellbottoms around his ankles. His hair blew wildly and stung my cheek. In the dark, all we could see was the white rumbling surf, and the few lonely lights of the other houses.

  "I can't get Stevie's friend out of my mind," said Billy. "He messes up my dharma."

  "Mine too," I said.

  "You whipped people."

  "I whipped grown men who paid me $200 to do it," I said. "I never tortured any children."

  "Just looking at him, I think—I feel almost afraid, being happy with you. It could be taken away from us tomorrow."

  I stopped and turned him to face me. "What would you do if I died?" I asked.

  We were standing close together. I reached up gently and held the lapels on his leather jacket, and he clasped my wrists. I searched his face with my eyes. He looked so fine and so strange there in the dark, with the wind blowing his hair half across his face.

  "Jesus, I don't know," he said in a low voice. "I haven't wanted to think about that."

  "I hope we're lucky enough to die together," I said. "Like in an airplane crash or something."

  "If you die first, do you want me to kill myself?" he asked.

  I shook my head. "Suicide is a sin against God."

  "I'll kill myself if you want me to," he said.

  A black shock went through me. I could see him cutting his wrists or putting a pistol barrel in his mouth. I kept shaking my head, and found that I was trembling.

  "Look, let's face it," he said. "Someday we're both going to die. Probably separately, probably you first. We have to have peace in our minds about that. That's what Buddha taught. There's just no way you're not going to lose the thing you love most. Peace is what sets you free from death."

  "Do you feel you have that peace? I certainly don't."

  He shook his head now. "I have a very big dread about that. Do you—" He hesitated. "Do you ever think that something might happen to one of us soon?"

  "What do you mean?" My heart was beating wildly.

  "People hate you more because you're the older one. They see you as having corrupted me. I'm always scared to death that someone might try to get you. Send you a bomb in the mail or something. Please be care­ful."

  "But you're the one out there in plain sight. You're the one running."

  He smiled a little. "We're both out there in front. And they always try to kill the front-runner."

  We had to stop this depressing conversation. We walked on.

  "Actually, we're going to be reborn," said Billy, "so why are we stewing? I wonder where our karmas will take us next. Are we going to be straight? Women?"

  I was relieved at the opportunity to smile. "You mean you want to be reborn as a gay?" I shook him a little.

  He laughed, putting his arms around me. "Sure. As long as it's not as Steve's friend. Maybe I'll be reborn as your coach next time. Boy, have I got plans for you, Mr. Brown. You're gonna run 57-second quarters on your hands and knees."

  The first raindrops were wetting our faces. He kissed me the way he had that first time in Song of the Loon.

  I lost count of the times we made love that week­end. We were laying up treasures for the lonely months ahead.

  That night we slept with the wind shaking the house and rain lashing the windows. Spending an entire night together was still such a luxury. We went to sleep pressed tightly together, lying on our sides, Billy fitted into the curve of my body, his back against my chest, my arms around him.
He was certainly not passive in our relationship, but I definitely had a fierce protec-tivist feeling. Even in sleep I had to shield him from the fury.

  The next morning, we woke before the others. It was still storming heavily, but the rain and wind were heady and warm. We pulled on T-shirts and bathing trunks, and went out.

  The long beach was deserted, all footprints washed away by the rain. A lot of drift lumber and seaweed was washed in. Huge breakers were rumbling in from far out. When they broke, they made incredible geyser-bursts of foam.

  We ran east along the shore, our bodies streaming with the sweet rain. Patches of fog drifted over us. We were half-blinded by the rain blowing in our faces. Sometimes the wind hit us so hard that we staggered. But we kept pushing along, laughing.

  Finally we were two miles up the shore. There were no houses here. All along the lonely dunes, the grass blew flat in the wind, and glittered in the rain.

  We stopped there and Billy circled back to me. His curls were plastered to his head and neck, and his wet glasses blurred his eyes. He was laughing, and the rain was running down his thighs. I could see every bone and muscle in his torso through his wet T-shirt. He caught me by the shoulder, and I grasped his hips and drew him against me.

  "You're the sexiest drowned rat I ever saw," I said.

  We kissed with the clean rain lashing us, and our mouths tasted like rain. I peeled his trunks down around his thighs.

  Billy started laughing. "Do you think there are pho­tographers skulking around behind the dunes over there?"

  "Listen," I said, "even if they get pictures in all this rain, where are they going to sell them? Ladies' Home Journal?"

  We put our clothes on the wet sand and lay on them, so we wouldn't get too gritty. His supple body was bent double under me, and after the cool rain, the heat of his entrails was a shock. On my hands and knees I cradled him under me. He was impaled, but safe there—I took the slashing rain on my back. Pressed hard into the curls between his buttocks, I looked down into his face. His eyes were shut against the rain. The tendons in his neck stood up whitely, and sand stuck to his hair as he rolled his head back and forth in a puddle. I wanted him to feel that hot gush clear up under his heart. The noise of the waves deafened us—I couldn't hear him moaning.