The Front Runner

by Patricia Nell Warren

  "You like being touched, huh?" I ran my hand up his arm.

  He smiled. "That first time we kissed, and when you started caressing me, that was unbelievable."

  The thunder was rumbling softly nearby. It was a soft, fertile summer storm, and if it hadn't been for the phone call in the afternoon, we could have been peaceful. We walked along the side trail. It was hard to follow now that all the ground plants had sprung up.

  Billy was serious again. "You know, I wish we could do it now—start this baby. Maybe I'm being paranoid. But after what happened this afternoon, you know—something could happen to one of us tomor­row."

  We came to the top of the hill, and looked down the slope that we'd gone down that morning. The mountain laurel was all in bloom. The pink and white bell-like blossoms hung heavy, and the green foliage glistened in the mist. We walked down through it slowly, our shirts getting wet from brushing on the leaves. Finally we were in the little open spot where we had lain on the leaves. It was all grown up now with ferns and wild asters.

  I stood looking at the little waterfall, feeling sad and frightened, and Billy walked around slowly kicking gently at the ferns.

  "Why do we always end up talking about death?" he said. He bent and smelled the mountain laurel blossoms.

  "Look," I said, "why don't we do the following.

  Let's have some semen samples stored in a semen bank. They freeze it. You can thaw it out and use it anytimes"

  He walked back toward me, smiling suddenly. "No kidding."

  "Sure," I said. "That way it'll be there."

  "All right, let's do it," he said. "Like, let's do it tomorrow. That way we'll both be less anxious about it."

  He put his arms around me and we just stood there holding each other, our bodies feeling very warm and good through our wet shirts.

  We got in touch with a very discreet and liberal gynecologist and told him what we wanted to do. He thought it was picturesque, and agreed to help. We made numerous trips to the clinic and masturbated assiduously until we each had a dozen samples in the freezer.

  As if in ironic comment on this, the last weekend in June I got a hate letter from my elder son, Kevin. The letter was the only personal communication I'd had from my family since the divorce.

  He wrote: "We've had to move away because everybody knew who we were. The kids in school all knew my father is a fag. I hope you get what's coming to you."

  On July 2, Vince left us to go to Europe with the pro tour. We were both very worried about him. He and Jacques had broken off completely. He was alone, and morose, and inclined more and more to brood about injustices done to gays in general and himself personally.

  Since our wedding, the track world had been pretty quiet about Billy. No one mentioned the subject much. The athletes themselves continued to be either sup­portive or indifferent to the issue, with just a few of them showing hostility.

  We suspected that the reason for this silence was that the AAU and the USOC were saving their am­munition to use on Billy in the Olympic Trials.

  This suspicion, it turned out, was right.

  15

  With the Olympic Trials, Billy and I said good-bye to our quiet home life at Prescott. The next two months, with its disruptions and its forced separations, we would just have to live through.

  "After the Games," Billy said, "you and I are going to get in bed and stay there for a week."

  With the Olympic Trials, the great hassle moved into fourth gear.

  The Trials are a messy, spectacular mini-Olympics. They are the finest track meet held in the U.S., and are organized by the USOC to select the Olympic teams in each track and field event.

  They are also a slaughter. Any sociologist looking for choice research material on male aggressiveness will find it at the Trials. The aim is to be among the first three finishers in your event; If you're fourth, you're out, no matter how good you'd been all that season. Novices and veterans alike are thrown into the meat grinder. Runners shove and spike each other on the track. A fall, an injury, a foul, running wide, a tenth of a second, a cramp, a hot day, a sleepless night—just one of these little things can rob a runner of four years' sweat, pain and financial sacrifice.

  The U.S. is the only major track power that selects its Olympic team in this brutal way. All the others handpick their teams on the basis of that season's over­all performance. Track people argue about which is the better way. Either way, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes politics that can get just as bloody as the spiking out on the track.

  So, when Billy and I flew out to Los Angeles for the Trials in the first week of July, we knew that people were saying openly that Billy would not make it. The handful of powerful officials and coaches who control U.S. athletics can exert all kinds of subtle pressures.

  "They'll louse him up somehow," one friendly official told me.

  "And besides," everybody was gleefully saying, "Billy just got married, so . . ." Myth still hath it that having sex is not good for a runner, especially before a big meet.

  Another thing to worry about was that Bob Dellinger had been working hard. His own 5,000 and 10,000 meter times had improved to the point where he was within shot of Billy's best times. Like Billy he had been playing it smart. He had not been racing himself to death all season, as so many others do, only to ar­rive at the Trials past their peak. Like Billy, Dellinger had even passed up the AAU national championships in June.

  It would have been cheaper to drive to Los Angeles, But several days' sitting on his hamstrings in the car might have made Billy stiff, so we shot the money on airline tickets. In Los Angeles, we checked into the Costa Clara Hotel near the stadium, where a lot of other runners were staying. We tried hard to keep the press at arm's length. Billy had gotten tired of answer­ing the same questions over and over, so he mimeo­graphed a one-page resume of his nine years in track and silently handed it out.

  The afternoon that we drove to the stadium for the 10,000 heat, it was Billy's first public appearance since our marriage, and we got a shock. A big crowd was waiting there at the entrance. When we got out of the car, we were mobbed and the police had to pry us through.

  Shrieking worshipful girls and quieter worshipful gays begged Billy for autographs, and crowded him so hard he could hardly move a pencil to sign them. Dozens of admirers, both gay and straight, were wear­ing T-shirts that said go billy and be kind to the animal. They all wanted to touch him and hug him. Some of them even wanted my autograph.

  But in the same crowd, there were also people who screamed curses and obscenities at us. Their eyes were blazing with hate, and their faces were twisted. As we struggled through, my face and Billy's were spat in several times. Someone pitched a ripe tomato at Billy and it made a red spatter on his blue warm-ups.

  Inside, Billy turned to look back at the crowd. I was shaken, wondering if it had spoiled his psych for the race. He looked thoughtful, but still calm, and wiped the spit off his face with his sleeve.

  "Well," he said, "now we know how the little black kids felt the first day they walked into the white school."

  Activist distanceman Mike Stella, who had also been caught in the crush and nearly lost his athletic bag, stood there appalled. He was the one who had privately spoken up on Billy's behalf.

  "Christ," said Stella, "you guys ought to have a couple of bodyguards."

  At the nearest water cooler, he helped us wash the tomato stain off Billy's warmups with cold water.

  But the experience seemed to provoke Billy's cold stubbornness, and he ran a good tactical race that day, qualifying for the final. Stella, who also had his eye on the 10,000-5,000 double, qualified too.

  The final was run on July 5. This time we avoided the crowd by sneaking into the stadium through a back entrance. But the shrieking admirers and de­tractors were all through the stands. Outside, a Gay Youth group and a couple of straight youth groups were hawking the go billy T-shirts, and hundreds were wearing them now. A YAF group and the Jesus freaks were selli
ng T-shirts that said stop billy.

  Billy posed for photographers wearing a stop billy T-shirt. "They'll need more than a rag to stop me," he said.

  But I knew he was just a little nervous, and barely keeping his dharma balanced. From what quarter would come the political ploy that would try to keep him off the team?

  As he went to the starting line with the rest of the field, my stomach was tied in knots.

  The tactical problems of this race were complex for Billy, and he was not a genius at flexible tactics. Theoretically he didn't have to run an all-out race— all he had to do was finish third or better. But he had to run fast enough, and smart enough, to stay clear of the others, particularly Dellinger. If they forced the pace and stayed up with him in a group, and if he found himself in this group, he might panic and foul somebody, and be disqualified. If Dellinger fouled him out of the race, the USOC just might not call the foul. Some pretty strange disqualifications take place at the Trials sometimes, but the runners usually accept them. For once I was thankful that Billy was a front-runner—back in the pack, waiting to kick, he would be more exposed to bumping.

  As the runners toed the marks, there were boos and cheers. Through a pair of glasses, I studied Billy's face. It was alert, but expressionless.

  At the gun, the runners surged down the track, and the ten thousand people in the stands sent up a roar that made my hair stand on end. Roman circus. The survival of the fittest. A runner's blood on the track—that was what they wanted.

  I found that my hands were shaking a little as I followed Billy with the glasses. My whole life seemed to hang on those next twenty-seven and a half minutes arid twenty-four laps that the race would take.

  Dellinger made his strategy clear almost from the gun.

  He set a fast opening pace, obviously hoping to burn off Billy's finishing strength. Billy coolly accepted the challenge. The two of them bombed through the first mile in 4:23.7, which was near world-record pace. They pulled rapidly away from Stella and the rest. Billy was running a couple of yards in front, as if teasing Dellinger on. Dellinger pushed him grimly. The rest settled into their own pace, sure that the crazy two would kill themselves before long.

  Dellinger's strategy had me a little worried. Billy always ran a better race when he could set the pace himself and pick it up later on.

  The crowd deafened me, shouting blessings and curses at that distant slender figure. Through the glasses, I could see him close up—his curls lifting, his lips opened, the muscles playing rhythmically in his shoulders and arms, the blue letters prescott on his white jersey. He looked so human, so vulnerable. My lover, out there alone where everybody could stare at him. In my mind, mocking voices whispered, "They're married. What do they do? Do you think they. . . ? Of course, and they also ..."

  It was a hot day, and shortly both Dellinger and Billy were running with sweat. Neither of them was a great hot-weather runner, so that made them even. By lap 14, they were nearly an entire lap ahead of the rest. Then, as I kept noting the lap times, their pace started easing sharply. Billy was still a couple yards ahead, but they both looked as though they were suffering with the heat. I agonized—it was a bad sign to see Billy tiring so soon (later, though, he told me that he had simply felt Dellinger letting go, so he eased up to save himself).

  Far back, the pack saw them easing up, and began chasing them. Something in the way Billy moved told me that he was feeling liver cramps. It's a common affliction in thin distance-runners, and they usually bothered him most in the 10,000.

  Going into lap 23, Billy and Dellinger were still together, with Billy still implacably ahead. But a group of five, led by Mike Stella, was now closing the dis­tance between themselves and the two leaders. They were sixty yards behind, then fifty, then forty. The noise from the stands grew as the gap narrowed.

  "Come on, Bob!" "Hang in there, Billy!" "Go, Mike!"

  Both Dellinger and Billy looked very tired now. I would have to hope that we didn't get such a hot day in Montreal.

  Halfway along the backstretch in lap 23, Billy and Dellinger came up on the runner in last place. As they shifted outside to lap him, Bellinger tried a trick that Billy should have been ready for but wasn't. He threw a burst, cut to the inside and tried to pass Billy there. They bumped and tangled feet. And Billy went down.

  The crowd screamed. A jolt went through me—I could feel in every nerve how Billy hit the tartan track hard, on his hip. Roman circus. My runner lying there, in lane 1. I couldn't even go out and help him.

  Amid the general hysteria, Dellinger ran on alone. Billy lay stunned for a moment, then scrambled up. Dazedly he started to run again. He was limping. I put my hand over my eyes for a moment, then took it away again and looked through the glasses again. It was so pitiful to see him. His glasses had fallen off. He had lost one shoe—Dellinger must have stepped on his foot. His rhythm and his psych were shattered like thin glass. He was moving along jerkily, drunkenly. He was flapping along like a bird with a broken wing.

  All around me, his admirers were groaning and crying. "He's limping!" "I can't look, it's too awful." "That's the end of him." Dellinger's fans were re­joicing, pounding each other on the backs. "Bob's got it sewed up."

  Billy was pulling himself together now. But Mike Stella passed him. Then Fred Martinson passed him. He was running with one foot bare, running blind— he could see the edge of the track only fuzzily, I knew. He had stopped limping and was running evenly. But Wilt Boggs passed him. Now Billy was fifth.

  But coming out of the turn, Billy seemed to realize his situation. He collected himself, and suddenly he was running like a beast. It was one of those moments when I got the cold chills, watching him wring out of his body the last flicker of response. As the five of them tore into the final lap, the entire stadium was on its feet.

  Slowly Billy hauled Boggs down, and in the back-stretch he managed to pass him. Then he was madly chasing down Martinson. Meanwhile, up front, Dellin­ger was totally exhausted and unable to protect big lead. Stella, then Martinson swept past him in the turn. With Dellinger now third, it was him that Billy had to get in front of.

  As they raced down the straight, Billy was just coming up on Dellinger's shoulder. But the fall had taken too much out of him, and he didn't make it. He crossed the line fourth.

  The screaming of the crowd died off. Stella, Mar­tinson and Dellinger came jogging back. Billy stood beyond the finish line, bent over with the heaves. Then he came walking dejectedly back to where I was, limping again. His calf and the top of his foot were bleeding where Dellinger had spiked him. He pulled up the leg of his shorts and displayed an ugly bruise coming on his hip where he'd hit.

  He looked sick with shock and the heat, and I wiped his face and shoulders with a cold rag. His eyes were wet, but he wasn't crying.

  "Well," he said, "they better disqualify Dellinger. He bumped me."

  Announcer Curt Steinem was reeling off the results to the crowd. "First, ladies and gentleman, is Mike Stella, who records a 28:03.9 . . ." Stella, Martinson and Dellinger were announced as the 10,000 team.

  Then, incredibly, Steinem was saying, "Billy Sive is disqualified for fouling."

  Billy's fans erupted with boos.

  Billy looked at me. "I didn't touch him," he burst out. "He bumped me." An official brought him his shoe, and his glasses, which had been stepped on and crushed. He took them without looking.

  "Are you sure?" I asked. I felt crushed. Billy still had a shot left at the 5,000, but who knew if he'd make it, especially now that he was injured? The 10,000 was his best race. And he'd set his heart on the double.

  Mike Stella came over and put his hand on Billy's shoulder. "I'm really sorry, man."

  "That fucking sexual racist bumped me," said Billy.

  My dejection started turning to anger.

  As the afternoon went on, John Sive and I visited the ABC-TV crew. They showed us a playback of the videotape, in slow motion. It was quite clear. Dellinger bumped Billy as he cut to
the inside. They tangled" feet, Dellinger stepping on Billy's shoe, and Billy fell.

  I was livid. I went to the officials and invited them to view the videotape. They were not accustomed to having their decisions questioned, and they refused. "Billy ran into Dellinger," they said.

  The day's events ended, and the press's attention switched to the growing controversy. All the reporters at the meet looked at the videotape. Aldo, Stella and a number of other curious athletes looked at it. They all saw Dellinger fouling Billy.

  "This is incredible," said Stella. "It's the crookedest thing I've ever seen."

  Billy and I made a statement to the press calling for a reversal of the decision and disqualification of Del-linger. This would automatically move Billy onto the team. John Sive and I then informed the meet officials that if they didn't act before the end of the meet, we would get a court order that would make them act.

  "I can promise you," John said, "when a judge sees that film..."

  USOC official Frank Appleby responded with some remarks about John being a "goddamn meddling parent."

  That night, Stella and his fiancee Sue Macintosh had dinner with us. Billy was sore and disgusted, but Stella finally cheered him up and had him laughing. With his musketeer's mustache and his long, black hair in a ponytail and his dancing hard-boiled eyes, Stella was picturesque. He was a tough, casual, raspy-voiced in­dividualist. He could be brusque and sarcastic, but also gentle. The other athletes had learned to respect his integrity, and the AAU to fear his clout.