The Front Runner

by Patricia Nell Warren

  Lindquist pestered Billy every chance he got. While I respected the man as one of the country's leading track coaches, I found it hard to escape the conclusion that he wanted to spoil Billy's chances. Perhaps he thought that if he poured on enough pressure, Billy would lose his Montreal psych. If so, he didn't know Billy. Billy's stubbornness increased in direct ratio to outside pressure.

  A major bone of contention was Billy's program. Lindquist couldn't believe, or said he couldn't, that Billy got such results on only 100-130 miles a week. "You're not working hard enough," he told him, and pressured him to add more mileage. Billy set his jaw and wouldn't add a single yard. Taplinger infuriated Lindquist by saying that he thought I knew what I was doing.

  I was amused to see Billy defending this program that sixteen months ago he had fought me so bitterly about. The Olympic track coaches, really, do very little actual coaching. Mostly they are just putting finishing touches on work that other coaches have done. They are babysitters with blazers and whistles, shep­herding finished athletes to the Games.

  Lindquist hassled Billy about his diet too, and made it hard for him to get the things he needed to eat. This meant that we were always smuggling nuts and fresh cereals into the camp via Mike. Luckily, the team doctor, Tay Parker, another new ally of Billy's, was fascinated by his diet, and kept close check on Billy's condition.

  This meant that Tay, too, had sharp words with Lindquist.

  "He pick at dose salads like a goddamn girl," roared Lindquist.

  "I'd like to see a girl run a 27:43 10,000," snapped Tay.

  Lindquist was always complaining to the USOC that Billy was a constant cause of discord between himself and his staff.

  Billy got into the politics on the team with a great deal of zest. He wanted to repay the honor shown to his cause by supporting others' causes. He was involved in the politicking that got the curfew-breakers rein­stated. When six black sprinters got mad at Lindquist about something, Billy and Mike were the two media­tors that smoothed things over. Lindquist didn't like that either. "Dot boy, he is not only qveer, he is vun big troublemaker."

  The day that the Time cover story hit the news­stands, USOC chairman Frank Appleby called Lind­quist, who yelled at Billy, who told me and John. We called Frank back.

  "Why weren't we informed about this?" asked Frank coldly.

  "It was done before the Trials, so it wasn't any of your affair," I said.

  "Do you realize that the IOC eligibility committee might question us on Billy's eligibility?" he asked.

  "We asked them not to use Billy's name in the advertising," I said, "and they agreed, and it's all in writing. If you want, we'll send you copies of the correspondence."

  "I fail to understand," he went on in the same tone of voice, "why you two are such publicity hounds."

  "We didn't go to them," I said. "They came to us. And I can think of several amateurs who have been on Time covers and never had their eligibility ques­tioned, so ..."

  A couple more days after the Time story appeared, the owner of the motel came around to us. "You're the guy in the story?" he asked. "That kid who comes is the other one?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "I'll give you an hour to pay and check out of here. Don't come back."

  Finally we found a motel in a nearby ski area. The lady owner let us stay even after she found out who we were. She was broad-minded, having seen all kinds of goings-on with the young ski crowd in win­ter.

  Billy and I didn't enjoy that uprooted life. We were back on a schedule eerily like the one we'd had before we married. An hour here, an hour there. He'd call me up from the camp and we'd talk affectionate nothings over the phone. "Mr. Brown," he'd say, "I want to make sure you're not feeling up any cow­boys out there." "Oh," I'd say, "I can't stand the smell of horses." But we comforted ourselves with the pur­pose of it all.

  I passed the empty hours talking gay politics with John and Vince, running, looking at TV, reading a little. We had brought along Billy's typewriter and I even did a little personal writing, putting down some of my thoughts and observations about what I'd lived through. Other athletes came and went, visiting. We always had somebody sitting around with a beer, tell­ing us about his injuries and his hopes.

  With Vince I took long runs on the mountain roads. He was laying off until winter, just wanted to do some easy road work, was going to the Games with us. Vince and I talked a lot as we strode along in the silence. Thos6 weeks were when I really got to know him for the first time. Vince had always been a little guarded with me, following my rebuff his first week at Prescott, and possibly being careful not to provoke Billy's jealousy.

  At the bottom of my mind I always had that ques­tion of whether there had ever been anything between Billy and Vince, and I had never inquired in detail into their years together in college. Why should it matter, anyway? I asked myself. But I recognized a deep fear of finding out something about Billy that didn't fit into my picture of him.

  For his part, Billy was mildly disturbed at the time I was spending with Vince, but I reassured him.

  The rootless days passed. Every day Billy came, seeking that peace that kept him moving. Our bodies were cool and dry in the mountain air. In my old age, I was at last being permitted to make the discovery that lovemaking gets better and better with time, if it's with someone you care for.

  His body seemed to be changing before my eyes, harder, more fined down, the veins more pronounced. My imagination was an X-ray—it could see into him, see all the physiological changes that training forces. In the high altitude, his blood was spawning millions of new red corpuscles—he and the others would go to Montreal with that extra oxygen-carrying capacity. He was doing the second workout now, and the added distance was making his capillaries branch and spread still more finely. Every ounce of weight lost was a better power-weight ratio. The Vitamin E he was taking was building heart strength for those last minutes of the race when he would be committing near-suicide to stay ahead. His lungs were growing their last cubic millimeters of oxygen capacity. To feed this system, he had a huge blood volume, with a far greater pro­portion of plasma than the unconditioned person.

  He was in another of his breakthrough periods, and every day he was faster. The team traveled to two meets for some last sharpening, and Billy broke 27:40 in the 10,000 for the first time, recording a 27:38.2. Over in Europe, Armas Sepponan was equally hot—he came very close to breaking the world mark in the 10,000, which meant that he was still six seconds ahead of Billy. Everybody was conceding that, barring an act of God, the 10,000 and the 5,000 would be a balls-out duel between the two of them. The riskiest kind of front-running against the most explosive kind of kick­ing, with each of them having to calculate their pace down to the last split second. I was thirsting to see it myself.

  But some Americans were less than eager to see this duel.

  After Billy made the team and the Time story ap­peared, the anti-gay activist groups who had opposed the Supreme Court decision started making noises again. They showed their political shrewdness by put­ting heavy pressure on legislators—the U.S. Olympic movement was financed largely by congressional ap­propriation. They demanded that Billy be removed from the team. One group was composed mostly of teachers and educators who had the horrors about homosexuality taking over the schools. Another called itself MAMA (Mothers Active for a Moral Amer­ica). None of them seemed to have faced the fact that gays were not sexual omnivores who went around seducing everybody in sight.

  In reply, John Sive and Billy let it be known that they would instantly file a discrimination lawsuit if he was dropped from the team. The USOC, caught in the middle, just agonized. Lindquist kept complain­ing that Billy was a source of disruption, to the point where it was affecting the team's training and morale.

  This "disruption" consisted almost entirely of the fact that a number of the younger, wilder members of the team like to run around with Billy, Mike and Sue outside of the camp, after they'd put in their work f
or the day.

  I can still see that convertible of Sue's bombing along the road from the ski area, and turning into the parking lot by the motel with a juicy screech of tires. It was full of athletes shrieking with laughter and Very windblown. They were serious about running, vaulting, high hurdles or whatever, but they were also serious about living. The car radio was blaring country music. Almost before the car had stopped, Billy had jumped over the side and hugged me.

  "If you pull a muscle doing that," I said, "you're going to get a two-hundred-dollar whipping."

  Mike got out and pushed Sue up to me. "Harlan, we gotta show you something." He was unbuttoning the sleeve of his paisley shirt and rolling it up. On his right shoulder he had a brand-new tattoo—a Capri­corn.

  I shook my head. But Mike was still grinning. He pulled up the sleeve of Sue's striped short-sleeved jersey. There was a Gemini.

  I couldn't help laughing. They were all doubled up around me with silly snorts and guffaws. Billy was leaning -on the fender choking with laughter. It made me happy to see him like that. He was getting one of his first tastes of his dream: being himself, being ac­cepted, being free.

  "Just to show you gay characters that you don't have a monopoly on the zodiac," said Mike.

  Meanwhile, the USOC was having a go-around with the press about the media rule. The Dick Cavett Show wanted to have Billy for an entire ninety-minute talk, as they often do with really controversial people. The USOC said nothing doing. Both the press and some of the other athletes were criticizing the rule, demand­ing that it be dropped. Finally the Cavett people asked if they could have several athletes on the show, with Billy as one of them, and agreed that sexual sociology would not be discussed. Grudgingly, the USOC agreed to this.

  Billy's eyes sparkled. "To be on the Dick Cavett show and not talk about being gay . . . that's fantastic. Maybe we're making some progress."

  Cavett's people asked for Billy, Mike, girl swimmer Jean Turrentine, Jesse Jones and vaulter Stan English. The five of them flew to New York. I went with Billy, and sat in the green room while they were taping the show.

  Cavett sat with all five of them, and they had a beautiful freewheeling conversation about athletics, young people, life, their hopes at the Games. Cavett's gags, and Mike's and Jones' witticisms, kept break­ing the group and the audience up. Billy was wearing a soft brown plaid suit and had combed his hair and was being his sunny irrepressible best. On the seat near me, I could see his face in living color as the mil­lions of TV viewers would see it. Whenever he spoke, the camera panned up to him. He looked strangely young with his new beard, and responded to Cavett with the warmth and candor that I knew so well.

  "How do you think you're going to do in Montreal, Billy?" Cavett asked.

  "Well, I've never been better," Billy said. "A lot will depend on the opposition. Especially Armas Sepponan. But if he pushes me, and if I can stay ahead of him, I think I can run some pretty amazing times. I think I'll go under 27:30 in the 10,000, maybe under 13:05 in the 5,000. I'm still discovering how much speed I have, so who knows ..."

  "What is your strategy going to be?" Cavett had done his homework—he knew how important that was.

  Billy grinned. "I'm not saying. But everybody knows I always run in front. I have the privilege of making everybody else wonder if I'll try to run away or set a slower pace.

  I had a lump in my throat when the show was over. All those millions of TV viewers who avidly tuned in to hear a verbal sexual circus had gone away dis­appointed. But they had seen him sitting there with the rest, looking so natural and so harmless, and maybe some of them had realized he was not a monster after all.

  After the show, Cavett told me, "I hope we can get him back after the Olympics, and talk turkey. He's a beautiful interview."

  "I'm sure he'll agree," I said. "He's not afraid to talk about it."

  As August ground on and the Olympics were only a scant two weeks away, the rumors that there'd be an attempt to drop Billy from the team grew more insistent. Finally one night Aldo Franconi called me.

  "Be ready," he said.

  "But they know we'll file suit," I said.

  "The buck is being passed up to the IOC," he said. "They're going to question Billy's eligibility."

  My heart sank a little. Being an international body made up of members from all the Olympic countries, the International Olympic Committee was beyond the clout of the Supreme Court decision.

  "But we're clean on eligibility," I said. "We've been so careful. I've killed myself thinking of everything."

  "Well, there's one thing you might have missed," said Aldo. "His job at Prescott."

  "His job? That's ridiculous. He isn't even remotely connected with the athletics department. He teaches sociology."

  "That's just it," said Aldo. "They're going to say that he uses his running as a podium for homosexual politics, and his job is ditto, and therefore his job is cashing in on this."

  "That's the most Machiavellian thing I ever heard."

  "Well, be ready," said Aldo. "Because that's what they're going to ask him."

  Seething inside, I hung up the phone. The Olympic movement allowed competition by Soviet and Euro­pean athletes who openly received financial support from their governments. Armas Sepponan himself received annual stipends from the Finnish government. Yet, out of sexual hysteria, they would question Billy's modest little teaching post.

  Two days later, the accuracy of Aldo's intelligence was proven. The IOC eligibility committee mildly in­quired about the propriety of Billy's job. They re­quested that he appear before an emergency meeting at their headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. He and one other athlete would please explain themselves.

  Billy's first reaction was cold fury.

  "I'll be damned if I'll go in front of them humbly and plead," he said. "I'll call a press conference and tell them off in public."

  Most of the Olympic team reacted angrily too. Only the handful who really disliked Billy were pleased. Mike Stella and the other activists went around raising the athletes' consciousness. They all saw it as just another hassle—if it could happen to Billy, it could happen to them. Mike on the men's team, and sprinter Vera Larris on the women's team, circulated a petition to collect protesting signatures. About seventy-five per­cent of the track team members signed it. Mike, and a number of others, said that if the IOC declared Billy ineligible, they would not go to the Games.

  "I have no intention of participating in an affair where this kind of thing can be done to a person," said Mike to the press.

  The USOC was a little rattled by the team's reac­tion. Clearly they had not expected this. They saw themselves going to Montreal denuded of a number of medal prospects, and with a skeleton team.

  Angrier still were the gays. The activists front in New York City organized a huge protest demonstra­tion in front of Olympic House on Park Avenue. Fi­nally even the Canadian government spoke up—homo­sexuality had been open and legal in Canada for many years.

  But when Billy calmed down, he was ready to go to Lausanne. He, Vince, John, Aldo and I climbed on a jet and we went.

  When we arrived at the modern glass-walled build­ing in Lausanne where the IOC had its headquarters, John and I had already decided we would not actually go into the meeting. It would look too threatening to have the lawyer father and the angry lover stalking in there. A little bit of last-minute diplomacy still might swing things our way. The only one who would go in with Billy would be Aldo.

  We were shown to a reception room. The meeting was already underway, and British miler David Walker was already in there being interrogated. And then, from one of the sofas in the reception room rose a man whom we had not expected to see there at all. It was Armas Sepponan.

  He came toward us with his light, quick step, dressed in a plain baggy black suit and white shirt, looking like the village fireman that he was. He shook hands with all of us.

  "I am reading the news about it in the newspapers," he said. "I am d
eeply distressed."

  "Well," said Billy, "if they won't let me run, I guess I can't run. I'll be joining Vince on the pro tour, maybe." He looked at Vince and smiled a little.

  We sat down.

  "I am distressed for selfish reasons," said Armas. "I am being very honest with you. I am now twenty-eight. It is my second Olympics. I shall probably not go to a third. If you are not in the 5,000 and 10,000, my performance will have no value."

  We sat silent. Billy and Armas sat with their eyes fixed on each other.

  "There is no other man who is testing me as you test me," said Armas. "You understand." Billy nodded. "And I think that you would feel the same way. Or no?"

  "That's right, I would," said Billy.

  Armas smiled. "You and I, we are not running for medals. We are not running for glory. We could run the same race some other place. Or no?"

  "I don't follow you," said Billy.

  Armas kept smiling his crinkled, simple, village smile. "These gentlemen make politics. But you and I make better politics. I think that after they consider, they are letting you run."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "It is only if you say yes."

  Billy nodded.

  "So ... I am walking in there with you. I am saying that I also am ineligible. My government is giving me stipends. Therefore neither of us are running. Then I am saying that you and I are going to some other place, Helsinki, New York, wherever we decide. There we are having our own world championship in these events. It can be in the week after the Games, when we are still . . . how you say . . . peaking. I think we are having no problem while finding a pro­moter who will hold such a meet. It can be invitational, we are bringing together all the best men. You under­stand? I am sorry my English is being so bad..."

  We all sat there flabbergasted.

  Billy laughed his slow, chortling laugh, as he al­ways did when some new idea beguiled him. "Sure," he said. "But, my God, you might be giving up a lot."

  Armas shook his head. "I am generous, a little, but not so generous. I think I give up nothing. These men are not letting us have our little championship. If they do—" he spread his hands in one of those piquant European gestures "—they lose very much face. Or no?"