The Front Runner (11 page)

"I can't believe this," I said.

"Neither can I," said John, a little sorrowfully. "It's really changed. Oh well, the Divine Miss M is always good."

But once we got downstairs, we saw plenty of gays. No doubt a lot of them were getting the thrill of making straights look at their bodies. Most were cruising nonchalantly around wearing the classic towel wrapped around their hips. A few reckless souls were lounging nude in the wicker chairs, among the palms. Or they were swimming nude in the big pool, and the straights were looking at them avidly. Back in the underground days, I had taken plenty of swims in that pool. For a moment I had an urge to defy the world and do it again, but I couldn't do it in front of Billy.

We hadn't been there five minutes before a famous TV came rushing up to John.

"Cheri!"
he cried.

He threw his arms around John's neck and bussed him on the cheek. He hugged him and bussed him back. He was a slender black man in his early thirties. He was wearing a black seal maxi coat with rhinestone buttons and a white satin gown. His woolly hair was cut very short, and he had on cascading rhinestone earrings and carried a little rhinestone bag.

"Cheri,
it's been ages," said the TV, squeezing John's hands.

"In town for a little business," said John warmly. "How's Irving?"

"Irving," said the TV pleasantly, "is
merde.
Is this your son? My god,
cheri,
how he's grown.
Comme il est belle."
He kissed Billy on the cheek. Billy laughed and pecked him back. "He's ravishing, John."

"You stay away from my boy now," grinned John. "He's in training."

The TV raised his eyebrows archly. "Yes, we know all about that. We read the papers too, you know. He's

our divine athlete. When are the Olympics,
cheri?
I fully intend to go."

Billy and I were laughing now. "The kid hasn't even made the team yet," I said. "But you'd better make reservations now, because they'll be hard to get."

"This is my coach, Harlan Brown," Billy explained. "Mr. Brown, this is Delphine de Sevigny."

"Oooooo,
cheri,
I know who you are," he crooned. "I thought you looked familiar. You're the big bad Marine."

I actually flushed. I sensed that Billy was looking at me strangely. I had always presumed that Billy knew of my hustling career, but somehow I felt deeply embarrassed. I wanted my runner to forget that his coach had sold his meat for fifty dollars. I wanted to punch Delphine de Sevigny in the mouth.

"If you're alone, why don't you join us?" John was saying, taking his arm.

"Cheri,
I'm always alone.
Toujours.
Take me where you will."

Arm in arm, they strolled on ahead of us, through the crowd.

Billy stood looking at me for a moment. His eyes were full of pain, full of questions. For a moment we seemed to be all alone, in the middle of that shoving, babbling, cruising, staring mob.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned away, unable to meet his eyes. Feeling poured over me like a tidal wave. I had always thought of myself—even in the gay world—as a breed apart. The sight of the transvestites had always depressed me beyond words, and I had avoided them. I had always told myself: At least I'm not a freak like that. It was occurring to me now that there was an incredible manly courage in the TV's effort to live as a woman, and that I was still full of straight thinking.

Billy stood there looking at me sorrowfully. This world was his kingdom, his birthright, and I was still a tourist in it.

I walked past him. "Let's go, or we'll lose them," I said roughly.

We sat jostled at a table near the stage. John drank scotch. Delphine drank a champagne cocktail. I drank a Coke. They didn't have any milk, so Billy drank a "glass of water. We heard Bette Midler and the rest. John and Delphine talked, and Billy and I sat silent. When Jess Collett came on and the crowd erupted into frenzied dancing, I was sure Billy would jump up to join them, but he didn't.

After a while, a dance band came out and started playing vintage stuff: slow jazz and Glenn Miller. It was the kind of stuff that I would have danced to in my youth if I had been irreligious enough to dance. It brought back memories of dances that I didn't dance, loves that I didn't love. The lights dimmed, and the crowd quieted and danced slow. Everybody was plastered together. The straights were plastered to the straights, and the gays were plastered to the gays. John and Delphine got up to dance, and drifted off cheek to, cheek, body to body.

I sat there feeling more and more depressed. I was thinking about my whole blitzed youth, my blitzed running career, my blitzed romance and marriage, my blitzed summer with Chris.

Billy sat looking down, playing with a paper napkin.

A toweled boy paused by me, talking in a high excited voice to a friend. He pressed his hip lightly but meaningfully to my shoulder. Out of the corner I could see his lean torso. His towel was draped so that one buttock was half-bare, in hopes I would make a pass. Billy raised his eyes and watched me. He knew about the rooms available upstairs.

"Get lost," I said hostilely to the boy.

The hustler looked at me, then at Billy, and said, "Oh dear, pardon
me,"
and walked off with his friend.

Finally Billy said, "You going to make a wallflower out of me?"

I felt that blow in my stomach. He wanted to dance with me.

"I don't dance," I said. "You go ahead if you want."

"Come on, it's a slow one," he said.

I wanted to take his hand in my right hand, and put my left arm around him, and dance with him, and feel his ruffled breast pressing against my tie.

"All" we need," I said harshly, "is a little social note in
Sports Illustrated
about how Prescott track coach Harlan Brown was seen dancing with Billy Sive at the Continental Baths."

Billy shrugged. A few minutes later, an older man bent beside him and asked him to dance, but he shook his head.

"You're a very virtuous kid," I said.

"I go to bed only with people I love," he said.

"That makes a lot of sense," I said. "I suppose your father taught you that."

"No;" he said.

"You're too young to know what love is," I said.

"I know," he said. "I guess I'll fall hard one of these days."

"He'll be a lucky man," I said. I was talking as though I had drunk five scotches. "And I suppose you'll get married."

He shrugged again. "Those marriages don't last. Anyway, if you really love someone, you don't have to formalize it. And Buddhists are supposed to reject rituals."

I felt like my heart was lying there on the sawdust floor, being pushed around by thousands of dancing feet.

"Do you love someone, Mr. Brown?" Billy asked very cautiously playing with my empty Coke bottle, turning it around and around.

"No," I said.

"But you must have, sometime."

"No."

"Not ever?" he persisted.

I drained the last of my Coke from the glass.

"But you have to love someone, sometime," he said.

"True," I said.

"Look," he said, "don't be embarrassed by what Delphine said. I knew all about you when I came to Prescott."

This embarrassed me even more.

Billy went on. "My father started hearing about you in New York. He even saw you around a few times." Billy smiled a little. "I understand you cost an arm and a leg."

"Listen," I said, "that's a very painful period of my life, and I don't like to discuss it."

"All right," he said. "But in return do me a favor."

"What?"

"I wish you would cut this Mr. Brown crap with me," he said.

I shook my head. "If I let you call me by my first name, then I have to let all the other students do it."

Billy sat looking very sad for a moment. He pushed the empty Coke bottle back toward me. Then he shook his head. "Mr. Brown," he said, "I wish you weren't so unhappy."

My hands were lying on the table, knotted into fists. He reached slowly over and laid one hand over mine. His hand was hot and a little moist. My stomach jerked. Was it possible that he liked me?

I had an image in my head of a ballroom filled with people. A glass ball was turning slowly overhead, making those spots of light swirling over everything. A thousand John Sives in black suits were dancing cheek to cheek with a thousand sequinned Delphine de Sevignys. They waltzed gaily, thousands of them, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The band instruments glittered and blared. John Sive and Delphine de Sevigny were tapdancing, looking at each other with eyes of love. Then off among the drifting thousands, I could glimpse Billy. He was walking slowly toward me, cutting through the dancers. He was wearing track shorts and singlet, and his Tigers with the blue nylon uppers, and a headband keeping his hair out of his eyes. The sweat glistened on his limbs as the spots swirled over him. His face was grave. He came slowly and held out his arms to me. We held each other tightly, and put our cheeks together, and danced slowly while the band played "Stardust."

I shook his hand off. "Don't do that," I said. "You

never know who's watching. I don't need sympathy anyway. I'm just fine."

He drew his hand away as if he'd been burned.

On New Year's we didn't go to a party.

In the evening, the four of us walked around in the streets looking at the lavish Christmas decorations all over midtown. It was very cold. We walked up Park Avenue a ways and looked at the trees trimmed with white lights. We bought roasted chestnuts from the vendors and ate them, burning our fingers. Billy allowed himself to eat some chestnuts. We stopped to listen to the Salvation Army carolers on Fifth Avenue. A few blocks farther we stopped to listen to a few shivering members of the Hare Krishna Society, as they sang and
prayed half-frozen in their saffron robes.

John and Delphine walked ahead, arm in arm. Nobody on the crowded sidewalks noticed them. John and Delphine were having a sudden romance. Billy raised his eyebrows a little and said, "Dad's off and running again."

Billy and I walked behind them, not arm in arm. Since the night at the Baths, a tension had sprung up between us. I sensed that I had hurt him, and was sure now that his touching my hand had been friendship, nothing more. But I didn't want to apologize, because the distance between us would help me control my feelings for him. At the same time, if anyone had tried to prevent me from walking the streets of New York with him that night, I would have fought with both fists.

We went to Rockefeller Center and watched the skaters circle the big rink, their breath blowing white in the air. We looked up dizzily at the giant Christmas tree by the rink.

Billy looked at me and said, with a certain peculiar belligerence, "I'd like to skate."

I said, "That's all we need is you should twist an ankle."

"Where do they rent the skates?" Billy asked Delphine. "I'm going to skate."

"They   don't   rent  them,  
cheri,"  
said  Delphine,

touching Billy's cheek. "You have to bring your own."

Delphine was madly in love with both Billy and John at once. Billy handled this with tact. He put him down gently by treating him as a potential mother. Billy had total respect and seriousness for all trans-vestites.

That evening I finally relaxed toward Delphine myself, and decided he was delightful. I had seen so many flamboyant gay foxes that Delphine's relative naturalness of dress and manner took some getting used to.

"I'm past high drag,
cheri,"
he told me as we thawed out over something warm to drink in the Plaza Hotel. "I'm into couture."

To see him play with his drink and his cigarette holder, there among the potted palms and crystal chandeliers, of the Plaza, you would never know that Delphine lived in a tiny apartment on 123rd Street with ten cats and rent owing. He bought his beautiful clothes at thrift shops, and learned his French from a Berlitz record. "My limousine awaits," he would say as John put him into a taxi. He was Palm Beach, the Riviera, a box at the Metropolitan Opera.

"I warn you," he told Billy that night, "I plan to go to the track meets, and cheer you and Vince and Jacques onward. I may even throw flowers at you."

"I'll look for you," said Billy, smiling.

He smiled at Delphine more than he did at me that night. Gentle filial smiles, devoid of sex. I would have settled for even one of those.

Back in John's room at the Chelsea Hotel, we thawed out again and John ordered up a big ice bucket. Reposing in it were two bottles: one of French champagne, and one of sparkling mineral water, as a concession to Billy and me. Delphine turned on the color TV so we could watch the midnight doings over on Times Square. John popped the cork on the champagne. As he opened the bottle of mineral water, he made a loud popping noise with his mouth, and we all laughed a little. He filled the glasses.

"Oh, bubbly!" Delphine cried.

The television was playing "Auld Lang Syne." I felt as if my heart was going to break. It was 1975, and

on August 18, 1975, I was going to be forty years old.

We all touched glasses. "Heart's desires for all of us," said John. "For Delphine, a millionaire. For Billy, a sub-28 10,000 meter. For Harlan, love." His eyes rested on mine briefly, and I wondered how much he had sensed.

"And for you, and for all of us," I said, "good luck with the Supreme Court."

Billy and John hugged and kissed each other, and Delphine hugged and kissed me. John hugged and kissed me, and Billy hugged and kissed Delphine. But neither Billy nor I made a move toward each other. He just smiled a little, touched my glass with his, and said in an even voice, "Cheers, Mr. Brown," and drained his mineral water with the air of a debauchee.

On the TV, everybody was kissing everybody else. I drank off my mineral water in one gulp too.

SIX

WHEN the holidays ended, Vince and Jacques came back to Prescott with their news.

Jacques had died a thousand deaths before he finally told his family. A cultivated, sensitive family of musicians, they were distressed but trying to understand. I was glad that it had turned out this well. Jacques went back to his studies and training more relaxed than I had seen him.