The Front Runner (23 page)

right in the middle of the back, but Billy kept his balance and shot forward, starting his drive.

Vince came up beside Dellinger, and Dellinger elbowed him in the ribs. Vince bared his teeth and hit him right back. The crowd was on its feet, howling. Dellinger was leaning on Vince again. Billy's drive was burning Vince off, and he pulled ahead, leaving Vince to deal with Bob.

The next thing everybody knew, Vince had thrown a miler's flying body-check on Dellinger. The two of them staggered and stumbled aside, I jumped up, panicked, with visions of falls and injuries in Vince's invalid legs. Then, as the rest of the field raced on by, the two runners had recovered, and they were punching each other.

The crowd roared as if it was a heavyweight championship, taking sides.

The officials raced out and shoved the two of them off the track before the field came around again. In the infield, the two runners started slugging each other again. By then I was there myself, trying to pry Vince off Dellinger. Vince had a bloody nose and red spots were dripped down the front of his sweat-soaked silver. Dellinger had a swelling eye.

"You whore," snarled Dellinger.

"You straight pig," said Vince. "you keep your fucking fascist elbows to yourself next time."

Billy, aware of what was happening, poured on his strong new finish and hit the tape for a new American indoor record in the two-mile.

Then, hardly missing a stride across the infield, he headed for Dellinger himself. I blocked his way. Billy was convulsed with a cold fury—he kept trying to climb past me. We were a group of squabbling officials, coaches and runners as about two dozen of us tried to quiet them down. The whole meet came to a stop for about ten minutes.

"Dellinger hit them both first," I said.

"They're nothing but trouble," said one of the officials.

"It's other people make the trouble," I said.

"You stay outta my way next time," Billy said to

Dellinger. "If I have to stop and break your neck right in the middle of the Olympic trials, I'll do that." Buddhist nonviolence was out the window.

Finally the runners walked off the track and the meet went on.

Vince threw his arm protectively across Billy's shoulders. Several students and gays jumped down and surrounded them. Up in the crowd, Delphine de Sevigny stood up and heaved a bouquet of long-stemmed American beauties down at Billy. They had probably cost him a week's groceries. Billy caught them neatly and threw him a kiss. John Sive was sitting by Delphine, grinning with pride.

The old guard sat glumly, wishing for the good old days. I knew just how they felt. I had known the good old days myself.

We didn't know it then, but the Millrose was the glittering peak of Vince's career. From then on, it was downhill into the dark.

That weekend he had won the Wanamaker Mile for the third time. His rivals had pushed him to a 3:51.59 mile, which now put him second on the all-time list. But his fist-fight with Dellinger stirred up a storm of criticism. People conceded that Dellinger had started it, and that was all.
New York Times
sports columnist Andy Meagan suggested that Vince take up ice hockey and play for Philadelphia, a team noted for brawling.

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.

TWELVE

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