The Front Runner (12 page)

But Vince had had a bad time. His father was a union official in Los Angeles. He and his son were on poor terms already. He was ambivalent: proud of Vince's track exploits, but unhappy that Vince did these things while wearing a beard. When he heard that his son the miler was also a "fag," he was first incredulous, then livid.

"He told me never to come home again," said Vince bitterly. "He talked about killing me. He even talked about going to court to make me return the money he spent on my education. Can you believe? Fuck him."

He bared his shoulder to us, and showed us a new tattoo. It was the Lambda, the symbol of gay activism. He'd had it done in a Los Angeles tattoo parlor before he flew back.

I was distressed. "That's just the kind of thing I think we
shouldn't
do," I said. "That thing is going to be visible at every meet you're in."

"Oh hell," said Vince, "the old farts at the meets aren't going to know what it stands for."

On February 17, 1975, something very important happened to us. By a seven-to-two vote, the Supreme Court made their now-famous ruling on sodomy. They struck down all laws regulating sexual activity by both straight and gay consenting adults, stating that

they were an unconstitutional attempt to regulate bedroom matters. The decision also clarified homosexuals' protection under the anti-discrimination laws of 1964.

The gay people and their liberal supporters rejoiced. John Sive and his colleagues had prepared their case painstakingly, and the years of work paid off.

But the ruling jolted the country, and gays were suddenly feeling more pressure than before, instead of less. I'm not a sociologist, but I have my own visceral theory about why.

Unlike the abortion issue back in 1973, the sodomy issue was not bruited about in the media a lot beforehand. By the time the Court finally ruled on abortion, most Americans were pretty accurately informed on the pros and cons. But the sodomy issue was just one of 126 other matters on the Court docket that year, and it hit middle America straight out of the blue.

All that the average taxpayer in Peoria, Illinois, knew was that suddenly the Court was saying it was all right for his kids to be fairies, a thing he had been taught to fear and despise. His ideas about homosexuality stayed away from facts, in the medieval murk.

This deep irrational fear was at the bottom of the reaction, and behind the unsuccessful but fanatic organized groups who tried to get the Court to reverse the ruling. In all the furor that spring, most people seemed to forget that the ruling also covered lesbians and straights, and they shot their hostilities at gay men.

The psychotic fear of gay men shows how deeply the issue went. American men are insecure and on the defensive anyway, what with all the women's lib stuff. And despite all the women's lib activity, American society still tends to regard a man as having a higher responsibility than a woman. A man has his privileges, but he also carries his burden. So a man who refuses to impregnate Miss America, who wastes his semen between another man's thighs, is a sexual traitor who threatens the very future of a society.

In my opinion, no other big social change in recent years—such as integration, drug use and relaxed heterosexual  morals—has  provoked the degree  of

anger that the sodomy thing did. Maybe I am biased, because I felt that anger. But I always felt keenly that the biggest backlash came from men who were insecure of their own roles. They feared—secretly perhaps—that I was a bigger stud than they were. I might practice my prowess on their own sons, and thus cut off their lifeline to genealogical immortality.

As far as I and my three gay runners were concerned, the Court ruling meant that we were both better off and worse off than before.

I wouldn't have to worry any more about their getting busted in some state with strict laws, while traveling to meets. We now had solid legal backing in case they were hassled on their way to the Olympics.

On the other hand, with the whole country boiling on the issue, people might show us even more hostility than they would have otherwise. And, as everybody knows, it's one thing to get a fair civil-rights law passed, and another thing to get it enforced.

By April Billy was recovered from the stress fracture and making some progress, and his 5,000 and 10,000 times were dropping slowly toward the goals I'd set. But he wasn't making the progress he should, because he was fighting me tooth and nail about his program. I wanted him to train just once a day. He insisted on twice. Sometimes he'd give in, and then a couple of weeks later, he'd fall off the wagon. It was like trying to keep an alcoholic away from booze.

We had all three of the boys entered in the Drake Relays, which were to be held April 25 and 26. I was especially anxious that Billy be fresh for this important meet, as it would be a major test of his potential.

I was cold and correct with him, and he was cold and correct with me.

As my feelings for him tortured me more and more, I started training hard again, the way I had at Villanova. The coach was working fully as hard as his athletes. Every morning I got up just as it was getting light, and busted ten or fifteen miles over the trails in the woods. In the afternoons, I even managed

to squeeze in some speed work on the track. I was pathetically pleased, in my old age, to see how quickly my body responded and came back to racing condition. I was running 4:20 miles in time trials that spring.

And so the weeks passed, I barking at Billy and he running silent and stubborn.

One day his faculty advisor came to me and shook his head about Billy's portfolio. "It hasn't gone anywhere since that spate of studying when he had the cast on his leg," he said. "I know Billy's serious about track, but if he wants to graduate ..."

"Yeah, sure," I said, sounding like the detached concerned athletic director. "I'll talk to him about it."

On April 15, in the early evening, I was working in my office in the silent athletic building when I heard Billy call me sharply from the dressing room down the hall.

"Harlan!" There was a note of urgency in his voice.

I ran down the hall and into the dressing room. He was standing bent over strangely by one of the benches. He was nude except for his jock strap, and his damp running clothes were thrown over the bench. His face was white and his teeth gritted, and he was kneading his thigh desperately. He had a mammoth cramp in his leg.

I knew at a glance that he had been out for one of his clandestine workouts. With Billy, muscle tremors and cramps were always the result of magnesium loss and overwork.

"Harlan," he panted, "help me."

It had always been my policy to stay away from the locker rooms and leave any rubdowns to my assistant. But there was nobody else around, and a cramp like that can do real damage if it's not handled right.

So I knelt on the concrete floor in front of him, and massaged the leg desperately. He bent over me, his hands clenched in the back of my shirt. Finally the cramp started to ease. I made him lie down on the bench and kept working at the leg, from the calf to the hip.

We were alone. The building was silent. It was the first time I had seen him so close to naked, and I

found myself wishing that he had gotten the jock strap off before the cramp hit.

His body lay on the bench as if offered to me. His right leg" was in my hands, and the other had fallen aside, the bare foot braced on the floor. His crotch was exposed: the powerful hamstrings, the small buttocks with curls of dark wet hair between them. More curls framed the manhood tight and hidden in its supporter. The broad dingy elastic band across his lean abdomen contrasted curiously with his pale skin. He was not flaunting himself, as Denny Falks had done, and that made the sight of him all the more moving.

He lay breathing deeply, one arm over his face, fighting to concentrate, to use his yoga to relax the muscle. Since he wasn't looking at me, I dared to let my eyes run over his body. He was beautiful by no standards save those of distance running. His muscles were good, but too starved-looking. The legs were too long and thin, too veined, the muscles too cruelly defined, for most tastes. His curving thigh was scarcely thicker than his calf.

Finally his leg lay limp and supple in my hands. I could still feel a feeble muscle tremor in the thigh as I held it.

"How does it feel?" I said, still daring to hold his thigh a moment.

"Okay," he said in a low shaky voice, still not taking his arm away from his eyes. "It hurts a little. There's a tremor there."

Then I saw that the front of his jock strap was swelling a little. Now that our worry was over, it had occurred to him as well that we were in a sexual situation. Possibly he liked me. Possibly he was just hard up for sex. But in any case he wanted me to touch him. All I had to do was bend over him and put my face against his hot flank, and gently pull the damp jock strap down around his thighs.

Instead, I panicked, and with the panic came my anger.

I let go of his thigh. "Serves you right," I said.

My voice cracked in the silence of the locker room. His body jerked as if I had lashed it with a whip.

"How far did you run?" I demanded.

He still had his arm over his face, and his pale skin had turned a mottled pink-blue covered with goose-bumps. ""Fifteen miles," he said.

"What pace?" I said.

"Five fifteen," he said.

"A week before the Drake," I said. "You're an irresponsible brat. Who the hell do you think you are, taking my time with your tantrums? If you can't settle down and do this right, then I invite you to find another coach."

He sat up, turning away from me. His back was straight, but I sensed how humiliated he was. The front of his jock strap went back to normal. I ached with regret at having hurt him, but I also felt safer now.

"And now you're chilled too," I said. "Get your ass under the hot water."

Silently he got up and fumbled in his open locker for his towel. I looked mournfully at his body, feeling as if I was saying good-bye to it.

"Have you been taking magnesium?" I asked.

"No," he said in a stifled voice. "Just eating spinach and stuff."

"Well, get on the Magnesium Plus then," I said. "If you're out, I'll give you a bottle." I pretended I only cared about that: my athlete's condition.

Without looking at me, he started toward the shower room.

"One more thing," I barked. "It's
Mr.
Brown. Don't forget it a second time."

But that night, lying awake, in bed, the memory of his body came back to me like a hallucination. My imagination staged a hard-core encounter between us, right on that locker-room bench. We would both be half-mad with desire, like in all the gay skin flicks I'd seen. Our panting and gasping would echo in the silent locker room. It was amazing how many different ways I could think of for us to make love to each other without moving off that bench. I rehearsed it over and over, and had an ejaculation just thinking about it—I didn't even touch myself.

In my misery, I tried to pray. It didn't make much sense to pray after having indulged in erotic fantasies like that, but I did. "Out of the depths I cry unto thee, oh Lord. . ." But then all I could think of was the
Song of Songs.
". . . That at night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth, I sought him but found him not. O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me. Refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love."

About 3:30, I decided that the only thing to do was put in a really long run. So I pulled on my running clothes and shoes and went out. It was still dark, but light was coming in the east and the first birds were already singing in the dark woods. It was the kind of spring morning that might have delighted me, but I found the bird songs sad and oppressive.

I ran for three hours, and covered about twenty-five miles. The run put me into the necessary trance, and emptied my mind. But the last six miles, I was nearly falling apart. My legs were hurting and dead. When I got back to the campus, I was exhausted, sick, shaky and more jumpy than ever. I was a fine one to criticize Billy—I was now physically over the edge too.

That afternoon I had the yoga class for the men's and women's teams. As usual, when the weather was warm, we had it on the grassy infield of the track.

Billy hadn't inspired this class—we'd started it the year before, when we noticed a few runners elsewhere adapting yoga into stretching exercises. Flexibility is crucial in running, especially for avoiding injury. My kids and I had been happy with the class—I was making them supple, and they could imagine themselves as Siddarthas in sweatsuits.

So I was walking up and down before the rows of kids. The girls were on the left, in their red gymsuits, and the boys were on the right, in their blues. Neat rows of supple young bodies, doing this yogic contortion, then that, at my order.

"Semi-plow," I said. They all bent slowly backward from a kneeling position and touched their heads to the grass.

All but Billy Sive. He was in the lotus position, in

the second row of the male team. He was sitting a little slumped, slowly picking early dandelions out of the grass, and his face looked strangely vacant. Sure, I told myself, you refused him sexually and you humiliated him. He probably hates you now.

But the sight of him letting himself go like that infuriated me. I was exhausted and edgy, and I lost my temper completely.

"Billy Sive!" I barked.

He looked slowly up at me.

"Semi-plow, on the double!" I said.

He dropped his eyes and went on pulling dandelions, making a little bouquet. He put the bouquet to his mouth.

I walked between the lines. I never showed my three top runners any favoritism before the others, boy or girl, and this was going to be one of those moments.

"Billy Sive," I said, between my teeth, vibrating with anger. I was furious at him for the mess he was making of my peaceful life.

Instead of doing the semi-plow, he got up slowly and looked me right in the eye, with his candid, vacant gaze. His lips were yellow with pollen.