Harlan's Race

Vince a new card, and the courts upheld the refusal. It wasn’t till the union folded, and a new athletic body took over, that Vince could compete. But open gay men don’t last in American “he-man” sports. Gay ballplayer David Copay and gay umpire Dave Pallone were both forced to quit. Vince finally got tired of the hassles, and his health was starting to fail.
    So we turned our efforts to Front Runner clubs and movies that were “diamond bullets”. Two wins at the Sundance Film Festival, a win at Cannes for Angel, and a reputation for Vince and Paul as a top young producer-director team, with Darryl as the “eye” of their vision. And a growing list of screenplay credits for me. In fact, Valhalla films had a bigger following in Europe than in the U.S., where we were known mainly on the film festival circuit. The movie mainstream still denied that gay men and lesbians are fully human.
    But, even as right-wing extremists were making things steadily worse, some things did change for the better.
    The LAPD, for example. These days, the department had a recruiting table at Gay Pride events.

    s I started the engine, a magpie flew up from the
    dolphin’s carcass. Ahead was the first meeting with Betsy in ten years. We hadn’t seen her since that day of the snow geese in 1980. My stomach tightened with the old resentment. I’d tried and tried with her. Why had she cut herself and Falcon off from us? Even with the loss of her lover?
    The boat headed toward the rebuilt Davis Park marina. Pulling out my cellular phone, I punched the number of Chino’s phone, that he wore at his belt.
    “I’ll be at the marina in five minutes,” I told h im .
    “See you there,” came his voice.
    Wonderful new thing — the cellular phone.
    Five of my family were waiting on the ferry dock.
    In his fluttering windbreaker and baseball cap, Vince looked tired, alarmingly thin, from a week’s shoot at the Gay Games. He was 38 now, still striking, his eyes deep-sunk but compelling, frame pared to the bone by three years of active symptoms. He was gun-metal gray as me, staying alive out of sheer will, a veteran of alternative treatments — he hadn’t wanted all the drugs. His eyes were sad at what he’d seen.
    Chino had his arm around Vince, with that quiet new fire in his own eyes. The cormorant was wearing his “out and proud” vet clothes — a camo beret, a frayed eagle-and-trident SEAL patch on one jacket shoulder. He was 41 now, still single but not worried about it — healing steadily, inch by inch. Lately Chino had finished his masters in political science. He’d been in touch with his blood familia again, and was helping Project 10 with gay Latino kids in some L.A. high schools.
    At Chino’s elbow was John Sive. At 66 he was our white-haired curmudgeon, and walked with a cane. John and I had finally made our peace.
    Michael and Astarte were trying to deal with John’s two dizzy little spaniels on leashes. My son’s career as a hemophilia researcher had put him ringside on the massacre we were all living through. After years of unrelenting cohabitation, he and Astarte had finally decided to get married and make me a grandfather. My daughter-in-law’s slender form showed she was six months pregnant. Who knew what sexual mysteries her genes, and Michael’s, would carry?
    “God,” exclaimed Michael, as he climbed into the boat, “coming back here is like landing on the moon.”
    “The ghost of decadence past,” John proclaimed as Michael helped him into the boat.
    ‘We didn’t think we were decadent,” Vince retorted. “We thought we were normal.”
    My lover refused a hand from Michael — he didn’t like being coddled — and sank on a seat beside me. I was still old-fashioned, and liked to call him “lover”. Nineties terms, like “significant other,” seemed a little cold. While Chino drove the boat, I put my own jacket on Vince, because his thinness couldn’t stand up to eastern chill any more.
    With time, Vince and I had grown together like two trees, rubbing together in the wind so long that our bruised bark grafted as one. We were a good sniper team for the community—shooter and spotter, each covering the other’s back. One shot, one kill on the lies and ignorance. Our voices were heard from podiums at Congressional hearings, our voices echoing along the Capitol Mall, over the heads of a vast crowd. We were one of the golden gay pairs that lived in America’s face. This time, the