Harlan's Race

me. A whack of the stick, and the dog ran home. By the time I saw Hotel Goodnight just ahead, the sun was high in the sky.
    Steve and Angel were on the beach waiting for me. My writer friend wore his favorite beaded belt with his jeans. He had a towel in one hand and a highball glass in the other. The two whiskeys that he nursed all day were what he called “typewriter cleaner fluid”.
    Steve had been described by The Advocate as looking like a gay Will Rogers. His mix of English and Comanche blood had left him homely and ironic. As a young no-name journalist writing gay porn between Village Voice assignments, Steve had a hard time getting anybody to go home with him from a gay bar. So he spent lonely years making love to his typewriter — hand-jobbing his craft till a sentence cried out with life. These days, Steve was immune to flashes from his growing public. He had found his great love in Angel Day.
    Now, looking at them both in the daylight, it struck me that neither of them looked good, somehow.
    Steve tossed me the towel, while Angel hunted for beach glass along the wash. The shore was so rich in weathered bits of glass, from centuries of shipwrecks, that people collected the stuff.
    “Vince is really on your mind, huh,” Steve said.
    “A relationship with him is logical.”
    “Uh-huh,” Steve agreed.
    “But it’s not very sensible. He’s —” I made a frustrated gesture in the air. “You know, when Vince came to Prescott with Billy, he was this warm-hearted, gutsy kid. Everybody liked Vince. Yeah, he was hot-headed. But it was never a problem, except when he sassed the race officials. But he has really gone nuts after ...”
    My voice broke.
    “This Gay Panther thing,” I shrugged. “Are you sure about it?”
    “George Rayburn told me. You know George. He’s way to the left, but he draws the line at guns.”
    “So George hoped you’d talk to me.”
    “Yeah. And I hope you’ll talk sense to Vince. Where is he going to pull this revolution from? Who’ll join him? Gays have always been non-violent. Some of us are too passive. Face down, for the straight prick.”
    “Sounds like too many people already know about Vince’s thing. Every Mary south of Riverdale.”
    “George said just a few people know.”
    I stood staring over the ocean.
    ‘Vince is going to be a handful,” I said. “Drugs. Wild sex. Who knows what disease he’s got now?” I was glumly rubbing my hair dry. “I’d have to clean him up.”
    ‘You sure don’t sound like a hopeful swain,” Steve laughed.
    “Hard to feel hopeful about a promising lad who turned into a slut.”
    Steve stared at me, his eyes like two gun barrels. “Nobody was a bigger slut than you, Harlan.”
    I glared at him.
    Steve laughed again. “It’s easy to get your goat, my friend. You’re such a puritan queen. Why can’t you just let people be?”
    “I want to keep my love life in some kind of sensible balance with my career and family.”
    “Screw sensible,” said Steve. “Are you in love with Vince?’ My fists clenched in the towel.
    ‘Vince goes back before Billy,” I said.
    The towel around my neck felt like a hangman’s knot. On the southern horizon, a few thunderheads were piling up. Studying the clouds, my friend drained his highball with a clink of ice. Then he said briskly, ‘Well, if I were you, I’d go down to The Pines and drag him out of there.”
    The thought jolted me. I could do it today. With some luck, that hot young guy would be in my bed tonight.
    “And,” Steve added, “you’re what stands between Vince and trouble. The FBI has been looking for fag conspiracies
    ever since the Fifties. They would love to find a real one.”
    Angel had found a hunk of amethyst glass. Proudly he held it up to the sun. As Steve admired it, his head and Angel’s bent together. The boy’s long chestnut tresses brushed Steve’s hands.
    No one knew Angel’s real identity. Maybe he’d been a kidnapped child. The same year I met Billy, Steve had rescued him from a S & M pimp, who had the kid on heroin to keep him dependent. Angel was mute from years of sexual brutality. Steve knew the kid would wind up in an institution, so he managed to adopt him and got him on a methadone program. “Angel Day” was a made-up name. Now Angel was a handsome young man with fragile health and the eyes of a refugee, who could say Steve’s name and a few other words. Angel clearly loved Steve, but he didn’t tolerate any touch. So he and