Harlan's Race

for the ladies the way you do,” Steve told him.
    “I’m not bi any more,” Vince said. He left the onions and prowled into the living room, antsy with drug desires. “I don’t want to go near anything straight.”
    “Except for your straight friends in the kitchen?” Marian asked, stepping over to finish his onions.
    “Yeah, certain straight friends are cool,” admitted Vince.
    He yanked at the closed curtains, as if angry that he had to live in hiding. Then he leaned against the wall, pressing his face against the cool cedar planks. He had a sheen of sweat on his face. We all looked at one another, having seen a million students go through this syndrome.
    ‘Why do you want Falcon to look like Billy?” he said to me. ‘You wanna ... like ... fuck him when he grows up?”
    Everybody’s heads raised from their cooking, and they got very quiet. It felt like Vince had shot me in the chest at point-blank range. The idea had never crossed my mind.
    I went into the front room, fish knife in my hand.
    “What did you say?” I demanded of Vince.
    ‘Well?” Vince pursued. “I mean ... hey, it’s not incest. So why not?”
    He stared at the knife trembling in my hand.
    “That’d better be the dope talking,” I growled.
    “Are you being honest?” Vince lashed back. ‘When you look for Billy in him?”
    ‘You were never robbed of your children,” I said. “So a snot-nose like you wouldn’t understand.”
    As Vince slammed out the back door, the kitchen crew covered their embarrassment by busying themselves with cuisine.
    “Hang in there, Harlan,” said Steve as he dumped the onions in the kettle.
    Steve was patient with all the lovers’ fights that went on among his guests. He wrote the best ones into his books.
    Outside, in the moonlight, Vince was sitting slumped on the dock. Down the shore, rows of lighted houses disappeared into evening mist. Other people’s lamp-lit windows always look so peaceful — the only house full of bloody war is your own.
    Vince had tears running down his face.
    “I wish I didn’t love you,” he said.
    Not wanting to argue when he was so drugged out, I just stood there.
    But now Vince launched a tirade at me.
    “You are so fucking conservative!” he said, making a fist. “So bourgeois! Sometimes you act like you never came out! You don’t really commit. You always ... like ... hold back something. When we were trying to get Billy to Montreal, you made all the right political moves for him, yeah ... and, yeah, you told the press you’re gay. But you never once said, I’m proud to be gay. You fucking held back. And you held back on Billy, didn’t you? What you held back on him was me. Well, I’m not like you, man!”
    The words were so cruel, and so true, that I rose to the bait.
    “Sure,” I said. “Be a kamikaze. Guys like me carry on after guys like you crash and burn.”
    Vince bounded to his feet, with that cornered-wolf look in his eyes. He went to punch me with his right, and telegraphed the punch so many miles that I blocked it easily. So he threw a left, and my block got him off-balance. I was pissed off now, and hit him a hard jab to the chest. My lover went backward into the water with a tremendous splash.
    Streaming and silent, he crawled out on the dock. His slumped shoulders and hanging head told me that he felt humiliated beyond belief. I had just done something to him that was going to change things between us for good.
    “If you’re going to fight,” I barked in my best Parris Island voice, “you’d better learn how.”
    The following weekend, the Prescotts quietly slipped back to Prescott College. They must have told Betsy about the cat murder, because she moved her oar and put more water between her boat and mine. Now she was hunting for a house off campus. Marian and Joe tried to point out that the campus was safer. But she tightened her lips, and kept rowing.
    I was settling into the rhythm of Fire Island life, still trying to stay incognito in Davis Park. My collar-length hair and solid beard had really altered my look. Mostly I hid in our shelter-belt of cherry brush, enjoying the writing and long talks with Steve, and (most of the time) being with Vince. He said nothing about losing our fistfight. In fact, he was quieting down. A couple of times, before dawn, we ghosted the clam-boat out of the boathouse, and spent a good day digging together. Vince learned to cull. One day we hit a good spot, and pulled grandly up to the