Harlan's Race

secured the house, replacing standard window-panes with one-way glass and outside screens, to minimize the danger of fire-bombing and rock-throwing. We already had three ground-floor doors for quick exits. The Tower Room became another emergency exit, with windows opening onto the roof. In one place, the dune was high enough that you could safely jump from the roof. For extra weapons, we fags had baseball bats, pokers, towel rods, barbecue forks, fire extinguishers, and so on. A mighty swat of a tennis racquet across an intruder’s face is a good stopper.
    As a final touch, we started shuffling bedrooms on a random basis.
    “Never set a pattern,” Chino kept reminding us. “Always do the unexpected.”
    I wasn’t getting any writing done, and the clam-boat sat in the boathouse. But it was a relief to be taking some action. Keeping busy dulled the pain of missing Vince.
    He didn’t call.
    Not till two weeks later, with changes complete, were the two nance commandos ready for a little partying. “Time to prowl and growl,” said Harry. “Where’s that East Coast action we’ve heard so much about?”
    Since we never left the house unguarded, Steve took Harry up to the gay towns. The next day, on my assurance that he could find a brown boy or two in the gay towns these days, Chino and I jogged toward Cherry Grove. As we passed the spot where Vince had cavorted with me, I had to fight back jealousy. Where was my young hellion? What was he doing? Who was he doing it with? Maybe I should look up my old flame, Chris Shelbourne. It was amazing how vividly I remembered him — the tender, throbbing, guilty, secret boy-love that almost was.
    Screw Vince.
    As we traveled along, Chino updated me on their lonely life in L.A. Since Montreal, Jemal and Corky had drifted away from H-C. Somebody in the Navy had recognized Chino in Montreal news footage. They couldn’t give him the dishonorable discharge now, but a former superior had written him an ugly letter. As usual, bodyguard jobs were few, and poorly paid.
    “Fifty dollars an hour for my butt and my gun,” said Chino disgustedly. “Shiiiit... I could make more money if I just sold my butt,” he grinned.
    While Chino talked, between breaths, he was running softly at my side. His open windbreaker and green Speedo displayed a bullet-creased torso as supple as the sea snakes in the Asian waters where he’d fought. An ugly scar gnarled one breast. His long, powerful legs were spotted with a few little phosphorous burns. His black hair, short in the Navy in ’73, was now long enough for one of the first male ponytails I’d seen. Clean-shaven, he forewent the cholo mustache that many Chicanos sported. He was 29 now, and felt older than me.
    Chino and Harry — two attractive straight-looking guys, the kind I liked. But I already knew their professional ethics — they didn’t fuck their clients. And we were all living with the crosshairs on us. It was no time to think with your dick.
    “How’s your thing with Vince going?” Chino asked.
    “Not too good,” I said.
    At the gay towns, we passed an exuberant lesbian softball game. Then a strip of beach where gay muscle-boys oiled their hides and showed off their pecs. Finally a strip where cantankerous white clones with money and mustaches were camping. Some Anglo gays didn’t like Hispanic gays who came out from the city. Now, several whites noticed my brown friend.
    “Latin trash,” one of them said as we passed.
    Chino’s jaw tensed, but he kept jogging.
    The next clone yelled, “Hey, spic! This is our beach!”
    He went to stand in Chino’s way. All Chino did was rivet the clone with those eyes of his, the same eyes that hundreds of Vietcong had seen just before they died.
    ‘Wrong,” said Chino pleasantly. “The beach belongs to everybody.”
    The clone and his buddies took a reading on Chino’s eyes, and they got the feeling they should back off. Anyway, fisticuffs weren’t gay style. Why fight with a guy if you can make love to him? I wanted to smooth things over, so that Chino could start out on the right foot down here. Hopefully, there was one homy stud in the crowd who would be into tricking with a brown sea snake.
    So I said: “Go ahead, boys. Take my friend on.”
    They considered my double-edged hint.
    “Nah ...” somebody drawled. “He can take me.”
    The tension broke, and everybody laughed.
    Suddenly a man my age in a black leather G-string recognized me under all the hair. He was