Harlan's Race

hip enough not to say my name, but he couldn’t resist a dig.
    “Hey ... What’re you doing in a mustache?” he asked me. “Trying to hide your stretch marks?”
    His name was Bark. He took us to the Ice Palace, bought us drinks, was very attentive to me. Chino silently chugged his shot of whiskey, his back to the few dancers on the floor. He was looking morose and introspective, about to go off and cruise alone, when he saw a young Puerto Rican in a red Speedo standing there gazing at him, awestruck. The boy looked to be in his early 20s, with lovely eyes and long, nappy curls down to his shoulder blades.
    All Chino did was hold out his arm. The boy slid under it, nestling against him. Chino left with him, and was back in an hour, looking relaxed, to find Bark and me talking about old times.
    As we walked back to Davis Park, Chino was silent now, brooding.
    But as we passed that place again where Vince and I had embraced each other in the water, I felt a different feeling this time — a heavy wave of nostalgia and pain for that first time we’d made love. I missed him, missed his body, his smell, his wild giving. Chino had just had a man’s body that way, Speedos down, warm skin against warm skin. I envied even that minimal release that my friend was feeling.
    Chino must have picked up my thoughts, because he looked over at me. But he didn’t say anything.
    Around July 1st, Chino and I made a quick trip back to Prescott. I wanted to try and talk Betsy out of moving off campus.
    When we got to her house, packing boxes were sitting around. Chino prowled the yard while I went inside. Betsy looked at him through the window, all her own gay liberal anti-war feelings in her eyes. Then she invited me unsmilingly into Falcon’s room, where she was putting him down for a nap. His crib was hung with a fantastic array of mobile toys. As she changed his diaper, he kicked his legs, looking lovingly up at her with his soft myopic baby eyes.
    Very reluctantly, I gave her an update on Vince and the sniper.
    “Yeah, the minute I saw the Neanderthal with you again,” she said, “I knew things must be serious.”
    Feeling oddly remote from Falcon, I put out my hand. The baby grabbed my thumb in his hot little fingers with astonishing force, talking a blue streak of mah-mah-mahs and bah-bah-bahs. How much I yearned to hear him saying, “Dah.”
    Betsy’s hands were shaking a little.
    “For a while, I believed it was going to be over any time now,” she said. “I don’t want Falcon to grow up in the middle of all this violence!”
    It was clear that Betsy was bailing out of my life, taking my lover’s child with her. And not a court in the country would uphold my deeply felt claims. Feeling helpless, I let Falcon’s hot little hand jerk my finger around.
    “I hate feeling this way about Vince,” she went on. “I mean — he was one of my first gay male friends. Only Billy was closer to me than Vince ... you know that. But Vince has changed. I hardly recognize him any more.”
    ‘You’re taking Falcon away from me,” I barked angrily. Betsy touched my hand, as gently as if she were putting baby oil on Falcon.
    “No,” she said. “I’d never do that to you. But will you listen to me?”
    Grudgingly, I got myself in hand and nodded.
    “Look,” she said. “Billy’s death pushed us all to the edge. But Vince is over the edge. And now you and Vince are together. So it brings his scariness close to the baby. Don’t you understand?”
    I didn’t want to.
    “Is he going to live with you?” she asked. “I mean, at Prescott?”
    “If he comes back to me. If we last the summer.”
    “And you wanted to marry me? That’s a clear message to the second sniper, if that’s who he is ... to anyone out there. They’ll want to know why I’m so important to you. All they have to do is bug us, and find out who Falcon’s father is. Maybe they know already! Somebody might kidnap Falcon so he’s not brought up gay. Billy’s parents might find out, and go to court to take him away from me. He could get hurt just by being around you ... a fire-bomb ... somebody shooting at the house.”
    I knew she was right.
    Betsy was inserting Falcon into his giraffe pajamas.
    “And if you and Vince live together on campus, and you try to go on coaching, there’s going to be more trouble. The college will be under more pressure. And supposing Vince really does the Gay Panther thing? That means the police
    —    the FBI —