Harlan's Race

something to stop him.
    ‘The only way it will work,” I said, “is if we don’t argue about politics.”
    “Then I can’t... like ... have an honest difference of opinion with you.”
    ‘That kind of difference wears love out.”
    Vince shrugged. “If it wears out, it wears out. Meantime, we have what we fucking have.”
    Putting the roach in his pocket, he ran his hand up my arm. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Don’t be uptight.”
    In my bedroom of the moment, it was shirts yanked open, bare chests pressing. “Oh God, I’ve missed you,” he said into my beard, into my chest hair. He smelled like a hayfield, but not the agricultural kind.
    “What took you so long to come back?” Into his hair, as we went down into a square of bright morning light on the bed. My hand jerked the curtain shut, and his opened knees slid caressingly up along my sides, almost in the same move.
    “My fucking pride, and my ... Oh.” His head arched back.
    “So you want a summer thing,” I said against his throat. “Summer thing, winter thing.” He could hardly talk. “Oh God.”
    I wanted him so much that I didn’t care how he smelled. “Oh God, I love you,” he was saying.
    We tried to keep quiet, so we didn’t drive the other guys in the house crazy. Afterward, exhausted, we slept till early evening, and took a short run in the moonlight toward The Grove.
    “Mr. Brown,” he said, between breaths, “I have to get you to live in the moment. You live in your head too much.” Was LEV. watching this through his high-tech binoculars?
    “Can I try and get you to quit smoking?” I asked.
    “Mr. Brown, you can try anything with me,” he grinned.
    That night, the two vets gave me level looks, but said nothing. They walked Vince through our security routines. With surprising docility, he agreed to do what he was told. He wanted to get in good with them.
    As the summer passed, those bedroom times were challenging. The intense college senior that I’d met in 1974 had matured into a highly sexed knothead — like me. With other men, I had always maneuvered to be the one in control, and now I prayed that my control could keep Vince out of revolution. But it was hard to control Vince — his feelings were awakened in a new way, and he was eager to push the envelope of sensation. I wasn’t into extremes, or rough sex, so I tried to hold the line. All the while, I kept asking myself “why?” about Vince. I had never asked myself why I loved Billy. That love simply was — like the sunrise is. Yet I was getting as addicted to Vince as he was to dope. Addiction, to me, had always meant alcohol and drugs, so this was a humbling thing to realize.
    Outside the bedroom door, Vince courted the vets’ trust. I went through ridiculous little secret fits of jealousy. Did he find Harry or Chino attractive?
    If it was Harry’s turn to relax, our screaming eagle shared Steve’s bottle of bourbon and Vince’s bottle of burgundy, and told us a thousand and one tales of Vietnam. Vince listened with rapt horror, and the last of his liberal shudders. One day, Harry casually mentioned hauling a dead Vietcong out of a rice paddy, to sit on while he ate his lunch.
    “Christ,” Vince said, “it’d take me... like, years, before I’d get that hardened.”
    “It’d take you 24 hours,” Chino said dryly.
    Our cormorant never told war stories. When it was his turn to relax, Chino kicked back with his six-pack of beer and told us funny tales of what he’d seen on the boardwalk. Now and then, he got dick-dragging drunk, and left us to
    pass out on his bed. This was a new thing since Montreal.
    “Yeah,” Harry said quietly, “Chino took Billy’s death very personally. But his drinking problems started in the Nam. A mission’s like shooting speed — afterward you go on a spree to come down.”
    “What’s his history?” I asked Harry. “I’ve known you guys for two years, and I don’t know a thing about Chino.” “I live with the guy,” said Harry, “and I don’t know much. He was one of the last SEALs in Indian country, before we pulled out. Advisor to a unit of native mercenaries. They ran POW rescues.”
    Vince’s eyes lit up. Rescuing prisoners was a noble thing. As a liberal, he could allow himself to admire this.
    “I don’t think Chino was ever a commie-hater,” Harry went on. “He wanted to be a SEAL for manhood, I guess. I get the impression that some of his teammates knew he was gay. But SEALs stay