Harlan's Race

the idea that I was encouraging him to run, he came charging to me again and again. I loved it, grabbing him up to nuzzle his belly-button. It was the first real flash of Billy that I had seen in him.
    “He’s going to be a sprinter,” I gloated. “Already doing intervals.”
    “The first gay President of the United States,” said Vince. “And he’ll sign an emancipation proclamation for gays and lesbians.”
    “Oh, come on,” Betsy cut in. “If he turns out to be a bi anchorman, or a straight chef, and he’s happy, that’ll be okay.”
    Ana and Falcon, loose on the floor together, got into a baby brawl, and had to be rescued from each other. As we lingered by the warm fireplace with coffee and tea, our silver-haired old lawyer stared into the fire with his grandson drowsing on a blanket on his lap. His coolness to me had warmed a little in the sentiments of the day. We talked about the baby.
    .. And on my side, Falcon is the third generation of the dynasty,” John was saying. “I’m gay, Billy was gay. But the kid here ... who knows? And I don’t believe that genes are everything. But I do think that we’re born what we are.”
    From there, we got into the perennial argument.
    “Chino says the whole concept of gay and straight is bullshit,” I said. “He thinks we’re all bi-sexual on a scale of 1 to 10.”
    “What about past lives?” Vince put in.
    As she listened to us, Eileen’s face was expressionless
    —    our blunt talk bothered her. Now and then, she returned my studying look. She had not failed to notice that I was having an affair with the second of the now-infamous “three gay runners”. Did she wonder if I would steal Jacques from her? Meanwhile, as she was glaring at me, I noticed that Jacques was staring fixedly at Vince, with an expression that could only mean one thing. My stomach sank. If Vince noticed, he didn’t let on — he was talking baby talk and taking Falcon from John Sive.
    Steve and Angel hadn’t come. Angel didn’t feel well enough for the 90-minute drive. But Harry and Chino called from L.A. with birthday wishes.
    “Hey, man,” Chino told me, “I’m going to AA meetings. And I enrolled at UCLA. Thanks for encouraging me.”
    The following weekend, I looked in on Steve and Angel. Unshaven, Steve was grouching around his messy apartment. Piles of untouched paperwork littered his desk. Angel was asleep in his own bedroom.
    Angel was sweating and feverish at night, Steve said
    —    the boy’s bed was drenched in the morning. His lymph nodes were the size of marbles, very sore. Sometimes he seemed confused. Steve was worried. He’d missed a deadline for an Esquire fiction piece. ‘Ten thousand bucks I’ve lost,” he complained.
    “Better get Angel to Doc Jacobs,” I said. “Knock it out of his system, whatever it is.”
    “Yeah,” Steve agreed. “I dread doctors — he hates being touched. But maybe he’s got mono, or something.”
    My journalist friend Bruce Cayton was also back in town. He’d just completed a postwar update on Vietnam for Harper’s. Bruce knew that the gay world was the only American fringe with no violent politics yet, so he’d been intrigued at the first wispy rumors of Gay Panthers. He wanted to interview Vince and me. How much had he found out about Vince’s new revolutionary activities?
    I told Bruce I’d think about it, then called Harry. Harry mused. “For a reporter, Cayton is pretty sharp. In Vietnam I was always afraid he’d see through my closet door.” “Any problem with Vince or me doing this interview?” “Not if you keep it a backgrounder ... off the record.” So, that warm autumn evening, Bruce and I rendezvoused with Vince on Christopher Street by the church. From among the loitering young people and clouds of pot smoke on the church steps, Vince ambled out with his rangy walk. My lover was losing his Fire Island glow
    — he had been in the city for weeks. He was dressed with surprising conservatism — wrinkled navy blazer and preppie loafers.
    “Hi, Harlan,” he said to me, as if we’d seen each other yesterday.
    Staring at him, I realized how our passion had eroded down to the purely sexual. And, for me, sexual wasn’t enough. Respect, and care, and dignity, and discipline, had to be there too.
    The three of us walked together. In front of the Badlands club, a couple hundred young males in rut were milling around, eyeing one another, cups of beer in their hands. Sweaty tank tops