Harlan's Race

exasperation. “I looked around at the other guys, felt their vibe, and for the first time I... really saw where I was heading. Suddenly I just... flamed out. There’s got to be a better way.”
    “I tried to tell you that,” I whispered.
    He jumped up, and his eyes went black with emotion. “Why in the fucking hell,” he burst out, “do you always have to be the big know-it-all? Just because you’re older doesn’t give you the right to belittle me! So I made a mistake. Didn’t you ever make a mistake?”
    He towered over me, and poured a scalding soliloquy through the mask, onto the bed.
    “Jesus, Harlan, where’s your heart? Emotionally, with you, I feel like... I don’t know. You make me feel like when I was 17 and had my sacred dream about loving men. It was going to be ... a ceremony or something. And wonderful ... if I could get up the guts. Then I got fucked for the first time. Yeah, I lied ... somebody had me before you. I was hanging out on Melrose Boulevard. This college guy, he was from Texas Christian ... fed me a line and took me to a motel on Sunset, and he did me till I was raw, and then he left. I cried all night and felt like some girl who’d been raped. After that, I believed that being gay meant being used. Being the most alone that a person could be. So I used people. Fucked people. Until I met Billy. What a revelation. Wow, man ... another human being who still had the dream. And ... guess what. Billy didn’t love me. But that was okay, because Billy was my first gay friend, and that was something.”
    With a wrenching movement, he turned away, and leaned against the cold window. His breath steamed the glass.
    “Then we met you, and we both fell for you. And guess what... you didn’t love me. But that was okay, because you and Billy got together, and it was like... the two of you had found the golden romance that every dyke and every faggot dreams about. The ceremony. Maybe the Goddesses and the Gods put you out there so we could see the golden thing was real. So I could go on hoping.”
    His tears were spilling down behind the mask. Incredibly, one tear made it to his neck, where it spotted his collar.
    “But... you’re not golden with me, man. Emotionally, you have me and walk, like that first guy did. And I wish to God I could hate you. But I can’t, because you were the golden thing for me.”
    There was a long silence. Down the hall, the hospital intercom was calling out a code blue — somebody was on the edge of death. I knew I was supposed to feel sorry, so sorry. I tried to feel sorry. But it seemed like my heart had been replaced by a knot of mucous.
    “Come here,” I whispered.
    Weakly I held out my hand.
    “Fuck you... cold-hearted son of a bitch,” Vince raved. “No wonder women talk about male chauvinist pigs. You’re a gay chauvinist pig, man. You’re the worst there is.” “Come over here.”
    My hand lay open on the white coverlet.
    Slowly he sat down in the chair again, bent over the bed, pressed his face in my palm. His hot tears trickled through the surgical mask, onto my fingers. He cried into my hand, smelling like soap and tears. With my other hand, I stroked his feverish head. Finally I felt around for the Kleenex box, handed him some.
    After a few minutes, he sat up and blew his nose.
    “So what happened there at the camp?” I whispered. His eyelashes were stuck together with tears, as he stared out the window.
    “The night I got there, I had this weird dream. There was this dark hole into a wall, really creepy looking, and Billy was saying, ‘No, no, don’t go in there’. I hadn’t dreamed about Billy for years. I woke up in my tent, really freaked out, and suddenly I knew I’d come to the end of it. So I left my gear, and sneaked out.”
    “They must have had sentries posted.”
    “Yeah. I almost got my buns shot off. Then I was stranded in some no-nuts little town, no money, nothing I could sell. The cops arrested me for vagrancy. So I called Harry and Chino, and Chino came and bailed me out, and they loaned me a little bread.”
    “What are you going to do now?”
    He wiped his eyes with the Kleenex.
    “Get the Testarossa out of storage and sell it. I can get twenty-five thousand for it, maybe. Go home to California. Get a job. H-C says I can crash on their sofa till I get my shit together.”
    I tried hard to feel something, but I couldn’t, and exhaustion was swallowing me again.
    When I woke up, Vince was gone, and Chino