Harlan's Race

seemed almost incestuous. Restraint can be as precious as passion.
    What had Harry called it? PTSD? Post traumatic stress disorder? First time I’d heard the term. Was this a $64 word (the Fifties phrase dated me) for what had happened to my own life?
    Maybe I should get on with locating Chris Shelboume. For all I knew, he was the solution to my problem — the missing piece that changed the puzzle into a perfect pattern.
    Michael met me at La Guardia Airport. His eyes showed me fear that he was losing his dad again. I spent several days trying to show him that I was sane and loved him. But Michael was being emotional about something, wanting to cling. I was too shaky a post to cling to.
    “You still haven’t gone to a therapist,” Michael insisted. “I think therapy is a lot of crap,” I barked. “A guy ought to be able to figure out his own problem, and deal with it.” “That’s why you’re such a mess,” he barked back. “Christ... and I thought you were the strongest guy in the world!”
    “I have to be alone for a while.”
    ‘Tell you what,” he said bitterly. “When you want me around, you write me the letter next time.”
    There was a mound of mail to deal with. No new missive from LEV. But there was another letter from the past — and it was from Chris. My heart almost stopped as I read his name on the envelope. He’d sent it care of the Bruce Cayton Show, who forwarded it. It was odd that I’d been thinking of him. Like we were both psychic. The letter was hand-written under an AP letterhead, with a home address in Santa Barbara, CA.
    Dear Harlan,
    I suppose you get lots of letters from people who say they knew you when. It’s hard not to be reminded that I knew you once — you seem to be everywhere these days. I saw you on the Bruce Cayton Show — you haven’t changed much, still locking horns with everything that comes down the pike. I’m married these days, got a lovely wife and two kids, pretty successful career — can’t complain,
    I guess. I come to New York once a month on business. Maybe we could get together for dinner, talk about old times. If you call and I’m away, just tell her who called, and leave a message. Hope to hear from you.
    All the best,
    Chris
    The hopeful hints were all there in the letter. Did I want to see him? With Vince in the past, and Chino in a holding pattern? Did he want something from me? Who knew if the spark could flare up again?
    That night, not surprisingly, a dream ambushed me with a memory from 1952. Chris and I were running together. I was following him along a deer trail through the Pennsylvania woods. Autumn leaves fell golden around us. He kept looking back over his shoulder, as if he knew the devastating effect he had on me. I loved that shy radiance in his face, his smile that revealed a tooth chipped in a scuffle we’d had. He wasn’t as strong as I was — I’d beaten him easily. Close on his heels, I was the male in rut.
    We passed a road sign. Then we were in the cab of an old blue Chevy pickup, panting and sweaty, and I had him trapped against the passenger door — his back was against the window. He was hot for me, but his sky-blue eyes were nervous. I kept trying to kiss him. He kept turning his face away. Finally, for a moment, he let me — lips parting to me. Then his eyes flashed with fear, and he was pushing me away. “No, no, please,” he was saying. “Stop ... it’s a sin.” I was wild with love, and woke up in the struggle to convince him it was all right.
    I lay there, in New York in 1980, deep in the spell of that dream. How could Chris be so warm and alive, so unchanged inside of me, after 25 years? Memory tricks us.
    The next morning, my hand shook as I dialed the number.
    ‘This is his wife, Helen,” said a woman’s voice. “He’s out of town on business. May I ask who’s calling?”
    We chatted for a bit, and I told her I was an old school friend. She’d never heard him speak of me, but willingly took a message that Chris could find me in Davis Park, Fire Island.
    When I hung up, I was shaking nervously all over.

    ith a few clothes, my typewriter and Bible, and
    Striper in a carrier, I took a cab to a Long Island used car lot. There I slid into anonymity again, and bought a blue Chevy truck for cash. An hour later, I was on the Long Island Expressway. The need that I felt, to be out on the water in my clam-boat, was a starving as strong as any I’d ever felt for sex.
    Fire Island was pulling me