The Front Runner

snapping. They neared the reviewing stand, and there was the usual moment of suspense. Would the flag dip, or wouldn't it? All the other flags were dipping, one by one, as they passed the Prime Minister of Canada.
    Old Glory was coming up to the reviewing stand now.
    I leaned over to John and Vince. "He's not going to dip it," I said, and I told them Billy's joke about the flag as a symbol of gay erection. John and Vince broke into helpless laughter.
    That flag passed proudly by the reviewing stand, straight up. American arrogance and honor had been upheld once again, by a youth that America had disdained. I was laughing myself. That lump just stayed in my throat, and wouldn't go away.
    But the tension in the stadium was real and gripping, and we could feel it that very first afternoon. Every person who was at the Games remembers it as the Games of rumors and threatened violence. The rumors kept coming and going like the sunlight on that first day.
    The ghosts of Munich and Mexico marched in that opening parade, carrying their black flags. So many extremist groups had threatened to bomb the Montreal Games that everyone there sort of assumed that
    there'd be some kind of massacre. Everyone hoped that the bullets wouldn't fly while they were watching their favorite event. It was a sad proof of how accustomed we all were to violence.
    Rumors said that the French-Canadian separatists were going to bomb the Games. Black protestors were going to bomb the Games. The Canadian Indians and Eskimos were going to bomb the Games to protest racial discrimination. Jewish radicals were going to bomb the Games to avenge the massacre in Munich. A few telephoned threats to the Olympic officials had even informed them that the Games would be bombed if they permitted Billy Sive to compete.
    So the Canadian government had reacted by throwing a massive cordon of troops around the Olympic area.
    When we had arrived at the stadium that first day, we had been amazed at the elaborate security precautions. Every single ticket-holder had to walk past one of those metal-detectors used in airports. If he showed metal, he was frisked. The Olympic Village, where the 1,700 athletes spent all their time save for those moments when they appeared on the field, was under such tight guard that athletes could not sneak in girlfriends and wives as they had done even at Munich. The athletes could leave the village to visit downtown Montreal, but they were warned that they did so at their own risk.
    The threats against Billy had upset us all. But the Canadian government assured us that they were taking every precaution. They were treating Billy with great courtesy, no doubt hoping to pick up a few points with their own gay population.
    Billy was staying with Mike, Martinson and Sachs in an apartment on the second floor of the U.S. dormitory in the athletes' village. The apartment was under guard at all times, even when the boys were out. In addition, the Canadians had provided two big armed bodyguards who went with Billy everywhere, and one who went with me. The bodyguards could be trusted to do their duty fervently—they were gay.
    Now and then I had nightmare thoughts about Billy
    being blown up by a bomb, but I tried to relax. You're really getting paranoid, I told myself.
    The clank of troops had put a damper on the Games. I could feel it right there in the stadium. The crowd was trying desperately to have a good time, but all around I could hear people talking about their adventures at the frisking point.
    "What's the point of having the Games," Mike Stella had told me the night before, "if they can't be open and carefree?"
    Everyone—spectators, the press, athletes—kept looking around hungrily for something to give warmth and positive focus to the whole chilly affair. And that something was turning out to be Billy.
    He had walked into the athletes' village with his sunlit smile, his mop of curls, his glasses, his brown suede jacket and his spikes slung over his shoulder, and he had said "Hi" to everybody. In about twenty-four hours, his Pied Piper charm had disarmed most of the athletes. They were all young too—sixteen to thirty-five. Many were nonconformists in their own right, and they responded to Billy as someone whose struggle and hard work they could appreciate.
    They talked to him and found that the notorious, young, bearded gay was just a human being like themselves. They found that while he'd discuss homosexuality if they pressed him, he