The Front Runner

of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Looking at him, I pondered on how this situation could drive me wild with jealousy if I didn't see the Virgo in him firmly refusing all advances.
    Steve got up on a barstool and made an incredible fifteen-minute speech full of raunchy gay puns, that didn't mention Billy at all. He was so drunk that he could hardly stay on the stool. Everybody roared with laughter. The sharp smell of amyl nitrite got stronger and stronger in the air. Vince was wandering around, somewhat drunk also, with his arm around a wild depraved-looking young French Canadian of about eighteen. Vince was Wearing his leather cap tipped rakishly over one eye, and a black leather jerkin that left his arms and chest bare and displayed his tattoos; The jukebox blared endlessly.
    The crowd begged Billy to get up on the bar and do the boogie.
    He refused. "I did my boogie on the track," he said.
    Finally I was trying to fight my way through the crush to Billy with another glass of mineral water for him, and somebody's hand started to unzip my fly. I put my free hand down there, and pushed the hand away, and zipped my fly back up. Leo is not next to Virgo in the zodiac for nothing.
    Billy was looking a little gray. "Harlan, let's go back to the Village," he said. "I've had enough of this, and I'm falling apart."
    We tried to find Vince, but he had disappeared with his friend, so we caught a cab to the Village alone.
    The next morning late, Vince returned, hung-over and subdued. He must have purged some of the poison building up inside of him, because for the next few days he stayed right with us.
    "I don't know what came over me," he said. "Last night I made a spectacle of myself. I don't understand myself any more."
    Billy showed great concern for him, and he responded, and it seemed a little like old times. Every day the three of us sat in the stands with the rest of the group, and watched the track and field events of our choice. Billy and Vince yelled for their friends on the team.
    Rita Hedley bombed out in the semifinals of the women's 1,500, and Billy said, "I hope it wasn't because I danced the legs off her."
    Down in the States, Billy's victory was all over the media. Telegrams of congratulation poured in to him. One was from Jacques, sent from the small Michigan town near where he was doing his field work. It said:
    THANK GOD FOR TV, IT WAS BEAUTIFUL, YOU MAKE ME WANT TO START RUNNING AGAIN, GOOD LUCK IN THE 5,000, LOVE, JACQUES.
    As the Games ground on, I began to see a subtle change in Billy. His euphoria was wearing off, and he (like me) was beginning to find being a celebrity very wearing: the demands on his time and emotional energy, the loss of privacy, the feeling of being looked at by 100 million TV viewers via satellite every day.
    "Are we going to live like this from now on?" he asked me.
    "I hope not," I said.
    "You know," he said, "I'm dying for that race on Sunday, but I'm also dying to go home."
    Right there at the Games, he received two lucrative film offers. One was from M-G-M, to do a feature film about an athlete. The other was from European director Luigi Servi, to do a feature film about gays. The M-G-M offer he turned down immediately—he couldn't do it and stay an amateur., Two book publishers wanted to bid for his memoirs. He put all these people off, saying he needed time to think about it. And he and Armas Sepponan received a $100,000 offer each from the International Track Association to join the pro tour. Both he and Armas said flatly, "No."
    In the 5,000-meter heats, Billy and Armas qualified easily for the final. Bob Dellinger made the final too, but Mike Stella missed.
    All around us, you could hear people talking up the
    5,000 final on Sunday like no other event. Even the glamour of the 1,500 event was being eclipsed.
    Some incredible bets were being made. Steve Goodnight had recklessly bet a rich conservative American track buff $10,000 that Billy would win the 10,000 meter. "Good thing I won," he told me, "because I didn't have $10,000." Now they were renewing the bet—$5,000 for the 5,000 meter.
    On Saturday, when I saw Billy, he was oddly subdued and tense.
    "I'm going to come out tonight," he said, "and we'll spend the night together. I really need you. I didn't sleep good last night. Another night like that and Armas will blast me off the track tomorrow. Everything is getting to be too much."
    Early that evening, John cleared out of his room and I waited for Billy there. The