The Front Runner

was, I understood him.
    That was the terrible thing. In spite of my grief, I understood just what had gone on in Mech's mind. He and I had branched from the same American root.
    We took Billy's body back to New York on a special jet supplied by the Canadian government.
    The whole group was still together. John had collapsed in the stands when he saw it happen, but he was able to walk off the plane unaided at Kennedy, white and unspeaking. Even the Angel had seemed to understand that his nonthreatening acquaintance had been killed, and he cried against Steve's shoulder.
    I was still experiencing things without reacting to them. It seemed to me that I had become a camera, that recorded images in a mechanical way.
    In New York, I recall being in a large room somewhere with a lot of reporters and a mike in front of me, and making some remarks about how if I could have every person who had hassled Billy, from people who wrote him hate letters to officials who wanted him off the track, charged in court with first-degree murder, I would do so. But I added that unfortunately there were not enough courts and lawyers in the country to process the case.
    The world was in its usual state of futile guilt. We have all become so accustomed to violence that the hand-wringing was now just a social ritual. There were editorials about how such things shouldn't happen. I read some of them. Unbelievably, there were also people who said that Billy deserved to die.
    The gays had occupied buildings in New York and Washington, demanding a Congressional investigation into the continuing persecution of gay people, demanding the death penalty for Richard Mech. Thousands of shocked straights flocked to these demonstrations, most of them young. Like an automaton, I put in an appearance at one of the big zaps in New York, and said a few words to the massed men and women, and was overwhelmed by their grief and sympathy, which I did not know how to react to.
    The athletes, now home in their countries, were saying that unless their lives could be unconditionally guaranteed at the next Olympics, they would not go. They had struck and walked off the field Sunday after Billy was killed. The Montreal games had ended with the running of the 5,000 meter. Armas Sepponan and the other two finishers had refused their medals. The victory stand stood empty. The anthem was not played.
    The closing ceremonies had turned into a gigantic memorial service for Billy, with festivities cancelled. The Olympic flame was dimmed out with the stands packed and everybody weeping but me.
    It looked as if Billy's death might have broken the back of the Olympic movement.
    But the only thing now real to me was Billy's body in the expensive ornate black coffin hastily supplied in Montreal.
    There was the decision of what kind of arrangements to make.
    "The decision is yours," said John.
    "A big messy funeral," I said, "so the gays can cry over him. Then cremate him."
    The funeral at the Church of the Beloved Disciple on Fourteenth Street was bigger and messier than even I'd anticipated. It was a hot muggy day, and gays were fainting in their feathers, sweltering in their leather. The streets around the church were packed. It was another of those gay social affairs overrun by straights and celebrities and tourists. The police had a hard time maintaining order. The separatist gays tried to beat up some straights and chase them off, saying, "This is our funeral." Finally I had to go out and talk to them. In the name of Billy's nonviolence, I asked them to let everyone come that wanted to.
    The hot church was packed with hard, gay faces. The smell of sweat, leather and flowers was overpowering—the only smell that was missing was amyl nitrite.
    I sat in the front pew with the group, staring at the casket.
    It had stood open there for a day and a half, almost —you could say—in state. Thousands of people, mostly gays and young people, had filed past it. Billy had belonged to the young, and he had been openly, coldly assassinated, like a Kennedy, a King. They looked at him and cried and piled flowers around the coffin and spoke yet again of how American society was insensible to human subtleties.
    Billy lay there wearing his brown velvet suit. Behind his glasses, his eyes were closed. The gold medal lay on the ruffled breast of his shirt. His left hand,
    laid over his right, wore the gold wedding ring. The Montreal undertaker had washed the blood out of his hair, combed it