The Front Runner

you know. He's
    our divine athlete. When are the Olympics, cheri? I fully intend to go."
    Billy and I were laughing now. "The kid hasn't even made the team yet," I said. "But you'd better make reservations now, because they'll be hard to get."
    "This is my coach, Harlan Brown," Billy explained. "Mr. Brown, this is Delphine de Sevigny."
    "Oooooo, cheri, I know who you are," he crooned. "I thought you looked familiar. You're the big bad Marine."
    I actually flushed. I sensed that Billy was looking at me strangely. I had always presumed that Billy knew of my hustling career, but somehow I felt deeply embarrassed. I wanted my runner to forget that his coach had sold his meat for fifty dollars. I wanted to punch Delphine de Sevigny in the mouth.
    "If you're alone, why don't you join us?" John was saying, taking his arm.
    "Cheri, I'm always alone. Toujours. Take me where you will."
    Arm in arm, they strolled on ahead of us, through the crowd.
    Billy stood looking at me for a moment. His eyes were full of pain, full of questions. For a moment we seemed to be all alone, in the middle of that shoving, babbling, cruising, staring mob.
    I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned away, unable to meet his eyes. Feeling poured over me like a tidal wave. I had always thought of myself—even in the gay world—as a breed apart. The sight of the transvestites had always depressed me beyond words, and I had avoided them. I had always told myself: At least I'm not a freak like that. It was occurring to me now that there was an incredible manly courage in the TV's effort to live as a woman, and that I was still full of straight thinking.
    Billy stood there looking at me sorrowfully. This world was his kingdom, his birthright, and I was still a tourist in it.
    I walked past him. "Let's go, or we'll lose them," I said roughly.
    We sat jostled at a table near the stage. John drank scotch. Delphine drank a champagne cocktail. I drank a Coke. They didn't have any milk, so Billy drank a "glass of water. We heard Bette Midler and the rest. John and Delphine talked, and Billy and I sat silent. When Jess Collett came on and the crowd erupted into frenzied dancing, I was sure Billy would jump up to join them, but he didn't.
    After a while, a dance band came out and started playing vintage stuff: slow jazz and Glenn Miller. It was the kind of stuff that I would have danced to in my youth if I had been irreligious enough to dance. It brought back memories of dances that I didn't dance, loves that I didn't love. The lights dimmed, and the crowd quieted and danced slow. Everybody was plastered together. The straights were plastered to the straights, and the gays were plastered to the gays. John and Delphine got up to dance, and drifted off cheek to, cheek, body to body.
    I sat there feeling more and more depressed. I was thinking about my whole blitzed youth, my blitzed running career, my blitzed romance and marriage, my blitzed summer with Chris.
    Billy sat looking down, playing with a paper napkin.
    A toweled boy paused by me, talking in a high excited voice to a friend. He pressed his hip lightly but meaningfully to my shoulder. Out of the corner I could see his lean torso. His towel was draped so that one buttock was half-bare, in hopes I would make a pass. Billy raised his eyes and watched me. He knew about the rooms available upstairs.
    "Get lost," I said hostilely to the boy.
    The hustler looked at me, then at Billy, and said, "Oh dear, pardon me," and walked off with his friend.
    Finally Billy said, "You going to make a wallflower out of me?"
    I felt that blow in my stomach. He wanted to dance with me.
    "I don't dance," I said. "You go ahead if you want."
    "Come on, it's a slow one," he said.
    I wanted to take his hand in my right hand, and put my left arm around him, and dance with him, and feel his ruffled breast pressing against my tie.
    "All" we need," I said harshly, "is a little social note in Sports Illustrated about how Prescott track coach Harlan Brown was seen dancing with Billy Sive at the Continental Baths."
    Billy shrugged. A few minutes later, an older man bent beside him and asked him to dance, but he shook his head.
    "You're a very virtuous kid," I said.
    "I go to bed only with people I love," he said.
    "That makes a lot of sense," I said. "I suppose your father taught you that."
    "No;" he said.
    "You're too young to know what love is," I said.
    "I know," he said. "I guess I'll fall hard one of these days."
    "He'll be a lucky