The Front Runner

harsh brown patch of pubic hair was startling on his pale, supple, veined loins, and the swollen cock between those runner's thighs.
    I had it in my mouth almost before I'd seen it. The only sound, in that silence, was Billy groaning softly as he fondled my head and thrust his hips slowly against my face. He was real.
    Despite my wish to be frank, I can't describe everything we did.
    There are several reasons why. I am better at hiding feelings than displaying them. I am not literary enough. I have to keep some memories for myself. I am not sure that I remember what we did in exact serial order. Besides, I think it is generally known by now what happens when two human bodies come together.
    Maybe it I were the Jean Genet or the Steve Goodnight of the trackwriters, I could put on paper the peculiar intensity of that first sexual encounter.
    The word "ecstasy" isn't quite right. We both rejected mysticism in favor of simple directness and rough tenderness. If Billy let himself go so far as to moan sometimes and close his eyes and toss his head around on the leaves, I was silent and open-eyed. I had to see in order to believe. Even in his arms, I was the doubting Thomas.
    The lesbians tell us that only a woman knows how to love a woman. The gays will answer that only a man knows how to love a man. I had always found women passive, devouring. They seemed to have no notion of how important sex is to a man, and no willingness to learn. Women had always robbed me of my sex for money—first my wife, then the prostitutes. But Billy's male intensity met me halfway. Instead of taking, he
    gave. Each of us gave, and gave again, until we were drained and hurting.
    That first time, we shied away from the ultimate act of love and possession that the Supreme Court had declared legal. In our macho pride, neither of us had ever permitted another man to do that. For months yet, each of us would still have a deep-rooted fear of offending precisely that maleness that we loved in the other. In addition, I dreaded the idea of hurting Billy physically, or of upsetting that relentless psych that kept him in front on the track.
    It would take far more trust and confidence than we had on that April morning before each of us would not only tolerate being taken, but actually wish for it as the ultimate way of pleasing the other. In fact, I would be the first to surrender—my fear of damaging Billy was so strong that I would wind up hurting his feelings by at first refusing his own surrender.
    But for now, what we were able to give and receive was more than enough.
    We lay finished.
    I had expected to feel shattered after this intimacy with my ghost. Instead I felt peaceful. It was warm there on the dry leaves. The morning sun was shining right on us, and I felt empty, almost weightless. I felt very clean, as if the light were shining straight through me—as if the forest air were moving through all the cells of my body.
    His legs lay across my arm, and my head lay on his thighs. He still had his arms around my lower body, and his face pressed against my groin. In the silence, I could almost hear our hearts beat. They had the slow deep pulse of the distance runner—mine was about forty-eight and his was forty. I could see that pulse beating in his genitals—the penis, still swollen and moist, moved slowly as it lay across his thigh. My mouth tasted of his salt and his semen.
    The leaves crackled a little under us. Nearby, the water gurgled as it slid over the rock. The birds had stopped their dawn caroling and were into the softer,
    more businesslike daytime notes. In the distance was the soft rumble of a jet plane.
    I couldn't move. In my sweet inertia, I was like a rock. I would lie there till a glacier moved me.
    Billy drew a long slow breath and ran his hand along my thigh one more time. My arm was going to sleep, so with deep regrets I pulled it slowly from under his thighs. It took an effort, but I raised myself up on my elbow. He stayed as he was, his face between my thighs, his hand stroking. My groin was spattered with a little glistening semen, and Billy started to lick it up slowly, first out of the pubic hair, then off my bare skin to the side. His eyes were closed.
    It was dreamlike yet so real: the feel of his warm tongue on my body. He moved slowly, turning against me, kissing his way up along my torso. He was dry now, and warm, with a fine dust of salt on his skin. His tongue left a wet trail in my body hair. He reached my