The Front Runner

with any discussions of this sort, and just swallowed the questions.
    Billy was laughing again. He was convulsed. He pointed at my stopwatch. "Mr. Brown, you even forgot to stop your watch before you grabbed me."
    We both leaned against the rock, laughing, shiver-
    ing in our wet clothes. "Mr. Brown," he said, "what was our pace per mile?"
    "More like 3:50," I said.
    We walked slowly back with our arms around each other, our sides pressed together. About a mile from the edge of the woods, we saw Vince and Jacques coming along the trail. I drew away from Billy nervous-
    ly.
    "Hell," said Billy, "we want them to know, don't we?"
    So we kept walking like that, two lovers, with bits of leaf still in our hair. Vince and Jacques came loping up to us, grinning widely. They stopped just long enough to enable Jacques to caper around us. He was playing an invisible recorder and making noises that sounded like the Mendelssohn wedding march. Vince punched me gently, and punched Billy gently.
    "Now maybe we'll have some peace and quiet," he said.
    NINE
    AS graduation 1975 neared, every passing day told me how right I'd been not to say no to Billy. The decision had been right not only for me, but for him too.
    Both of us relaxed. I stopped barking at him. He stopped fighting me about his training schedule. It was amazing how docile he suddenly was about cutting down his mileage. He was still a little addicted to it, and fidgeted like an ex-junkie sometimes. "I fought you because I resented your behavior to me," he said. "Now I'm going to be good."
    For me, the relaxation was gradual, as the buried tensions and pains of years slowly dissolved. For Billy, the relaxation was immediate. From that first morning in the woods, he abandoned himself to love.
    "I always fell in love with unhappy people," he said. "I was a sucker that way. I wanted to change their lives and make them happy. It never worked out. It was the same with you. You were the unhappiest guy I ever saw. But you're stronger than the others, and you really want to be happy. This time it's going to work."
    The relaxation had a curious effect: for the first week or so, both of us wanted to sleep all the time. Billy nodded off in classes. In the afternoons he went back to his dorm and napped. I found myself falling asleep in my office with my head on the typewriter. I found my eyes falling shut as I stood by the truck supposedly timing my runners. We both found that we couldn't stay awake past nine P.M. We laughed about it.
    But our happiness was far from complete. It was painful to continue on the same daily schedule as before. We saw each other only during workouts, classes and team open house. We snatched an hour of
    love every day or every other day, in the evenings at my house, or in the woods, or in my car somewhere. When Billy's father came to New York, we snatched a half hour in his hotel room when he was out. When night came, Billy always went back to his dorm to sleep.
    Above all I hungered for him at night—not merely for his body, but for his presence. I thought: Have I waited twenty years for this, only to wake up in the morning and find myself in an empty bed?
    We often called each other up on the phone. I'd be home about ten P.M. working out new training schedules for the teams, and the phone would ring. "Hi, Mr. Brown," he would say. "Hello, Mr. Sive," I would say. "Mr. Brown," he'd say, "I can't get any studying done because I'm thinking about your body." "You're not even supposed to be up at this hour," I'd say. "You're supposed to be asleep."
    Though Joe Prescott had told me long ago it would be strictly my business, I felt obliged to tell him. He took the news with his usual equanimity. Vince and Jacques had not been able to resist telling a couple of friends among their straight teammates, who in turn couldn't resist telling a few other students and faculty. They observed that Billy did indeed sometimes go to my house alone in the evening, and that I wasn't yelling at him any more.
    The reaction was: Ho hum, another picturesque pair. Unfortunately this knowledge eventually found its way off campus.
    Billy started studying extra hard, trying to make up for lost time. When May came, all three boys' portfolios were graded "Pass" and they were able to graduate.
    Whereupon Joe Prescott then hired Vince and Billy as teachers, with the idea that they would develop a gay studies program. Joe had gotten more and more interested in the whole question of gay