The Front Runner

awards banquet, maybe a dance, young athletes arguing about training methods in six languages, girls hanging around. I was always proud of the three of them—handsome in their good suits, ties, dress shirts, showered and combed and glowing, each poised in his way. They danced straight-facedly with girls, and if they boogied, it was never gay.
    Vince and Jacques were both unfaithful to each other—Jacques for the first time—and tasted the joys of European females. But Billy was—as usual—impervious.
    "Hey, Harlan," said Vince, "these European foxes, they don't work as hard as American foxes at being sexy."
    The morning after the meet, we loaded up our car and were on our way again.
    Never again were the four of us so close in feeling and purpose. We were two couples in love. We were friends that would do anything for each other. We were a motherless clan, a gay commune, a little band of guerrillas living off the land. All three boys were in top form, injury-free, pitting themselves against some of the world's best, racing flat-out every few days, running well, placing if not winning.
    I was engrossed in taking care of them. There was always something I could do. Vince bruised his left foot badly, and I crafted a marvelous emergency insert for his shoe that would be springy enough but legal. Just toward the end, Billy started losing his edge a little and having muscle tremors, and I had to feed him magnesium and massage his legs. Jacques was having insomnia, partly from the usual nervousness about racing, partly from euphoria. Vince would get the hotel
    kitchen to heat milk for him while I rubbed him down, and usually we managed to get him off to sleep.
    They looked after me too. When I stupidly injured my knee running in the Bois in Paris (it ended my running for the rest of the trip), they were all icing the knee and winding the Ace bandage around it. When I got laid low by stomach flu, they ransacked the drugstores for something powerful to kill it.
    We left a trail of victories and surprises across the Continent.
    Jacques had the first stretch of consistent running since he'd left Oregon. He ran mostly the 800 meter, his best event, and he was beaten only once, by Willi Kruse in Stuttgart. All my work on Vince's knees was finally showing—he was having one of his rare stretches of injury-free competition, and he was unbeaten in the 1,500.
    Billy didn't win a single race, but his explosive appearance on the international scene was causing a lot of talk. He was usually second, or third.
    The feeling of a couple of European track experts was that, if I brought the three of them to Montreal like that or better, we would collect enough gold to balance the U.S. foreign debt.
    I wasn't so sure, though Jacques' euphoria would wilt once he was back in the U.S. having "fag" yelled at him. Vince was clearly one of the top 1,500-meter men in the world at that moment, but I didn't know if I could keep his legs in one piece for another year. Billy was still, as he had always been, a question mark.
    But we decided to leave these matters to the analysts, and live for the moment.
    In Amsterdam there was a rock concert, and the boys begged to go. I agreed, providing they would depart at a decent hour. We went, and I sat getting my eardrums bent while the three of them whooped and shrieked with the other 20,000 young souls crowded into the park. When I said, "Let's go," they left, looking back lingeringly.
    In London, Billy reached the other wayside marker on his road to Montreal. He ran third in the 5,000
    meter and broke 13:35 for the first time, turning in a 13:26 with an impressive effort. The 5,000 was definitely his second-best race.
    When the month ended, none of us wanted to go home. I told myself I was unpatriotic.
    "Happiness," said Vince, "is bumming around over here, running like a dream."
    Sadly we sold our car for $200 in front of the London American Express, and took our plane back to New York.
    When we arrived, we found that the boys' fine European showing had gotten the press coverage one would expect. Track people maybe didn't approve of them, but they couldn't ignore them either. Special note was taken of Billy's lightning appearance as an international threat in the 5,000-10,000 double.
    In fact, the discussions about the boys' being gay— rumors, arguments, were they, weren't they, how could they be if they were so masculine, etc.—were going on so openly at trackside that we realized public disclosure