The Front Runner

impress him.
    "Look," I said, "are they all enemies on the USOC?"
    "No," said Aldo. "Not all of them. Most of them are. There's a few, like me, like most of the seven athletes' representatives, who feel that an athlete's private life is not the business of the AAU and the USOC. And I do believe that, Harlan."
    "All I can promise you," I said, "is that Billy and I are going to conduct ourselves with dignity. If anybody makes fools of themselves, it's going to be those senile old fanatics."
    "Look," said Bruce, "I'm sitting here thinking. There's a story here on the whole question of ... of this kind of thing in sports. If I can find just the right handle on the story, and if I can find somebody to publish it, I'd like to try a piece. Would Billy let me interview him?"
    "Sure," I said. "He's a beautiful interview. His head is an open book."
    "All right," said Bruce, "I'll get in touch with you when I've worked things out."
    "If you do a story," said Aldo viciously, "find some kinda way to dispel all the other rumors too."
    "What other rumors?" I said.
    "You really want to know?" Aldo asked. He was furiously tearing up a piece of bread.
    He started to tell me. When he'd finished, I'd had one more sociological revelation. Society had tried to teach me that the gay mind was an open sewer. Now I knew, beyond any doubt, that it was the straight mind that was the sewer.
    Billy was silent as I repeated to him what Aldo had told me.
    "That I have orgies with some of my freshmen that I've seduced," I said. "That you and I go down to New York and pick up chickens. That students disappear off the campus because I take them down to New York drugged and tied up and sell them to pimps."
    It was that evening, and we were lying in my big, hideous, Victorian bed made out of Caucasian walnut. Rain rattled against the windows. It was cold already, and the furnace in the little old house wasn't working very well, so we had the quilt pulled up over us. Making love had not had its usual therapeutic effect.
    "And of course that I have orgies with all three of you. But what's worse, that you and your father and I ... and that you and your father always . .."
    Billy sighed and shook his head. "Wow. I could tell you were upset when you came back from the city."
    "Chickens," I said bitterly. "I can't even stand kids that age. And all the grief I had all those years precisely because I was prissy about sleeping with runners, and they've got me balling my whole goddamn team."
    "And that one about the pimps," said Billy. "That's a classic. That's straight out of the Saturday-night horror flick. And the crap about me and my father . . . poor Dad, when I think how careful he always was. There's just no pleasing some people, is there?"
    He was propped on his elbow by me, and his warm body was stretched out easily against mine. He tried to comfort me, caressing my side. But I could tell he wasn't all that upset about what I'd told him, and this irritated me. I wasn't comforted by his stroking.
    "Well, what're you going to do?" said Billy. "We knew that people would react this way, didn't we?"
    "They really believe these things," I said.
    "Just don't think about them," said Billy. "Rumors like that just dry up and disappear."
    "And another one," I said, "that you're two-timing me all the time with Vince and Jacques. That really hurt."
    "Why did it hurt?" said Billy. After a minute, he said, "You don't trust me."
    "I don't worry a minute about Jacques. But you and Vince are very close. Vince sleeps around. How do I know he's not going to sleep with you?"
    "Look," said Billy, annoyed, sitting up, "when will you learn that I never lie? I've told you before that there's never been anything between Vince and me."
    "All right," I said. "I'm just a jealous old man."
    "Well, don't be," he said. He sat with his knees drawn up against his chest and stared at the foot of the bed. Then he added, "Part of your problem is, you still haven't totally accepted the fact that you're gay. You still want to have things their way."
    "I'm aware of that," I said, a little sarcastically.
    "You won't be happy until you put your head in order. We won't be happy."
    "Aren't you happy with us?"
    "Don't put words in my mouth," said Billy. "I just meant that your straight hang-ups are gonna get in our way if you don't work them out."
    "Are you that tired of me already? Are you about ready to move on?"
    Billy got out of bed. "Look," he said, "I know you had a rough time at Mamma