The Front Runner

mid-July till after the Games, we would be seeing little of each other.
    We were still in our impasse about how to live. I Saw our lives being frittered away, day by day.
    One weekend during that April rest, we managed to have one of our few times alone together. My memories of that weekend are powerful and poignant, and not totally happy.
    Steve Goodnight had a house out on Fire Island. Not in one of the famous little gay communities, as one would expect, like Cherry Grove. He had settled in Ocean Ridge, a little town farther east along the shore. "I couldn't ever get any writing done in the Grove,"
    he had told me. "People drop in. Sexual distractions. The hell with it."
    That weekend he invited Billy and me, Jacques and Vince, and John and Delphine out to the house. He and a strange new friend of his met us on the dock in Patchogue on Friday evening, and we took the last ferry across to the island. This early in the season we were the only people on it.
    We sat on the upper deck, letting the cool wind blow our hair, watching the sun set over the Great South Bay.
    "I haven't been out here since my hustling days," I said.
    "You're not missing much," said Steve. "It's getting to be like Coney Island."
    Billy was smiling at me. "I'll bet you've been to some parties out here."
    I grinned. "I've seen some things, all right." I put my arm across Billy's shoulders, since our group was alone on the deck.
    It was always good to see Steve. He hadn't changed much, though he was forty-three now. His straight brown hair was thinning rapidly, and his good English face looked a little worn. He was working on a new novel and also on some gay pornography because, he said, he needed money.
    The ferry docked. We loaded the suitcases and the boxes of groceries and the cat-carrier containing Steve's cat onto a couple of the rusted red kiddy-wagons that are Fire Island's only private transportation, and started off along the boardwalk.
    We felt uncommonly conspicuous. Since it was early in the year, most houses were still closed up. Only a few windows showed the warm gaslights. We had a few strained laughs about being a little advance unit in this straight town.
    Steve's house was a rambling shingled affair with a lookout tower and a lot of windows and a sundeck all around it. It sat right up on the dunes overlooking the ocean, with the beach grass blowing all around it. I figured the house must have cost Steve $70,000.
    It was a warm clear spring night. Steve let the cat
    out. We turned on the gas lights, unpacked the groceries, cooked a fast dinner and went straight to bed. Each couple had their own bedroom.
    Ours was airy, with a double pine bed and grass rugs and big windows. Billy and I undressed by candlelight, and the soft flame made a flickering tender light over our bodies. We slipped into the clean sheets and made love. The window was open to the sea, and we lay listening to the surf.
    "We're insane," I said softly, "not to live like this all the time."
    "Yeah, two days is really going to spoil us."
    The next day we all got up late. Billy and I ran our two miles. Jacques ran his slow seven. Vince ran a hard ten.
    After breakfast we lay around on the sundeck tentatively taking the spring sunshine on our pale skins. Billy spread a blanket on the deck and did his yoga and breathing exercises, tying his supple body into contortions. We played some volleyball over a weathered drooping net down on the beach. Steve's huge black tomcat stalked through the dune grass, and we had a few jokes about whether he was a straight cat or a gay cat.
    But the atmosphere among the others was strangely subdued and unhappy. Billy and I found it affecting our contentment.
    To begin with, we were all disturbed by Steve's new friend.
    He was a sixteen-year-old boy, mute, withdrawn, zombie-like. He had a tangled mane of pale, flaxen curls that hung clear to his shoulderblades. His thin waxen face had an unearthly beauty. His sapphire-blue eyes were expressionless. He followed Steve around like a dog.
    As we sat on the sundeck, Steve told us his story. "Here I wrote that book about the Angel Gabriel, and then I met him. I don't even know his name. All I know is, he was a runaway, and he was a chicken ever since he was twelve. The pimp specialized in the S/M trade. Whenever he didn't have the kid out on tricks, he kept him tied up in his apartment. I heard
    about him from a friend. He was at this party, and they had the kid there, and they were