The Front Runner

gang-raping him and whipping him and burning him with cigarettes. I couldn't get this out of my mind. So I contacted the pimp and pretended to arrange for a trick. When I got the kid in my house, I wouldn't give him back. I told the pimp if he didn't get off my neck, I'd turn him in. The pimp had Mafia connections, and next thing I know, they're threatening to shotgun me. So I had to buy the boy from him. They said he was getting too old anyway. I paid them $10,000, which was almost the entire advance from the new novel."
    Steve told this story right in front of the boy. He was sitting there on the blanket beside Steve in his swimming trunks, sniffling and staring vacantly, the wind playing with his hair. It was obvious that he was in another world.
    We looked at him, horrified. He might have had a good body, but it was very emaciated. He was covered with whip and burn scars.
    Steve had a hairbrush, and he was brushing the boy's hair gently. He teased out the tangles until the whole beautiful mass spread silkily across his thin back. But if he caressed the hair too much, the boy would absentmindedly pull his head away.
    "He won't let me make love to him," said Steve mournfully. "He just gets hysterical. And he's a junkie on top of it. I tried to get him onto methadone, but no way. When he's down, he remembers everything, and he just cries and gets hysterical. I finally realized that smack is the humane thing for him. So I get it for him. I just have to be careful that he doesn't OD."
    Billy's eyes were fixed on the boy, and he shook his head slowly. His eyes glassed over with tears, and he looked down. Experienced as he was, Billy had had little taste of the brutal side of gay life.
    "My great dream," said Steve softly, "is that he'll speak to me. I'm reduced to that."
    Sure enough, as we sat talking of the Olympics and track politics, the Angel Gabriel got restless and shaky. Finally he was lying face down on the blanket, crying soundlessly, his buttocks squeezed tightly together as if
    trying to defend himself. We all fell silent, too depressed for words.
    Steve went in the house and came back out with a cut of "heroin and the works. The Angel Gabriel sat up shakily, his eyes fixed on the white powder as Steve expertly melted it down in the metal spoon over the flame and filled the hypodermic.
    "You use shit, Steve?" Billy asked hoarsely.
    "No," said Steve. "I'll stick to speed."
    Gently as a nurse, he gave the hypo to the boy. The Angel's eyes were intent as an animal's now. Very businesslike, he hunted for a usable vein in his thin thigh, working the needle around in his flesh. Shortly he had his rush coming. He lay back down, relaxed, smiling a little at the sky. The sky was clouding over, and Steve threw another blanket over him.
    The sight of the Angel Gabriel made us all think of our own problems, and of that emotional death that always threatened us.
    John Sive talked to me for hours that weekend, pouring out his heart about the anxieties of gay old age. Delphine was after him to marry him, but John was past even temporary relationships. "What I need," he said, "is something to make me forget about sex entirely, for good, or I'm going to end up making a fool out of myself."
    Delphine spent much of his time that weekend sitting by the window looking out at the sea, and talking to himself in French.
    Vince talked to us a lot that weekend too. I had become deeply fond of Vince, and it alarmed me to see how bitter and sad he'd become. Pro track was not working out for him. He said that running an exhibition mile alone against the pacing lights just wasn't the same. The promoters were using him as a sideshow. Step right in, folks, see the real live homo miler with the tattoos.
    For obvious reasons, he wasn't getting the fat product endorsements that the other top pro runners got. "And I've got this film offer," he said. "But I've seen the script, and my god, it's just one of these slick stereotype Hollywood jobs about gays. And I'm not
    starving, so I said no. I don't need being exploited any more than necessary . .."
    And now, on top of this, it looked like Vince and Jacques were breaking up. I had always assumed that Vince would be the cruel one when the end came.
    But the first night, Billy and I heard him arguing with Jacques in the next bedroom, through the thin paneled wall.
    "You seduced me," said Jacques. "You were in such a big hurry. If you'd just let me find my way, maybe I wouldn't be paying a