The Front Runner

be out of our minds," said Billy.
    "Do you think they have enough pictures?" I said.
    "Am I behaving like a Virgo?" said Billy. "Seriously.
    Is a Virgo supposed to let himself get balled on the beach in broad daylight in the middle of a hurricane?"
    "Only by a Leo," I said.
    We lay around choking with laughter, making various silly remarks like this. Finally we got up and went over to our clothes. The first thing Billy put on was his glasses.
    "Men never make passes at boys who wear glasses," I said.
    That broke us up again.
    We stood around for a minute letting the rain wash the salt and sand off us.
    Finally we put on our sticky sandy clothes and started walking back. We had sand in our crotches, and it itched. We walked with our arms around each other. The rain was finally stopping.
    "Sometimes I think back on how afraid I was to love you," he said. "It makes me laugh now."
    "Afraid?"
    "I was always afraid of loving someone as strong as myself."
    Those words moved me even more than when he'd said he loved me. I couldn't have stood anything effeminate in him.
    Vince passed us with a sad little wave, going out for his own run alone. Then we passed a woman in a sou'wester, going out to walk her dog. She threw us an odd glance. We knew she was thinking that the fairies were moving in from Cherry Grove. It was a good thing she hadn't come along half an hour earlier.
    Back in the house, the others were getting up with their sorrows and fixing their breakfasts, but we managed to stay happy. The hot shower was good, and dry clothes. We sat at the big redwood table by the window. I had eggs and toast and hot tea. Billy drank milk and ate some ripe pears, rubbing the juice off his chin. But then Steve and the Angel sat down, and Steve was trying to make him eat, and we both found it hard to keep laughing.
    All that day Billy and I tried to shake off the sorrow. We inflicted the sight of our affection on the others. It was cold and dank in the house, so we built a fire in
    the franklin stove. Billy and I sat wrapped up in a blanket together on the plaid couch. John Sive watched us with a. sad little smile and shook his head enviously.
    "Oo la la," said Delphine.
    The Angel Gabriel watched us curiously too. Possibly it was the first time that he had ever seen anything but sadism between two men. We put on a little show for him, kissing each other tenderly. The Angel watched with a grave stoned expression.
    By afternoon the rain had stopped. The gale was still blowing, but it had shifted and was now blowing out to sea. The sky was a dark ominous blue. The ocean was a weird green. The huge waves were still rolling in, but now the wind was blowing their tops off. As each wave curled over, a cloud of snowy spume blew back from it like a comet's tail.
    It was an awesome spectacle, and we all went out on the beach to look at it.
    Then we walked over onto the National Seashore. The whole area was deserted. We might have been the last people left on earth after some terrible natural disaster, and we would, of course, not be able to re-populate it.
    We wandered barefoot along the boardwalk that winds through the park. All around us, nature was giving life. In the marshes, the cinnamon ferns were pushing up their great silky heads. On the dunes, the bayberry was coming into bloom. We bent to sniff the masses of little waxen white flowers, but the wind blew the fragrance away before it could reach our nostrils. I thought how incredible it was that a drop of my semen on Billy's skin, or of his on mine, would not root into life somehow. Nothing of our feeling would survive our deaths.
    I broke off a spray of bayberry and brushed it on his lips, so that they were yellow with pollen. He looked at me, possibly understanding what was bothering me, and kissed me so that both our mouths were dusted yellow.
    We were six threatened men. Only Billy and I walked holding hands. Each of the others ambled along alone with his thoughts. Vince was hunched,
    diffident, hands in pockets. Jacques was tight-faced, staring. Delphine played distractedly with his fluttering chiffon, scarf. John Sive strolled heavily, hands clasped behind his back European style. Steve kept looking anxiously at the Angel, whose hair was a tangled mess in the wind. Finally, gently, he took the boy's hand, but the Angel pulled his hand away.
    We walked down along the tide ponds on the bay side of the island. There the wind ruffled the flat water.
    "Look," said Jacques softly, "a