The Front Runner

out of it. Then when Frances came everything was fine. He was convinced it was just the loving. Maybe that's why love and being touched means so much to me, because of those few months when I didn't get any ..."
    "You like being touched, huh?" I ran my hand up his arm.
    He smiled. "That first time we kissed, and when you started caressing me, that was unbelievable."
    The thunder was rumbling softly nearby. It was a soft, fertile summer storm, and if it hadn't been for the phone call in the afternoon, we could have been peaceful. We walked along the side trail. It was hard to follow now that all the ground plants had sprung up.
    Billy was serious again. "You know, I wish we could do it now—start this baby. Maybe I'm being paranoid. But after what happened this afternoon, you know—something could happen to one of us tomorrow."
    We came to the top of the hill, and looked down the slope that we'd gone down that morning. The mountain laurel was all in bloom. The pink and white bell-like blossoms hung heavy, and the green foliage glistened in the mist. We walked down through it slowly, our shirts getting wet from brushing on the leaves. Finally we were in the little open spot where we had lain on the leaves. It was all grown up now with ferns and wild asters.
    I stood looking at the little waterfall, feeling sad and frightened, and Billy walked around slowly kicking gently at the ferns.
    "Why do we always end up talking about death?" he said. He bent and smelled the mountain laurel blossoms.
    "Look," I said, "why don't we do the following.
    Let's have some semen samples stored in a semen bank. They freeze it. You can thaw it out and use it anytimes"
    He walked back toward me, smiling suddenly. "No kidding."
    "Sure," I said. "That way it'll be there."
    "All right, let's do it," he said. "Like, let's do it tomorrow. That way we'll both be less anxious about it."
    He put his arms around me and we just stood there holding each other, our bodies feeling very warm and good through our wet shirts.
    We got in touch with a very discreet and liberal gynecologist and told him what we wanted to do. He thought it was picturesque, and agreed to help. We made numerous trips to the clinic and masturbated assiduously until we each had a dozen samples in the freezer.
    As if in ironic comment on this, the last weekend in June I got a hate letter from my elder son, Kevin. The letter was the only personal communication I'd had from my family since the divorce.
    He wrote: "We've had to move away because everybody knew who we were. The kids in school all knew my father is a fag. I hope you get what's coming to you."
    On July 2, Vince left us to go to Europe with the pro tour. We were both very worried about him. He and Jacques had broken off completely. He was alone, and morose, and inclined more and more to brood about injustices done to gays in general and himself personally.
    Since our wedding, the track world had been pretty quiet about Billy. No one mentioned the subject much. The athletes themselves continued to be either supportive or indifferent to the issue, with just a few of them showing hostility.
    We suspected that the reason for this silence was that the AAU and the USOC were saving their ammunition to use on Billy in the Olympic Trials.
    This suspicion, it turned out, was right.
    FIFTEEN
    WITH the Olympic Trials, Billy and I said good-bye to our quiet home life at Prescott. The next two months, with its disruptions and its forced separations, we would just have to live through.
    "After the Games," Billy said, "you and I are going to get in bed and stay there for a week."
    With the Olympic Trials, the great hassle moved into fourth gear.
    The Trials are a messy, spectacular mini-Olympics. They are the finest track meet held in the U.S., and are organized by the USOC to select the Olympic teams in each track and field event.
    They are also a slaughter. Any sociologist looking for choice research material on male aggressiveness will find it at the Trials. The aim is to be among the first three finishers in your event; If you're fourth, you're out, no matter how good you'd been all that season. Novices and veterans alike are thrown into the meat grinder. Runners shove and spike each other on the track. A fall, an injury, a foul, running wide, a tenth of a second, a cramp, a hot day, a sleepless night—just one of these little things can rob a runner of four years' sweat, pain and financial sacrifice.
    The U.S. is the only major