The Front Runner

  "Now," John went on, "if the ban isn't lifted, the first thing we'll do is get a temporary court injunction against the blacklisting, pending a hearing. This means that you would have to let the boys run, and if you didn't, you'd be in contempt of court. Second, if we have to, we will file suit against the AAU and against all meet promoters who go along with your policy. And we will ask for big damages for the boys. Let's say, for instance, that we might ask for a million dollars each."

  Again that silence, as they thought of the AAU's lit­tle bank account.

  "Now obviously," said John, "you ought to check this out with your own lawyer. Have him tell you if he thinks you stand a chance in court. And bear in mind that if you lose the case, you pay all the court costs."

  Flagstaad said, "Mel, the meet promoters. If just one of them gets hit with a suit, they're all going to ignore your memo."

  "Then we cut off AAU money to them," said Stein-bock.

  "They'll find the money somewhere else," said Flag­staad. "Several of the meets are already getting funds from private industry and stuff."

  "Then we won't sanction the meets," said Reel reck­lessly.

  "What's the point of that?" said Aldo. "Do you want to hurt all the athletes?"

  "There's one more thing," I said. "And that's pub­licity. You don't like publicity like the crap in the Na­tional Intelligencer. And frankly, neither do we. We're not afraid of publicity. But it's a nuisance. We're not looking for publicity at all. As far as we're concerned, it shouldn't be an issue. We're interested in peace and quiet, and business as usual, and seeing to it that the boys run."

  "I agree with you there," said Steinbock. "The pub­licity is awful. But you were asking for it."

  I shook my head. "This guy McGill comes up to us at the 15-kilo and he asks us questions about some­thing that all the track people are talking about. Are we gonna stand there and deny it, and make fools out of ourselves? We didn't ask him to come there. There's a difference between publicity that you go looking for, and publicity you just fall into like a manhole."

  "What we're trying to point out," said Aldo, "is that the more you fight the boys, the more publicity there is going to be. And there are people around who will make martyrs out of them. You guys are just going to come out as the heavies."

  "That's true," said Steinbock painfully. "We always come out as the heavies. Nobody ever sees how over­worked we are, or what good we do."

  I could sense that the publicity thing was turning them in our direction.

  "We can guarantee you," I said, "that if you think you're overworked now, you'll think you were on vaca­tion if this blacklist thing stands. For instance, there's a big demonstration planned for tomorrow, in front of the AAU office in New York. The boys have been in touch with the media, and the media are very inter­ested."

  "Christ," said Steinbock.

  "A bunch of people are coming up here to picket the convention," John added. "The three boys are coming up too. All the major newspapers and two of the TV networks are sending people."

  The wine glasses were empty. We could see the un­ease growing on their faces. Pickets, demonstrations, lawsuits, all reminiscent to the AAU of the 1967 black demonstrations at Madison Square Garden against the racist policies of the New York Athletic Club.

  "What kind of people are coming up to picket?" asked Reel.

  "Gays," said John quietly. "Four busloads, I believe. People from the New York Mattachine Society, the Gay Activist Alliance, the Gay Youth ..."

  We watched them consider the thought of homo­sexuals picketing the AAU convention.

  "Can it be called off?" said Mel.

  "Sure," said John cheerfully.

  "In other words," I said, "before we leave here, you show us a final draft of your counter-memo lifting the ban. You distribute the memo tomorrow at the con­vention. There won't be any demonstration. It'll be business as usual, and a minimum of publicity."

  "Can you guarantee us about the publicity?" Stein-bock asked.

  "We don't control the press," I said. "We can't guar­antee anything. But, like we said, we won't be going around looking for it."

  "All right," said Mel. "I'll draft the memo right now, and we can look it over."

  "In other words, if Billy sends in an entry for the national cross-country, it'll be accepted."

  "Of course," said Steinbock. He pulled some sheets of paper out of his briefcase, and started writing in­dustriously.

  I had no joyful feelings as I sat there watching him write. We had won a respite. But I knew—and Stein­bock knew—that now there was all the more reason to trip the boys up with some bona-fide regulation. This was why he had given in so suddenly, and so gracious­ly. Why risk legal trouble when, if he waited, the boys might play into his hands in some other way?

  In November, Billy won the national cross-country championship. And that same month, the hunters shot the first of my young birds down.

  One evening Jacques and I sat alone in front of the fire in my living room, and he told me that he was quit­ting running for a while.

  "I just can't take the abuse any more. I don't even enjoy running now, it's gotten to be an ordeal. It's politics, not sport."

  I felt so sad, sitting there, looking at the firelight play on his bushy auburn hair and beard and his corduroy jacket. He was sitting stooped, his expressive Gallic eyes empty and staring into the fire.

  "I have to get away from it for a while and think things through," he said. "My family have been very understanding, and after the spring semester I'm going home to stay with them for a while."

  He was silent, clasping and unclasping his fingers. Then he looked slowly up at me.

  "I feel very guilty at all the time and the effort and the money everyone has invested in me," he said. "Es­pecially you. I feel that I've failed you."

  I shook my head.

  "But obviously I'm in no shape to think about the Olympics," he added softly.

  "The Olympics aren't that important," I said. "I'd rather see you jogging two miles a day and happy."

  His eyes drifted back to the fire, and his hand slid down to pat the setter, who was leaning blissfully against his leg. "And the whole thing has kinda come between me and Vince too. I'm totally confused, I don't know what I think about anything any more. I remember how simple it seemed when I first met him. That feeling is just gone. But obviously I still feel something for him, because when we have a fight, I feel like I'm going to die. I deliberately hurt him, and then when I see him bleed, all I can think of is doctor­ing him up. It's funny how vulnerable Vince is; he comes on as such a tough...."

  "He's vulnerable only to people he cares for," I said.

  "Maybe that's it," said Jacques.

  "Well, you know I'm always here if you need me," I said. "For anything."

  "Who knows," said Jacques, "I may be back for the next Olympics, with a whole new set of attitudes . . ." He smiled a little. "Actually I won't stop running com­pletely. If I do, I'll probably gain twenty pounds. I'm just dropping competition. I'll go out for seven, eight miles a day. Maybe I can learn to enjoy it again."

  I sat studying him, thinking how they had done it. They hadn't needed to hit him with the rule book. All they'd needed was psychological terrorism.

  Meanwhile, winter was coming on, and Billy was really burning.

  He was having another of his breakthroughs. His times were dropping spectacularly all across the two-to-six-mile range. We didn't think of him as a two-miler, but that winter he was unbeaten in that event in the U.S. He even broke 4 in the mile, running a second-place 3:57.48 at the Sunkist.

  He wanted to run everywhere and run against every­body and beat everybody. I had a hard time holding him in, and chose his races carefully, wanting to keep him fresh and injury-free.

  We got him over to Europe again, for a few of the great winter cross-country races. (This time the AAU gave us no trouble about travel permits.) He ran in England, Belgium, France and Spain. Of course the Europea
ns now knew about him. But while he was teased and taunted here and there, he was treated more tolerantly than at home.

  The only country where he had trouble was Spain. We heard rumors that the Spanish government might not let him enter the country, because of their strict homosexual laws. But they changed their minds.

  When Billy showed up at the big meet at Granolles, a huge crowd was there to taunt, or just gawk at, the famous young American maricon. Roberto Gil and the other Spanish runners were under terrible pressure not to stain the nation's honor by getting beaten. I really felt sorry for them.

  It was also the kind of situation where Billy was at his most cold-blooded. The results were predictable.

  The runners went off at such a hot pace I knew they'd be stepping over dead bodies before the finish. Gil is a front-runner, and he stayed right up with Billy, and glared at him, and Billy simply ignored him. When Billy started his drive, he just dropped Gil flat, and everybody else. They came tearing down to the finish through the mud puddles looking more like sprinters, with Billy twenty-five yards in the lead. The course record was smashed to pieces. The crowd whistled Billy for winning, and whistled Gil for losing, and the police were holding them back.

  During the American indoor season, between Febru­ary and May 1976, Billy went on a winning binge. Now he outclassed Bob Dellinger and everyone else in his events, and no one could push him. He had the speed now, and the stamina, and a long driving finish that was as deadly as a kick. He was knocking off all the big kickers in the U.S. now.

  It made his critics very uncomfortable to see him winning like that.

  In Europe he could now knock off all but a few— for instance, Armas Sepponan. Every time they met that winter, Armas still beat Billy—but narrowly. I was always amused to see how friendly the two of them were off the track, and how ready to kill each other they were on the track.

  "You make me work harder now," Armas told Billy. "But I also get better. I think I am breaking 27:30 in Montreal."

  "Twenty-seven thirty!" Billy told me later, despair­ingly.

  "He's just trying to psych you," I told him.

  The gays were keeping their promise to go to track meets. We saw them mostly in the big cities, where they felt safe enough to come out in numbers. Some­times they exchanged insulting remarks with the old-guard track buffs.

  In addition, a few runners—only a few, fortunately —were very public about their intense dislike of Billy and Vince, and took it out on them in races.

  So the atmosphere often crackled with lightning ten­sion at those indoor meets that winter.

  Bob Dellinger, now twenty-five, had his eye on the same 5,000-10,000 berth to Montreal that Billy did, and he was probably the most outspoken enemy. It wasn't merely that he was, as he put it, "anti-weirdo." It was a whole question of lifestyles—Dellinger be­longed to Young Americans for Freedom and Athletes in Action, and Billy's whole carefree attitude revolted him.

  The promoters of the big indoor invitational meets, however much they might personally disapprove of Billy and Vince, saw them for what they were: good box-office. All that winter, the Matti-Sive-Dellinger thing packed the crowds in. Dellinger had once been able to "beat Billy at any distance between two and six miles, but now he couldn't any longer. "Losing is bad enough," he said, "but losing to a queer . . ." It was a double loss of masculinity, a public castration. But he could still beat Vince in the two-mile, so he kept slam­ming away at the two of them.

  The most explosive encounter the three had was in the gilt-edge Millrose Games at Madison Square Gar­den in February 1976.

  That night, hundreds of gays showed up at the Gar­den. The gay organizations had put out the word that this was a night to show support. Here and there, as I looked through the smoky air at that huge crowd, I could see the male creatures of the night—TV's in silk turbans and feathers. There were big groups of leather-jacketed gays. There were signs reading OUR BILLY, GO

  VINCE, LOVE FROM THE GANG IN NEW JERSEY, BEAUTIFUL THINGS, etc.

  In the seats behind me, I could hear a couple of crusty old right-wing track nuts muttering that they were sickened by all this.

  In other areas of the crowd, I saw other enthusiastic supporters of ours. One group had a sign reading be kind to "the animal." They were young radical and liberal heterosexuals, mostly students, who were taking up the gay cause the way they had black civil rights. The publicity that Billy had gotten, and his appealing ways, were rapidly making him something of a gay guru with these young people.

  When we arrived at the Garden that night, we had to fight our way through a crowd of them. It was good to feel loved for once. We were crushed, hugged, kissed, jostled, wished well and touched. Billy was fighting off a dozen screaming girls and scrawling autographs and laughing. Some of them were wearing T-shirts that said go billy.

  "Can you believe it?" he said when we got in. "We have a few more friends."

  When the athletes started coming out onto the track and warming up, they were no less colorful than the gays. Lately track and field athletes had been blossom­ing out in mod attire for the indoor meets. Vaulter Marion Wheeler was there in his patchwork warm up pants. Shot-putter Al Diefenbaker was wearing his flowered T-shirt. Black sprinter Ted Fields had on a bizarre embroidered vest.

  Bob Dellinger was out there warming up too, wear­ing his regular UCLA warmups.

  But when Billy and Vince shucked their warmups, the crowd gasped a little, and a wave of whoops and wolf-whistles went up from the gays. The two of them were wearing tracksuits that glittered in the bright lights. Billy's was a little more subdued, a gold jersey. But Vince's was a blatant silver, and it set off his wild black hair and beard and his hirsute body admirably.

  Billy and Vince had done it as a joke. "All those other runners are gonna be in indoor drag," said Vince. "We have to show them that there's no doing things halfway."

  But from Dellinger's look of disgust, I knew Billy and Vince were in for a rough night.

  When the two-mile started, there was pushing and shoving such as I'd seldom seen. It looked more like the women's roller derby than a men's track event.

  Billy went out at a suicide pace. Dellinger and three others went with him, sitting on his back. Vince lay back, waiting to kick. Lap after lap, everybody elbow­ing and spiking. The crowd was screaming for blood. The gays yelling, "Burn 'em, Billy!" The old guard howling, "Smoke 'em, Bob!" The liberal students shrieking as if they were at a rock concert.

  Billy and Vince were beautiful to look at in their now sweaty silver and gold. I could feel every eye in the place mesmerized by them.

  With a lap and a half to go, Vince moved up for the kill, hurtling along, his white teeth showing through his beard with delight. Billy and Dellinger were running shoulder even. Dellinger shoved Billy. Billy ignored him, so Dellinger leaned on him again. This time Billy scored a solid hit on Dellinger. The man behind Billy, running boxed in, reached forward and shoved Billy right in the middle of the back, but Billy kept his balance and shot forward, starting his drive.

  Vince came up beside Dellinger, and Dellinger el­bowed him in the ribs. Vince bared his teeth and hit him right back. The crowd was on its feet, howling. Dellinger was leaning on Vince again. Billy's drive was burning Vince off, and he pulled ahead, leaving Vince to deal with Bob.

  The next thing everybody knew, Vince had thrown a miler's flying body-check on Dellinger. The two of them staggered and stumbled aside, I jumped up, pan­icked, with visions of falls and injuries in Vince's in­valid legs. Then, as the rest of the field raced on by, the two runners had recovered, and they were punching each other.

  The crowd roared as if it was a heavyweight cham­pionship, taking sides.

  The officials raced out and shoved the two of them off the track before the field came around again. In the infield, the two runners started slugging each other again. By then I was there myself, trying to pry Vince off Dellinger. Vince had a bloody nose and red spots were dripped down the front of his swea
t-soaked sil­ver. Dellinger had a swelling eye.

  "You whore," snarled Dellinger.

  "You straight pig," said Vince. "you keep your fuck­ing fascist elbows to yourself next time."

  Billy, aware of what was happening, poured on his strong new finish and hit the tape for a new American indoor record in the two-mile.

  Then, hardly missing a stride across the infield, he headed for Dellinger himself. I blocked his way. Billy was convulsed with a cold fury—he kept trying to climb past me. We were a group of squabbling officials, coaches and runners as about two dozen of us tried to quiet them down. The whole meet came to a stop for about ten minutes.

  "Dellinger hit them both first," I said.

  "They're nothing but trouble," said one of the officials.

  "It's other people make the trouble," I said.

  "You stay outta my way next time," Billy said to

  Dellinger. "If I have to stop and break your neck right in the middle of the Olympic trials, I'll do that." Bud­dhist nonviolence was out the window.

  Finally the runners walked off the track and the meet went on.

  Vince threw his arm protectively across Billy's shoul­ders. Several students and gays jumped down and sur­rounded them. Up in the crowd, Delphine de Sevigny stood up and heaved a bouquet of long-stemmed American beauties down at Billy. They had probably cost him a week's groceries. Billy caught them neatly and threw him a kiss. John Sive was sitting by Del­phine, grinning with pride.

  The old guard sat glumly, wishing for the good old days. I knew just how they felt. I had known the good old days myself.

  We didn't know it then, but the Millrose was the glittering peak of Vince's career. From then on, it was downhill into the dark.

  That weekend he had won the Wanamaker Mile for the third time. His rivals had pushed him to a 3:51.59 mile, which now put him second on the all-time list. But his fist-fight with Dellinger stirred up a storm of criticism. People conceded that Dellinger had started it, and that was all. New York Times sports columnist Andy Meagan suggested that Vince take up ice hockey and play for Philadelphia, a team noted for brawling.