Free Harlan's Race by Patricia Nell Warren

with hard, edged movements. The pants had slipped so far down that his flanks were bared. In his armpits, black curls were wetted to the skin, as if he’d just surged from a swimming pool. His coal-black mane stuck to his back, then broke loose to whip the air.
    Everyone watched him, enthralled. It wasn’t just his crass beauty that gripped their attention. It was his rage. Unlike me, he’d been public about his grief over Billy. That rage mirrored what so many gays felt in their hearts. I felt sad — remembering when Vince danced with a joy in life.
    Nearby, a trio of well-barbered princes eyed him.
    “Hail Mary full of grace,” drawled one mustachioed male.
    Even as they spoke, Vince’s pants worked down another inch, barely hanging on his bush.
    “Tsk,” the second mustache said. “If I want to see animals, I’ll go to the Bronx Zoo.”
    “Well, he can fuck me anytime,” commented the third.
    Steve said in my ear, “Look at Vince’s eyes ... he’s speeding his brains out.”
    A dark-haired man, probably Mario, reached a popper up to Vince. Without a break in the motion, Vince cracked the little vial and snorted deep. The carotid swelled in his neck, as chemical energy blazed through him.
    My sister was awestruck.
    ‘What is Vince snorting?” she yelled over the music.
    “Amyl nitrate,” Steve yelled back.
    My heartbeat was choking me. What I wanted as much as his body was that ardent spirit, that wounded tenderness and vulnerability, that power of deep affection that he hid from almost everyone. And the fierce loyalty. Once after Montreal he’d yelled at me, “I would have stopped that bullet with my own head so you and Billy could still be together.” Many people disliked Vince, because all they ever saw of him was the arrogant stud horse.
    Steve caught my eye. “Marian, darling,” he said, “let’s find a nice quiet piano bar.”
    The three of them left.
    Slowly I pushed ahead through the crowd. Faces turned toward me, the same stares at my wild look. My encounter with Vince was going to be uncomfortably public. Would my disguise hold? Were the snipers watching? Even here?
    Finally I was in the front row of spectators, about 10 feet from Vince.
    Now the Ice Palace was vibrating with whoops, whistles and ooooohs — Vince down-shifted into slow grinds. Standing with legs braced apart, he slowly eased the drawstring. One hand barely kept the cloth in front of him. But the loose pants slipped down behind, baring his haunches in the hot lights. Sweat coursed richly down his spine, into the dark curls between his buttocks. When he squeezed into the next slow luxurious thrust, those powerful muscles pressed sweat from between them.
    As the males in the crowd went wild, I suddenly had a mental image of some self-righteous redneck shooting point-blank at Vince. A shotgun blast would tear a red rat-hole in that perfect body. I felt myself break out in a hot terrified sweat. Harry and Chino had warned me.
    Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God ...
    Strangers’ hands were caressing his legs. Unsmiling, meeting the strangers’ eyes boldly from his Olympian height among the hot lights, Vince turned slowly amid their feels, giving everyone their look.
    Then his dionysian stare met my puritan frown.
    He wasn’t so drunk and stoned that he didn’t recognize me. He stopped dead. And he blushed. The flush started at his nipples, and went up his neck, clear to his hairline. It had always amazed me how my frown had such power to rouse his shame.
    The pause broke the magic spell. Most people surged back onto the dance floor, like the sea closing over Egypt’s chariots. A few men whistled — they were disgusted that Vince held back from nudity. Meanwhile, Mario looked me up and down, then walked away. His pants still held at half-mast, Vince stood there on the bar, chest heaving like a racehorse’s. His blush was fading. Now the air between us was bathed in a sheet-lightning of male-male