The Front Runner

dollars," or whatever. But for my first time I didn't want a hustler. So I wandered around half the weekend, till I was half-deaf from the jukeboxes in the bars, rating faces and bodies. I was looking for that particular physiognomy, that hint of my ghost, that would strike the deep erotic response in me.
    About one o'clock Sunday afternoon, I was about
    to give up when I went into the Loews-Sheridan theater, notorious as a place where gays could have sexual encounters. Several dozen men were there. Two couples were already twined together, and the others sat alone here and there. One of them had shaggy, bright blond hair that looked almost silver in the light from the screen.
    Needing a closer look, I walked slowly, nervously down the aisle. He was sitting slouched a little, with his thighs spread, wearing a red leather jacket and tight, striped, bellbottom slacks. A little too well dressed to be a hippie, but obviously not an establishment type either. (I, the ex-Marine, already talking about the establishment.) He was younger than I, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two, very lean and hard-looking. The changing light from the screen lit up his thoroughbred profile in the smoky dark.
    I hesitated only a moment, wondering if he were a plainclothes policeman. Then I did what I'd seen had to be done. I went into the row, along the seats, and sat down by him. My heart was pounding like I'd just run the mile. Feigning indifference, I looked straight ahead at the screen. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn his head. Was he rating me or just getting ready to arrest me? If he was rating me and didn't like what he saw, I'd have to keep walking.
    What happened next is still burned in my memory after all these years.
    He moved his thigh over and touched his knee to mine. I turned my head a little. His thighs were long and slender, their corded muscles visible through the thin, tight pants. A runner? Who knows? He was certainly athletic-looking. The open jacket displayed his narrow hips and his full crotch, with the cock bulging in the left pantsleg. Even his hands, on the armrests, were attractive, lean, strong-looking, with long fingers.
    I returned the pressure of his knee, then shakily laid my hand on his nearest thigh. Its hardness and heat hit my fingers like a shock. He laid his hand over mine tenderly. I had not expected tenderness. My hand was startled into turning over so that our moist hot palms touched and our fingers twined.
    As we held hands, I finally dared to let my eyes slide up to his face. He was looking at me unsmiling, that provocative witchy look with which the gay in rut rivets his peer. This was no cot. His sex seemed suffused into his features like a bright light. His eyes seemed to say, I can make your fantasy real.
    Then, with his free hand, he reached inside his jacket and drew out a shiny metal thing like a lipstick tube, and held it over to me. It was the rite of the offering of amyl nitrite. I relaxed just a little. Trying to look as expert as possible, I put the inhaler to one nostril as I'd seen others do. Breathing deeply and slowly, I wondered what it would do to me. After a moment, a burning delicious rush flashed through my body, exploding in my genitals.
    Neither of us spoke. He was already caressing my thigh. I gave him back the amyl nitrite and he inhaled it himself. On the screen, to the accompaniment of tender violins, a couple of young heterosexual lovers were kissing frantically. But the man beside me was unhurried, and drew me into his own rhythm.
    His hand had already slid down to his fly and was slowly undoing the half-dozen small buttons there. His hips were grinding and thrusting up slowly in the seat, and he looked as if he were in an ecstatic trance. His eyes were half-closed, his lips parted, and a couple of locks of hair stuck to his iridescent cheek. For a moment I panicked a little, realizing that he was going to precipitate me into it without any foreplay.
    But after another drag on the inhaler, I had my hand on the bulge in his pants-leg, rubbing it tenderly. He caressed my hand, pressing it there while he kept unbuttoning with the other. He wore no underwear, and the opening fly bared his lean sucked-in abdomen, then the light bronze pubic hair and the hip bones moving sweetly under the skin.
    My whole body was vibrating with excitement—no woman had ever made me feel like this. I put my hand on his abdomen, feeling the muscles ripple in it, and slid my arm