Chapter 1
1.
Joe and Ronnie
“When stuck in her blues, a Disco Witch can always boogie to another part of the dance floor.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #23
THE FERRY
May 3, 1989 … 3:30 PM ferry
Where the hell is it? Excited by the prospect of crossing the Great South Bay for the very first time, Joe Agabian was struggling to see Fire Island through the ferry’s rain-splattered window. It seemed as if the universe had purposely employed the fog and drizzle (and the scratched plexiglass window) to hide his past and future under a thick veil of secrecy.
He pulled the first mixtape Elliot had ever made for him from his backpack and inserted the well-worn cassette into his Sony Walkman. It was nearly four years ago when Joe first noticed his future lover sitting in those red banquettes upstairs at Woody’s Bar in Philly. When Elliot looked over at Joe, it was as if a thousand blue-green dragonflies had swarmed his young heart. Elliot had sandy-brown hair, shining hazel eyes, and a strong (but not showy) body—a result of playing baseball as a teenager. And then there was his strong, resonant voice, which had launched a thousand hours of smart, funny banter. Elliot cared about the poor, hated Reagan and worshiped Fleetwood Mac. He was the one Joe had been waiting for his whole life.
Then the bad news …
“It’ll be a challenge,” Elliot warned after explaining that he had recently tested positive for the HIV virus. “You sure you’re up for it?”
“I’m in love with you,” Joe said, “and that’s all that matters.”
The cassette sleeve bore the handwritten title Mixtape: Love Songs 1 . Joe could still feel Elliot’s touch in the scrawl of the fine-tip blue marker. He had made a total of seven mixtapes for Joe during their relationship. Six had been lost to moves, mechanical accidents, or the flood in Joe’s mother’s basement the previous winter—which had also destroyed most of his and Elliot’s photos together. Love Songs 1 was the only cassette left, and Joe cherished it more than any other object in his life. It would be the perfect soundtrack for laying eyes on Fire Island for the first time.
He pressed “Play.” Suddenly, the percussive jolt of Peter Gabriel’s “Kiss of Life” jackhammered against the fog.
Six months earlier
“Yo, Chachi,” Ronnie Kaminski shouted into the ear of a stunned, damp-eyed Joe on the night they first met. “You got some real nice dark eyes, and a sexy tan complexion. You Italian?”
Ronnie was six foot two, with a Chippendale’s body and Fabio hair. He was strikingly handsome despite encroaching crow’s feet and the errant gray nose hair. Joe knew who Ronnie was, of course—everyone loved to talk about him, Philly’s number one gay-bar star. Some said he was the lover of a Channel 10 weatherman; others, that he was the illegitimate son of Paul Newman; and another that he was the aging “kept boy” of an antigay local politician. True or not, Ronnie clearly relished the gossip.
“Armenian m-mostly,” Joe stammered, his anxiety about talking to hot guys instantly obliterating his already feeble ability at bar banter.
“Ah. Nice. I’m twenty percent Swede and eighty percent Polack, which is probably why I keep looking for meatballs in other guys’ pants.”
Joe realized that when someone is really, really hot, other people will automatically laugh at their terrible jokes—just as he was doing at that very moment. “Well, it was nice meeting you,” he said, figuring Ronnie would soon disappear to do whatever mysterious, magical things really hot blond guys do on a Saturday night.
“Hold up a minute.” Ronnie eyeballed Joe from head to toe. “You’re a very interesting subject. I’m kind of a gay anthropologist—a ‘gay-thropologist’ I call it. I like to study other gay guys, and when I find one that isn’t reaching his potential, I like to help him out. Like you, for example. Every weekend you come here all alone, looking like the worst sack o’ sadness.”
Joe’s face flushed. That someone like Ronnie would even look at him was surprising, but that he claimed to have noticed him multiple times seemed unreal.
“You’ve been watching me?”
Ronnie winked and made one of those suave lateral clicks of the tongue à la Bogart. “Don’t act so surprised. You got a look . Here’s the thing: I’ve decided it’s time you and me hit the dance floor and get to know each other.”
Seconds later, he and Ronnie were dancing. It was the first time Joe had smiled in ages. In between Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and Madonna’s “Open Your Heart,” he told Ronnie the sad story of Elliot—or rather, a facsimile of the true story. (Joe never told the whole truth about what had happened—not even to himself.) But everything else he said was fact, including how he was back to living at his mother’s in the Philly suburbs (which he hated), and how he worked as an orderly at Friends Hospital on Roosevelt Boulevard (which he also hated), and how he wanted to move back to Center City and look into the organic chemistry course he needed in order to take the MCAT and maybe apply to medical school someday.
“But money is pretty tight,” Joe said, “so I need to save up some cash.”
“MCAT, huh?” Ronnie winked. “Brainy can be kinky.”
“I guess.” Joe was impressed at how Ronnie could turn a comment about a standardized test into something sexual. “But it’s just an idea. I’m not really sure where I’ll end up.”
“Is that so? I get it. It took me all thirty-four years of my life to figure out my true destiny, but you’re young. You’ll get there.” Ronnie squinted his eyes at Joe. “How old are you, anyway?”
Before Joe could say that he would be turning twenty-nine in March, Ronnie stopped him.
“Wait! Don’t tell me! I’m really good at guessing ages. Let’s see … baby face underneath that five o’clock shadow …” He peeped down the neck of Joe’s shirt. “… Nice little hairy chest, but not a line around your eyes … still dresses like a clumsy straight guy … got it! You’re twenty-three, right?”
Joe was happy he looked as young as that, but he also worried that Ronnie might look down on him, being that he was nearing thirty yet still worked a crap job, lived with his mom, and had literally nothing figured out. And what if he also discovered that Joe had been vowing to take that chemistry course for five years but still hadn’t even looked at a catalog? So much for him thinking Joe had “potential.” A bitter thought popped into Joe’s head: Life has been grotesquely unfair. If it hadn’t been for Elliot’s sickness and death, he would have been able to make something of his life. He might already be in med school, and he and Elliot might already have been living in a townhouse they had bought together in Rittenhouse Square. Life owed Joe those five years back. For just one night, I’m getting a do-over.
“That’s exactly right!” Joe said. “Good call. I’ll be twenty-four in March.”
“I knew it! Still a baby—and been through so much already.” Ronnie pinched Joe’s cheeks. “So, wanna go back to my place and fuck?”
“Sure,” Joe said, though a middle-aged blond glam jock wasn’t exactly his type.
“Stellar.” Ronnie chugged the rest of his beer. “Let’s get our coats.”
The sex that followed was perfunctory and functional. Kiss, suck, condoms, fuck. Joe bottom. Ronnie top. Like the other three hookups Joe had experienced in the year and a half since Elliot’s death, none of the men were as sexy or smart as his dead lover, nor were they the right size big spoon to Joe’s little spoon. Every time he had sex, he’d leave his body, look down onto the bed, and watch himself betray Elliot.
After they toweled off, Ronnie lay back down and looked Joe in his big, sad brown eyes. “Let’s face it, we both know that’s not gonna happen again,” he said, confirming to Joe that they were on the same page per their erotic incompatibility, “but I’m not done with you yet, Joey boy! I’ve decided you’re gonna be my new project.”
Joe’s stomach squirmed. He hoped he hadn’t inadvertently found himself hooking up with someone who was into EST or sold Herbal Life. “What do you mean ‘new project’?”
Ronnie’s eyes softened with pity as he took Joe’s hand and spoke with a gentle firmness. “Face it, Joey boy. You’re a mess. You looked like you were gonna cry the entire time we were having sex.”
“I’m really sorry,” Joe began.
“It’s okay. I get it. We’re living in hard times, but it’s not just your broken heart that’s the problem.”
Joe got up from the bed, and pulled his Sears polo over his head. “What do you mean?”
“Look at yourself—the way you dress, how you cruise bars, even the way you keep your socks on during sex.”
Joe glanced down at his white athletic socks; one was rolled down and one was up. He groaned.
“Here’s the thing,” Ronnie said. “I’m gonna teach you how to master this gay game and also help you get over your broken heart. Don’t worry, kiddo, no charge. Sound good?”
While he doubted Ronnie would offer much of a solution to the paralyzing sorrow he had felt since Elliot’s death, there was something about the gregarious, handsome jock that made Joe feel just a little hopeful for the first time in a long time. “You got a deal,” Joe said.
After that, they hung out every weekend and quickly became best friends.
Ronnie gave Joe a mini-makeover, shaving a fire path through his Armenian unibrow, taking him to a better barber, and putting him in jeans that emphasized his muscular legs, cute butt, and respectable package. He taught Joe where to stand in a bar for the most flattering lighting and how to make small talk. Ronnie also told Joe of his own plans to marry rich and eventually become a motivational speaker like Norman Vincent Peale or Napoleon Hill—but a “gay-guy version,” helping guys like Joe learn how to play the “gay game” and achieve their highest potential.
And it worked, up to a point. Joe started getting asked out by some quality men. Unfortunately, most dates ended with him choked up, talking about Elliot. After the men (politely) kicked Joe out, Ronnie would insist he come over for a post-date debrief. Almost always, Joe would end up in tears while Ronnie cuddled him until he fell asleep.
That Christmas, Ronnie got fired from his after-hours security job at the Holiday Inn for hooking up in unoccupied rooms. That’s when he proposed that he and Joe get jobs on Fire Island for the summer.
“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime!” Ronnie told Joe that frigid January night at Jim’s Steaks on Philadelphia’s South Street. “Last August, I met this rich old guy named Scotty Black. He owns this club called the Promethean—it’s the hottest disco on Fire Island. If we go out there early enough, Scotty says he’ll give us bartending gigs. He’ll also provide housing, food, everything. We’ll save a fortune!”
“Um … you know I don’t know anything about bartending, right?” Joe said.
Ronnie waved his hand. “Nothing to it, especially in a gay bar. You just have to be cute, smile, flirt a little, and slosh some booze into a glass. A beagle could do it if he had thumbs and looked hot in a T-shirt!”
“I’m not sure I wanna be that far from Philly,” Joe said, squirming in his chair as he poked at the crusts of his discarded cheesesteak roll. “My mom’s getting older and—”
“Stop being a drama queen. Your mom is a big girl and wants you to be happy. She told me so. Look, my adorable little Armenian, you need to start having some F-U-N fast, or your heart and dick could get stuck in a sad, dark place. You don’t wanna end up dead and alone in some studio in Fishtown with a cat named Little Sheba, do you?”
Ronnie had a point. Like many young men who had lost lovers to AIDS, Joe felt both like a frightened toddler and old beyond his years. It was his widowed mother, Evelyn, who had originally encouraged him to drive into Philly to meet new gay friends.
“Don’t we have to interview or anything?” Joe asked Ronnie.
“Nope. Scotty said the jobs are basically ours if we want ’em. We’re in like Flynn!”
“I don’t know …” Joe scrunched his eyebrows.
“What have we got to lose?” Ronnie said. “I’ve slept with everybody worth sleeping with in Philly. Just think, an entire island of hot, rich gay men looking for love. Also there’s no cars or even bikes allowed, so it’s really safe—especially if you’re gay. You can just walk down the boardwalk in your Speedo, holding hands and kissing in public, and no one’s gonna beat the shit out of you or set your house on fire. It’s Gaytopia!”
Gaytopia? Could any place feel that safe or free? How many nights had Joe pretended to be straight as he walked home from the bars while groups of hetero assholes shouted threats at the more obvious gays? How many times had he wished he could have held Elliot’s hand as they walked South Street without worrying some Philly lug-head might mutter under his breath, “AIDS carriers”?
“That all sounds amazing, but how about we do it next year?”
“Enough with the stalling!” Ronnie shouted over Madonna’s new hit “Live to Tell,” which was blasting from the sound system. “Listen to Madonna! She’s telling us to do it now ! You turn twenty-four in March! I turn thirty-five in September. We only get to stay at the top of the homo-food chain for a short time—and that’s the best-case scenario. Look what happened to Elliot. Look what’s happening to nearly fifty percent of our friends over thirty. Who knows when any of us are gonna bite the big bad dick of death!”
“Jesus, Ronnie. Keep it down!”
“You know I’m telling the truth.”
Maybe it was the third beer Joe drank that night, or maybe it was his finally acknowledging how small his life had become, or maybe it was the eight tons of despair clogging his stomach (along with the Jim’s cheesesteak with Whiz), but he looked up at Ronnie and said, “Fuck it. I’m in!”