Chapter 4
4.
44 and ⒈／⒋ Picketty Ruff
“Beware the stranger and sinner, for their outlandish ways might transform you into the most glorious being known to the heavens.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #14
Unlike the predominant natural wood tones or pale neutrals of the other houses in the Pines, 44 and ⒈／⒋ Picketty Ruff was the color of dried blood. To approach the front door one had to cross a ten-foot bridge over a moatlike drainage ditch and pass through a small gate that slammed closed like a gunshot, scattering the crows sitting in the nearby holly tree. On the front door was an ornate wreath with a laminated photo of Edith Piaf at its center.
Before Joe could even lift his hand to knock, he heard Howie’s voice sing out from within, “Joe’s here!” A second later the door opened to reveal Howie in a flowery caftan, beaming. “Come right on in, Joe! Take a seat. Relax—I’ll make us a snack.”
At first, the house’s decor reminded Joe of his late Aunt Vartu’s with all its mismatched 1970s colonial-style furniture and too many tchotchkes. But then he started to notice the differences, like the arty male nude photos and how the wall hangings and bric-a-brac, like much of the jewelry Howie wore, were mostly of religious icons from around the world: the elephant god Ganesha; the emaciated, fasting Buddha; one that looked half bird, half human; a bevy of extra-bloody Christian martyrs; a goddess with snakes clutched in her upraised fists; and many more. Along with all this religious Grand Guignol kitsch, the stereo was blasting a cassette of 1970s-era disco music.
Lenny sat on a shabby, flower-patterned sofa, his eyes glued to Joe since the moment he walked in.
“Nice music,” Joe lied, hoping to make a good impression.
“Do you like it?” Howie hollered from the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Joe lied again. “It’s great dinner music.”
“It’s actually morning music,” Lenny corrected. “We’re just starting late today.”
“Oh,” Joe said. “Wow, that’ll sure wake you up.”
“That particular track is ‘La Vie en Rose’ by Grace Jones. DJ Robbie Leslie finished his set with it at the 1978 Black Party at approximately eight thirty in the morning.”
“Wow.” Joe’s eyes widened. “You remember that?”
Lenny raised one eyebrow. “I remember everything.” He gestured to the shelves of bookcases lined with hundreds of homemade cassette tapes. “We keep bootleg recordings of all our favorite dance parties.”
To demonstrate his enthusiasm and hopefully get on Lenny’s good side, Joe looked through the cassettes, nodding and mmm-hmming. Unlike Elliot’s Love Songs 1 , Howie and Lenny’s mixtapes were decorated with colorful ink drawings and handwritten calligraphic titles like Beach Mix, 1979 ; DJ Roy Thode, the Saint, Opening Night, 1981 ; and DJ Leslie, the Saint Finale, May 2, 1988 ; that particular tape’s insert had hand-painted gold stars, moons, and a gravestone that said “R.I.P.”
“You really went to all those parties?” Joe gushed. “That must’ve been something else.” He felt slimy, faking it like that. The truth was, he had been totally clueless about music until he’d met Elliot, whose passion for the topic had been infectious. Joe found himself liking anything Elliot liked, from blues to contemporary rock, to world music and folk. Rikki Lee, Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny. But when it came to dance music, Elliot had decidedly been of the “disco-sucks” school of thought. Joe had followed suit. But at that moment, to avoid sleeping on Ronnie’s cold floor, he’d need to feign disco fandom. “This collection is seriously rad. All the greats. I really appreciate you letting me crash here.”
“Who said we’d decided?” Lenny snipped. “Me and Howie have to have a little discussion first.” He lowered his voice, leaning in toward Joe. “You know, our best friend, Max, will be coming out here eventually, so don’t even think about trying to steal his spot. Capeesh?”
“I’m not here to steal anything.” A ball of fear filled Joe’s stomach. If he lost this opportunity, he’d be condemned to Ronnie’s pneumonia-inducing floor—and even that wasn’t a guarantee. “It would just be temporary. I promise.”
“That’s what they all say.” Lenny’s nasally whisper rose in irritation. “I know how you pretty boys like to roll.”
“Pretty boy?” If he hadn’t been so desperate, Joe would have laughed out loud. “I have no idea what you think I’m trying to do, but—”
“Oh, sure, play dumb, but if you think you’re gonna—”
A large metal spoon smashed into the sink, startling Joe while Lenny fell silent. Howie rushed into the living room, his maroon bathrobe flying behind him, slamming down a plate of Hickory Farms cheese logs, grapes, and Ritz crackers on the coffee table.
“Leonardo Gennaro Vincenzo D’Amico!” he shouted, wagging his finger. “You’re being your mother again!”
Lenny shrugged, scrunching what little neck he had, looking guilty. “I was just—”
Howie put his hand up to silence him. “As I said. You and I will talk and then decide. Meanwhile, Joseph darling, just ignore our bad seed here. She takes time to warm up to folks—”
“Said the necrophiliac,” Lenny muttered.
Joe laughed, more out of nerves and a desire to win him over.
“Don’t bother humoring him,” Howie said. “Lenny’s Sicilian. He hates change.” Then, to Lenny, “Joe wouldn’t be staying in Max’s room anyway. Both of you, follow me!”
Howie opened what looked like a closet door between the kitchen and bathroom and pulled down a ladder. As he climbed, he hummed the melody to “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks , singing out the words, “Follow, follow, follow!”
Remembering Ronnie’s warning, Joe wondered if cannibals sang show tunes.
“Go on, no point in wasting time,” Lenny said in an ominous whisper—or that’s how Joe heard it. “ Follow , like she just sang. Howie always gets his way.”
Joe warily climbed up the ladder. As soon as he stepped into the attic, he was instantly hit with a burst of sauna-hot air. It smelled of cedar, dusty old insulation, and something else he couldn’t name but vaguely recalled smelling before. There were shelves and boxes everywhere, and the walls and beams were covered with framed vintage photographs.
“Wow. Are all these photos of you guys?”
“Oh my, no,” Howie said. “These shots go back to the forties. We’re just the most recent in a long line of holy lovers who have occupied 44 and ⒈／⒋ Picketty Ruff.”
“Holy lovers?” Joe’s eyes widened in realization. “I was trying to figure out if you two were boyfriends or not.”
Both men did comedically dramatic retching sounds, indicating Joe had horribly missed his mark. “Boyfriends?” Howie laughed. “Of course, we’ve slept together. I mean we’re gay and all. But now we’ve settled into one of those typical Boston marriages by way of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf .”
“When Howie says ‘holy lovers,’ he just means homos ,” Lenny quipped.
“Lenny!” Howie chided. “You know it’s more than that.” He touched the tips of his fingers together under his nose, like a professor. “We use the phrase to mean any person whose identity or desire for love lies outside the commonplace. We believe the Great Goddess Mother has blessed all inverts, queers, sissies, trans folk, dykes, two spirits, asexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals, and what-have-yous with extraordinary gifts and with the preternatural ability to love much more expansively.”
“Oh,” Joe said, pretending it was the most normal thing in the world. “Gotcha. And you two and Max all live and work out here the whole year?”
“Goodness, no,” Howie exclaimed. “Lenny goes to Florida at the first hint of cold, and Max goes back to the city to stay with his boyfriend, Heshy. I’m the only one who hibernates out here during the offseason. But with the first sniff of spring, I emerge, pretty like a crocus and buzzing like a locust.”
Joe gave a small laugh and wiped the beads of sweat on his forehead.
“You think this is hot?” Lenny warned. “Come midsummer, it’s like a Turkish bath.”
“We have fans he can use,” Howie said. “And at night there’s a wonderful cross breeze. We’ll just need to shuffle things around a little. Lenny, help me.”
They started moving boxes off the shelves, each labeled with their contents: feathers, rhinestones, leather scraps, dolls’ heads, glass eyeballs, and more. At the front of the attic were two old sewing machines on a desk, two mannequins of different sizes, a handmade tree with branches festooned with hundreds of spools of colorful threads, organized by hue and shade—cool colors at the bottom, warm colors at the top. There were piles of lace, big jars of dolls’ body parts, milk crates piled high with vintage fur—animal heads still attached.
“Max and I had been using the attic as our workroom,” Howie said, huffing and puffing after the climb upstairs. “But I think, with a little elbow grease, it could be a very cozy bedroom. Now, if you’ll pardon us, Lenny and I are going to the kitchen for a little t ê te- à -t ê te. Hold tight.”
As soon as they were downstairs, Joe heard them bickering. Too nervous to listen, he turned his attention to the old photos covering the walls and beams. On the lower right corner of each was a white slip of paper bearing a handwritten date, location, or event where the photo was taken. Things like “Fire Island Party on the Beach, 1979,” “Provincetown, August 1969,” “Key West, 1962.” Joe, who’d first had sex with a man in 1982, the year after the virus was identified, wondered how much the gay world had changed since the crisis began. How much fun had they had before making love turned into a death threat?
Several of the shots were of a much younger Howie Fishbein in crazy outfits and long brown hair, his head crowned with enormous, ornate hats featuring dioramas or not-so-miniature millinery installations. One hat featured an entire castle with an Elizabethan-costumed Barbie doll in the process of being decapitated. Was it? Yes, it was! Genevi è ve Bujold as Anne Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days . Lenny (with more hair) was dressed as the executioner, complete with leather apron and a mask, but otherwise naked. There were always several other men (and a few women) with them, all dressed outlandishly, including a Hispanic-looking man, dressed in beads and crazy headgear, who appeared at the center of every group photo. Is this Max? And why were they all dressed that way?
Joe had never dressed in anything close to flamboyant. Preferring to blend in, he’d get the straightest-looking haircut (no Flock of Seagulls for him), shirts from Sears, khakis from JC Penny. Ronnie was vehemently opposed to doing drag—he said it would destroy his image as a “sexy gay jock.” For Joe, seeing Howie and Lenny wear their gayness with such abandon was both shocking and impressive. How freeing that must feel. For a few minutes he found himself lost in the photos, staring at the faces, searching for … something, but he didn’t know what. It was almost like he could hear the music that must have been playing back then, smell the patchouli, feel the warmth of their vests, the chill of their love beads.
The darkest, hidden corner of the attic was filled with the most risqu é photos of groups of naked men either having sex or just sitting around the house naked. These photos were much older, and all in black and white. But he experienced the same thing, finding himself unable to look away as if the men in the photos were casting a spell on him.
But then Joe heard footsteps on the ladder, and he quickly stepped away from the lurid photos.
“Don’t worry!” Howie poked up his head through the floor hatch. “Those orgies were way before we moved into this house!” Stepping into the attic, he walked over and pointed to one very vivid image. “How nice to capture oneself in the midst of such passion! Sadly, most of those men are gone now … but not all. You’ll meet a few this summer—though you may not recognize them. Such is the brutality of time and deliquescence.”
Joe blinked, confused. “What?”
“Getting old,” Howie clarified.
“Ah, okay,” Joe said. “I love all these old pics … especially that Anne Boleyn one, and these over here.” He gestured to the shots that had entranced him the most. “It’s weird. It’s almost hard to stop looking at them.”
“Is that so?” Howie said, again in that strange, puzzling way.
“Yeah, they’re really great.” Joe pointed to another one of several clothed men jammed onto what looked like a newer version of the downstairs couch. Younger Lenny, sporting a bad comb-over, sat between a younger Howie and that wildly dressed Hispanic man. “Is that Max?” Joe asked.
“Indeed it is,” Howie said. “Maximon Esteban Hieronymus De Laguna. He’s the most important stooge in our Three-Stoogian triumvirate—the Moe of ’mos, we like to joke. You’ll love him, and he’ll love you. That photo is from our first year on the island, when we had dozens staying here. Our orgies, though un-photographed, lasted days. Bliss exploded everywhere, staining everything and everyone with joy.”
“The cleaning bills were a fortune!” Lenny called from the base of the ladder before scampering up into the attic and pointing to a photo of a twenty-something man wearing a thong in a body-builder’s pose. “See that one? I was a hot piece of mortadella, huh?”
“That’s you ?” Joe said, sounding far too surprised. Lenny sucked in his cheeks, his eyes narrowed bitterly. “I mean,” Joe nervously added, “that’s obviously you. It’s uncanny … you’ve barely aged.”
Howie then—in an obvious appeasement to Lenny—gently turned Joe’s face to the light. “To be honest, Joseph, you remind me a bit of Lenny when he was your age.”
The thought that he could he ever turn into someone like Lenny, with his bald head, dyed black mustache, and squat bowling-pin body distressed Joe more than a little. But then, when he saw Howie’s wink, he quickly nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I can see what you mean.”
“You think?” Lenny smiled cockily, looking at both himself and Joe in a nearby mirror. “I was a little better looking at your age, of course—”
“Don’t push it, Lenny,” Howie muttered. “So shall we all agree that Joseph here, who looks practically like your son—brother, I mean, little brother—will be our temporary guest in the attic?”
Lenny sighed with resignation. “Okay,” he said, “but he’s got to pay rent and share the chores while he’s here.”
“Of course!” Howie gushed. “I’m sure young Joseph will be happy to help.”
“Definitely,” Joe agreed.
“Good! Then we want at least twenty-five dollars a night!” Lenny said.
Joe’s heart sank. Twenty-five dollars was more than his budget. “I don’t think I can afford that. I only brought seven hundred dollars with me. I need to stretch it until I get a job.”
“Great work, Miss Fishbein.” Lenny folded his arms while adding a harrumph. “Suddenly we’ve turned into a Bowery flophouse for indigent twinks.”
“Oh, just stop,” Howie said, brushing Lenny off. “Joe’ll get a job as quick as you can spit. There’s the Seahorse clothing store or one of the two liquor stores or … wait a minute. I’m an idiot! I’ve got a fabulous idea! Joe, wait up here one minute. Lenny, come with me.”
Howie and Lenny scrambled down the ladder again. Joe heard the phone being dialed and then Howie talking to somebody. A few minutes later, the men scrambled their way back into the attic. At first, Howie looked dire but then quickly broke into a broad smile.
“You have a job interview at five PM today with Dory the Boozehound.”
“A job interview?” Joe’s heart bubbled with the news. “But how … I mean, with who ?”
“Dory the Boozehound. You’ll adore her. She’s eighty years young, rich, and fabulous.”
“Owns a bar called Asylum Harbor,” Lenny added.
Howie pointed out the front window. “Adorable little bucket of blood just across and down the walk. Dory’s part of our inner circle—a bodhisattva if there ever was one. So many people with AIDS have spent their final hours lying on her deck, watching the waves, listening to their favorite disco tracks until it’s time for them to go.”
“You mean”—Joe’s voice cracked with an emotion—“they die in her house?
“They do,” Howie said. “Dory believes it’s her responsibility to try and give those in need a beautiful place to cross over. Right now, one of our dearest friends, Saint D’Norman, is staying with her. He was terribly sick last year, but he’s so much better now. Praise the Great Goddess Mother. I’ll tell you more about Dory and Saint D’Norman later, but you should go get your things, and then get ready. Meanwhile, Lenny and I will get your room in shape. Let’s say seventy-five dollars per week for now? A little more after you get established. Would that work?”
“Yeah … I mean … wow.” Joe couldn’t believe his bad luck was finally turning around. “So I can stay? Seriously?”
“Only until Max moves back,” Lenny corrected.
“Of course,” Howie replied, winking at Joe. “Something like that.”