Chapter 5
5.
Dory the Boozehound
“The lesbians, fag hags, and transsexuals shall save your wounded ass.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #12
Dorothy Lieberman-Delagrange, aka “Dory the Boozehound,” had just celebrated her eightieth birthday with a luncheon feast of chicken paillard at the 21 Club. After a slice of candle-torched chocolate mousse, she and her granddaughter, Elena, took a car out to Sayville to catch the ferry to Fire Island Pines. “Saint D’Norman is thrilled you’re spending the whole summer,” she told Elena. “He’s been fixing up your room all week.”
“That’s sweet of him,” Elena said, half listening, as her finger drew a woman’s teary face in the steamed-up ferry window. Huge, liquescent tears ran down its foggy cheek.
Elena was an unparalleled beauty—when she wanted to be. She had perfect caramel-brown skin and haunting green eyes that were preternaturally large. She often complained that she looked like a sloth when she didn’t wear makeup, ignoring the fact of having been a successful model since the age of fourteen—the first Black girl ever to appear three times on the cover of Twentieth-Century Girl magazine. With all the trauma of the previous two years, including the two stints in Bellevue—which Dory had only found out about after the fact—it was no surprise that Elena was considering retiring at the ripe old age of twenty-three. When Dory suggested that she come out to Fire Island for the summer before making any serious life-altering decisions, Elena responded with one of her expressionless shrugs. “Why not?” she mumbled. “An island filled with men ignoring me sounds like the perfect oblivion.”
Dory fingered Elena’s lovely golden-brown curls tied into a bouquet atop her head. She loved her granddaughter more than anyone else in the world and was devastated at the thought that her precious girl had tried to end her own life—more than once.
Whatever caused her to feel this unhappy, I’m sure Fire Island can heal her, Dory thought. If any place can …
Dory’s relationship to Fire Island Pines was far different from most residents’. Her roots in the community dated back to the 1920s, when her white, Jewish father Milty “Gutterjuice” Lieberman, at the behest of his Black, Seventh Day Adventist wife, stopped bootlegging and went into real estate, purchasing dozens of acres of the barrier island. Years after his death, Dory made a small fortune selling the bulk of the property. For sentimental reasons she kept a half-acre plot on Ocean Walk, though for decades she’d never set foot on it, turned off by Fire Island’s notoriously racist, (mostly) white inhabitants.
But then in 1970, recently widowed Dory became involved with a mystical cabal of gay clubbers in Manhattan’s nascent disco scene. During a night of intense dancing at the Loft, she had a vision where her late father, Milty, appeared to her and told her she should build a great house on the vacant Fire Island property and open a “sleazy little gay bar” in the Pines.
So she did. The house she built was a magnificent six-bedroom beachfront paradise, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the great Atlantic. It became the perfect summer retreat for her club friends (of all races) to celebrate their annual three-day-long, highly decadent Summer Solstice Party. Dory, who had always been vociferously straight, became an even greater star of the gay community, and she set her sights on opening the gay bar.
Unfortunately, with the dearth of commercially zoned property in the Pines, she was forced to lease a sordid little upstairs bar space from Scotty Black—a greedy and unpleasant man whom she, and many others, detested. Scotty, wanting to pocket as much money as he could from Dory, proffered a completely unfair agreement for the bar: he not only was asking an exorbitant price, but the contract was stuffed like a capon with stipulations, caveats, and red flags. Despite her lawyer’s pleas not to sign, she’d had no other options in the tiny harbor—Scotty Black owned everything. So, wanting to honor her father’s otherworldly wishes, Dory went ahead with the agreement.
Within a month of signing, she opened Asylum Harbor, a quaint little rough-and-tumble “cruise bar” where one could grab a hot boy and cold beer all within a matter of minutes. Dory’s bar quickly became a huge success, and by the late 1970s had been declared the best bar in Fire Island Pines. But then AIDS arrived, decimating the clientele and many of her dearest friends. With fewer and fewer customers showing up at Asylum Harbor, the threat of Scotty Black exercising some of those shady, contractual stipulations was becoming more and more real—including his right to close the bar for good.
Just as Dory and Elena arrived at her beach house, they heard the telephone ringing. Before they could get their shoes off, Saint D’Norman, a lean, fifty-something, gay Black man with a melon-bald head and a Steinway keyboard smile, walked over to Dory, dragging a receiver attached to an extremely long spiral telephone cord.
“It appears you have an important call, Dor.” Saint D’Norman rolled his ennui-ridden eyes. His years having worked as a nurse, not to mention membership in Dory and Howie’s secret dance coven, gave him an air of stoic amusement no matter what was before him, be it a burnt appetizer or the apocalypse. As he handed Dory the telephone, he raised a single very aristocratic eyebrow. “It’s Howie. He sounds … um … overly excited.”
“Of course, my dear.” Dory shared a knowing smile with Saint D’Norman, her closest confident and, as needed, executive assistant/major domo. “Now, if you could show my granddaughter our dear Alan’s old room. She’ll adore the view.”
“Of course.” Saint D’Norman smiled and pointed to the stairs. “Just up there. I remember you when you were just a sneaky little dandelion. Look at you growing into a gorgeous sunflower!”
Once they were out of earshot, Dory lifted the phone. “Howie, darling, how are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks be to the goddess,” Howie’s voice buzzed through the earpiece. “It’s preseason madness, natch. Lots of owners with their hair transplants on fire …” He took a breath. “Dor, the reason I’m calling is, are you still looking for a bartender for Asylum Harbor?”
“I am. Do you know someone?”
“I think I do. Scotty Black pulled a fast one, and this poor kid named Joe found himself out here jobless, homeless, and with barely a penny to his name. We’re temporarily sheltering him in our attic like Shirley Temple in The Little Princess .”
Dory certainly needed a bartender. She also despised how the tyrannical Scotty Black reveled at playing goddess with other people’s lives. Still, the bartender position was far too important to give away just for spite or to please one of her dearest friends.
“What’s he look like?” Dory said, getting down to business. “I need a real five-star stud.”
“Well, I haven’t seen him shirtless or anything. But he looks like the love child of Sal Mineo and Montgomery Cliff. Eyebrows like two large, melancholy chinchillas about to mate.”
“Mmm.” Dory had always been a fan of overwrought eyebrows.
“Appears to have a furry chest too—which is like hens’ teeth out here lately. His aura is all over the place—lots of blue and indigo among a torrent of dark bands. I sense something tragic happened in his past. What exactly—I can’t see it. I’m hoping when Max gets out here, he’ll be able to give him a solid read. The main thing is he’s got this mesmerizing swirl of contradictions: butch but vulnerable, smart, sexy, sweet, and curious at the same time. He also yearns, Dory. He yearns .”
“Ooh, I like that too,” Dory said. “One can’t be truly beautiful without yearning.”
“Exactly. Customers will either want to fuck him or adopt him.”
Dory lowered her voice. “What about the package?”
“Not that I’ve noticed …” Howie cleared his throat knowingly. “However, it appears as if he’s hiding a liverwurst sandwich down the front of his Levi’s. All the old geezers will be blowing their pensions on your best top-shelf liquor just to stare.”
Dory closed her eyes as an image of her father flashed across her brain. He was nodding his head.
“Have him at my bar at five,” Dory said. “If he’s half of what you say, the job is his.”