Chapter 24
24.
Fun on the Outside
“It’s at night when the gods and demons boogie most freely with our hearts. Dance with them, but beware.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #32
The air outside the Promethean throbbed with dance music. Rivers of men in tight shorts, combat boots, and tank tops poured into the club from every direction. Despite having done two shots of J ? germeister before leaving work, all of Joe’s excitement about his first big night out had been replaced by anxious thoughts. Was it the right time to go out and let loose? He was living on an island filled with dying gay men; a possible hot, muscled-up, Gladiator ghost; and what may or may not be a coven of gay pyromaniac Disco Witches—and he was supposed to just forget all of that (and Elliot) and go have fun?
As Joe turned to head home to 44 and ⒈／⒋ Picketty Ruff, a voice called out from the edge of Fire Island Boulevard.
“Hey, Joe!
It was Elena, dressed in a sweatshirt and shorts, stunningly beautiful as always, calmly sitting, like an oasis on the edge of the boardwalk, with a thermos of tea. Next to her sat that same blonde cashier from Mulligan’s grocery—the pretty one Joe had assumed was Fergal’s girlfriend that day he had seem them sitting together. He sure had misjudged Fergal there.
Elena waved him over. “Come meet my new friend, Cleigh,”
Joe crossed and shook Cleigh’s hand. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Cleigh said, in one of those great raspy voices of a girl who drank a lot of beer. “Elena’s told me a lot about you. She’s a big fan.” She narrowed her eyes. “I think I’ve seen you before, right?”
“You know how it is,” Joe said, hoping she didn’t remember. “Small island.” He leaned on one of the wooden columns as he felt a slight swoony buzz from the J ? germeister.
“You okay?” Elena asked, scrunching her eyebrows as her golden-brown eyes seemed to dig into Joe’s brain. Did everyone on this island worry about him?
“Yeah. I’m cool,” Joe said. “I was gonna go out dancing, but I’m not sure I’m feeling it.”
“Come sit with me for a few minutes.” Elena patted the edge of the boardwalk. “Cleigh was just taking a water taxi back to Sayville.”
“I’ll catch you tomorrow at the …” Cleigh suspiciously stumbled on what she was going to say. “You know, that thing we’re going to.”
“Right,” Elena said with a smirk. “See you tomorrow at the thing .” Then they hugged in a way that was both awkward but also seemed to hold a secret meaning. Joe wondered if Cleigh had already said something to Elena about that day she had seen him, and maybe why she and Fergal had laughed at him. Or maybe it was just the embrace of two straight female comrades stranded amid the hordes of homosexual men.
“What are you doing out so late?” he asked, plopping down next to her.
“Couldn’t sleep. That’s why Cleigh came out to meet me. My mind was spinning.”
“Join the club. What was it spinning about?”
She looked over her shoulder back toward the harbor. “Well, that’s kind of the crazy part. It was spinning about Cleigh.”
Oops, Joe thought. Maybe it wasn’t only Fergal he had misjudged. “You mean you like her? And she likes you … that way ?”
“Maybe. I just think she’s really cute and smart and looks like Kristy McNichol. And, well, I think, under different circumstances, there would be potential for something to happen between us. But I’m just not in a place for that sort of thing.”
“I didn’t even know you were gay.”
“I’m not. I mean, I worked in fashion, so I’ve dabbled, but this is different. I really, really like this girl. But I just ended a seriously destructive relationship back in the city with this guy I used to party with, and I’m not supposed to even consider dating anyone right now or make any big changes in my life.” She grunted in frustration. “And turning into a lesbian sounds pretty big, right?” She sighed and then, all of a sudden, closed her eyes and tilted her head like she was entering a trance. It went on for at least forty seconds, which concerned Joe.
“Is something wrong?” Joe asked.
“No,” she whispered, her eyes still closed. “It’s just the music. Hear that bass?” Joe could hear the distant thump thump thump . “It was the sound of my heartbreak back in the old days.”
“Old days? You’re still in your twenties, right?”
“I meant before I got sober.”
Joe recalled having offered her a beer the day the bar opened, and her reaction. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have offered you that beer—”
“Don’t worry about it.” She laughed. “You were being nice. I should have just said something. I guess I’m still new to it … though it feels like a lifetime ago at the moment. It’s why Dory brought me out here, so I could get away from the mess I made back in Manhattan.”
“I guess we all have some kind of mess in our past.” Joe suddenly groaned, holding his stomach.
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Elena reached over and felt Joe’s forehead.
“My stomach’s a little wobbly. I did some J ? ger shots.” Then, without thinking, he said, “Unless Lenny put something in the Bolognese he cooked for me tonight.”
“You might be right,” she said darkly—or that’s how Joe heard it. “Those boys are always offing some young bartender with poison pasta.”
Joe’s eyes widened and he lowered his voice. “Elena? Have you heard something?”
She looked at him puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“Shh.” Joe looked around at the blue and gray silhouettes of men roaming the shadows. Any of them might have been Lenny or Howie or one of their devotees. He scooched closer to Elena. His J ? ger buzz was giving him courage. “Look, I heard some really crazy stuff about Howie, Lenny, and Max. Your grandmother and Saint D’Norman too.”
Elena looked at Joe suspiciously. “What did you hear?”
Joe took a deep breath. “I heard that all of them are involved in this secret club—they go to discos and dress up in wild outfits and act like they can cast spells on people and … and maybe, at least once, they’ve burned a dance club down. I know that sounds nuts, but—”
Elena burst into laughter, hugging Joe like he was a slightly drunk twelve-year-old. When he realized she didn’t believe him, his heart sank, and once again he felt totally alone.
“Joe, who told you that? Those four old queens and my grandmother are the nicest people this side of Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood . Someone actually said they burned down a club?” Again, Elena covered her mouth to hold in her guffaws.
Joe’s face flushed. “But have you seen how they used to dress? There are pictures—”
Elena patted Joe’s hand. “Shh. Honey, I’ve looked at Dory’s shelves of photo albums ever since I was a baby. Everybody used to dress up like that to go to the disco dancing back in the day. It was like church for them. They aren’t actual witches.” She sputtered into another round of giggles. “Oh my God, baby, island fever has gotten you.”
Elena’s words made some sense, but they didn’t explain what he’d heard in Howie’s room and what he had seen in the crawl space.
“But you don’t understand, I heard things, saw things …” Again he looked around for any hint of his roommates. “I snuck into this locked storage space in the attic. It’s where they keep all their supplies and … it doesn’t matter. There’re these photos in there; they were on the walls when I first saw the attic, and then, for some reason, Howie and Lenny hid them in the crawl space. I swear!”
“Hid them?” Elena tilted her head. “Okay, so, what was in the photos?”
Should he really tell her everything? She might call 911 or refer him to a psychiatrist. But who else could he tell?
“Well, when I looked at them—I mean looked really closely—I recognized this guy I’ve been seeing out here. He’s in the background of at least five of the photos they’ve hidden, but—here’s the thing—the photos are really old, and he hasn’t aged at all. I mean he looks exactly the same after ten, twenty, thirty years.”
Elena’s smile dropped. She looked concerned. “You think they’re hiding photos of a guy whose appearance didn’t change over thirty years?”
“Yes!” Joe said.
“Describe him to me.”
“Well, he’s about six four with short, dark hair and this sexy, salt-and-pepper beard … crazy handsome and built huge, like one of those guys in those old gladiator movies. You know the dubbed ones where everyone talks with a British accent, but they’re supposed to be Romans?”
“Mm-hmm. So, you saw this gladiator guy’s face up close in photos and in real life?”
Joe thought about it. No. He hadn’t seen his face closer than thirty feet. And except for the one clear photo, the Gladiator Man was always in the background, with his face partially obscured …
Joe’s memory started to blur. His face felt hot and sweaty. “It really looked like him, I swear.”
“Joey, baby,” Elena said kindly, “I hate to say this, but all gay guys look alike.”
“No they don’t!” Joe protested.
“They do. You just can’t see it, honey.”
Joe gestured to a smooth blond body builder, in a spaghetti-strap tank top, walking next to a short, thin Latin guy in biker shorts. “You’re telling me they look alike to you?”
“Of course they don’t look alike,” she said. “I’m not comparing the bears with the twinks or leather clones.” Elena impressed Joe with her knowledge of the taxonomical variations in gay male archetypes. “I’m saying just look within those categories—the guys look so much alike they could form their own sixties girl group. What’s that expression? Oh, right: ‘There are only six gay men in Manhattan, and the rest are done with mirrors.’ ” She pointed to the stream of men heading into the club. “Just use your eyes.”
When Joe actually looked over at the specific brands of gay men standing in line, the similarity became starkly evident. Bears, twinks, muscleheads, silver foxes, lumberjacks, trolls, clones, wolves, chickens … it was like an illustrated gay Grimms’ Fairy Tales . Even the “regular-guy” gays were all regular in exactly the same way.
“I guess we do all look alike,” Joe admitted.
“If you get up close and add a personality, everyone is unique,” Elena said. “But from a distance, it’s like looking at dozens of G.I. Joe dolls on the shelf at F.A.O. Schwartz. It’s the same with fashion models. Just squint and, other than our race and hair color, we’re basically carbon copies. It makes sense that you thought you saw the same guy in all those old photos. Sounds like this guy you saw is one of those Tom of Finland muscle clones.”
“Ugh,” Joe said, realizing the impact of the insanity of his early summer—the move from Philly, the sadness, the unrelenting schedule, the heat of his attic room. “I feel like such an idiot.”
Elena hugged him tightly. “You are not an idiot. This island will do that to you. It makes everyone go a little nutso. I’ll be honest with you, I had something similar happen to me out here when I was a kid. Dory had me come out here the summer after my mother died—kind of like she had me come out here this summer—to heal. She thinks the island has special powers.”
“She does?”
“She does indeed. And it’s infectious.” Elena started to laugh at a memory.
“What is it?” he asked, reflecting her laugh. “Come on, tell me.”
“It’s so stupid.” She shook her head. “Once, when I was a kid, I thought I saw her group of friends elevating a few inches off her living room floor while they were having a dance party. I also remember thinking I heard strange voices.”
Joe stopped laughing. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” she said, still giggling until she registered Joe wasn’t laughing too. “I mean no, Joe, it didn’t really happen. It was just a weird window reflection, my mind playing tricks on me. That summer I just needed to believe in something magical, like Dory did. If magic was real, than maybe my mother’s death wasn’t an ending. You know what I mean?”
Joe thought about it, and there he was, like always: Elliot. If Gladiator Man was a ghost, then Elliot might be able to return as well. If a dying man’s photograph could talk, then maybe Elliot could send him a message. If there was such a thing as Disco Witches, then maybe there would be some meaning to the awfulness of the world and the AIDS epidemic. “I think I get it now,” he said. He lowered his voice even more. “I need to tell you something else.” He took a breath, ready, finally, to talk. “About two years ago the only guy I ever loved died, and I’ve been struggling to get over it. That’s one of the reasons I had to get out of Philly.
“I didn’t know,” Elena said. “I’m so sorry. Was it …?”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but instead looked down at the ground, worried. Joe wondered if she was assuming he was infected too.
He nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not positive. I got tested nine months ago. And I never have unsafe sex, so I should be okay.”
“Well, that’s good,” Elena said, looking up.
“Elliot and I were always safe too. Sometimes I wish we weren’t. I know I shouldn’t say that, but that’s how I feel. I loved him so much. Watching him at the end … I just wished I could leave too.” Joe swallowed hard. The alcohol was making it even harder not to break down into tears when he told her about Elliot.
“It’s good he cared enough to be careful for you,” Elena said. “Not everyone is that lucky.” Something had shifted inside her. The closeness Joe had felt toward Elena just moments before had fallen away. Her warmness had chilled.
But he kept going. For the first time he thought he might be able to tell someone the complete truth. “What really happened was …” He scooted a little closer, lowering his voice. “We weren’t exactly … together when he died. I mean, I wasn’t there, because—” His voice caught in his throat.
Elena gently touched his leg as she bit her lower lip and scrunched her eyes sympathetically. The warmth was back. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Was it his family? They tried to stop you from seeing him, didn’t they?”
“No, you don’t understand,” Joe snapped, annoyed she couldn’t read his mind. He took a deep breath, hoping to stem the tears, but the J ? ger shots were making it impossible to control himself. “I wasn’t there because—” He gasped for air as his shoulders shook and the tears began to fall. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell her.
Elena pulled him to her shoulder and stroked his hair. “Oh, baby,” she said. “It’s okay. It makes total sense you’d think your roommates were witches. We all need magic to heal this shit.”
Joe wiped his face with the bottom of his T-shirt and sat up. “I am so not gonna get laid looking like a fucking crybaby,” he said. “I definitely need more cocktails.”
Elena smiled, keeping her hand on his knee. “What about just heading to bed and trying again tomorrow? You’ll have your pick of this island with those gorgeous eyebrows.”
“Not so much. Also, if I don’t try tonight, it might be weeks before I get the time off again.” Joe stood up and swayed a little.
“But you’ll be okay, right?” Elena sounded like a stern but caring field hockey coach.
Joe nodded. “Hey, you’ll keep all that stuff secret, right?”
“Sure,” Elena said. “You have my word. We’ll keep each other’s secrets.”
Joe nodded in agreement. After he hugged her goodbye, he headed toward the Promethean, feeling her eyes follow him the whole way.