Chapter 26
26.
The Wawa Outside of Which I Wept
“Heterosexual overlords are not the only architects of the Great Darkness. Be wary of those holy lovers who have not grown past their self-hatred. Their hearts will be impenetrable to all but evil. Their kiss brings poison.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #101
When Joe opened the door of the Promethean, the one hundred and ten decibels of sound shook the fillings in his back teeth. A giant blow dryer’s worth of humid air blasted his face, filling his nostrils with the scent of booze, poppers, and man sweat. The packed bar area was so dark it was impossible to make out anyone’s face, but all the silhouettes looked like those of muscle gods in the prime of life. When the strobe lights went on, though, he suddenly saw the hollowed cheeks and cavernous eyes of those who were sick.
He pushed his way to another spot. That time, when the strobe lights exploded, he swore that for a split second he saw the face of Elliot in the crowd. He fixed his eyes on the spot, held his breath, and waited for the next clarifying flash of light. As he often did, he played a mind game: What if Elliot hadn’t died? What if Elliot was actually here in the club, dancing? What if Elliot had faked his death just to get away from Joe? At the next strobe blitzkrieg, Joe saw that the man didn’t look like Elliot at all.
The J ? ger was really fucking with him now, but it wasn’t enough that he could forget all the bullshit swarming in his head. He elbowed his way to the front of the bar, where he saw the medium-sized Graveyard Girl working the beer tap. He didn’t appear to be high on K this time, and looked pretty good wearing a pair of butt-less chaps exposing his round and smooth cheeks like two kickballs.
“Hey!” Joe screamed above the boom-boom-boom. “I met you the other week with Ronnie and Thursty at the gym. I’m Joe from—”
“You’re wearing too many clothes!” Without warning, the Graveyard Girl reached over the bar and yanked Joe’s T-shirt up and off his back. “That’s better!” He rubbed Joe’s chest. “Mmm … like Sean Connery and John Stamos had a baby. What’ll it be?”
“Something strong,” Joe said. “Maybe tequila?”
“Looking to get fucked up, huh?” the Graveyard Girl said.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “A little.”
“Got just the thing. It’s called a Knockout punch. It’ll help you feel all warm and sexy!”
“Sounds perfect!” Joe shouted over a remix of “All She Wants Is” by Duran Duran. “Give me an extra-large!”
About fifty seconds later, the Graveyard Girl held up a huge tumbler glass of punch. “It might sting a little at first,” he said. “Best to take a big gulp to numb the throat.”
Joe did as he was told. The Knockout—which Joe could now recognize as an extra-strong variation of a planter’s punch—carpet-bombed everything in its path—tongue, gums, and back teeth. Joe’s face scrunched in agony. “Holy shit, that’s strong. How much do I owe you?”
“Always on the house for a fellow bartender. When you need a refill, just say the word!”
“Thanks,” Joe said as he pounded down another gulp of the Knockout and made his way to the jam-packed dance floor. He could feel the alcohol pinballing around his synapses. He took another gulp, which no longer burned, but felt warm against his numb cheeks and throat. As Jody Watley’s “Real Love” blasted over the sound system, his body begin to sway, and all the dark and anxious thoughts that constantly swirled around his brain began to slip away. He took another gulp, then another.
After fifteen minutes he was feeling pretty good. He took in the whole dance floor. It was exactly as Ronnie had promised back in Philly—shirtless young muscle studs everywhere, the potential for copious amounts of sex, a feeling of freedom. He returned to the bar, and before he could even ask, the Graveyard Girl pushed another Knockout into his hand. Locked and loaded, Joe was finally ready to shoehorn his hot Armenian American body into that sweating fortress of heaving flesh.
Drinking is miraculous! The Graveyard Girls are miraculous! Fire island is miraculous! For the first time in forever, he wasn’t thinking about Elliot or HIV or lying to everybody. He felt okay. Better than okay. Everyone around him was staring and smiling at him. Several men tousled his chest hair. A few grabbed his butt, and one unseen hand fondled his crotch. After politely moving the hand away, he crossed back to the dance floor’s edge and set down the remainder of his second Knockout on a cleanup tray. He’d rarely been that drunk and knew he needed to pace himself.
“Bad drink?” a man to his right asked loudly.
Joe felt the air and spit of the words more than he could hear them. He couldn’t make out the man’s face since he was backlit by lasers and strobe lights. His most defining attributes were his height and that, unlike almost every other man in the club, he wore a shirt.
“Do I know you?” Joe asked.
The towering man adjusted his position so that his face was given a demonic glow by a red work light. It was Scotty Black. His perfectly coifed white hair, glowing pink, was frozen in a 1970s GQ middle part. “Don’t my bartenders know how to make a good cocktail?”
“It’s probably the best cocktail I’ve ever had!” As proof, Joe took another huge sip of the Knockout. His throat squeezed shut in protest, causing him to spit some out. Feeling guilty, he took another gulp, even bigger than the last. One of his eyelids closed more than the other. Scotty Black, like the first time he had seen him, raked his satanic eyes up and down Joe’s shirtless body.
“You’ve been working out.” Scotty let his lips touch Joe’s ear. “You almost look Promethean-good. You sure I can’t steal you away from Asylum Harbor? My guys make at least five hundred dollars on a night like this.”
Joe had never made five hundred dollars in one night anywhere. His mind flashed to all the things he might do with that sort of money. But then he thought about Vince and Dory and the little merman clock over the bar. Fuck Scotty Black and his money. Fuck him for trying to shut down Asylum Harbor. Fuck him for not giving Ronnie the bartending job like he’d promised. “You know what? You’re a full-on dickwad,” he drunkenly mumbled.
“Pardon?” Scotty Black leaned his ear down to Joe’s mouth. “I didn’t hear that. Have you been overserved?”
“Are you kidding?” Joe shouted louder that time. “I’m ab-solutely sober! I just said, thanks for the offer, but I like working at Asylum Harbor. We’re doing great.”
“You think?” Scotty snorted. “Dory needs to face facts. I’m not in the charity business. That shitty little bar won’t make it through August. If you reconsider my offer, call me.”
Scotty slipped his card into Joe’s front pocket, letting his hand linger before he slowly removed it. It took Joe’s last sober brain cells to stop himself from tossing the remains of his Knockout into Scotty’s face. “Sorry, Mr. Black!” he shouted over the music, “I’m feeling a little fucked up! I also have to go meet a friend … upstairs. Thanks for the offer. I’ll think about it!”
Joe shook his head and stumbled up to the balcony. He wanted to find a spot where he could be alone. His happy buzz that had been climbing higher and higher on the roller coaster of inebriation abruptly tipped over and began its morose descent. Glassy-eyed, he gazed over the roiling dance floor, desperately searching for anything that might lead him back to the previous happy feeling. Those last few gulps and running into Scotty Black had ruined everything. The recurring darkness that had slipped away earlier came roaring back along with its rum-soaked forbidden memories.
Two years before in Philadelphia.
The middle of a Sunday night.
The last conversation he would ever have with Elliot.
Joe had been drunk that night too. He was blabbering into a pay phone in front of the twenty-four-hour Wawa market on Walnut Street, chomping on pork rinds—his go-to food when he was sad and drunk. He was just around the corner from Woody’s Bar, the place where he had first fallen in love with Elliot.
“Hello?” Elliot’s low and sleepy voice answered the phone. “Who’s this?”
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
“Joe?” Elliot said. “Joe, is that you? Are you crying?”
“No,” Joe said, sniffling.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
“Are you eating something?” Elliot asked.
“No,” Joe lied. He simply wanted to tell Elliot that he missed him. It had been only three days since they had taken a relationship break—their third such break in a month to be exact. Between his mouthful of fried pig skin, drunkenness, and weeping, it came out, “I (snuffle) m- m- miss (snuffle) y- y- you.” Crunch, crunch, crunch.
“Joe, you’re not supposed to be calling me, remember?” Elliot said matter-of-factly, as his therapist had probably instructed him. “We agreed we shouldn’t talk for a while.”
“How long of a ‘while’?” Joe pleaded. “I feel like I’m going to die from being so sad. My heart hurts, Elliot. People die from broken hearts too, you know!”
“Joe, come on—”
“You’re the only person I’ve ever loved, Elliot. I still love you.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you, Elliot. What if something happens while we take this break? What if you get, ya know, sick again or something, and—”
Joe couldn’t finish the sentence. Was it that he wanted Elliot to love him again or just to absolve him of the mantel of being the worst lover any dying man had ever had? Joe’s shoulders shook, bits of pork rinds flying out of his mouth and onto the mouthpiece of the pay phone and his tear-covered hands. Homeless folks walking by looked at him with pity.
“Jesus Christ, Joe.” Elliot’s cold voice echoed through the receiver. “We’ve talked about this over and over. I don’t know how long I have left on this planet, and I don’t want to waste it constantly arguing with some muddle-headed boy who can’t get his life together, can’t control his emotions, and always has one foot out the door of this relationship!”
“That’s not true!”
“It is true! You know it. I loved you, Joe, but it was just too hard.”
Elliot’s use of love in the past tense sent Joe into another bout of uncontrollable crying. Elliot waited until Joe’s deluge had settled into mere snotty hiccups of weeping. “I’m sorry, Joe,” he said. “I can’t take your periodic rages at me for being sick. That constant expression of worry on your face. You look at me, and all you think about is me dying.”
“That’s not—”
“And you’re always trying to control my every move, what I eat, how much I sleep, how long I stay out at night.”
“I’m just trying to take care of you!”
“It’s not helping, Joe! It’s crushing me! I don’t want to think about it—don’t you get that? And meanwhile, you’ve done nothing about your own life. You clean bedpans in a mental hospital. Focus on yourself, Joe. Grow the fuck up. Please don’t call me again.”
“Okay. But we …” He gulped air, trying not to sob. “We’re still together, right?”
“I … I’m not sure. I’ll call you in a few weeks.”
The click of the hang-up. The ghostly whine of the dial tone. The crunch of the pork rind. The odor of the barbecue mixed with spit, tears, and the plastic of the pay-phone mouthpiece. Joe shivered as the cold Philadelphia wind blew through the giant hole in his stomach.
The DJ was spinning “Good Life” by Inner City when Joe realized he must have blacked out leaning over the edge of the Promethean balcony. He could have died, and his last memory would have been that final conversation with Elliot—a memory he had come to Fire Island to escape. He needed to shake the sadness from his head. He took one last long, painful gulp of the Knockout, hoping it would work like turpentine, melting away the blue and black paint of awful memories. Below him a thousand shirtless men’s bodies rose and fell like a bubbling cauldron. The disco lights swooped, the strobes exploded, the red laser beams stabbed the darkness. Joe tried to spot anyone he might know who could rescue him, but between the lights and his blurry eyes, everyone looked the same.
Except for …
He squinted his eyes to make sure he wasn’t imagining anything. He wasn’t. It was him . Gladiator Man. Every hair on Joe’s body leaped to attention. A bullet of desire blasted away the previous moment’s darkness.
“Hey! You! Hey!” Joe screamed.
Being several inches taller than anyone around him, the Gladiator Man towered over the center of the dance floor like a colossus, his massive shoulders spanning those of two men. A perfect dusting of fur spread across his bowling ball pectorals, and a treasure trail traipsed downward through the granite landscape of his ripped abdomen. His tight white jeans glowed in the black light, making him even more of a beacon. It was as if he wanted Joe to find him.
“Is this really happening?” Joe’s drunken guts ached with sexual hunger as he closed and opened his eyes. When he looked back down, the Gladiator Man gazed directly back at him. This time, there was no mistake. He sees me. Abandoning any attempt at Ronnie’s lesson on seductive disinterest, Joe frantically waved his arms. The beautiful man smiled and waved back, the underside of his hairy forearms mapped with veins. He pointed up to Joe, and then back at himself, as if to say, “You and me—us, together.” Then he tossed his head toward the front door. The meaning was obvious.
Joe vigorously gestured that he would be right down. “Wait for me!” he shouted over the din of Frankie Knuckles’s dance mix of “The Real Thing” before he bolted down the stairway, climbing over a man who had passed out on the steps. Joe’s heart was trying to sledgehammer its way out of his chest. When he arrived at the edge of the dance floor, he elbowed and jammed his way through the crowd. Most of the dancing revelers were too wasted to care. Several thought he was trying to play with them and proceeded to grab his ass while a gaggle of older Asylum Harbor regulars, rolling on ecstasy, encircled him in a group dance hug.
“Falafel Crotch! Our favorite little bartender on the whole island,” one of the men spit into Joe’s ear. “We love you!”
“Lemme go!” Joe wiggled from their clutches and dove deeper into the crush of the dance floor. A burst of multiple strobe lights briefly blinded him, but he was able to discern he was close to the middle. “Where is he?” he cried out. “Fuuuuuuck! I cannah looze you again!”
“Who are you talking about?” a sardonic voice yelled. “I’m right here!”
It was Thursty and the shorter Graveyard Girl, holding a Diet Coke can in his hand, meaning he was probably high on something. Thursty, however, was clearly drinking one of those Knockout punches.
“Having fun tonight?” Thursty shouted, patting the fanny pack around his thick waist. “I got C, K, T, E, X—the whole fuckin’ alphabet. I also have a package deal tonight on E, K, G—the cardiologist’s special! What do you want? Thirty percent off for island employees!”
“I don’t do drugs!” Joe shouted back.
Thursty rolled his eyes. “Oh puh-lease, Sandra Dee! You’re gonna end up begging me for something by the end of July. Might as well start now and not waste time!”
Joe shook his head. “Did you see a huge muscle guy with a beard? Sexy, slightly hairy chest? About five inches taller than you, but crazy handsome?”
Thursty gestured to the room. “We’re in an ocean of crazy handsome men, Baby Falafel Crotch! Dig in!”
“No! And don’t call me that! I’m talking bigger, better than them! He’s perfect. He looks like a gladiator! He likes me!”
Thursty yawned and gestured over by the door. “All gladiators have gone to the Colosseum.”
“What’s that?” Joe shouted.
The two Graveyard Girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
“The Meat Rack!” the short Graveyard Girl shouted into Joe’s ear. “Gladiators are in the Meat Rack tonight! Don’t forget your armor!”
The Graveyard Girls returned to dancing. Joe’s chest tightened with excitement. A drunken smile burst onto his face. He wasn’t supposed to go into the Meat Rack, but he also didn’t want to miss his chance. He wiped the gunk from the edges of his very dry mouth. The last thing he wanted was his first kiss with the Gladiator Man to taste like dirty socks. But he had no time to go to the bar for another drink.
“Hey, I need to wet my mouth!” he shouted to Thursty, who was now bobbing up and down to Madonna’s “Holiday.” Not wanting to waste any more time, Joe grabbed the Knockout from Thursty’s hand, drinking half in one long swig.
“Hey!” Thursty yelled, grabbing his drink back. “You know, you are a very rude little boy!”
“Thanks!” Joe shouted as he began pushing his way through the bodies until he was finally outside and the cool air burst against his body. He felt substantially drunker than he had only moments before. Looking down Fire Island Boulevard both ways, he could only see blackness in the distance. He wanted to cry out in frustration, but at the same time his body began to tingle with an insatiable sexual hunger, as if some invisible energy was tickling its fingers across his skin, tweaking his nipples, then reaching down his pants and diddling his balls. He rubbed his hands across his own chest, trying to satisfy his urge to be touched, but it was no use. There was only one man who could satisfy the urge. There was only one man who could take all the pain away.
“Joe!” a familiar voice called from behind him. It was Howie, dressed in his usual maroon bathrobe and baseball cap. “I’ve been looking for you! How was it inside?”
“Is incruminable,” Joe slurred, staring at Howie’s blurry face. “But I … I canna talk … I have ta meet someone.”
“Joe,” Howie begged with tinge of panic in his voice, “you look a little funny. Have you been imbibing?”
“I had jus’ a few sips. I’m okay. I feel very sessy, though. It’s weird.”
“Well, how about you and I go back inside? I haven’t danced in over a year—we can take a spin around the floor! Michael is about to play his Grace Jones set.”
As Howie blabbered on about a long-ago night at some Manhattan dance club, Joe looked westward and spied Gladiator Man’s white pants heading into the darkness. “Is him!” he cried.
“Him?” Howie asked. “Who?”
“I have ta go! Issa ’mergency! See ya later!”
“Emergency?” Howard shouted after Joe. “What are you talking—”
Oblivious to Howie’s shouts, Joe clumsily ran down the boardwalk, the agonizing hunger in his belly spurring him onward and his full-on erection pointing toward the Meat Rack.