Chapter 33
33.
To Catch a Thief
“Life is like the best night of dancing—far too short. Do not waste time complaining about the music or how the drinks are not strong enough or how the pretty boy with red hair did not notice you. If you do, you’ll miss your favorite song, and perhaps a more beautiful boy (with an adorable space between his front teeth), and suddenly the dance will be over without you ever dancing at all.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #69
Joe had just finished walking Ronnie home when he looked over at Fire Island Boulevard, and his stomach clenched. One of the new ACT UP benefit posters he and Elena had put up on the bulletin board was missing. He ran to check the nearest telephone pole. It too was barren. The same with the next three. All that remained were the poster’s torn corners and bits of tape.
“Fuck!” he shouted. “Not again!” Just as he was assuming the worst, something caught his eye, far down the boulevard. It was the culprit, in the very act of tearing down another blue poster. “Hey! Stop it!” Joe sprinted down the boardwalk. “Don’t touch that poster!”
When he was fifty feet away, he recognized the man. At first, he felt sadness and shock, but then a wave of fury crashed over him. “Fergal? What in the hell?” He steadily moved closer, clenching his fists. “You’re the one who’s been helping Scotty Black tear down the posters? How could you?”
Fergal dared to appear aghast at Joe’s condemnation and mumbled a feeble “Look, stop making assumptions.” His phony innocent act made Joe hate him even more. The evidence was right there in his hand, as well as in an entire bag filled with torn-down posters at his feet. To think I had a crush on that asshole. To think I let him kiss me. Joe lunged for Fergal, shoving him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Fergal steadied himself.
“You knew how hard Elena and I worked to put these up again!” Joe screamed. “Don’t you care about the AIDS crisis?”
“Could you pipe down?” Fergal whispered. “I didn’t tear anything down.”
“You fucking liar! You’re holding the fucking evidence!”
“Could you just listen—”
“How could you do this to Dory?” Without thinking, Joe swung at Fergal.
Fergal quickly lifted the bag like a shield, blocking Joe’s punch. “Would you just chill out?” When Joe took a second swing, Fergal dropped his bag and grabbed Joe’s wrists, flipping him until he was bent over in front of him. He pressed his mouth to Joe’s ear. “I said listen! I was not tearing down your posters. Look here—why would I have this if I was tearing shit down?” Fergal pointed to a massive roll of cellophane packing tape in his bag.
“Bullshit,” Joe growled, confusion starting to overtake him. “Prove it.”
Fergal grabbed his bag with one hand and Joe by the scruff of his T-shirt with the other and dragged him down the boardwalk until they reached the next utility pole. Stuck to the pole was a recently mended poster. “Open your fucking eyes,” Fergal barked. “I just put that back up. I found the posters in the dumpster behind the Promethean. I spent the entire night, since one in the goddamned morning, replacing as many as I could! Look all down the boardwalk. I said look!”
Joe looked. And sure enough, the next pole had a repaired poster, and the next one farther down and the next one and the next. Each had clearly been torn down, carefully taped back together, and then wrapped on the pole with enough packing tape it would take a machete to get them down again. Fergal was telling the truth. Joe felt his face flush. “Okay. Fine,” he grumbled through the fog of his humiliation and the remnants of his raging adrenaline. “Can you let go of my shirt?”
“Are you gonna promise not to swing at me again? Cause my arms are a lot longer than yours, shortstop, and I’d have no problem knocking your lights out.”
“Okay,” Joe said as Fergal released his T-shirt. “So, if you didn’t do it, do you know who tore them down?”
“No friggin’ idea,” Fergal said. “One of Scotty Black’s goons I guess. Maybe the Graveyard Girls or some other island wacko—I dunno. I got most of ’em back up.” He walked a few paces away from Joe and started stretching and yawning while also muttering loud enough for Joe to hear. “I haven’t slept all fucking night , and my thank-you is some fucking pint-sized muscle princess trying to lay me out—for the second time this summer, I might add—”
“Okay, already,” Joe grumbled, so much confusion inside of him. “I’m sorry, all right? Stop acting like I actually hurt you. Jesus.”
“I guess apologizing properly isn’t really your style, huh? Can you at least put these last ten posters back up for me? I want to grab a water taxi and shower before I start work in an hour.”
“Yeah … okay.” Joe didn’t move, immobilized by the breadth of his embarrassment and the preternatural power of Fergal’s blue-blue eyes staring at him. “I guess I … you know … I misunderstood and … I’m sorry.” He shrugged.
“Whatever. Just fix up any major damage. Then wrap the tape around the pole several times to make it harder to tear down. Here’s a backup roll.”
He handed him another thick cylinder of tape and started to gather his stuff. The thought of Fergal leaving on such a sour note sent a jolt of panic through Joe’s heart.
“Wait a minute. You got five seconds more?”
Fergal groaned. “What do you want now?”
Joe’s emotions were a mishmash as he found himself suddenly nervous, confused and overcome by the incredible generosity of Fergal’s act and how he, Joe, had so terribly misjudged him—again. And underneath all that was a desperate sadness that he had missed out on something deeply important. “Seriously, that was a really decent thing to do, and …”
“Yeah, and?” Fergal raised his eyebrows indicating he was waiting for something more.
“Nothing,” Joe said. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
Fergal shook his head, snorted in disgust, and started to walk toward the harbor.
“Wait!” Joe called out.
“What the fuck do you want?” Fergal turned back and dropping his backpack to the boardwalk. “You sound like you want to say something, so fucking say it.”
“Okay.” Joe’s voice shook with nerves. “That morning you kissed me when I was all fucked up. What’s the real reason you didn’t you want to, you know, go further?”
Fergal looked off toward the giant periwinkle pompoms of the hydrangea bush at the side of the walk. Joe couldn’t help but notice how Fergal’s ever-changing eye color was now the perfect shade to match the flowers in the early morning light.
“I don’t fuck around with people so messed up they don’t even know who I am,” he began, his usually gruff voice knee-capped by emotion. “Not to mention, you thought I was someone named Elliot?”
“That wasn’t it,” Joe said, trying to control the emotion in his voice. “Elliot’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh great,” Fergal groaned. “I get it now. Look, you swingers can do what you want. Hats off to you, but I’m not interested—”
“No!” Joe interrupted. “I mean he was my boyfriend. He passed away. Two years ago.” He swallowed to clear his throat. “I knew who you were. Honest.” Joe looked down at the bag of ripped and repaired posters.
The ferryman’s eyebrows arched in a way that might have preceded a deep and long hug if they had been friends. “I’m really sorry about your partner.”
“Yeah, well. Me too. It’s the main reason I came out here—trying not to be so sad anymore.
“I didn’t know that,” Fergal said, any vestiges of his formerly sharp tone having been fully replaced with one of gentleness and true concern.
“So that’s the whole reason you didn’t have sex with me?” Joe’s voice cracked. “Because I was messed up and called you the wrong name?”
“Yeah.” Fergal looked over at a nearby doe, who appeared to be eavesdropping. “Actually no, that’s not entirely true.”
“Then why?” Joe asked.
Fergal sighed. “It’s just summers on Fire Island can get very dramatic. I didn’t want any trouble. I grew up out here, I’ve seen what guys go through every year. Watched them crying behind their Ray-Bans as they take the last ferry back. Hearts all busted. No thanks. Not for me.”
“But it would’ve just been sex.” Joe attempted a quick laugh, trying to approximate the cool sexiness Ronnie might muster in a moment like this.
Fergal shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t. I can see it in your eyes. You’re not that type. You wanna think you’re just here to have a good time and fuck around. But I can see it—you’d want something more. You’d want to cuddle and all that bullshit and—”
“And what?” Joe suddenly felt even more exposed, even to himself.
“We’re from different worlds,” Fergal said way too earnestly.
“For real?” Joe laughed a little. “Did you steal that line from One Life to Live or something?”
“I’m serious.” The blush was visible beneath Fergal’s scruff.
“Long Island and suburban Philadelphia aren’t that different.”
“For one, you graduated from college. I didn’t.”
“So?” Joe scoffed. “Doesn’t mean you’re not smart.”
“Also, I tend to go for older guys,” Fergal countered. “You’re only twenty-four, right?”
Joe looked up at the trees and then back at Fergal. His lie had even traveled the Fire Island gossip circuit. He felt smothered by a hot wet rag of embarrassment.
“Not really. I turned twenty-nine last March.”
“But at least three people told me you were—”
“I lied. See, what happened was, when I first met my best friend, Ronnie, he took a guess that I was in my early twenties, and—well, I just let him believe it.”
“Why?”
There it was. Joe had to decide whether to tell the truth, a half-truth, or another outright lie, or just keep quiet. But something about Fergal’s expression made him not want to lie anymore. Not to Fergal. As he took a deep breath, he fingered Howie’s good luck charm in his back pocket for courage. “The whole story is this: When I was actually twenty-four, Elliot and I fell in love. But he was sick. He had AIDS.”
Fergal took a deep breath, and then gently said, “I’m really sorry.”
“After he died, I wanted a redo of that part of my life.”
Fergal nodded but then looked down to the ground like he was avoiding Joe’s eyes. Joe had been through it a dozen times before. As soon as he told a guy that his partner had died of an AIDS-related opportunistic infection, they’d start asking themselves, “Does that mean Joe has AIDS? Is he going around infecting other people? Is he going to die?” He hated that they did this, but he knew he would probably do the same thing. “I’m not positive, if that’s what you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” Fergal responded curtly, looking Joe in the eyes again. “Why would you assume I’d think that?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just … you know what I mean? Everyone thinks if you’ve been with someone positive for a long time, then you’re …” Joe gestured to the air.
Fergal nodded again, and Joe was grateful for the lack of pity in Fergal’s eyes. He would have liked to tell him everything, including the secret he had yet to tell anyone. But he couldn’t; he had already exposed enough of himself for right now.
He studied Fergal’s face. The shadow of his beard was even heavier than usual, and even though he looked dead tired, Joe couldn’t help thinking how honestly and purely sexy he was. All of him, from his uncombed mop of hair to the scar above his lips, his hot-as-hell hairy legs and arms, down to those huge, webbed feet stuffed into Top-Siders—the ones Joe had vomited on that first night they’d kissed. Unlike all the pretty boys on the island, Fergal’s good looks were misleadingly average—even a bit brutish—if you didn’t look too closely. But when you took the time to really look at him, you couldn’t miss the innocence and fire that made every inch of his face and body vibrate with an almost painful beauty. Sure, he was no Gladiator Man, nor was he an Elliot, handsome and academically brilliant, but the more Joe listened to Fergal’s voice, looked at his adorably scruffy face, and watched the hair patch on his chest point up to his unusually large Adam’s apple, the more Joe wanted to—
“So?” he blurted out.
“So what?” Fergal narrowed his eyes in a way that insisted Joe be clear.
Joe rubbed the good luck charm in his pocket again. “You wanna go out on a date with me or not?”
“You are really somethin’.” Fergal shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched in an almost smile. “Can I be honest with you?”
“Sure.” Joe’s voice cracked, fearful that the honesty might hurt.
“I’ve actually never been on a real date with a guy—or a girl, for that matter. I mean I’ve fucked a lot of folks, obviously, but …” He looked like he was searching for something to say, but then just laughed like he was unable—or frightened?—to find the words. “What I mean is, I’m not sure it’s a good idea—”
“I don’t mean to cut you off,” Joe said, playing with the newfound power that Ronnie had pointed out in him, “but I’m not gonna accept no for an answer. Look, I finish work early tonight. I know you didn’t get any sleep, but it’s gonna be a crazy week with getting ready for the benefit. My day off was even canceled.” He cleared his throat. “What I’m trying to say is, we shouldn’t waste time. Howie says wasting time is the worst sin in the world. And I know going on a date is way scarier than just fucking someone. I feel the same way. So, what I’m asking is—”
“Sure,” Fergal interrupted, his face flushing while he attempted to maintain his gruff, matter-of-fact tone. “I guess I can get someone to cover for me after the seven PM ferry, and maybe I can catch a few naps on trips over.”
“Great! I’m done with work at eight. Meet me at my house at 8:05, and I’ll figure out a place we can go.”
“Mmm-kay,” Fergal said.
Joe didn’t know what to say next, so he hemmed and hawed and bit his lower lip a few times. “I guess I’ll catch you later,” he finally said.
Then he walked a few tentative steps closer to Fergal, lifted himself up on his toes so their faces would be at equal height, and kissed him. Unlike the first time they’d kissed, this time was gentle. He was able to feel the softness of Fergal’s lips set against the roughness of his beard. He pushed the kiss further. Fergal’s mouth responded. They closed their eyes while their tongues grappled like two Turkish oil wrestlers who had fallen in love. When Joe swallowed the sweet but salty wetness of Fergal’s mouth, he imagined a magnificent tsunami, the entirety of the ocean, sweeping him under.