Chapter 40
40.
Confessions, Part 1
“Sing your deepest darkest secrets loudly to the universe. If you keep them hidden, they will devour you with their teeth.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #33
On the day of the Morning Party, Howie awoke with an even darker feeling than all the other dark feelings he had already awoken to that summer. With Max on the brink of death, Lenny having spotted the egregore in the Meat Rack, the blood moon ready to reach its totality at the end of an already cosmically complex weekend, and still no confirmation of who might be the chosen one, the dark event his guts had been prophesying all summer had to be imminent.
Then again, he thought, it could end up being just a big old bag of bupkis. The Great Goddess Mother could be unpredictable in her dance with the Great Darkness. Why would she suddenly give Lenny—the schlub who had been doubting their old magic—the individuated power to see the egregore when there wasn’t even a quorum on the island? So, even though Howie’s gut swarmed with the wasps of ill omen, he knew he and Lenny were capable of getting things laughably wrong. He ruminated on his own misguided prediction of 1969, when his prescient nightmare (in retrospect brought on by eating beef too close to bedtime) caused the entire coven to undergo emergency herbal colonics. And there were other gaffes of magical insight over the years as well, especially when the Disco Witches were far apart from one another.
Of course, Howie’s necromancing stomach was more often right than not. Consider the spring of 1981 and his most catastrophically accurate prediction of all: the plague that had decimated legions of holy lovers. But what was the use of speculating whether there was or wasn’t an impending cataclysm? Without a quorum of Disco Witches on the island, they were helpless. He prayed his stomach was on the fritz with the rest of his powers. Let Lenny and me be wrong this time, Great Goddess Mother. Let us be the most wrong we have ever been.
“Time to snap out of it!” Howie commanded himself. He then jumped from his bed, threw on his favorite Hawaiian birds-of-paradise caftan, and stared into his closet. After all the recent terrible news, he decided to break his fashion fast and bring some necessary light to the island. I should make a new hat. Something that reminds people of their holy place in the world. Of course, with things as they were, there would be no inherent magic—it would only be for show. Still, something silly and colorful might at least brighten the mood. As a frontline volunteer at the Morning Party, he would be seen by everyone at least once. (This would also allow him to keep an eye on Joe, just in case the boy found himself overwhelmed.) As he was about to go make sketches of a joy-inducing hat for the party—silver Mardi Gras beads, bows, and tinsel; a disco dinosaur perhaps?—he heard loud banging coming from the attic.
“Joe!” Howie ran to the living room and clambered up the ladder. “Are you all right?”
As soon as his head popped over the lip of the attic hatch, he saw Joe sitting on the floor. His right hand wove dramatically through his wavy dark hair while his left held his stomach as if he had been punched. His drawers had been emptied. Clothing was strewn across the floor as if it had been ransacked.
“Joe, you scared me!” He grasped the neck of his flowered caftan like a six-foot-three femme fatale. “I thought you had injured yourself!”
“I can’t find it.” Joe’s voice cracked with emotion.
“What did you lose?” Howie stepped up into the attic.
“It’s this mixtape I listen to all the time. It’s really important to me.”
“It’s awful to lose things,” Howie said. “Can’t you recreate it? I mean we have thousands of albums and a state-of-the-art (give or take a few states) record-to-tape console downstairs—”
“No!” Joe snapped. “You don’t get it! Someone else made it for me. It can’t be recreated.”
Joe dipped his head between his arms. He wasn’t crying, but Howie knew that was probably because he was there. Looking over to the top of the bureau, Howie noticed the cassette’s empty jewel case with the handwritten title in blue marker ink: Love Songs 1 , with a tiny smiley face and a three-word note. Love you forever. E.
“Oh, I see,” Howie whispered. “Your Elliot made you the tape?” Joe nodded, mumbling something into his forearms. “I’m sorry, Joe, I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?”
Joe lifted his head. His aura was illuminated by despondent dark blue, a sickly green, and speckles of somber red and grayish pink. Rippling underneath everything was that unresolved and bitter black that had been present since day one. Only now it appeared twice as pervasive. Howie looked away for a moment, his sensitive retinas unable to behold that hue of wretchedness for long periods.
“When we first met,” Joe said, “Elliot made me a bunch of mixtapes. This was the only one I had left.”
Howie recognized the razor-sharp center of Joe’s pain. He, himself, had had nine romantic heartbreaks in his own life, not to mention the scores of beloved friends and comrades he had lost over the last eight years. He knew so many who were, at that very moment, in the process of losing a lover. Joe’s pain was … not worse, but different. Confused, yearning, incomplete.
“Did you look inside the Walkman?” Howie asked, taking his hand from his own heart, where he had been holding it.
“Of course. I looked everywhere. After Fergal and I broke up, I took it to the beach to listen to it, and walked halfway to Water Island. I dunno—maybe I changed the tape on the way back and left it on the steps at Sail Walk. But when I went back to look …” He shook his head.
“I see.” Howie attempted to make sense of what he didn’t know. The indigo of clarity suddenly illuminated Howie’s own eyes as a jab of insight poked his intestines. Elliot. Fergal. Elliot. Fergal. Lost tape. “Joe, you and Elliot—was there something unfinished between you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Joe gruffly mumbled to the floor. “We loved each other, then he got sick and died.” He lifted his head, but not his eyes. “No. That’s a lie. Did Fergal tell you?”
“No, not at all.” Howie placed his large warm hand on the middle of Joe’s back. “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I’m tired of lying.” Joe’s whole heartbreaking story suddenly spilled out. All of it, from falling in love with Elliot, to learning of his HIV infection, to Elliot’s refusal to talk about it, through their fights, all the way until Elliot cut Joe off and then disappeared forever.
Howie visualized the entire relationship both mentally and viscerally. He relived Joe’s agony, the regret still lacerating his soul. And just when it became unbearable, Howie saw the light blue of truth breaking through Joe’s aura, fighting to overpower that putrescent green.
“I didn’t even find out he had died until weeks after.” Joe’s reddened eyes looked to Howie. “I don’t blame you for judging me. I get it. You and your friends stood bravely by while all your lovers died in your arms, and mine kicked me out because I couldn’t handle it. And then I go around lying to everyone about it. I just felt so embarrassed and angry at myself. He was all I ever wanted, and I couldn’t even … Anyway, that’s why I broke up with Fergal.”
Howie raised his eyebrows. “So Fergal is …?”
Joe nodded. This was what Howie had been subtly intuiting for months. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. So many of the most kindhearted of the island’s demigods had fallen victim to the plague. “That poor, sweet boy.”
“What really sucks is”—Joe’s words fought their way out—“I’m completely in love with him. Great, right? I came out here to get over Elliot, and I fell for Fergal—someone else who has the virus. But at least this time I knew the relationship would be doomed. I’d lose my shit again. I won’t do that to him too.”
“I understand,” Howie said gently. “Of course, there is the minuscule possibility it might be different this time. You’ve grown so much.”
“I don’t think I have. And what happens if he dies? Huh? It would just hurt so bad. I’d rather be alone forever …” Joe choked on a small gasp of air and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets to stem any seepage.
Howie sat next to him and pulled Joe’s head to his chest. “It’s all so confusing and awful,” he said. “Holding all that inside, not being able to talk with Elliot … of course that made it impossible. And that wasn’t only your fault. But to lose your first great love like that … so unfinished. It makes absolute sense to be scared to love again. How can we even begin to love without the delusion of forever?” He stroked Joe’s hair. “It was almost two years ago that your Elliot left us?” Joe nodded. “And you’re twenty-four now, which means you were only a child when all this—”
Joe lifted his head abruptly off Howie’s chest. His aura flashed an angry red.
“I didn’t mean to imply your feelings weren’t valid,” Howie said. “I just meant that no one as young as you should have had to go through that. None of us should. And if you still believe that it’s somehow your fault, that you’re damaged beyond repair, please stop. The Great Goddess Mother loves you, Joe. She loves all of us passionately. You need to trust me on this. I’m not going to tell you it will work out with Fergal. I can’t know that. But you mustn’t control your heart too much or you’ll end up bitter. Just look around.” Howie gestured widely to the room, the island, the world. “So many people who have lists of limits for who is and is not worthy of their love—and they wonder why they are alone. We need to give the Great Goddess Mother the freedom to do her matchmaking work.”
“Her matchmaking work?” Joe said, bitter poison drenching his words. “Is her work always forcing me to fall in love with someone who’s dying?”
Howie held his gaze. “We’re all going to die, Joe.”
Joe’s teary eyes squinted into a look of puzzlement. “Is that supposed to help?”
“No,” Howie said. “But it’s true. That’s what makes love possible. While we tell ourselves “forever,” inside we know that our time is limited. That’s why we embrace our lovers so tightly when we first meet them. The goddess wisdom in our bones understands the brevity of it all. But I also promise you something else, Joe: many of those who have the disease today won’t die from it. I just know it. The greatest of the gods and goddesses are on our side.”
Joe looked up to face Howie. His dark eyes were ready to challenge. “Do you really believe in all that woo-woo stuff?”
“Most of the time.” Howie smiled, using the edge of his caftan to wipe the tears from Joe’s cheeks.
Joe’s eyes shifted as he jerked his head away. “You know, ever since I got here, I’ve heard people say crazy stuff about you and Lenny, that you are …” He hesitated. Howie saw his embarrassment to even say it.
“Witches?” Howie offered.
“Yeah.” Joe rolled his weepy eyes. “Disco Witches, in fact—whatever that means. That you used to perform spells in the clubs—magic and stuff. ”
“They say that, do they?” Howie feigned being aghast, then chuckled.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “It freaked me out. What with you making all that weird potion stuff on the stove, and your reliquaries and charms, and the way you’re always talking about the Great Goddess Mother and auras …”
“I see.” Howie’s face began to feel hot.
“So, are you? Are you and Lenny Disco Witches? Do you cast magic spells? Cause people to fall in love? Did you … did you set a club in Rehoboth Beach on fire?”
Howie sighed and then laughed a small bitter laugh. “Those silly queens just love to talk. Of course we didn’t set anything on fire. That’s arson, not witchcraft.”
“I knew it was stupid.” Joe gritted his teeth guiltily. “I feel like an idiot even bringing it up. But can you just say it out loud? Say, ‘No, Joe, Lenny and I aren’t Disco Witches.’ ”
Howie studied the young man’s face. Was it the right time to tell him?
“Joe, everyone has a power inside themselves—” he began.
“Oh, bullshit!” Joe spat. “Don’t patronize me. Just tell me the truth. I’ve seen how people react around you.” His voice grew softer but insistent. “I told you my secrets. Now you tell me yours.”