Page 28 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

—Disco Witch Manifesto #39

Joe awoke at twoPMwith an unusually painful hard-on. He vaguely remembered having another Elliot dream—something that had happened regularly in the twenty-two months since his death. When he tried to recall the details of the dream, he realized the man in the dream wasn’t Elliot at all. It was Gladiator Man, wearing Elliot’s favorite long-sleeve rugby shirt. It was three sizes too small on him, and the seams were ripping, slowly exposing his muscles and skin. The dream Gladiator Man, like some puppet master of lust, had the power to simply look at Joe with his angry-sexy stare and instantly cause an overwhelming and unquenchable longing in Joe—a longing that could make him do anything.

“Joseph!” Howie’s voice called up from downstairs. “Breakfast is on the table!”

“Coming,” Joe shouted, waiting a moment for his hard-on to deflate. Then he scrambled down the ladder to find a plate of eggs with a side of brisket on the table. Howie was cooking something else on the stove. “Where’s Lenny?” Joe asked.

“Out back in the yard, exercising.” Howie pulled down several little jars from the floor-to-ceiling spice rack next to the stove. Each shelf was crowded with dozens of small jars containing dried leaves and powders, as well as others that appeared to hold small twigs, roots, and other organic materials. The lowest shelf had corked test tubes filled with liquids, mostly brownish and yellow, but a few with more vibrant blues and greens.

“Whatcha cooking?” Joe grimaced at what smelled like potpourri and rancid tuna.

“Just putting a little infusion together for Chrissy Bluebird. She’s in the middle of selling her late mother’s house and has lots of inner turmoil. She tried carrying around my cleansing green tourmaline for a week, but it didn’t work. So I’m preparing an old radical faerie remedy I learned from a sous chef up at the Moosewood Kitchen in Ithaca.”

“Gotcha,” Joe said, suppressing about a dozen questions. As he dove into his breakfast, he looked out the window and saw Lenny twirling around in a circle in the middle of the herb garden. He held one arm up toward the sky, the other toward the earth, his eyelids half closed. Joe expected him to stop any second, but the man kept spinning, first slowly, then faster,àla Stevie Nicks’s “Stand Back” music video. “I thought you said Lenny was exercising?”

“He is.” Howie stirred the various pungent ingredients into a doll-sized saucepan.

“Looks more like some sort of dancing to me,” Joe said, crunching off a bite of toast.

“Well, dancing is exercise—especially twirling. It’s also fantastic for the brain and an important tool for restoring the Great Balance.” Howie stuck his head out the open window. “Take it easy, Lenny! Remember your stent! Also finish up and eat lunch! I need you to drop off this infusion to Chrissy before you go to your meeting!”

“Be right there!” Lenny hollered back, gasping heavily, having stumbled out of his spin. “Let me just do a minute on the left so I’m not lopsided!” Five minutes later, still sweating, Lenny sat at the dining room table, eating a brisket sandwich and flipping through the personals in theNew York Native.

“Oh, by the way, Joe,” Howie said. “Everyonehas been gushing about your bartending debut.”

“Seriously?” Joe said, feeling a little giddy that people might actually be talking positively about his bartending skills.

“Absolutely,” Howie continued. “You are a huge sensation.”

“Reallyhuge, it seems,” Lenny said. “You know they’ve already nicknamed you Falafel Crotch, right?”

“Falafel crotch?” Joe squinched his eyebrows. “What does that even mean?”

“Lenny, stop it.” Howie looked annoyed. “Why’d you mention that?”

“What’s the big deal?” Lenny slapped the air with his sandwich. “It’s ’cause you got a big package—if it’s real. Also, because you’re Armenian, which is the Middle East. Besides, everybody gets a nickname around here. Really, it’s a compliment. The guys think you’re aces.”

Joe sighed. “I guess it’s better to hear what people are saying. Still, that nickname’s bullshit. Falafel isn’t even Armenian. And Armenia is in Central Asia, not the Middle East.”

“I’m happy to spread a new nickname around if you want,” Lenny said. “What’s an Armenian food that sounds good next to the wordcrotch?”

“Let’s just forget it,” Joe said. “Anyway, I totally had a blast last night. I even invented my own version of a Long Island iced tea and took home over two hundred bucks in tips. Oh, and I think Vince went home with Ronnie.”

“Do tell.” Lenny salaciously sipped his coffee.

“How nice!” Howie effused earnestly—clearly, he wasn’t holding a grudge about Ronnie’s rudeness from the previous day. “I sense those two would be good for each other.”

“Oh, it’s just a sex thing,” Joe said. “Remember the whole point of Ronnie being out here is to find a rich guy to marry. He’s pretty focused.”

Howie nodded his head over his now steaming saucepan. “Like I said, Fire Island summers rarely turn out the way you plan. It’s all up to the Great Goddess Mother, after all.”

Great Goddess Mother?Why did he keep saying that? His housemates’ obscure and unexplained allusions were starting to frustrate Joe, as well as give him the heebie-jeebies again.

“What do you mean exactly?” Joe asked.

“I mean that at her best, Fire Island has a way of giving you what you need, not necessarily what you want. But at other times …” He looked into his saucepan, as if the strange concoction had reminded him of a sad memory. “At other times it can tear your heart out—”

“Hey, let’s keep it light,” Lenny interrupted, his mouth full of brisket. “So, Joe, what time did you finish work?”

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