Page 30 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

“Oh, pish!” Howie laughed and tipped the pot of his rancid potpourri into a very small tincture bottle. “We’re as clear as a cataract.” He sniffed the greenish-brown liquid in the bottle and scowled as if Joe hadn’t said anything. “Lenny, I’m not sure if I did this right. I think it needs more elder knot and some maidenhair. If you’re in the Meat Rack later, could you keep an eye out?”

As Howie and Lenny began cleaning up while discussing where to find the plants, Joe was forced to surrender once again to the strangeness of his housemates with their mysterious and obscure slogans; their healing potions; their spinning in circles; the omni-present disco music playing; and the strange, flamboyant way they dressed. Of course, while they sometimes tied his mental wiring into knots, he had to admit he enjoyed how different they were from the middle-class gays of Philly, with their limited ideas of gay identity. Most just wanted to be able to pass as straight, get into a monogamous relationship with someone equally “straight acting” who worked in a law firm, and own a Society Hill townhouse and maybe a weekend place in Bucks County. For Joe, Howie and Lenny’s weirdness was a bit like being awakened with a bucket of multicolored ice water being poured over his head. Despite what Ronnie always said, there wasn’t just one way of being gay. Joe liked how Howie and Lenny made him feel a little less self-conscious. Maybe they wouldn’t judge him if he admitted to stalking the Gladiator Man—and they, of all people, might actually know who the man was.

“Hey,” Joe interrupted. “I wanted to ask you about this other guy …”

“Uh-oh, here we go,” Lenny said, giving a wink.

“Was it the other man you met at the beach?” Howie started wiping off the condiment bottles.

“I haven’t really met him,” Joe said. “But he’s probably the hottest man I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Howie and Lenny cast their rags aside, sat down at the table with their chins on their fists, and stared at Joe with enraptured faces.

“Go on,” Howie insisted. “We love stories about beautiful men.”

“I’m sure you know him,” Joe said. “He’s really built, about six four or six five, salt-and-pepper beard?” Both his housemates nodded their heads in approval. “He looks like a cross between aColt Magazinemodel and an actor in one of those old Italian gladiator movies? About thirty-five or forty—maybe older, maybe younger, hard to say.”

“Not ringing a bell,” Lenny said, looking at Howie, who appeared to agree. “But sounds delicious.”

“Come on,” Joe practically begged. ”You had to have at least seen the man I’m talking about. He was in the harbor the day I met you guys—he was wearing a Titans sweatshirt? I keep trying to talk to him, but he keeps disappearing. He has these really dark, intense, angry eyes that feel like they’re ripping you open—”

At the exact same moment, Howie’s and Lenny’s expressions changed to something a lot like … dread? No, that couldn’t be right. But there was no doubt their eyes showed recognition. “So youdoknow him?”

“No,” Howie muttered. “We have absolutely no idea who you could be talking about.”

After Joe had pressed Howie and Lenny two more times about the Gladiator Man, he surrendered and headed into the bathroom to shower. Once he was out of earshot, Howie whispered to Lenny anxiously, “This must be what Max was trying to tell us to look out for.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions again,” Lenny insisted. “Remember, he’s nowhere near the age of the others.”

“Yes, but did you see how mesmerized he was when he talked about that Gladiator person? The hottest man he’d ever seen? Couldn’t look away? Kept disappearing? Angry, dark eyes ripping him apart? That’s nearly the identical language all the others used. What if a chosen one can be a few years younger? People mature at different ages. I can’t believe it’s happening again at the worst possible time—”

“Basta! You’re being paranoid! It was just some random hot guy. Joe’s on Fire Island for the first time, for Chrissake.”

“Oh come on, Lenny! Someone who looked like his Gladiator Man would be the talk of the town this early in the season. You know that!”

Lenny shook his head adamantly. “I’m not buying it. Joe seems too levelheaded. The others were all in very bad places in their lives.”

“Then why are my intestines all balled up like this?” Howie’s eyes lowered to the table as if he were searching the swirls in the wood pattern for possible disasters.

Lenny took his old friend’s hand sweetly. “Let’s just take a breath, okay? The world is a mess, and our heads aren’t in the right place. Let’s not start comparing Joe with …” Lenny stopped himself from saying the name, but Howie knew exactly who he meant.

A dark memory—an event that was considered one of their coven’s worst failures—flashed simultaneously before their eyes. It had happened during their final summer as the holy guardians of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The young man’s name was Lucho, an adorable carpenter who did repair work on the artists shacks in the dunes. Half Portuguese, half Nauset Indian, Lucho had been born on the Cape and had beautiful, sad black eyes, a beard, and a traditional azulejo design tattooed onto his shapely right pectoral. So sexy yet so pure, and prone to falling desperately in love with the worst men who visited P-town. His dream was to become a writer and to compose stories that would change the world.

Max, consulting his sacred rubric, had concluded without a doubt that Lucho was one of the chosen ones—a holy lover, blessed by the Great Goddess Mother, destined for greatness, a warrior for the restoration of the Great Balance. Because of this he would be marked for death by the Great Darkness, and require protection and guidance by the Disco Witches in order to survive his dark summer of the soul.

It had been the Monday after Labor Day. Max, fearing Lucho’s most recent man obsession had been sent by the Great Darkness to lure Lucho toward annihilation, asked Lenny to stand sentinel overthe boy while the others attended a midsummer “cleansing boogie” at the A-House. Lucho, a master trickster, managed to slip away under Lenny’s nose. A local drag queen reported seeing Lucho stumbling in a stupor across the stone jetty to Long Point, “as if he was chasing something.”

A dozen Disco Witches piled onto the dance floor in a last-ditch effort to boogie out some protective magic to save Lucho from his dark fate, but it was too late. Rumors spread that Lucho had left town without telling anyone. The regular folk assumed the disappearance was simply another instance of a worker who couldn’t bear the pressure of another Provincetown summer and fled on the midnight bus. The Disco Witches knew differently. Lucho’s tank top and shorts were found in a tidal pool behind Herring Cove beach. They never found his body.

“To be quite honest,” Lenny said, having shaken off the awful memory and averting his eyes from Howie’s, “I’m not sure I believe in all that crapola anymore. We did a lot of drugs back then …”

“Just stop, Lenny,” Howie spat. “It’s not time for your periodic agnosticism again. Think of that anxious look in Joe’s eyes. Think of how he was transfixed by those photos in the attic—the ones we know were taken on the days when you-know-what was afoot.”

“Okay, fine.” Lenny threw up his hands. “Maybe it’s not just us being delusional together. But until Max gets out here and gives Joe the once-over, there’s no way to know for sure. Of course, there’s another way.”

“What is it?” Howie said excitedly, hoping Lenny had remembered something.

“If Max doesn’t get back in touch soon, we could just send someone to get the sacred texts from him. We might as well face it: it’s time you took over—”

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