Page 36 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

So, where exactlywerethey hiding the crawl space key? Joe looked back and forth between the doors of the three downstairs bedrooms. Lenny’s was the smaller room at the back of the cottage, next to the laundry machines, allowing for maximum privacy in case the randy little leatherman coaxed some hot bottom into his sling. You could tell when Lenny was using the contraption because he’d put an old pair of sneakers in the dryer and run it for an hour to silence the sounds. The center room off the dining room, the largest, was Max’s, which hadn’t been occupied since the previous summer. And finally, Howie’s room, at the front of the house, next to the screen door, allowing him to oversee the comings and goings of 44 and¼Picketty Ruff all year long. The key would obviously be kept there.

After double-checking that no one was out front, Joe pushed Howie’s door open. Other than a few glimpses, he had never stepped inside. When he did, his eyes were bombarded by a rainbow fantasia of feathers, sequins, glass beads, and wall-to-wall camp. A Disneyland fantasy boudoir by way of a whorish Glinda the Good Witch.How am I going to find anything in this mess?

There were shelves of ornate hats ringing the ceiling, jewelry trees dripping like Spanish moss with silver necklaces, two mannequins draped in lavender organza. The bedspread was an intricately handmade quilt of pinks, greens, and yellows, featuring a pattern of winged phalluses, all erect and ejaculating daisies. Joe felt a strong urge to laugh—almost like the room demanded it. How could someone with a room like this burn down a disco? But then again, hadn’t that serial killer John Wayne Gacy worked as a clown at children’s parties?

He continued his search, crossing to the bedside table, thinking if Howie had an important key, he’d want it close to him when he slept. On top of the table were two books worn thin by repeated readings. The first was an old mimeographed manuscript titledFaggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions. The second sent a burst of ice water through Joe’s veins:Witchcraft and the Gay Countercultureby Arthur Evans. A quick perusal proved the book was more of an anthropology textbook rather than a black magic how-to. Joe wondered if Howie’s taste in literature had ignited the rumors. Perhaps an old hookup had glanced at his bedside reading and told everyone Howie was a witch.

Mustn’t get distracted. Focus! The key, the key—where is the key?

He slowly pulled open the little table drawer. It was filled with the usual gay bachelor accoutrement (condoms, lube, poppers) as well as a small stash of magazines:After Dark,The Advocate,Latin Inches, andGood Housekeeping Needlecraft. Still no key. He looked in enamel jewelry boxes on the bureau. Alas, they were only filled with rings and brooches, coins from around the world, old postage stamps, rubber bands, and a staggering number of nail clippers.

Feeling frustrated and guilty, Joe sat on the flying penis comforter and sighed. He was being ridiculous. He felt Howie’s good luck charm in his pocket and thought about how the boys had taken him in and found him a job. Lying back on the bed, Joe stared at the ceiling painted with the constellations of the night sky. As he searched for Orion’s belt, he suddenly felt an overwhelming sense that someone was watching him. But the door was shut tight. He gazed out the window and around the room twice before he saw it.

In the very middle of the wall facing the bed was a very large, ornately framed Hollywood glamor shot of a woman with giant black eyes. On closer inspection Joe saw that the subject wasn’t a woman at all, but a Hispanic-looking drag queen dressed in a blonde wig, with thick layers of makeup and giant fake eyelashes. She had strong Indigenous features, like a Mayan Mae West. The photo was signed,To Howard Fishbein, mi alma gemela. Your love forever, Eartha Delights and Her Ominous Bush. Release and trust the power! XXOO Max.The gaudy frame was its own handmade work of folk art, decorated with so much gold paint, jewels, and pearls.

Inspecting closer, he saw that under and between all the fake glass jewels were gilded souvenirs of the drag queen’s life: theater tickets, cocktail umbrellas, a large glass-ruby cocktail ring, a mascara brush, a cock ring, two horse-sized false eyelashes, plastic red lacquered fingernails, Central American worry dolls, and membership cards to the Paradise Garage, the Saint, and Flamingo East. At the very bottom of the frame was a small brass plaque with words etched in elegant calligraphy:On this Earth she danced with passion, Maximon Javier Ramon De La Laguna, 1934–

Then, just above the frame, was a small shelf with a lotus-topped metal vase. On a closer look, Joe realized it was most likely the urn that would hold Max’s ashes when he died. The frame, it appeared, was meant to honor Max in perpetuity. Had Max and Howie worked on it together? Had they already known, when they made it, that Max was going to die soon? What was it like to know you’re dying and to partake in the building of your own memorial?

Joe’s heart grew heavy as he thought about how much Howie must care for his friend to build such a work of art. He wondered if perhaps they were more than friends. Did Howie love Max as much as Joe had loved Elliot? Did he love him more? Joe gazed into the drag queen’s dark eyes and grew dizzy. Suddenly, he heard the sound of disco music. Had the stereo started on its own? Or was it coming from the neighbors? Sensing an odor emanating from the photograph, he stepped closer and sniffed. The smell of acetate, jasmine, and musk filled his nostrils. As he looked deeply into the drag queen’s eyes, her lips appeared to whisper,“We aren’t dead yet,Joe. We love you. You’re in danger, Joe. Dance with us, Joselito, dance with us.”

Joe’s body started to quake uncontrollably. What waswrongwith him? Was he going crazy? It took him several seconds to recognize his own weeping. He felt so foolish. He had never even met the dying drag queen. He needn’t be heartbroken over her too. Wasn’t mourning Elliot enough? He had to stop staring at the photo, but he couldn’t. It was as if the drag queen wouldn’t let him go, wouldn’t let him forget.

“Stop lying, Joe,”she whispered.“You must stop lying about Elliot! Danger, Joselito, danger!”

Joe gasped for air. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “Leave me alone! It’syourfault this disease even started! It’s your fault Elliot’s dead! Now, where is that goddamned key?” Rage filling his chest, Joe tore himself from the photo and returned to his hunt for the key. He scoured the top shelf of the closet, felt along the windowsill, and searched the pockets of Howie’s maroon bathrobe. Finally, as if being led by some odd intuition, his eyes fell on the bronze lotus flower at the top of Max’s empty urn. He leaped to his tiptoes, reached inside the lotus flower, and there it was. A key.

He glanced at his watch; it seemed impossible, but two hours had passed since he’d entered Howie’s room. He had to hurry. After putting the room back in order, he rushed up to the attic and stared at the little locked door. Was it the right key? Of course it was. The padlock opened on the first try. Joe’s body vibrated with both excitement and fear. What would be inside? Cages? A trapped door leading to a secret space where they imprisoned young bartenders from seasons past? Cast iron pots and yards of black velvet draping the walls? He pushed the small door open. The heat from the cramped, unventilated storage space whooshed out at him. He finally pinpointed the other smell—frankincense! It was a smell Joe equated with the Armenian Apostolic Church he’d attended as a child. Priests swinging large brass incense burners. Aunt Vartu lying in the coffin, lips and cheeks too rouged.

The lightbulb string hanging from the eaves tickled his neck. Heart pounding wildly, he held his breath and yanked. The small room lit up, and a flood of disappointment hit him. There were nodead bodies hanging from the rafters. Nor was there a giant cauldron or jars filled with baby’s hearts. Not even empty cans of gasoline. Instead, the interior of the crawl space was filled with what had been moved for his comfort—sealed boxes of craft supplies, racks of clothes, and coffee cans filled with decorative buttons, trims, and glass eyeballs.

The Graveyard Girls’ gossip had clearly been the hazing of the island’s new bartender, nothing more. Such a bullshit waste of time.

Just as he was about to pull the lightbulb string, he noticed a cardboard box opened and haphazardly shoved right next to the door as if it had been placed in a hurry. Every other box in the room was sealed and neatly stacked. He was overcome by the same madness he had felt while standing in front of the drag queen’s photo, that voiceless voice propelling him toward the box, the faint sound of disco music, the scent of the jasmine-musk perfume. He slowly moved the flap to look inside, as if it might contain the smallest dead body. By the shapes and sizes of the frames, Joe instantly recognized the photographs that had been removed from the walls of his attic room. He pulled one from the box and saw it was exactly like all the others he had seen already, vintage shots of the boys and their friends enjoying themselves at various events going back decades—nothing that seemed worthy of hiding.

Joe laughed at his own foolishness. Maybe he’d secretlywantedHowie, Max, and Lenny to be pyromaniacal dancing witches. He picked up another of the frames, a black and white photo that showed a much younger Howie, Max, and Lenny. Lenny with his full head of black hair cut in a severe crew cut; Max, an androgynous, Guatemalan hippie with his arm around Howie’s slim waist. He also spotted a glamorous, younger-looking Dory along with her friend Saint D’Norman in the photo. Both were dressed in white elephant bell bottoms and crop tops, with religious icons around their necks, similar to what Joe had seen on Howie. The entire group stood by a Provincetown Inn sign, holding American flags like it was the Fourth of July. Joe examined the other retro-looking men standing nearby. Most had mustaches and long hair; some were handsome, others not. His eyes wandered to the upper corner of the photo, and chills suddenly ricocheted across his flesh.Looming there in the background was a man who looked uncannily like the Gladiator Man.

No. It wasn’t that he looked like a younger version of Gladiator Man, but rather he looked almost exactly like the man Joe had seen both in the harbor and on the beach. But it couldn’t be him—the photo was from the late 1960s, and the man in the photo, like Gladiator Man today, appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties. Yet it was the same beard, the same build, the same square jaw, the same gray sweatshirt with the word “Titans” on it. Even the way the man folded his thick furry forearms looked exactly like Joe’s Gladiator Man.

Joe pulled the next frame from the box. This photo, in gilded Kodachrome, was labeledBicentennial Party at Big Bill Missellwick’s House, July 1976. Everyone was dressed in kitschy, patriotic, fetish outfits—sexy Ben Franklins, slutty Betsy Rosses. Searching all the faces, Joe couldn’t find him at first, but then he noticed a blurry form of a muscular man leaning against a tree in the background. He couldn’t make out the man’s face exactly, but he was the only person at the party not in a costume. He had the beard, the posture, the gray sweatshirt (though Joe could only make out the letters A and N). It could be him. But itcouldn’tbe him.

Joe thrust his fists into the box and pulled out another, then another and another. One, circa 1970, showed Bette Midler singing to a crowd at Christopher Street Liberation Day in Washington Square Park. Another was titled1979 Island House Party, Key West. And then he pulled out the Anne Boleyn decapitation hat photo. In each one Joe found a similar-looking muscle man who very well could be Gladiator Man, standing in the background, rounding a corner or riding a bike, always staring into the camera—staring directly at Joe.“Here I am,” the figure seemed to say. “I’ve been waiting for you. Come find me.” Joe closed his eyes, hoping for an end to what had to be a hallucination.

A loud banging on the downstairs screen door shot a bullet of panic through every nerve in his body. What would Howie and Lenny do if they caught him in there? He shoved the framed photographs back into the box and yanked the lightbulb cord. He had to lock up and get the key back into its hiding place. As he jammedhimself through the small door, he felt the most shocking pain, as if a very small assassin had jabbed a mini dagger into his leg. Looking down, he saw the bloody nail sticking out of the door frame. It had sliced a two-inch gash into his calf muscle. After fumbling with the padlock, he bolted down the ladder.

“Joe! Hey! Joe!” the gravelly deep voice yelled from the screen door.

Joe’s heart pounded. He limped across the living room, hoping the shadowy figure behind the door didn’t see him as he rushed back into Howie’s room. He quickly dropped the key into the lid of the lotus urn. The drag queen’s voice echoed in his head,“They’re going to find out, Joselito, they’re going to find out! Danger, Joe! You’re in danger!”

“Shh!” Joe hissed before hobbling to the front door and opening it. There, staring at him through the wire mesh, was Fergal the Ferryman.

“What do you want?” Joe snapped, far meaner than he’d intended.

“What’s wrong? You okay?” Fergal asked, his brow worried.

“No! I mean yes. I mean, come back later. Howard and Lenny aren’t here.”

“I know they aren’t,” Fergal said. “They asked me to tell you they’ll need your help getting some stuff up to the house—holy shit, dude, what the fuck happened to your leg?”

---