Page 46 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

Thursty rolled his eyes. “Oh puh-lease, Sandra Dee! You’re gonna end up begging me for something by the end of July. Might as well start now and not waste time!”

Joe shook his head. “Did you see a huge muscle guy with a beard? Sexy, slightly hairy chest? About five inches taller than you, but crazy handsome?”

Thursty gestured to the room. “We’re in an ocean ofcrazyhandsome men, Baby Falafel Crotch! Dig in!”

“No! And don’t call me that! I’m talking bigger, better than them! He’s perfect. He looks like a gladiator! He likes me!”

Thursty yawned and gestured over by the door. “All gladiators have gone to the Colosseum.”

“What’s that?” Joe shouted.

The two Graveyard Girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

“The Meat Rack!” the short Graveyard Girl shouted into Joe’s ear. “Gladiators are in the Meat Rack tonight! Don’t forget your armor!”

The Graveyard Girls returned to dancing. Joe’s chest tightened with excitement. A drunken smile burst onto his face. He wasn’t supposed to go into the Meat Rack, but he also didn’t want to miss his chance. He wiped the gunk from the edges of his very dry mouth. The last thing he wanted was his first kiss with the Gladiator Man to taste like dirty socks. But he had no time to go to the bar for another drink.

“Hey, I need to wet my mouth!” he shouted to Thursty, who was now bobbing up and down to Madonna’s “Holiday.” Not wanting to waste any more time, Joe grabbed the Knockout from Thursty’s hand, drinking half in one long swig.

“Hey!” Thursty yelled, grabbing his drink back. “You know, you are a very rude little boy!”

“Thanks!” Joe shouted as he began pushing his way through the bodies until he was finally outside and the cool air burst against his body. He felt substantially drunker than he had only moments before. Looking down Fire Island Boulevard both ways, he could only see blackness in the distance. He wanted to cry out in frustration, but at the same time his body began to tingle with an insatiable sexual hunger, as if some invisible energy was tickling its fingers across his skin, tweaking his nipples, then reaching down his pants and diddling his balls. He rubbed his hands across his own chest, trying to satisfy his urge to be touched, but it was no use. There was only one man who could satisfy the urge. There was only one man who could take all the pain away.

“Joe!” a familiar voice called from behind him. It was Howie, dressed in his usual maroon bathrobe and baseball cap. “I’ve been looking for you! How was it inside?”

“Is incruminable,” Joe slurred, staring at Howie’s blurry face. “But I … I canna talk … I have ta meet someone.”

“Joe,” Howie begged with tinge of panic in his voice, “you look a little funny. Have you been imbibing?”

“I had jus’ a few sips. I’m okay. I feel very sessy, though. It’s weird.”

“Well, how about you and I go back inside? I haven’t danced in over a year—we can take a spin around the floor! Michael is about to play his Grace Jones set.”

As Howie blabbered on about a long-ago night at some Manhattan dance club, Joe looked westward and spied Gladiator Man’s white pants heading into the darkness. “Is him!” he cried.

“Him?” Howie asked. “Who?”

“I have ta go! Issa ’mergency! See ya later!”

“Emergency?” Howard shouted after Joe. “What are you talking—”

Oblivious to Howie’s shouts, Joe clumsily ran down the boardwalk, the agonizing hunger in his belly spurring him onward and his full-on erection pointing toward the Meat Rack.

27.The Longest Journey

“Love is not the cause of happiness—it’s a symptom of it.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #29

At a casual pace it would take a sober-ish man approximately ten minutes to walk from the Promethean to the Meat Rack. Joe, drunker than he’d ever been and drawn by the most intense erotic desire he’d ever had, stumbled and swerved down the dark boardwalk for at least twenty-five minutes. In his mind he had been running, but he just couldn’t catch up to the mountainous muscle butt in the tight white pants. It was as if the boardwalk had turned into a conveyer belt going in the opposite direction. Sometimes he’d lose sight of the pants when they walked into the darkest shadows. Joe’s heart would sink, but then seconds (minutes? hours?) later the pants would reappear like magic. Twice, he dozed off while standing only to be awakened by his trumpeting erection beckoning him to follow.What the hell was in those Knockouts?

After five more minutes of stumbling after the white pants, he saw them stop. The Gladiator Man had reached the end of the boardwalk and the beginning of the Meat Rack. It was the perfect moment for Joe to catch up. But even as he tried to run, his lasagna noodle legs kept tripping while his erection grew more turgid. Hereadjusted himself so his penis pointed straight up in his pants, thinking it made him look less trashy. The next thing he knew, he was standing just ten feet away from Gladiator Man, a monument of masculine perfection, with intense dark eyes, a long Roman nose, and a small mole on his cheek, just above the beard line, like a punctuation mark on his sexiest of smiles—a smile clearly meant for Joe. Joe attempted to say something, but the words got caught somewhere between his uvula and Adam’s apple.

“I … um … I … um …” Frustrated by his inability to form words, he gestured to his heart and then grabbed his crotch in a sloppy dumbshow of lust.

The Gladiator Man grinned and tossed his massive head toward the Meat Rack. “Follow me,” he said in a low rumbling voice that literally caused Joe’s testicles to vibrate. He stumbled closer, his hunger and fear inextricable.

“I wanna …” Joe said, finally able to speak in words that felt as if they were being pulled from him. “I … so lonely. So empty. I need you.” The Gladiator Man moved closer. Joe felt his dragon hot breath on his cheeks. Were the man’s eyes glowing? His body odor was a mix of Aramis cologne and … horse sweat? Joe’s cock punched at the teeth of his zipper. “Kiss me!” he begged. “Please kiss me before I … oh, fuck.” His guts began to heave. He bent over and Lenny’s Bolognese came gushing outàla Linda Blair inThe Exorcist—once, twice, three times. When the urge to expel subsided, he fell to his knees, wiped his mouth on his wrist, and gazed up at the Gladiator Man’s face, which had grown as tall as the treetops. “Do you still want me?” Joe asked feebly before his eyes grew so heavy and everything went black.

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