Page 61 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

Joe leaned in and kissed Elena lightly on her forehead, her nose, her lips. “Remember that,” he whispered.

32.The Prodigal Stud

“And when the Great Balance is achieved, all our lost lovers and friends will return to us, joy will abound, and the dancing will last for days.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #219

It was four forty-fiveAMSunday morning when Joe locked the door to the bar. It had been a slower night than usual, and tips were down significantly—most likely due to several prominent house parties on top of the usual competition. But he also worried his flirtatious bartender personality had been impaired by all the concerns piling one on top of another inside his head, especially Elena’s recent revelation. He already felt himself wanting to take control of Elena’s health, the same way he had tried to control Elliot’s, berating him to get more sleep and not drink alcohol or stand too close to someone with a cold.

“You’re suffocating me,” Elliot had told Joe. “Every time you nag me about my health, it reminds me I have the disease. I can feel you staring at me in that sad, scared way you do. Stop it. I’m not dead yet.”

Joe winced at the memory and wanted to avoid the same mistakes with Elena. It would be a struggle not to hover over her, not to worry, not to try and use his constant surveillance to keep her alive. How did Howie and Lenny do it? The vast majority of their friendsstill living either had AIDS or were HIV positive. They had lost eighty-two of their closest friends to the disease so far.How do they breathe without crying?

As he headed down the stairs from the bar, he noticed a shadowy figure stumbling around the corner of Picketty Ruff. Joe clenched his fists and stayed on high alert on the short walk home. When he opened the gate latch, he heard a huge crash behind him. The man had fallen off the walk and into the neighbor’s trash cans. Joe ran over and called into the pile of disrupted garbage, “You okay?” Then he recognized the long blond hair, the gym shorts, the bloated muscles covered in old bits of lettuce. “Ronnie? What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Ronnie stammered, staring up from his bed of trash, struggling with the simple maneuver of removing his left leg from the garbage can. “Lost my footing. They should really fix that boardwalk. Someone is gonna sue. I should sue. I mean if I was hurt I would, but I’m not.” He attempted to kick off the trash can but only got his right foot stuck in a different one.

Joe considered walking away and leaving his inebriated ex-friend to his mess. But after a few more seconds of watching him pathetically wrestle with the cans, Joe jumped down and pulled Ronnie’s legs from the mucky containers. “Jesus, Ronnie,” he said, retching as he got them both back onto the walk, “where have you been? You smell worse than a bathhouse toilet.”

“There’s that judgmental Joe,” Ronnie scoffed. “If you must know, Thursty gave me the weekend off, so I’ve been partying a little, that’s all.” He looked at his crotch. “Fuck, I think I tore my best sexy shorts!”

“Why were you sneaking around my house?” Joe asked.

“I wasn’t!”

“Right.” Joe shook his head. Ronnie’s eyes were so alert he looked in a state of shock. An almost inhuman creaking noise came from his grinding teeth—the final telltale sign that Ronnie was most likely coked-out. “So why aren’t you asleep in Trey’s tennis court–sized bedroom?”

“I just needed some space this weekend.” Ronnie crossed his arms—a feeble attempt at bravado. “But things are great—fuckingspectacular! Just like I visualized. I’ve made so many great connections—rich guys, famous guys. One of Trey’s friends got sucked off by Liberace in Vegas once. Yep, I’m living large … I’m really living—” Ronnie suddenly gasped like someone had punched him in the stomach. His head toppled into his hands, sobbing.

It was one of the saddest things Joe had ever seen. Without thinking, he pulled the smelly, sweaty man into his arms. “Ronnie,” he whispered, “it’s gonna be okay. Now tell me what’s going on.”

Ronnie lifted his head from Joe’s shoulder and went to wipe his face on the sleeve of his nonexistent shirt. “Fuck! What happened to my shirt?”

“I dunno,” Joe said. “Where were you last?”

“Who the hell knows. It got kind of wild last night, I guess. Hey, it’s Friday, right?”

“Nope. Sunday morning. You’re telling me you’ve been doing coke sinceThursday?”

“Who said I’ve been doing coke?” Again, Ronnie’s head fell into his hands, shoulders shaking this time. “I miss you, Joey,” he said between trilling gasps for air. “I’m really s-s-sorry about what ha-ha-happened.”

“Ronnie, all right. C’mere.” He pulled Ronnie’s weeping head to his shoulder. “Just be careful not to get snot onto my shirt … oops. Too late.”

After about thirty more seconds of sobbing, Ronnie pulled himself somewhat together. The two men sat on the edge of the walk, overlooking the spilled rubbish.

“You were right, Joey. Trey Winkle was a snake. Hedidhave a boyfriend named Bill—some older dude from Virginia who owns a bank or hedge fund or something. Trey barely has any money of his own. That’s why he dates rich guys.”

“You mean like you do?” Joe was surprised by his own candor.

“I hear ya, and I know you’re still mad at me, but you have to understand, I really thought I could fall in love with him. I mean if he was the caring person I thought he was … which it turns out he wasn’t. He told me, ‘You know, Ronnie, it’s getting close to the last part of the summer, and I think I wanna be solo for the Morning Party and Labor Day, so it’s time we said goodbye.’ ” Ronnie gulpedair to stabilize himself again. “And then he handed me five hundred bucks and this shit.” From his shorts pocket he pulled a sandwich bag filled with a half dozen brown glass vials inside and a tiny cellophane envelope with one blue pill. Most of the vials were empty, but three were full. “That’s it. Two eight balls worth of coke, eight hits of X, and five hundred lousy bucks. You have no idea what things he made me do—and not just with him alone. It was fun when I thought he loved me. Now it disgusts me.Hedisgusts me.Idisgust me.”

Ronnie cried for another few rounds. Joe wanted to feel open enough to be of more help, but something was blocking him. “Ronnie, I’m sorry about what you’re going through, and I want to figure us out, but what you said and did to me at Trey’s party was really fucked up.”

“I know!” Ronnie grimaced at the memory. “And I’m really, really sorry. You gotta believe me. When Trey asked me to bring you along for Ace, I told myself he just wanted to spruce up his party with another hot young guy. But I also guessed he wanted you to sleep with Ace to get him in a good mood. I just was so crazed with that shit and with trying to make Trey and me work. I rationalized it by telling myself if I ended up rich, then I could help you out too. But it was mostly me being selfish.”

“What about what you yelled at me?” Joe’s voice cracked with bitterness.

“I don’t really remember what I said, but whatever it was—”

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