Page 77 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

“It would take months,” Vince said, calming himself. “And we might as well face facts, even if the fire didn’t happen, we weren’t likely to make the margins we needed to keep Scotty from exercising his right to kick us out. It’s his property, and even if that oldbucket of snot does use the insurance money to rebuild, there’s no way he’ll allow Asylum Harbor back in business. This is exactly what he wanted.”

Joe kept recalling the rumors about the Disco Witches and the club fire in Rehoboth, but seeing Howie and Lenny’s distraught faces now, he at least was certain they’d had nothing to do withthisfire. “I just know Scotty Black did this,” Joe said. “Think about it—the fire alarm gets rung by an unknown person at the exact right time, so it only destroys the interior of our bar but leaves the rest of Scotty’s nearby properties unharmed. Isn’t that suspicious to you? Why isn’thebeing investigated?”

“It wasn’t Scotty,” Dory said with that strange sense of mystery in her voice that reminded Joe of how Howie sounded sometimes. “At least not directly. There’s some other darkness at play.” Dory’s eyes engaged again with the space around her. “It’s my fault anyway. I’ve been too distracted. I was foolish to think …” She swallowed hard, stopping herself from crying. In his three months on the island, Joe had never seen Dory look so frail and old. He tended to forget she was eighty, but that morning she looked as if she were a hundred. She had told Joe the revived bar had been her dream of inserting some life back into the Pines after eight years of AIDS. Now it was all gone.

“Come now, Dory, darlin’, let’s go,” Vince said, gently offering his arm to Dory. “I’ll get some fellas to do the cleanup. That’ll be my last job as manager I suppose. Joe, you come on too. You’ve had a hard week of it, lad.”

“Just one more minute, and I’ll be right there,” Joe said.

As Dory and Vince stepped out of the charred doorway, Joe looked once more at the cindered refuse. He thought about how so much of what he had allowed himself to love in the world got destroyed one way or another—Elliot, Fergal, the bar. He pulled Howie’s good luck charm from his pocket and tossed it into the ashes. Then he reached for the merman clock, snapped off the little partially burned head, and clenched it in his fist. This would be his reminder of a summer that would not stop breaking his already broken heart.

39.What’s the Buzz?

“When the world is falling apart, Disco Witches dance.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #6

The buzz about the 1989 Gay Men’s Health Crisis Morning Party was as loud as a cornfield of gay locusts. Howie explained to Joe that the event—the third high holy day of that summer—had grown so popular the organizers decided to expand that year’s event to a huge swath of the public beach at Ozone and Ocean. The dance floor would need to be built over the backyard swimming pools of two massive beach houses. Tickets would only be available via event “sponsors”—well-connected individuals who were certain to invite only the most beautiful, famous, infamous, and/or wealthy. But even quadrupling the size of the party still left many wannabe revelers bartering their virtue or vintage leather jackets to attend. Dory, as always, used her octogenarian strong-arming to convince as many vendors as possible to donate their services. This ensured the bulk of proceeds would go to GMHC.

“The party is happening the same day as the blood moon,” a troubled-looking Howie told Joe. “These things can cause the cosmic environment to become frighteningly hospitable to otherworldly mischief.”

Joe nodded, unsure of how to react to another of Howie’s New Age panics. “Oh. Wow. Okay.”

Howie, apparently unsatisfied with Joe’s lackluster concern, pressed further. “This can be quite serious, Joe. It’s also the second lunar eclipse of the year, which makes it doubly powerful.”

“Why?” Joe asked.

“Because it’s double.”

“Gotcha.”

“Blood moons can mean danger,” Howie explained. “Although cosmic super events can always go either way. Do us a favor and keep us posted about what you’re up to this weekend. I don’t mean to act all mama bear, but it’s really for the best.”

“Sure, sure, Howie. No problem.”

Joe had been taking most of Howie’s woo-woo, foreboding crap with an even greater grain of salt lately. Other than his alleged aura readings, failed attempts at love potions, and incessant pleas to the Great Goddess Mother, there was absolutely nothing that demonstrated any real magical power. Could the good luck charm Howie had given Joe have been more of abad luck charm? The bar had burned down; he’d lost his bartending job; and worst of all, he’d broken the heart of Fergal—and obliterated what was left of his own heart in the process. At least the Picketty Ruff boys had come through with some catering gigs that would pay his bills through Labor Day. It appeared their only real magic power was as a summer temp agency.

“We’ll be at the party the whole day tomorrow if you need us,” Howie said. “We’re on wristband check between eleven and one, and then the last two hours we’ll be working security, making sure no one dies of an overdose or is too flagrant with their drug use. Between one and four we’ll be dancing near the first big speaker on the ocean side of the dance floor. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Joe said.

After doing his dishes and showering, Joe headed over to the beach to volunteer for the party setup. The party area had been cordonedoff with orange plastic fencing. Dozens of shirtless young men with power tools buzzed around, flirting. Joe and Ronnie, having been asked to help set up the big tent over the stage, had also doffed their shirts and were holding up two tent poles while two other men set the canvas tarp atop the frame.

Just like the ACT UP benefit (and every big party), rumors were circulating that the surprise performer that year “just had to be” either Madonna or Whitney. The other big topic of conversation was that Frankie Fabulous, that poster boy of Fire Island fun, would not be able to attend the Morning Party, because, after drinking too many Absolut and cranberries, he had jumped off the Taj Ma Homo’s ten-foot-high deck and landed headfirst in the sand, breaking his neck. The severity of which no one knew, but all were certain Frankie Fabulous’s shinning summer of ’89 had ended with a terrible thud.

“That’s some serious bad news for the party,” Ronnie said. “A Morning Party without Frankie Fabulous is like a gay porn scene without penises.”

“Poor Frankie,” Joe said, flinching at the thought of the accident.

“At least the summer’s almost over.” Ronnie shrugged. “The good news is, he’ll have enough time to get his physique back by next year’s Pride, or maybe even for the Winter Party in Miami. I mean, if he can walk and all.”

“For real, Ronnie? You know you—”

Joe was just about to tell Ronnie how profoundly shallow his worldview was, when Ronnie kicked him in the calf muscle and whispered, “Hey, Joey, heads up. That muscle-ginger over there is giving you the eye.” He tossed his head to a group of volunteers building the dance floor. “Do the ‘oops-you-caught-me’ flirt I taught you.”

“I’m not in the mood,” Joe said.

“Come on, buddy boy! It’ll be good practice!”

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