Page 90 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

“Just be still!” Lenny slapped Ronnie on his overly muscled trapezoids. “Coglione! You want to help your friend or not?”

“Yeah, of course.” Ronnie swallowed his emotion. “Joe means everything to me.”

“Then shut your friggin’ mouth and let us get you ready.”

“It’s as simple as this, darling.” Dory touched Ronnie’s hand, causing an ever so slight jolt of electricity between them. “You’re joining us is essential to the process of saving Joe.”

“SavingJoe? Are you telling me you think Joe is your ‘special person’ that needs saving?” Ronnie asked, though he already knew. He had envisioned Joe’s vulnerability all the way back when they first met in Philly. He, too, had instantly felt an inexplicable need to protect him.

“Yes,” Howie began, “and tonight is his apotheosis. He either makes it through … or he’s lost. Ever since his breakup with Fergal and the burning of the bar, Joe’s lost all hope. That is the state the Great Darkness needs to do its worst. I know this won’t make sense to you, but you need to trust us—trust that feeling you have in the pit of your stomach. Joe’s on a precipice and has lost the desire to live. It’s our responsibility to try and help him. We must!”

It was then that Ronnie first noticed the small tingling in his lower abdomen that pointed toward the truth in Howie’s words. Yet he still didn’t want to believe it. “How can you help Joe with all of this dressing-up crap?”

“For starters, sugar,” Saint D’Norman said, “we’re bringing out the big guns.” He measured a pair of silver satin shorts against Ronnie’s bubble butt. “Mm-hmm. Like a glove.”

“I’m so confused,” Ronnie groaned, putting a hand to his gurgling stomach.

“Just trust us!” Howie fumed. “Things don’t always have to make sense to work! But we’re not asking you to be different from the way you are. Just allow yourself to see the similarities and the connections. Weareone!”

Ronnie, still grimacing, touched a rhinestone on the white cowboy hat, and similar to Dory’s touch, he felt electricity shoot into his fingers. Images flashed across his brain—the day he’d met Joe; the embrace with Joe on the boardwalk the night they’d became friends again; Joe wandering in a haze through the Meat Rack, not caring if he lived or died. Joe snorting a toxic chemical just to free himself from his bottomless psychic pain. Joe wanting to disappear forever. Ronnie pulled his hand from the hat. “Okay. What exactly would I have to do?”

“First, you’d let us finish dressing you,” Howie said. “Then we’d head to the Promethean to do a little ceremony—”

“You know.” Lenny spun a panel of silver silk. “A little twirling, a little flagging.”

“Fuck no!” Ronnie shouted. “I will not flag. I’ll never get laid again!”

“Goddammit!” Dory slammed her bejeweled hand on a metal shelf, causing several urns of ashes to clank together. “You’re our only hope! Do you want Joe to live or not?”

Ronnie stared at the four old eccentrics with their aging faces, ridiculous outfits, and pleading eyes begging him to join their humiliating, flagging dance ceremony that allegedly would “save” his best friend. He would become a person he’d never wanted to be. And yet, beneath that sickening feeling, there was a deeper one he struggled to identify. Excitement? Fear? Recognition?Haven’t you already had this nightmare?And then …What if this gayest of gay ceremonies really could save Joe? What if you didn’t do it, and Joe was lost forever?

“Okay. Do me up—but I’m not going to like it.”

48.The Gladiator Man

“Be wary of the comedown—it is like a dark veil on our joy. Be wary of the high—it deludes us into loving the liar. Seek the Great Balance between.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #52

“You found me,” Joe said, his voice barely a whisper, his skin shivering at the very presence of the gorgeous god towering over him. His gaze slid across the Gladiator Man’s huge, glistening pectoral muscles, then down to his tight athletic shorts that strained against his massive crotch pouch and mountainous ass, then back up to those terrifying eyes.Are they black? Are they blue? Why does he want me this much? Why does he hate me this much?Even if the Gladiator Man was just a byproduct of Scotty Black’s burning powder, Joe didn’t want to waste this moment. He threw his arms around the giant man’s hairy tree trunk of a thigh. “Please, let’s just do it!”

“What the hell?” the Gladiator Man barked in his sonorous, otherworldly voice. “Get off me!” He shook Joe from his leg as if Joe were an amorous Jack Russell terrier. “What are you on?”

“Almost everything,” Joe mumbled. “It’s my first time.”

“Right,” the Gladiator Man scoffed. “We all say that.” He lifted Joe to his feet and inspected him. “Not bad, except the snot coming out your nose. Haven’t I seen you before?”

“Yeah,” Joe said, wiping his face on his own forearm. He wanted to ask if the Gladiator Man did, in fact, hate him or desire him. But instead, the words in his drug-filled head scrambled, and he simply shrugged and muttered, “So, you wanna fuck me?”

“You’re a real charmer.” The Gladiator Man grunted and offered his hand. “I’m Glen.”

“Glen?” Joe smiled at how silly and wrong it sounded. “Gladiator Glen?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. I’m Joe.”

“Is that so?” Gladiator Glen’s lips spread in a most chilling smile.

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