The Night Listener : A Novel

want their little AIDS babies to be pure and innocent. Transfusion cases and IV mothers, shit like that. It makes ‘em nervous when you get it the way I did. They gotta make sure you weren’t havin’ a good time. Put you in the right fuckin’
    room.”
    As medieval as this sounded, I could believe it. “What did your mom say?”
    “She said I was twelve, and I didn’t have to be anything, or tell
    ‘em anything. Except to give me my fuckin’ meds and fuck off.”
    “Good answer.”
    Pete laughed. “Except she didn’t say fuck.”
    “I figured.”
    “So they put me in the fag ward with six other guys. And I was next to this big queen named Chico who thought he was Mariah Carey or somethin’ and made bras and shit out of his pillowcases.”
    “I think I know him.”
    “No way!”
    “I’m joking, Pete.”
    “Jesus, man. Don’t do that to me.”
    “Sorry.”
    “I hated that dude. He stole my chocolate pudding.”
    “I see what you mean.”
    “He didn’t like you either.”
    “ Me? ”
    “On the radio. He hated your show. He always wanted me to turn it off. He thought you sounded like Colonel Kangaroo.”
    “Captain.”
    “What?”
    “It was Captain Kangaroo. He said that, huh? That I sounded like him?”
    “Yep.”
    “What an asshole.”
    Pete giggled. “I’m tellin’ ya, man. He was bad news. So why did he leave?”
    “Who?”
    “Jess.”
    I hesitated, then told him there were a number of reasons.
    “Name one.”
    I drew a breath wearily, then took the plunge. “He wanted rougher sex.”
    “S and M, you mean?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He wanted you to hurt him?”
    “No. Just make-believe. It’s not at all like…Look, Pete, I just don’t think…”
    “But you’re good at make-believe.”
    “Not that kind…all those props and poses. I don’t disapprove or anything; grownups can do what they want. I just can’t take it very seriously. It’s not what I’m after in the long run.”
    A silence followed, then Pete asked: “You cryin’ again?”
    “No.”
    “What else?”
    “With Jess, you mean?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Oh…it’s just me, I guess. The truth is, I’m not that versatile in the sack.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Let’s just leave it…”
    “Gabriel!”
    “I’m not into fucking, all right?”
    That stopped him cold for a moment. “What do you do, then?” I found myself turning defensive on the spot, since even this abused child seemed baffled by my sexual deficiencies. “Lots of things,” I replied. “Well, not lots, but…Pete, I’m not ready to…”
    “Dicksmoking, huh?”
    “Yeah. Absolutely.”
    “What else?”
    “Jerking off and touching. And lots of kissing. I love kissing.”
    “ Kissing? ”
    “Yeah. Sure.”
    “During sex ?”
    It made terrible sense that this would seem odd to Pete. He’d been nothing more than an object in all those pedophile games. A living sex toy.
    And no one kisses a toy.
    It was kissing I’d missed the most. His lips were so full and sculpted, and they could fine-tune every part of me until I was goofy with pleasure and gasping in his arms. Sometimes, to my amazement, I’d end up jerking off with my toes in his mouth, those faded-denim eyes gazing up at me with slavish devotion. Or he’d work my nipples like a ravenous baby, murmuring, “Sir, yessir, yessir,” until I came with a fury, feeling the rough hemp of his chest across my belly, that silken cock against my leg, or in my astonished hand. It was leisurely, custom-made lust, the kind that can happen after years of knowing someone. But my fulfillment was so important to Jess that I found it all too easy to mistake it for his own.
    In the beginning my excuse was safe sex. Jess cared deeply that he not infect me, so I took the easy way out. Long before we met I had accepted my disinterest in fucking, though I had always felt something less than a true fag for my failure to achieve either top-or bottomhood. Suddenly there was a reason to keep things oral and manual, a solid political reason to formalize my limited repertoire.
    And Jess played along. Whenever we discussed our sex life in interviews, we invariably sounded like poster boys for Responsible Behavior. The human mind, we would say, was the greatest sex organ of them all. People who required penetration at any cost were merely lacking in imagination. Visuals were the key, after all, and the act of withholding could be extremely erotic.
    And so on.
    It wasn’t that Jess didn’t mean it. He did; we