The Night Listener : A Novel

both did. Our sex life was extraordinary, and all the more so because Jess usually chose the most highly charged moment to tell me he loved me. But there must have been times when he longed for the unedited roughhousing of his early youth, the very acts of raw abandon that had given him the virus in the first place. I could have provided that certainly, one way or another, with little danger to either of us, but I chose to wallow in my own contentment.
    When the transformation came it was almost a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing. Jess had been taking testosterone for energy, and the hormones had begun to forge his softly sensual body into an exoskeleton of muscle. Then he shaved off all his thinning baby-chick hair and grew a beard. And got a tattoo. And began to assemble a formidable leather wardrobe. And while such makeovers are common around here, this one filled me with dread, because I knew that Jess wasn’t reinventing himself for me; in fact, my opinion in the matter was never solicited. When I stumbled across a thin gold ring at the base of his scrotum and wondered out loud why he hadn’t mentioned it, he shrugged it off as unworthy of comment, as if he’d merely had his sideburns trimmed. I, in turn, felt old and disconnected. And slightly ashamed for having implied, however unintentionally, that his body was under my jurisdiction.
    Meanwhile Jess had assembled a whole new circle of friends. Guys he had met at ACT-UP and his HIV support group. Guys with daunting four-gauge earrings like his, who joined him for coffee at the Pasqua in the Castro to discuss Jung and Joseph Campbell. They were nice guys, Jess told me, but I rarely met them, since Jess never brought them to the house. Until now our friends had been largely mutual; we had cultivated them together as couples often do. This new arrangement unsettled me, but I struggled against my doubts.
    Jess, after all, had been my satellite for ten years without complaint.
    I knew that he needed a crowd in which he could be judged on his own, beyond the distracting glare of my celebrity. And he certainly needed the company of others who had defied a death sentence. I could never give him that, I knew, no matter how much I loved him.
    Then one day, when we were driving home from lunch in Berkeley, Jess turned to me with a sickly little smile I had never seen him use. “What would you say,” he asked, “if we started having sex with other people?” My reaction alarmed even me: a flood of tears that wouldn’t stop. Jess’s expression, I saw to my horror, became one of pained compassion. How difficult this moment must have been for him, I thought, and how terribly important. And I knew with a certainty there was no taking it back; the desire once voiced was as good as the deed. Our fortress had been stormed, right there on that gray stretch of freeway, and the damage was irreversible.
    Worst of all, I didn’t know myself anymore. Who was this fool weeping over sex? I had been a regular tart until I met Jess. A night of dick worship at the glory holes had meant less to me than a handshake. Only straight people, I believed, confused lasting love with a good time. Gay folks—or most of the men, at least—knew better, and were therefore capable of owning the whole package: adventure and commitment. Jess and I had even flirted with the idea of three-ways early in our relationship, snickering drunkenly over prospective candidates at a restaurant in Key West one balmy night.
    We had certainly never committed to monogamy in any formal way; it was just something we fell into with deceptive ease. All we’d ever promised, really, was honesty. So when an overly earnest reporter used the M-word to describe our relationship in the “Couples” section of People , Jess flew into a righteous rage: “Where the fuck does she get off?”
    “But we are monogamous,” I said, laughing.
    “She doesn’t know that. We never told her. And she has no fucking right to presume .”
    “You’re right,” I said. “It’s vicious libel. Call the lawyers.” It was funny at the time: two homos in a huff over the disgrace of monogamy. But I remember feeling uncomfortable, too. For, beyond all that sex-positive posturing, Jess seemed unduly concerned that someone might hold him to a contract he had never agreed to sign.
    Which was what I was doing, I guess.
    Oh, I tried like hell not to. Before that ghastly car ride was over I had promised to give the matter serious thought. I needed