I didn’t get what the doctor was driving at. He didn’t get me either. So we stayed there quiet for a while, me with my legs up and open and my ass all swollen and sore trying to tighten itself back and at least control itself, and the doctor grinning down at me asking if I really wanted it that way and if that wasn’t the real reason why I had held Metro’s face to my groin while the others made him take it up the ass. Shit no, I thought. But he kept asking me that and grinning, so by now I knew what he wanted. I said yes. Yes, I wanted it that way. He stopped smiling. He wrote stuff on his notepad. “That’s fine,” he said. “It’s good to get it off your chest.” But I didn’t have nothing on my chest. I just wanted him to shut up about Pops and about me being one of those guys who needed his touch or the touch of any man. Then he left me alone. I thought about the pain between my legs and the smelly guys who put it there and dug so deep that I lost all control of blood and shit and even my feelings inside. Damn, I said aloud. Damn. Damn. Damn. And there I was still lying in it. It took time, but I got well. Got a light sentence, too. The attack was proof enough for the judge, lawyer, and jury that I was really different. But this doctor was trying to make me more different than I was. Which is why I had my own room at the boys’ farm upstate. Something must have been in the psych report about how I wanted it to happen the way it did, and how I must have wanted Metro, too, all the while before they killed him or found me lying in the chalk. I had a room to myself. They was afraid I’d harm the others. Shit. I liked going solo. I was good. I followed the rules. And I got to go home once a month.

Which is how I learned about the quick bucks on 53rd Street between Lex and Third. How much money you could make just following along. I could use the money. It took all my allowance to pay for the bus trip down and to try to surprise Moms and Patty with a little something. My first time out, I sat on the bus next to some guy who kept rubbing my legs the whole trip to the city. He was the one who told me about the bars and corners on 53rd and how much money he made. What the hell, I thought. Let some guy blow me for twenty dollars, why not? That wouldn’t mean nothing since he was doing the blowing, not me. He was asking me for it, with a crisp new bill folded in his hand. All I had to do was sit in the car like I was waiting for a red light or something. It was the simplest thing. But I was too scared to do anything that first weekend out. I was sure I’d get caught. When you already had a record, even the first one, you had to be more careful.