What magazine did you tear this out of? he asks, smirking.

Funny, I tell him. That’s Gabriel. Then I wait, oddly wanting my brother’s approval or at least an acknowledgment we’re on the same page for once.

Connor stares as the photo and says, He looks…

Then he stops and bends the photo in the light before saying, Hot. And familiar. He looks familiar.

I promise you don’t know him, I say, grabbing the picture and putting it back into my bag. But I’m pretty sure I’m paler than my brother now. I refuse to believe in any reality where Connor would have crossed paths with Gabriel.

As I’m cleaning up, I come across a small printed booklet. HOW TO HAVE SEX IN AN EPIDEMIC: ONE APPROACH, the cover reads.

The table of contents makes me squirm with equal measures of curiosity and fear.

But my parents are leaving town.

And Gabriel is coming over. So curiosity wins out.

The opening pages explain that since no one knows exactly how someone gets AIDS, no one can know for sure how to avoid it. It says while some people will give up sex altogether—I guess James isn’t alone with his fear—the pamphlet was written assuming most gay men reading it would want to find a way to have sex without getting sick.

I flip back and forth from the table of contents to the relevant pages: Kissing. Sucking. Touching.

All the things we might do.

My face on fire, I skim the booklet, wondering how much I can learn in the five minutes before my brother wonders where I am. What I’m doing. What I’m imagining.

It discusses how to talk to a potential partner. Estimating risk.

Knowing your partner isn’t the issue, it stresses. Neither is the number of partners you have. The issue is the disease.

Maybe James is the smart one. Maybe fear is the only thing that makes sense. But thinking about Gabriel reminds me that I’m not James. He might not want to have sex, but it’s occupying my mind more and more, and I’m desperate to know what this thing is that people have killed for, died for, loved for.

What sticks in my head is: talking, washing, condoms, protect yourself, stay alive.

Before I leave, I take a good long look at Connor curled up on the couch.

Is he really hungover? Not like that’s out of character.

Is it too late for him to take what that pamphlet had to say seriously? Does Connor ever take anything seriously?

Have you thought about moving home? I ask him again, instead. At least there, I could keep an eye on him.

Have you thought about pushing me in front of the F train? he asks, leaning his head back into the pillows. It would be less painful.

On the way home, I pass a pay phone and then turn back and pull a quarter out of my pocket.

I know you can’t simply call some random number and get advice. It’s like following horoscopes in the newspaper. Everyone in the world born in the same month doesn’t have the same life. And everyone who calls Dial-a-Daze doesn’t either.