TWO TO SIX

A convicted child molester embarks on a journey into the criminal justice system–and his soul–in this troubling, absorbing memoir.

The author, then a Manhattan attorney, was arrested in 2003 for having sex with a 14-year-old male prostitute. A police search then found his pornographic photographs, some of other juveniles. His arrest and prosecution brings his affluent life of heedless hedonism crashing down. He spends a frightening night in jail, wonders how he can tell his mother and siblings the shameful news, and faces the prospect of disbarment, unemployment and permanent enrollment on the sex-offender registry if convicted. His lawyer assures Cornelio that a plea bargain can at least keep him out of jail, but an intransigent prosecutor and a look at the photos shake the attorney’s confidence. Cornelio doesn’t even have personal tales of childhood molestation to persuade the judge to have mercy. As the wheels of justice grind on, Cornelio undertakes a personal inquiry into his legal and moral culpability. (Coy about whether he had sex with his accuser, he does admit to having relations with a 16-year-old.) The author is open about his decades spent cruising for youthful–mostly black or Hispanic–hustlers, and not very apologetic about them. He celebrates the male beauties he’s drawn to and castigates society’s hypocrisy in marketing teen sexuality in advertising and entertainment while prosecuting those who act on these signals. Cornelio is a skillful, at times beguiling writer–he makes readers feel his anguish and fear and the spiritual crisis they provoke. Still, he can be self-serving and vain. He imagines he may have conferred a “blessing” on his partners with his rapturous regard, if not the bondage he subjected them to, and never really grapples with the harm they may have suffered. Nonetheless, his odyssey illuminates society’s muddled strictures about sex–and the predicament of those who run afoul of them.

A revealing confessional that makes this most reviled of crimes a bit more understandable.