SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Michael Jackson's defense team got off to a rocky start Thursday with the shaky testimony of two men who claimed they were never sexually molested as children, despite spending dozens of nights alone with the singer in his bed.

"Did Mr. Jackson ever molest you at any time?" defense attorney Thomas Mesereau asked Wade Robson, a 22-year-old choreographer for pop stars such as Britney Spears and *NSYNC.

"Absolutely not," Robson said.

"Did Mr. Jackson ever touch you in a sexual way?"

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"Never, no," Robson replied.

Robson brought his fiancée to court Thursday, holding her close as he entered the courtroom.

But the soft-spoken witness's voice cracked at times and he appeared to grow more uncomfortable during prosecutor Ronald Zonen's rapid-fire cross-examination.

Wade Robson, now 22, testified that he slept in Michael Jackson's bed many times as a child.

"The first time you slept with Michael Jackson, you were seven years old, is that correct?' Zonen asked during cross-examination.

"I slept in the same bed," Robson said defensively, confirming that he shared Jackson's bed 15 to 20 times from the ages of 7 to 13, and he likened the arrangement to sleeping in the bedroom of a best friend.

"Had you ever crawled into the bed of a 30-year-old man prior to that?" Zonen asked.

"My father's," Robson replied after some thought.

And while a former Neverland maid testified that she saw Jackson and Robson taking a shower together in the early 1990s, with their underpants lying side by side on the bathroom floor, Robson denied ever having showered with the King of Pop.

He also said that Jackson never kissed him on the lips or ran his hands through his hair, only hugs and kisses on the cheek.

"Did you cuddle in bed?" Zonen asked.

"No."

"Did you lie next to one another?"

"Yes."

"Did you touch?"

"No."

"Would you have considered it inappropriate to cuddle in bed?"

"No."

Questioning reached a fever pitch as the attorneys took turns engaging Robson in a pornography showdown, with Zonen trying to shock the witness by showing him page after page of sexually explicit materials found during a search of Neverland, and Mesereau trying to lessen the suggestion of pedophilia by focusing on the heterosexual nature of most of the images.

"This is a young boy with his legs open and he's naked," Robson replied when asked by Zonen to describe a photo in a picture book, "Boys Will Be Boys."

"Just take a second to strum through the balance of the book," Zonen ordered the witness, before asking him hypothetically, "Would you be concerned about your 12-year-old child sleeping in bed with a person who possesses a book like that?"

"No," Robson said. "To me, it's not a pornographic book, it's just a book."

Zonen walked over to the clerk's desk and retrieved another book, seemingly upping the ante with the unfazed witness.

As Robson thumbed through "A Sexual Study of Man, Illustrated with Photographs and Art Prints" — another tome seized from Jackson's collection — he confirmed that it contained images of men engaged in oral sex and sodomy.

"Would you be concerned about a man who possesses that book crawling into bed with a 10-year-old boy?" Zonen asked.

"Yes, I guess so," Robson replied.

Robson was forced to look at more magazines, and to read the titles "Double-Dicking Caroline," and "Stiff Dick for Lynn" out loud.

"I can't believe I have a world of people watching me do this," he said at one point, withering on the stand as he turned the pages.

But Robson said he never saw any pornographic magazines at Jackson's home, and despite the graphic nature of the magazines he reviewed, he held firm to his position that he would allow his own children to sleep with Michael Jackson.

Jackson is on trial for allegedly sexually molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor, plying the boy with alcohol to weaken his defenses, and conspiring to falsely imprison the child and his family at Neverland in February and March of 2003.

Robson is one of five boys, including actor Macaulay Culkin, who prosecutors claim were the victims of similar inappropriate sexual advances by Jackson more than a decade ago.

Only one of those boys testified for the prosecution that he had been molested during "tickling games" with Jackson. The mother of another alleged victim, Jordie Chandler, testified that Jackson spent up to 30 nights at her home, sleeping in her child's bed.

Chandler and the boy who claimed to be inappropriately tickled were paid millions of dollars by Jackson in exchange for their silence.

Jackson was never charged in the prior cases, although the judge ruled that prosecutors could introduce testimony that might indicate a criminal pattern.

Culkin is expected to testify for the defense early next week that he was never groped, despite the claims of state witnesses who say they saw Jackson with his hands on the then-child actor's private parts.

Pillow fights at Neverland

The fifth alleged victim of past bad acts, Brett Barnes, was the defense's second witness Thursday.

Barnes, unlike Robson, was spared perusing through porn magazines in front of the jury.

The 23-year-old roulette dealer from Melbourne, Australia, testified that he met Jackson when he was only 5 years old.

His mother, he said, got a letter through to the singer during his Australian leg of the "Bad" tour. By the age of 9, Barnes and his family were making frequent visits to see Jackson at Neverland.

Barnes, like Robson and like Jackson's current accuser, said he always slept in Jackson's bedroom — sometimes alone, sometimes with other boys.

He said they would stay up until all hours watching movies, playing video games and having pillow fights. Everyone kept their pajamas on, according to the witness.

Former Neverland employees have testified that Jackson gave Barnes inappropriate kisses on his face and pats on his rear end.

"Has Mr. Jackson ever molested you?" Mesereau asked him.

"Absolutely not, and I can tell you right now, if he had, I wouldn't be here right now," Barnes said in a thick Australian accent. "It's not the type of thing I stand for."

Like Robson, Barnes said he never discussed with his family about whether it was appropriate to sleep in bed with a grown man.

But he had trouble recalling basic details during cross-examination, such as whether his mother was present during trips he took with Jackson or how many times he shared the singer's bed.

He did recall, however, that the last time he slept at Neverland and spent the night in Jackson's bedroom was at the age of 19.