South Florida Was a Bad Place to Build a Safe House

The cops always assumed the boys were into drugs because they were. I question how you can even begin to think that busting some 14-year-old from Iowa for prostitution and weed was going to help this kid in any way to deal with his HIV.

One caveat. If the kid goes to jail, then the county has to pick up the antiretroviral costs which is why the county only does drug testing and not HIV testing because paying for the kid’s treatment would break the county bank.

It was a culture war.

With guns.

You couldn’t build (or rent some dump) a safe house in South Florida mainly because there was nowhere that was safe.

You could pick up tricks on South Beach. Just carry the skateboard. Five bucks for a blowjob in the T-room or you could take the little fuck home and fuck him all day and pay him off with crystal. You could always tell the boys on crystal. They glowed like glowworms in the night. Pimps rounded up far more boys into their dragnets than cops could. You worked harder for the money with pimps, but no one would beat you up. Unless you made a move to leave the pimp, and then the pimp would beat you up.

For free.

We got out of South Florida just before the pimps declared war on us. You have to know when it’s time to get out of Dodge.

It was HIV that was closing in. It didn’t matter if you had cute shoes. HIV was going to kill you, and sleeping on the beach at night could be downright freezing ass cold.