Young Boys, Sex Work, and Getting Fucked in the Ass

I don’t think I ever saw it as sex when it was happening. I don’t think I see it as sex now, either.

Stop asking me to be normal. Stop asking me to be like you. There has been too much water under that washed-out bridge.

I saw it as humiliation. I still do.

I remember those men. All of them were privileged men. They all had money. My parents would not pay for things like clothes. All I had were rags. None of it even fit.

I do not know how or why they arrived at this. They just said: no clothes.

The message, even to a kid, I was fourteen, then, was deeply sexual even if the kid could not articulate that because he did not know how.

All I knew was that humiliation was the end result no matter which way I turned.

It came down to rags or getting fucked in the ass.

A few were powerful men. And they wielded power like it was a sword.

I just went numb. If I was numb enough…

I am told by the people on the Internet who write about me but have never met me that I was middle-class.

Having to do sex work so you can afford clothing (like a coat or a pair of socks) is not very middle-class. People wondered why I hated my existence.

A couple of years ago, I emailed a Director of Public Education in the city where all of this took place. Some of it was at school.

I was acting out. Back then. Always in Big Girl trouble.

I do wonder when I will have to stop acting out. I do for the most part keep the rage subdued.

Sometimes a demon will escape. Nasty, bad little creatures. Not happy campers about stuff like HIV. Another suicide attempt but one more like a life sentence to drugs you cannot afford and cannot get.

I am told by the people on the Internet who write about me but have never met me that I was middle-class.

Having to do sex work so you can afford clothing (like a coat or a pair of socks, I remember buying my first pair of socks at Sears) is not very middle-class. People wondered why I hated my existence. Socks wear out.

A couple of years ago, I emailed a Director of Public Education in the Mid-west city where all of this took place. Some of it was at school.

I carefully explained to this Ph.D. what had happened.

To my surprise, she didn’t run. Yet.

She responded immediately and said she was horrified, and that that particular school had changed.

I did not and do not believe it.

I emailed her back. But there was no response. By this time, the lawyers would be involved.

But I did not want a fight. I just wanted someone to know.

I am sad for her that she was muzzled.

Silence will kill you. As will AIDS. I still wonder if I know what is going down around me. Silence nearly did me in. It’s always something. My suicide attempts were numerous. Even after I shot my guts out with a shotgun, no one ever said: what is this about.

I hate that town. Silence is an evil place. I have written about that place many, many times.

The men always tried to wiggle out of having to pay.

They all wanted one thing. To fuck me in the ass. When one guy came in me the first time I did this (twenty bucks was a big deal), I didn’t know what it meant. I really didn’t know what was happening.

It would happen again and again and again and again. Twenty bucks. I bled a lot from it.

I know people who just love the fetish of revisiting their past and surround much of the fantasy with romanticism. I am not one of those people.

The town is still there. The school is still there. Main Street is still there. The football team is still there. The Men in Charge are still The Men in Charge. They are men I know because I went to high school with them. Back then. I grew up with them. Their grandchildren are in the same schools now. They knew.

In the past year, they have told me quite clearly, and in no uncertain terms, that my various public personas are abhorrent to them. I disgust these men. I am not welcomed back in their town. I vividly remember second grade with them.

Their anger is palpable.

Change will never happen. Not really.

Smash Street is curating poetry from boys who do sex work today. We call our project: The Red Chair Poems. We go public on Halloween at noon.

http://theredchairpoems.tumblr.com

You have the reader bearing witness when you have them. When you lose them, the lawyers will have arrived. The silence will have been unleashed again.