Tim Barrus in the New York Times
I work with boys at-risk who have HIV. People do not understand at-risk means a spectrum. Suicide is at the top of the spectrum. Boys and guns. The gun is an insurance policy if things get any worse than they already are. Often, they’ll hide the gun in their stuff if they’re put in a foster home. Many kids in foster care will tell you the system worked for them. The suicidal see it differently.
If you can imagine (you can’t) an uninitiated foster parent taking in a hard-to-reach teenage boy with a history of sex work who has HIV and a gun in his bag. It happens. My anecdotal experience is that the boys who have done sex work and who have HIV exist at the brink of suicide far, far more ubiquitously than anyone wants to see. They will inevitably have customers (called tricks) who are married family men. Toys in the backseat of cars is a red flag. These boys miss nothing.
There is a self-defeating gravitas in these relationships (many men will come back) and the men who have families will confront much anger the sex worker internalizes. Sex work is one thing with adults making adult decisions. These are kids who can barely form relationships among themselves. The trick has something the adolescent views with rage and envy. A family. Often, including a boy their age. I have never seen a scenario where an adolescent who tells a naive family about their father’s attraction to boys turn out well. A churning revenge and depression. Suicide is an answer they cannot come back from.