The Motel
I always run out of needle boxes.
The murders at The Motel are not your average slash and cut affairs in showers. It’s far more complex than that. It’s just not a place you would bring up the subject of HIV in any conceivable conversation.
Tired tourists who find their way to pull into the deserted parking lot are told the place is full. There is no no vacancy sign because there is no sign. No telephones. No smart phones. No TVs. No pool. No restaurant. No bar.
The place is run by pimps who sell drugs and boys.
Everyone is stripped searched before they are issued a room. No phones means no phones. No one will be filming anything that goes on here because blackmail is a problem. There is no Internet. You are completely off the grid.
Overdoses and naked bodies are dumped from pickups. Always late at night when the horror-stricken fog glows in a diffident awe like yellow teeth. Rest areas are the new funeral homes. Rest areas in another state make what I call junky sense. Rest areas where a few families in cars live. Dead bodies of no clothes, no clues, no lord’s prayer. Opiates are the Reverend Mother. You kick the body out and go. No, officer, I never saw a thing.
The best times for The Motel is during a recession. The numbers of young boys attempting to survive swells like a holy sacrament of canine bitches in the jesus heat. The new boys are scared. The older boys try their best not to appear to be too sick. Sometimes they need help walking from room to room.
But AIDS is over from what I hear. My ear to the ground.
One kid can do a dozen tricks per night. Fucking hole is extra. The parking lot is patrolled by armed thugs in hoodies, many of whom were roomies back in prison. In fact, the distant glow of the federal prison just beyond the woods can be seen on the second floor balcony of The Motel.
Like a reminder of one’s worth.
The kids would spend the night at The Motel, but they’d be gone by morning. Tricks never seemed to spend more than an hour as most of them are terrified of being busted.
Or photographed.
That is not the only reason they never linger.
Often, the kid he is fucking will remind him of his son. Family men are the worst.
In winter, the place freezes over. The parking lot reflects car lights as if the surface of the parking lot were glass. It is always winter at The Motel.
There are no other seasons other than winter at The Motel. Winter took out an exclusive a long time ago. You think I am making this shit up. How convenient for you. How do you know something you do not know.
Most Americans have a hard time accepting the fact that boys can be exploited in prostitution. I call it rape. But never in some kid’s face. Most Americans understand survival, but the awareness of what survival is, can be pushed away. Things like recessions get a lot of boys pushed out of a lot of homes. If someone has AIDS you can always tell.
That boys still believe this nonsense is a testament to exactly how well the system reaches boys difficult to reach with actual information. Boys get their information from other boys. These are boys who have been left out of the numbers game the AIDS orgs and the CDC like to play. The numbers the institutions spout are bogus. There are many boys who function at the edges quite well and they are smart enough to not get counted. They will not visit a health clinic because health clinics want names and identification. Confidentiality is an idea, not a practice.
Sometimes a kid will take a break and come sit with me in my old jeep. Sometimes, not always, we talk. “I always bring my skateboard,” I am told.
I nod.
“But I never get to skate.”
They do not care about my camera. To them, it’s just another prop in a world of them. They know I am not supposed to have it here.
That thousand mile stare. It says a lot about what is trauma.
The Motel parking lot is like a graveyard of them. Their bones. Their bikes. Their boards. Their fanatical, unhallowed lies of connections that do not have and never will. The measure of their lives is not on a listing of life expectancy. Not when you can die at any moment. Most of these kids will not make it to thirty. They are infidels. Acrimonious in a group. Solemn when alone.
They love the jeep. Cigarettes and coffee from a thermos. Then, this scrawny-thing of ribs has to go back to work.
I travel to The Motel to hand out free boxes of new syringes. Please, don’t tell me your name. I don’t want to know. At first, I thought maybe a small percentage of the whores would take the needles.
They all did. Every last kid took a box.
I always run out of needle boxes.