Tim Barrus: And So the Logic Goes

They’re boys with HIV. What they believe might make no sense at all to you. But that does not mean it does not make sense to them.

If I ask them W-H-Y they want to construct a photography show called DEAD BOYS, they do have an answer.

You might not think that it’s not thought-out. But it’s not about you. Not everything is about the audience. You are only the audience.

"Because everyone wants to kill us."

"What do you mean everyone. Why do they want to kill you."

"Because they hate us."

"Who hates you."

"Everyone. Everyone hates us."

"Why do they hate you."

"We have AIDS, and we’re bad."

We have gone over the difference between AIDS and HIV a thousand times.

It does not matter. This is how they see it.

"Just LOOK at the ASK TIM BARRUS BLOG." I get screamed at.

I don’t look at that blog much. I made it so I could store the haters in a deep-freeze and only drag them out when I wanted to prove a point.

I don’t even read the hate. I just know it’s there. I had so nicely compartmentalized it.

Why should any of this concern me.

It concerns me because the name of the thing and the photographs that will be in it will be viewed as more grim than the thing will really be.

For one thing, the AIDS orgs will be royally pissed off. HIV is something that everyone can manage — sort of like stanky feet. If everyone used the right soap no one would have stanky feet.

In the HIV world, you get punished if you say: HIV can be a real bitch, and it will rock your pretty little world.

The AIDS orgs want to fight all the stigma that is out there so they create an illusion that HIV is stanky feet.

It’s not. It’s an infectious disease that a particular class of drugs has been invented to treat, and those drugs cost individuals hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if you are a kid, there’s no light at the end of that tunnel, you can’t win. It’s too big. A seventeen-year-old who was careless might not be able to even comprehend what hundreds of thousands of dollars means, and that he will need to be on these drugs the rest of his life.

The stigma is real and it’s horrid.

But the illusion that HIV is only as bothersome as a fly is also horrid, it doesn’t encompass everyone, and people aren’t stupid.

The Smash Street Boys know.

Treating HIV can be extremely complicated, and sometimes everything you throw at it doesn’t work.

And the cost will rip you another entire asshole to contend with.

The illusion that HIV is manageable for everyone is a stigma of its own in a stigma of its own in a stigma of its own.

And then there are the stalkers and the haters who do go after us on a daily basis.

That so many of these people are gay writers is a result of my history, not any kid’s history. Gay writers hate my guts because they feel deep down, I’m probably still not following the rules.

I left publishing.

I don’t know how I still threaten them. I do not get it.

And I do not understand why you would go after some kid just to get to me.

People can be so very sick.

The boys interpret this as there’s a lot of hatred out there, a lot of it is directed at us, and we need to stick together to survive it because it’s not going to change, and it’s not going to go away, and if gay writers can be the ones who hate us so vehemently, who’s next the Girl Scouts.

Suicide is an ebb and flow that ripples through this group like a river through my dreams.

So. Yeah. We’ve been out today photographing death. They are not intimidated, and they are not afraid of death.

They’re more afraid of pain than death.

Both Belgium and the Netherlands allow children to kill themselves.

This was the subject of much conversation.

I can’t even describe the photographs and I’m the art teacher.

I don’t know how.

In their minds, HIV, and the culture are the same thing. In their minds, they’re wanted men, and posters with their faces on HIV warrants have been posted all over Dodge.

"They want us dead. They want us to go away. They want us dead."

Many of the photos they took today were contrived where there is a murderer and a victim.

A doctor strips your naked corpse and there is an element to that photograph where it’s a violent confrontation — analogous to rape — where the doctor and the kid are fighting but the kid is dead.

Go figure.

Tomorrow will be more of the same.

Did you know that young, sex trafficked boys almost always wear their clothes to bed.

They sleep fully dressed.

You didn’t know that.

Well, now you do.