Tim Barrus in the New York Times
AT NIGHT, THEY PACE
you were sleeping and I would sculpt your naked body with the contours of my tongue/ you were that flawless carnal bleeding from your hole/ the inside of my mouth was eros drowned in blood/ in the cold hours of the night, you were awake and pacing as if you were listening to an echo no one else could hear/ in fact, you could wail and die and hear the wind/ i will show you all your wounds and knives/
I work with adolescent boys at-risk. Sleep is a pressing issue. One exhausted kid can mean an entire house of exhausted kids.
None of the experts talk about HIV because we really do think AIDS is over. There is no hope that we might remove our heads from the indifferent sand.
The “hard to reach” is HIV medical code for this is probably a teenage boy. The medical paradigm will push the pills. The rest of the kid can be a shipwreck. The medical paradigm offers little beyond the antiretrovirals. While the numbers have shown signs of hope for other segments of the at-risk population, the adolescent numbers are as stubborn as the boys themselves can be.
Anxiety is a killer. It has them by the balls.
Boys in crisis are young men who do not sleep. Past medications like Sustiva have printed information on the pill bottle or box that the drug can cause nightmares. This is disingenuous for many boys at-risk of full-blown AIDS. Substitute the term nightmare for the term, Roller Coaster Acid Trip Through Sleepville. There is not much sleep in Sleepvillle to be had. Monsters are around every corner.
Add into this already complicated issue, the various and demanding issues of sex and sexuality. It is quite impossible for most adults to hold their little adolescent hands through this one. Grounding him will not help. Adults have their own problems. Your kid is having sex with another kid down the block. They have sworn their undying love.
This is not the time to be an asshole parent.
School with HIV is not easy. It can be far, far more complex than just taking a pill every day.
Anxiety affects attention spans. Peers are not always other typical kids. Peers can be other boys with HIV.
Blood draws might need emotional support.
Physical after physical after physical might need emotional support.
Some adult’s gloved finger up your asshole time and time and time again begs the question: what is wrong with the medical paradigm. The kid says it’s sexual. The adults scream no. But the kid is right.
Just getting to the clinic might need emotional support.
What if their best friend is sick again. What if their lover has the flu. There are a lot of what ifs in adolescence. There are even more what ifs in HIV.
Every perceived skin condition (like acne) can be seen by an anxious teenager as the beginning of the end. And often calls for emotional support.
Being in sports requires emotional informational support. These are not snowflake kids. You can tell a kid his HIV is undetectable. But he has to believe it for it to mean anything.
For many at-risk boys, emotional support is nonexistent. A clinic might provide pills, but emotional support remains an idea.
How are we doing.
Not too well. And adulthood interrupted.
My floor is worn with pathways. At night, they pace.