That word again.

Aurelien was a veteran of the whore wars. He wanted to be a sex work activist. He wanted us to decriminalize what he did, what I did, what everyone we knew, everyone we lived with, everyone in our drug-saturated bubble did. Sex work was and is mainly criminal.

They will bust your ass and rape you.

To punish you, and while they are doing it, they will even tell you that the punishment must fit the crime.

Especially for young boys.

You reject this.

It is not your impression or experience.

You live on your planet. And I live on mine. Stop telling me to make my planet like your planet. What evidence do you have beyond your supposed moral authority that your planet is where I should live – so you might punish me – no thanks, I’ll stay on my planet even if my time there is marginal. Marginal is not a mystery to me. It is my status quo.

Your culture is a place of tribes. We are the sex work rape tribe, and we know from experience and fact that they will bust you and rape you.

We also know they can be bribed. Like we could afford it but we paid up anyway.

They will kill you, too. The murder of boys who did sex work never acquired the focus of the cops because the killers were the cops.

The boys we are interviewing for our project: QUID PRO QUO, INTERVIEWS WITH BOYS WHO DO SEX WORK, all deal with versions of this reality. Becoming too public is dangerous. You can barely advocate for anything. And you know this. American culture hates kids. The whole mommy image of the helicopter parent is bullshit. What parents. The place where boys get raped the most is detention and foster care.

Authority means sex. Sex means authority.

He would come home quite late. He’d climb into bed and tell me he wanted me to beat him up. I was not into indulging that particular fetish.

“No way.”

Aurelien did not relent.

“Slap my face. Tell me I am a bad little bitch and fuck me.”

My eyes to the ceiling.

Aurelien usually came home from a night of it, and he’d go into the bathroom and give himself a wine enema. He thought the alcohol would kill anything bad in the cum that had been ejaculated into him.

I told you, you do not know my world.

When I see Aurelien in my mind, I see two images of the same guy. There was the whore. He was street wise. Then, there was the teenager who was vulnerable and really believed he was a bad person who should be punished. He was not a bad person. I loved him.

Tricks could smell him a mile away. Whipping him was extra. Tricks will always pay.

We slammed together. Drugs were noble acts of truth.

He always fucked for money, but in different contexts, he gave himself away. The only thing that could undo his enslavement to punishment was death.

All that is left now is a video I wish I hadn’t made.