Whenever Jacob finds his image in the art of his buddies, or even in his own art, he vigorously rubs it out. Sometimes he cuts off his head. Other times, paints over, or he just uses permanent market to blot himself out.

If you were a kid who has been doing sex work (for years) in order to survive, and you had also been dealing drugs to keep your own habit happy, the Internet simply became a place to advertise and market your skills. In fact, you were well-known to the men (tricks) who travelled in those circles.

Jacob had also been filmed having sex with a trick without his knowledge.

This was the straw that broke that camel’s back.

Outrage would be putting it politely. Jacob began to plan his revenge against the trick who had filmed him getting fucked.

The plan featured guns and the family of the trick. A married family man.

Revenge is often a dish that should never be served cold, hot, or at all. My responsibility in this is to facilitate Jacob to see that it could all backfire on him. He had worked so hard to stay out of jail as it was.

This would put him in the very place he had labored to avoid.

He needed someone to blame. “I blame the Internet,” he claimed. Setting his jaw firmly, intransigently in adolescent, pissed off concrete.

The Internet would survive.

Social media is ripe with all of this. Marketing sex is everywhere. People who live in the mainstream of American life do not see it anymore. We are all so numbed and saturated. I see more sex workers (whom I know) on Instagram than you can possibly imagine. It’s the image they’re selling. If you want to touch me, you can.

No one is saying this outside the context of implication. Implication is the kind of suggestion that is all you need. A contact gets made, and everyone goes private.

Those images of Jacob are still out there.

Because Jacob had taken so many of them himself. “I was a working whore,” he explains. “What else could I do and stay out of foster care. They rape boys like me in foster care. It was sex work or hunger. I went with play for pay. I’m not going back. If men jack off to my pictures, that’s on them. I try not to care. But part of me thinks I should still be paid. People say prostitution is a victimless crime. But I feel ripped off. I am not going to physically hurt anyone. But I am going to let the family of that trick know what he did.”

I bite my lower lip a lot. “But where does it end. I see a lot of dogs chasing their tail.”

“I don’t want to go back to sex work.”

I had never heard him say this before with such clarity. I had not pushed him to say this.

He was opening a door.

Often, my job is to go through a lot of doors.

With. Them.

 https://medium.com/@timotheebarrus