Tim Barrus Blog
Posts tagged with HIV
-
How Do We Reach the Hard-to-Reach
I call them Boys-At-Risk. The label is inaccurate. It puts human beings in a box we don’t want to look at, and it’s language as racism personified. I loathe the terminology. But I am at a loss, not in terms of examining the many challenges, but how do I reach…
-
I Opened My Eyes
When Is Cultural Approbation Survival I still get death threats. Death threats are stupid, and stupid people make them. Bring it on, bitch.I opened my eyes. A small group of people in scrubs were looking down at me and they were uniformly grim. Obviously, this was a hospital. Tubes. Beeps.…
-
Tim Barrus: New York Times: PrEP Package
It is easier to chose to not have sex than become another rat in the HIV maze. Constant lab tests, the humiliating exams, the struggle to maintain medical relationships around informed consent (I am always being tested secretly when they take my blood, but I do find out about it…
-
Junkie’s Winter
that december of thursdays we lived on the subway like dishrags, incredulous that this had happened to us/ slamming in the subway toilets/ like cats/ vicious as a tattletale/ someday someone is going to put a bullet/ through your head/ and the rest of us and our second selves —…
-
Aurelien Was a Whore
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…
-
QUID PRO QUO: INTERVIEWS: BOYS WHO DO SEX WORK
I was twelve. He was a teacher. My parents had explained to me that they could no longer afford me. They had no money. I was on my own. I was terrified. All I had to do was be naked, and then it got a little bit more complicated. He…
-
Loving Boys At-Risk: Just Before the Cure
I am acutely aware of the fact that no one in a million years would dare to publish this. That does not mean I do not need to write it. I needed to write it. Yet I can see where it fits tightly into JUST BEFORE THE CURE which is…
-
We Need Assisted Suicide
We need assisted suicide. So you don’t fuck it up, and awaken to find yourself strapped down to a hospital bed having barely survived a coma you’ve been in the past three years. It happens every day. Don’t be stupid and think it doesn’t because it does. Killing yourself is…
-
Boys As Whores
I was one of them. And I know what the fuck I am talking about. You see sex. I see poverty. I know poverty. If you want this to end, if you can even begin to imagine the cyclical nature of it, if you think young boys selling their holes…
-
Death’s Footsteps
UCan breathe safely now i am told that AIDSISOVER jumping down TheRabbitHole of hiv is what we call TheNormal LifeJustThinkUCanLiveLike the normals live and UCanHave the AmericanDream because it WasMade4U if U could stop listening to death come down the hall
-
Survival is Vile Shit
I wonder if any of you have ever noticed that it is sometimes those who find most pleasure and amusement in their fellow man, and have most hope in his goodness, who get the reputation of being his most carping critics. Maybe it is that the satirist is so full…
-
Car Thief
For Robb Nagle VIDEO: KEVIN WAS A CAR THIEF So. Exactly. Who. The. Fuck. Do. U. Think. I. Would. Know. Junkies. Drug Dealers. Card counters. (I love Card Counters because they screw around with casinos). Car thieves. Kevin was a car thief. “Wanna go for a ride.” I was always…
-
Tim Barrus: New York Times: All Politics is Local
Tim Barrus: New York Times I sit in in silence at HIV clinics with people who cling to their oxygen tanks. AIDS is far from over. Americans pay $2K for Truvada which costs $8 in Australia. The depression and hopelessness you write about is real. I thank you for your…
-
Port of Call
Public Health has failed us. People tell me all the time: TIM, IT’S NOT LIKE THAT ANYMORE. Supposedly, we are living in a medical Renaissance. What a wonderful time to be alive. Until the day it’s not. Public Health refuses to give him the drugs he needs to stay alive.…
-
Tim Barrus: NY Times
It is known that HIV causes inflammation. I do not know of a single effective medical treatment. We are left to wonder. The notion of “living with cancer” seems to correlate with “living with HIV.” Or both. The HIV meds do not seem to affect inflammation. Anecdotally, people living with…
-
Take Off Your Shirt
Take off your shirt. No, I don’t want people to see me. (I look around) There’s no one here take off your shirt. No, I look like I’m sick. You are sick. No. Everyone knows you have it. It’s worse when everyone thinks we all died 20 years ago. Take…
-
Tim Barrus: New York Times
AIDS did not go away. There was no one to help. Or to listen. Caregivers. This was not going to be a vacation. This was not going to be just pop a little pill. Many people can pop that pill and they are fine. For some, the piggyback diseases are…
-
Tim Barrus: New York Times: Boys Raped
Some kids have never had real parents. They have always parented themselves. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/snowplow-parenting-scandal.html?comments#permid=31096013 College admission? I work with young adolescent boys with HIV. In rural Appalachia. Reading about parenting is like reading about Mars. Every boy has been raped. You think not. Overly dramatic. Yet rape is a way of…
-
medical abuse by blair
Often, the medical community, in its quest to reduce our humanity down to what it sees as manageable numbers, just creates bigger problems that are difficult and complex to even begin to solve. The medical community is indifferent, patriarchal, authoritarian, mean, and frequently wrong. Infectious disease specialists have a long…
-
Tim Barrus: NY Times: HIV and Pain
Photo by Smurf Tim Barrus: The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/opinion/girls-pain-sexual-abuse.html?comments#permid=30675672 The male-dominated medical establishment has failed us all. Men reject the charge of complete and utter failure. Example: Women are almost never mentioned and never portrayed in any of the uninspired rhetoric campaigns focused on HIV treatment. The stick figures…
-
What Light At The End Of What Tunnel
It is the light at the end of the HIV tunnel that is an illusion.
-
When Death Is Best
In life, you can find yourself falling into situations that you don’t want to be in. Sometimes, that situation is life itself. We at Smash Street are using video to explore what this means and how it feels. The medical infrastructure that constitutes facilitating surviving both sexual exploitation and HIV…
-
UR A PUBLIC HEALTH PIECE OF INFECTED MEAT
PUBLIC HEALTH TREATS ADOLESCENT SEX WORKERS SO BADLY WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO GO THERE
-
THE LIES AIDS ORGS TELL
AIDS Orgs Have Their Own Special Brand of Lies
-
Another Night of Whores
the fuckbucket slinks around the block not unlike the tongues of midnight in ten thousand of them creep along the sidewalks, too if only i could steal myself free of some trick’s eating of my ass i would do it like a tyrant’s vein so blue in temperament all that’s…