Boys with HIV kill themselves at rates eight times the rate of typical adolescents who attempt suicide. Children who kill themselves, kill themselves for a reason. And society recoils.

The institutions of society need for the people in that society to want to stay. Or at least pretend to want to stay. Society often prefers pretense over reality. The allusion to cultures that extract a price for participating in the culture’s values as being not worth the grief to stay represent a threat to society’s viability and power over the individual. There is an enormous stigma attached to suicide ideation, and when combined with something as explosive as HIV stigma, you have more stigma than an adolescent can be able to successfully struggle with.

Who are we to say: we know his pain. We do not know his pain. We do not know him.

The AIDS “Helper-Community” steadfastly refuses to address this issue, especially in a public context. The public health issue of adolescent suicide’s recombinant parallels knit together the unfolding of stories that do, indeed, ostensibly indicate a relationship between the HIV virus and neurology. The fear is that assumptions could include the influence of antiretrovirals in suicidal adolescents. Adolescents in care and receiving antiretrovirals kill themselves at the same rates as adolescents who are not in care commit suicide. The shade being thrown here has nothing to do with HIV meds that mostly do what they are supposed to do. It’s the term — in care — that is directly implicated. Kids in care kill themselves just as impetuously and malevolently as kids out on the street doing sex work to survive. The only difference in terms of numbers is that the kids on the street doing survival sex for cash often use that setting itself as a weapon pitted against themselves where all it takes to kill a 250 pound man is three milligrams (about as big as your baby toenail) of fentanyl and in that world, fentanyl is everywhere.

The “AIDS Helper Orgs” want to put out the rhetoric (kids can always spot rhetoric a mile away) that they should get tested, get in care, and get clean.

The kid soon finds out in many states that he’s now registered with law enforcement and they are watching.

I am here to tell you that this boy will disappear. Getting out of Dodge is common. He understands that detention means rape because it does. And who’s going to believe him — a whore.

No one.

I would bet the ranch that any adult who ever reads this will be unable to say — “I know what you are feeling. But…”

Warning: Don’t go there.

There is always a but. The reality is that we do not know, cannot know, what this particular kid in crisis is feeling. The kid knows this: you don’t really give a fuck. Just push his case (he is now a case) over to the helper professionals who know what to do.

This kid is going to be incarcerated one way or the other. Killing yourself is against the law. The law is oblivious to human suffering and beneath contempt. We tell ourselves that when the kid gets better he will be glad he did not put a gun in his mouth (boys use guns, females use pharmaceuticals) and look how great life is as it exists all around you.

He’s still homeless.

He’s still living on the street.

He still has HIV.

He’s still turning tricks.

He still failed at school.

He’s still getting sicker and sicker.

Kids who have attempted suicide do it again. And again. The day will come when they succeed.

We can’t cure poverty. We can’t cure sexual abuse. We can’t cure medical abuse. We can’t cure law enforcement. We can’t cure public health. We can’t cure education. We can’t cure foster homes. We can’t cure prisons. We can’t cure detention. We can’t cure rape. We can’t cure sex work. We can’t cure HIV.

What the fuck can we do.

The kid knows.

We can do nothing. We are as institutions impotent. We are as governments impotent. We are as individuals impotent and do not get involved. Anything we try to do ends in failure. In the face of this, the kid’s school failure is small potatoes. He has tried but he sees no way out.

The rabbit hole has him by the balls. All this kid can do is dig.

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Tim Barrus

Tim Barrus Blog

Posts tagged with tim-barrus-on-boys-at-risk

Rabbit Hole