Get Real.

The Building is abandoned and condemned.

Every trick between Bangor and San Francisco knows where to find it, and find it, they do.

Thirteen teenage boys turn tricks there. These are not outcalls because the boys are home.

To say that sex work itself can be dangerous is politically incorrect among sex workers, most of whom are women, and most of whom deal with stigma day in and day out. Most of the boys have a bucket they shit in.

I used to keep my big mouth shut. Sex work can be dangerous.

The boys are often sick. There is no water or electricity in the building. The place they call home is filthy.

I get a lot of requests from people who want to be volunteers, and I watch their eyes light up.

I have a hard time thinking these people are kind. I know how this works. Most of these people would be there for themselves.

Some of them are thinking sex. I am an obstacle in this. When I was on Medium, I got a lot of flack for telling these people to go fuck themselves. They hated me. Leaving Medium was so the right thing to do.

Why can’t volunteers work with these kids. Americans are always shocked when they see that when I say the word — eleven — it means eleven. Twenty means twenty. Usually, they don’t live to see twenty. But some do. No one I know of calls them survivors. But they are survivors. Usually, for the first couple of years Living The Life, they’re simply called runaways.

The reasons you can’t volunteer to work with them are complex.

You are not going to save them.

They would run. Running is what they do.

They’re criminals. If they haven’t been in detention, they can be headed for one.

There’s school failure. School failure is heavy lifting.

Exactly what is it we do to assist them in being successful within the context of American public education.

Nothing.

We do nothing. The system can’t even bring itself to articulate that these boys exist.

Then, the system weeps and whines, it is the victim here. And overburdened.

I just fucking shrug. The boys are right. American public education is bullshit.

Thieves. Shoplifters. Junkies. Psychotics. Credit card mavens. Felonious. Nefarious and the smoking gun.

On the manic run from the people who would hunt them down. The boys in the House of Sucking Cock, the derelict building, take turns playing lookout. This is done from the rooftop of THSC. If they see cops, they have boxes filled with empty liquor bottles. They dump the bottles from the roof, and everyone will hear it. THSC empties fast. They have escape routes.

The don’t want you to know who they are. Often, I hide them in videos and photographs. Some (it depends on the crimes they have committed) are bold and rebellious, and they will tell you they don’t care, and I am here to tell you that anyone who thinks they can knock the chips off these shoulders is sadly mistaken.

They don’t trust anyone.

They’re always poised, ready to fight.

The system might not be able to bring itself to acknowledge such corrupt, scandalous villians, but ironically, there are many people employed at many levels of law enforcement who hunt them down like animals.

Exactly how is it that the kid is supposed to know that you are not one of those very people. The kid will not believe you.

Let us pretend that Little Rodrigo is wanted for shoplifting.

Food.

Shoplifting is shoplifting.

Some of the stereotype going on here is one where people think that if the kid is doing sex work, the kind of stuff he would steal would be high end. Designer clothes. People don’t get it. Designer clothes would stand out. They would draw attention. Tricks with money don’t care really what he wears. They just want to fuck him.

The kid is going to look at Mister Volunteer and he’s going to immediately assume you, too, will want to fuck him.

The kid is often right.

This shit gives me a headache the size of France. Why in the world would I want to organize this. I have enough to make rock and roll.

The kid doesn’t want to know you because he fundamentally assumes most adults will get him arrested. And adults are stupid enough to facilitate exactly that.

I can explain the dynamics of confidentiality, and volunteers will shake their heads — yes — and then, they’ll go home and blab everything.

Volunteerism does not work for me. It works against me.

What we need changes. I can’t take them to my house. It is just way, way too easy to find. Being easy to find might get Google off. But it kinda sucks to me.

Groceries (hot dogs) came through this week. We got some new cameras. We are living in a tent.

We are always ready to get out of Dodge quickly.

Fuck ICE.

We had two boys who were in Wilmington doing sex work with tourists when Hurricane Florence hit. The boys do not always listen to the weather report. And even if they did, they’re not going to leave a condo on the beach with Uncle Dumbo and his credit cards.

Uncle Dumbo does read the weather report and he left Wilmington while the boys are asleep. Uncle Dumbo’s fantasy that a threesome would be interesting never included just how much physical effort such shenanigans are going to take. Hurricanes never figured anywhere in the fantasy. Uncle Dumbo is terrified (not so much of the hurricane) that the boys will say let us go with you.

This would be a problem.

We were able to rescue these two in a boat pulled by a jeep. Didn’t you read the weather report never mind.

Undocumented kids can be slippery as as a suspect in suspense. Who can blame them. The government makes up the numbers.

It’s the government that is criminal.

A fourteen-year-old who shoplifts a steak (sweat pants) from the meat department can be put in a locked facility for six years, and at some point the kid becomes an adult.

At which time he is then moved to adult prison.

This is the universe of rape. He knows they will rape him and they do. If I were in his shoes, I’d run like hell on wheels, too.

So don’t tell me two things:

1.) That you want to organize people to do what I do. Mother Mary Jesus Fucking Christ. You cannot do what I do. Get over it. What you will do is construct a board of directors in a nonprofit that then hires a suit as Executive Director. Go away. You offend me. I cannot know you. All suits are dangerous. The planet has too many suits. Suits exist to keep organized institutions intact, so they hire other suits with offices who talk to other suits in offices, usually all day. And then, they will all go to a conference. They never leave their office mentality. These are the trenches. Can you imagine a suit sleeping in a tent with ten boys who smell like smores.

2.) Stop telling me to be nice because if I was nice, then adult people would like me. I loathe adult people, and I avoid them like the plague. The boys always feel compelled to take this out for a test drive to see which side I am really on. I wish I could say there are no sides but there are definitely sides to every issue. My issue is that I want the kids I deal with to be safe.

The kid and I make pacts to agree to disagree.

Adolescent logic.

Detention is not safe. Law enforcement will kill you, and it is not safe. Drug dealers will shoot you, but most of them love to party. Married men love fucking you. Men in cars will cum in your mouth and then push you out into the rain.

Probably. Someone, please send this to Alicia in Africa. I did not mean to be cruel to her. But I did need to disabuse her of the notion she could recreate this with her colleagues in Africa. I no longer have a computer, I do almost everything on the phone, and I do not have a way to contact her anymore. Tell her I am sorry. But when I heard her talking about how professionals (this means suits) could recreate this, I had to take a vacation to Angrytown, and get over why adults do NOT GET what I do.

I knew a woman once in Key West who only talked to dogs.

I only talk to criminal children.

Your reality and their reality never meet. Ever.

They’re right about one thing. Cultures marginalize all of them. Now, there’s the real crime. I do this work not out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness in my heart. My heart is ravaged by HIV and it’s pissed off ALL the time. I do this work because the men who fuck these boys were the same men who fucked me when I was the age these boys are now.

I HAVE walked in their shoes. And they know it.

Volunteers are not worth the grief they cause.

Adults will turn them in and betray them. I try my best to keep these kids safely in the shadows of places you will never really know anymore than you know what it’s like to live in the House of Sucking Cock.