The New York Times’ recently published piece on sex work, brothels, and landlords was informative, well-written, and fundamentally relevant. I am here to tell you that there is another side to these complex issues that never gets articulated because the world of young boys doing sex work is far more insidious than transparent. It is basically invisible because it violates the stereotypes of childhood that help to define us all. Like most illusions, we see what we want to see.

I work with such boys in Appalachia. I call them the Boys of Violence. At one time, I was one, too. My main message to the boys is get off the street because the street is killing you. The usual response is but where do I go. This opens the door to exploring what the options are. I lie to them a lot. I pretend that, of course, there are options. There are always options, right. Most of the time, it is quite impossible to facilitate the kid to leave what he has come to know. He will return to the street time and time again.

The issues are familiar and intransigent. Addiction. HIV. Runaways. Family disfunction. Lack of shelter. Lack of health care. Hunger. And that ubiquitous boogie man known as poverty. How running away from home is confused with being kicked out of the house is anyone’s guess. One is not the other. We discuss rape a lot. Prostitution is dangerous. But juvenile detention is even more dangerous. For many boys, detention is where it all begins. How many boys in detention are tested for HIV. The landlord is the government and very few boys are ever tested. Why. I will tell you why. Treatment is too expensive, and again, we choose to look the other way. Sometimes I feel as if culture is, in fact, an ostrich whose head never leaves the hole in the ground.

The CDC calls these boys the hard to reach. They are not hard to reach. But you have to give them something to reach for. Something more than high school graduation. They do not care about high school graduation. What they need and what they want is necessarily immediate. The tools the CDC gives us to reach these kids is pretty much limited to posters with stick figures telling them to get tested. The CDC has abrogated its responsibility. Give me the tools, and I will work with them. But don’t give me a bunch of posters with stick figures that tell hardened boys what to do. All of the boys I work with are suicidal, and fully half of them do kill themselves. There is a big part of me that knows all about the painful and stigmatized place they live in, and it’s hard not to secretly conclude that maybe the kid is right, and suicide is a viable option. I would never say that to him. It would be heresy. But I think it all the time.

In Appalachia, the preferred method is an overdose. Working the street and working the Internet are two different things. I am told the Internet has changed everything when it comes to prostitution, and I believe it. But I also know that in small communities, certainly, in Appalachia, everyone is already quite aware of who you are and what you do. Making the trip to New York City is often seen as far, far more glamorous that it is. You have brothels and landlords. We have cars and the men who drive them. The boys don’t own cars, but they will play quid pro quo in one. The very real problem with cars is that they can transport you to remote places in the dark and the hollows even locals could not find. Bodies are discovered every day. Most of the time, the death is listed as just another opiated overdose. It can be. But opiates and murder cannot always be divorced one from the other. It’s commonly both. But try proving it. No one does.

I would argue that the Internet itself is the new brothel. But the availability of the Internet to supposedly savvy kids is a stereotype. You have apartment buildings. We have trailers. The trailers are convenient for a rough sadomasochism that leads to the kind of screaming no one hears. No one listens to the stories these boys have to tell. I used to believe a few of them. Today, I believe them all. Rape and detention go hand in hand. The criminal abrogation of what the boy can do, and what the trick wants done go hand in hand. A car parked on a dirt road that is more tractor trail than road will have to do, and there are no real landlords who own the road or rent it out. There is no one to trace back to who can explain what went on here. This is not trafficking. This is a boy who has fallen into some very dark trenches, and he navigates all of them alone.

Smash Street Safe House: https://tim-barrus.format.com/about

Young Boys Doing Sex Work: https://tim-barrus.format.com/tim-barrus

Real Stories Gallery Foundation: http://real-stories-gallery.org