United States of America

WARNING: Explicit Imagery and Colloquial Language

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

Tim Barrus (Director, Show Me Your Life; Founder, Cinemateque Films)

They have always found me through the grapevine. You will not find the grapevine anywhere near or around Facebook. Security at Facebook (and other mainstream social networking sites) sucks, and kids at risk often find themselves dealing with Big Brother or Authority at Facebook, and that is exactly what they try to avoid. They can get away with more at Twitter, but the social network they trust is the grapevine because they are the grapevine. You can’t be on the grapevine unless you are willing to rock and roll.

I knew people would find me this way because it is how they have been finding me since I started writing and publishing in 1976.

She knows people who know people.

Isn’t that how it usually works. She calls herself Kansas City and the video clips she sends me are very definitely Kansas City. Rock Cocaine Kansas City Crack Whore is Rolling Hard and Got Her Moonboots On Spun Out and Speedin’.

I think she might be underage. I have no evidence of this. It’s a feeling. Bikerdope. Moves fast and feels invisible.

Was recently fired from her executive position as a stripper in a totally nude (I wonder what it is they strip when they’re already totally naked) lap dance joint.

Comes on to me in a very sarcastic way (most of these women hang out with men but, in fact, like other women and loathe most males) in that she’ll bet she’s not eligible for Show Me Your Life. “Your little fan club of Other Misfits,” she says.

Maybe. Maybe not.

ME: How did you get fired. It’s a bad time to lose your job.

KC: My teeth are rotting out of my mouth. They don’t like that.

Me: No shit.

She’s HIV. She’s (what else) a single mother. Got to make the rent.

Rent is dummy dust. Forget the rent. Forget the kid as well. “It cries a lot,” she claims.

Back in high school, she had been artistic.

“I will show you I can do this,” she says. I am hesitant to put a camera in her hands.

Let us see what she can do. She borrows a video camera.

The clips that come in are as tweaked as Drano. They burn. She sees everything; even things I am sure are neither real nor there.

Her life is all over the place. Girlfriends and the middle of the road. She will do you for a sparkle.

Catch the veins. Mainly she hides them.

HIV would be tore from the floor up.

My writing this is a speaking to her.

I will work with the clips you are sending me. At first, I thought you were a dime a dozen, but the clips you are sending me are spun out, mama, on your own blue acid fizz wizz. I said show me your life and you are.

Obviously, you want to do this.

Spinderella, I only have one request.

No more Smurf Dope for the Spaceman. He’s not a spaceman, Sugar, he’s a little boy. If I see him on any of your shit, I will become your worst nightmare. Can you get it. It will take me a few days to edit these clips you have dropped on my Internet doorstep.

Be careful what you film around the BoyBangers you live with. It gets worse, you know. Spaceman could be raising himself all on his lonesome; living with you all by himself which is all the same thing. BoyBangers do not always desire to see themselves in video or on the le Internet. Some of them appear to be a little rough.

It’s amazing how your lives all amp together. I would suggest (and I will be on your case about it) you get the Spaceman tested.

If your next question is going to be — and I know it will be — are there HIV meds for little boys, let us save some time here because the answer is yes. Spinderella, tread carefully. They could take him from you. But if you don’t get him tested, you may be condemning him to a death sentence.

Putcher moonboots on, girl, you have work to do. Show me your life.

timothée barrus/ a cloak ripped through with holes

in a perfect world/ safe harbors would be able to withstand slowly rising waves or more o much more is often necessary/ safe from what pounding in what sleep/ stares through us/ our bones bared/ okay i'll just say it/ i am not sure that the idea of the safe harbor can actually exist/ it would like melting coins/ you can make it safer i suppose/ or as safe as the drudgery of a mausoleum/ where what embryos plummet to their dark address/ safe is perhaps the old neighborhood/ harbor is something moving in that light/ solitudes and rift/ no punishment or harangues/ the monster has been pushed aside/ now, year after year you will have to defend it/ or be content to be a passenger/ aboard a ship as brilliant as orion/ floats as languidly as a milkweed upon what winter's freezing cold/

the moth had been left at lollipop's home/ that's where the whore's left their kids/ with lollipop/ usually the  mothers returned/ sometimes they did not/ this kid's whole universe leaked blood everywhere/ my mother, my whore (now, there's a book title) had left him hanging/ worn out by whores into the threadbare child he had become/ the dividing line between lucidity and darkness IS suicide/ superman's death had diminished us all for as long as we would live/ i live in too many different worlds/ the truth is that all our lives and the guts that come with those lives are split wide open at any given time/ the truth is that we are all salvaging survival from the loud pitch of loneliness and one very crowded wire we line up on one crow at a time/

i do not know how anyone grows up there/ the moth just resigned himself to the idea that superman really was a suicide after all/ no mom, no nothing/ i gave him a ride around the motel parking lot on the bike/ he tried to smile/ but as a smile goes, this one failed the smile test/ i let him wear my helmet for a while/ i like the helmet, he said/ he might have loved and lived among the monkeys in the trees/ all his victories had been from town to town/ his appearance was handsome enough but his story was a lip bit-through a blowtorch/ but you could take me, the moth claimed/ reread the instructions on the cereal box, kid/ an old guy and a young both with aids take on a kid the size of a kindergarten rug rat/ i'm mad but i'm not that mad/ the world hates my guts as it is/ the world had not shrunk to fit this kid/

when it came time to go, the moth just clung to my leg/ but you're not coming back, he said/ it was an accusation/ i have been licked clean of pain behind the shoulder-blades/ your mom could turn up, you know/ you doubt it, the moth said/ i did, too/ we stand naked in the landscapes of pure necessity/ i stood transparent in front of this boy/ he drew his small body up and sobbed/ the bridges are not non-partisan/ the thorns i cannot absorb into my flesh, i try to keep at a safe distance/ he will become dangerous whirling down other streets/

i had this one friend, a chick who otherwise i kinda thought of as hip enough, who said i should go to the cops to find the moth's mom/ just go to the cops/ whores do not just go to the cops/ i am a writer and a whore/ going to the cops is not anywhere near this deck of cards/ we are no longer friends/ fuck her/ everything i write is a detachment/ just go, lollipop said/ i was set to/ i even made it to the door/

i turned around/ i told the moth that if he would promise to remember me, he could have the helmet/ he crossed his heart and hoped to die/ it looks ridiculous on him/ but with that helmet he is a hit with all the other kids/ we are all selves withheld/ i got back on the bike and met up with raymond at the next motel/ we went out to a stupid bar called timber cove/ there was no timber and there is no cove/ there are only tequila shots and limes/ raymond didn't want to leave the moth/ let's take him with us/ but superman had killed himself/ he was a fuck and a disappointment to many and his mother was a hooker from chicago/ life is an accident and a cloak ripped through with holes/