WARNING: EXPLICIT IMAGERY & COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE

"i believe you" : Show Me Your Life, Sexwork

these are the people... we do not exist familiar in any room/ as long as we remain invisible, you never have to look at our little black books/ at who our tricks were (in some cases still are)/ their husbands and their fathers and their brothers and their girlfriend’s husband, too, and their ministers and their doctors and their stockbrokers and their cops and their politicians and their bosses and their co-workers and their colleagues and their priests and the people they tell their secrets to/ these are the people who pay to fuck us/

Tim Barrus (Creative Director, Show Me Your Life & I Believe You; Founder, Cinematheque Films safe-house and intensive arts program for male adolescents with HIVAIDS)

I've never met a single kid who didn't hate their tricks

Show Me Your Life is an art program for Kids At-Risk. At-risk means things like homelessness, addiction, HIV, incarceration, sex work, and abuse. These are glimpses into landscapes very few ever see. We give video cameras to kids who have no access to them. Show Me Your Life tells story after story of kids who live mostly a marginalized, dangerous existence.  

Show Me Your Life deals directly with kids who are self-identified as sex workers. Our purpose is not to scare you or to change you or to tell you how to live your lives. Our purpose is to provide a safe place for you — a place no one can invade — where you can tell us anyway you can about the story that is your life. We give video cameras to kids at-risk. As a sex worker, you know all about many of the risks you take. But the one silent killer out there you are dancing with is HIV. We encourage you to get tested. But no one can force you into it. I have never met a kid who was doing sex work who had not somewhere in the past been sexually abused. We want to know something about the journey you have been on. We want you to know that you can tell the story about how you live, how you have survived, and no one is going to tell you that this story cannot be told, and no one here is going to put you down and humiliate you in any way. It is what it is. You are a person with dignity and worth. It is safe for you to say: this is how I have been hurt. It is safe for you to say: these are my dreams and this is what I want from life. No one is going to beat you up for that. Your stories belong to you and only you can tell them. To that end, the boys at Cinematheque Films will work with you to find the most effective way to form and mold your story into a visual form we can all attempt to begin to understand http://tim@showmeyourlife.org

as quiet as a virus

over and over/ starting to wake before the dark chambers of his eyes saw me pushed up against the empty walls/ naked in the morning there was no framework for us to hold tight to/ his mind came with a crashing sadness/ mine was just draconian/ we knew/ we knew/ the walls would dream/ our voices would become whispers quiet as a virus/

high wire act/ dark wires untangling

you grab on to the high wires of your life to keep from falling/ looking down/ when did it become a crime to not believe in hope/ such a convenient illusion/ there are no archives in a high wire act/ there is only hanging on/ moment to moment/ eyelash to eyelash/ shoe to shoe/ wire to wire/ there is no remembering dark with water/ just don't let go/ no records as to who has fallen to the ground/ there is no way to sleep/ insomnia is a fugitive's final drug/ high wires grotesque with secrets/ dying fingers pluck the bones/ genuflecting hope/ but the suits almost always win/ the powerful are the powers of indifference/ there were holes in my socks today/ and derelict holes in my skull where my eyes should be/ hope is a renaissance of longing for the void/ the black is closing in/ the wires will sing tonight and quickly through the door/ the sky is raining ticking clocks/ hopefulness is as inexcusable as a dead river and your job is to clean the carp out/ and sweeps the day away/ even the clown is connected tight/ dark wires untangling/

the fields they burned

i was seven when the fire came racing for the house/ the back field where i played was burning and roaring like a train/ the one that ran along the grand river down at potter's park where they kept the lions/ that fire never had a chance not with my father fighting it with shovels/ we never did discover who set that fire/ you're standing there looking at death coming toward you and for the first time in your stupid existence you understand that everything can end in a second/ all we knew is that my father had a lot of enemies/

i would be one from time to time/ the pain of knowing him and loving him was carried piecemeal through all the old silences/ the fuckin' irish/ chin up/ timothy patrick/ trouble is/ the ink has smeared on the postmarks of the places we no longer lived/ it was painful to know and love him/ i never did tell him i had aids/ he begged me to come to him i refused and he died alone/ the trip to his deathbed could not be made/ i could barely make it down the stairs of the mountain cabin i was living in/ aids is, in fact, a whole laundry list of diagnosis/ this was a bone disease called avascular necrosis/ yes/ it rhymes/ for effect/ more longfellow than whitman/ god i can't stand longfellow/

whitman at least cums from a long line of fellow literate cocksuckers/

i know/ i know/ we are all dying/ jesus fucking christ i could be cursed to live in this body for another hundred years/ avascular necrosis means your bones are dying/ ahhhh, now to the marrow of it/ i'm irish like the headboard and the bed/ the dull fingers from that field on fire spoke to me of smothering/ i could not attend my father's funeral because i couldnafucking walk/ he's running toward the fire with his shovels/ and all the old smoldering silences between us/

here's to liquor and fists, maynard/ we all have to leave our weapons somewhere/ lovers, poets, goats, and children, now/ i never understood the thing with guns -- seriously, it was a mystery to me all my life it was just guns, guns, guns; i thought everyone lived with guns like we did but they didn't and they don't -- until belfast and there it was/ the shadows of something looking so bleakly leaden at myself/ fuukin'gunsdaddy/ i'm dying here in my bones, old man, the paralysis of words/ a fuukin'poet anafailure forason/ pauses in the lovemakin' your cock up my ass i'm the son i can say it/ you wanted it so why not all the other men i sold it to/

ahh the irish in my head and in my bed i am alone/ headboards and footboards/ the red hair flowing like the stars, daddy/ trouble is/ indifference isn't even irish/ they called us blond but we knew better/ we have seen our pubic hair/ i shaved my head tonight and went out and faced the wall, old man/ i do that from time to time/ in fact, i will do just about anything to end the pain from these dying bones that are determined to die before the body does/ it's a strange disease/ what aids/ that, too/ stephen's surname is spelled daedalus the architect in greek myth who was contracted by minos to build the labyrinth in which he would imprison his wife's son, the minotaur i would suggest we simply simply fly and so i do/ errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery/

i shall try to fly by those nets, daddy/ the last one was called dilaudid/ the drugs don't work anymore, you see/ it's just us and the pain, old man/ isn't that how it was supposed to be/ so let us build the fuuckin' labyrinth and they can't come in because if they did they might find out the secret is we're lost/ now, they'll be wantin' to leave their facebook comments nice poem powerful truly a lovely poem you've written here magnificent it's the cliches, ya know/ but here the worst one and it stops me in my tracks/

inspirational/

you want it inspirational, now do ya/ oh, a little leipreachán glitter here and there/ i've shaved me head and i'm facing the friggin' wall, woman, and you're leavin' me a cliche to chew on are ye, oh daddy you nailed'em you really did/ i'm dying on the cliches, daddy/ pauses in the lovemaking/ you may take your cock out now/ i'm not that irish/ you know that field has been burning and comin' at me all this time, daddy/ tortured men in the stockade and mama's not even in this dream/ peeling potatoes written fifty years ago jeanann/ the truth is that we were all violently asleep in that old house even as you burned it down/ i am tired of walking those cliche streets/ o dublin/ o paris/ moving with our shovels blindly towards the door/

do not open it/ inspirational/ i shaved my head/ i swear to you i did i will take a photograph in the morning and i will publish it / the wall, the wall/

trouble is/ the thing itself and not the myth/ we all leave our weapons somewhere/



 

I am getting these tired emails about the morality of boys who do sexwork

I would say to these people: what would you have them do, die? And then I realize that is exactly what these people want.

I think what really pisses off these people is that I do not morally condemn the boys. Considering that I was a whore, it would be a little silly dontachthink. I do not mind saying: sexwork can kill you. It can even numb you emotionally. But it is society that assigns good. And it is society that assigns bad (not me). Kids are kids.

In Show Me Your Life, the problem comes with kids who are committing crimes. Prostitution was still a crime last time I checked. The minute you get into a car with a stranger and he realizes you have put him in a video, you are putting your life in danger and I do not mean from HIV.  To document that one is committing a crime is a form of culpability, I am not sure anyone knows what to do with. Such images are bound to be dangerous. And adults would not hesitate to use such video against kids. Whores know. Trust no one. Which is, if you think about it, sort of an interesting idea, that, because often enough, the boys are climbing into cars where they are trusting people in fundamental ways.

Please cease and desist telling me to stop working with adolescent sexworkers. I am of the opinion that in stopping a pandemic we are compelled to look sex and sexuality squarely in the eye and if we can do that, we will find ourselves working with people who are not necessarily exactly like us. 

Sexwork is an inclusive practice. ART is about transcending ideas.

The whole point of this workshop is in the face of a pandemic, to openly confront the “not nice” things polite society does not want to discuss. Or human beings will continue to die from HIV/AIDS in horrifying numbers.

Sexwork is an inclusive practice. Art is about transcending ideas.

If it’s about HIV/AIDS. It’s about SEX. And all that comes with it. This is a disease that does not lend itself to moral provincialism. It’s bigger than you are. It’s bigger than I am. And it’s not going away. Infection rates are UP for at-risk populations. And that means they are UP for clients - the bridge population - and their wives/girlfriends/boyfriends.HIV is a socially transmitted disease and it does not discriminate.

Sexwork is an inclusive practice.  Art is about transcending ideas.

Artists are a heterogeneous community embedded in distinct localities around the world.  If we cannot make art that speaks to SEXWORK, how are we going to address the demographics of disease.  How are we going to speak of issues that cannot be divorced from the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.  Issues that concern us all.  Like how children in our communities around the world actually live - homelessness, trafficking, and their involvement in organized crime as a form of sexual slavery.

Sexwork is an inclusive practice.  Art is about transcending ideas.

It is easy to cavalierly slap the label of OBSCENITY on anything YOU do not like: “Oh it can’t be art.” Ignorance as censor is dangerous in an HIV/AIDS pandemic. It marginalizes not just sex from art, but marginalizes the people who are dying from a sexually transmitted disease. One goes with the other. Why should anyone agree to be marginalized. 

Sexwork is an inclusive practice.  Art is about transcending ideas.

We are not going to allow you to define who we are. We want to live.

silver bullets

the pills around here where two streets cross are haggard bones/ there are way too many of them/ bones or pills, tim/ pills/ there’s not a pimp for a hundred miles/ along the shadows soft talking in the medications/ boys who open the door to death only by centimeters/ i would lock it nevertheless/ but i am not allowed by the powers that be/ the working boys across the way are rain and tomorrow/ six dollars a week to have one/ my boys not quite so swagger/ are listening still/ all i have to offer is a poem and silver bullets/

safe/ what is safe/ safe

we delude ourselves with a multitude of illusions/ o let the united nations do it/ there are 40 million people living in un refugee camps today/ 40 million/ culture has failed humanity with the vanity of tribalism/ your systems and institutions are constructed for the privileged few while the majority of human beings languish in ignorance, misery, starvation, disease, homelessness.  and despair; your united nations with its declarations of rights inherent to humanity has failed/ your moral codes are facsimiles/ what is a safer house/ your houses are your plagues/ i am going to do what i do/ i do not seek your opinion or your approval/ and I am going to do it in full view of your vast confusion/

in a perfect world

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/