Shatter Boys
The Shattering of Boys Who Have Been Sexually Violated
Become men who remember.
I have been teaching two Smash Street Boys how to make PSA’s. Both boys are twelve.
One is hospitalized as I write this.
Kirk can edit video on his MacBook right from his hospital bed.
The new MacBooks are PERFECT for this mainly because they have the power of the Mac, but they weigh almost nothing.
Joel shoots the photography.
I am in the hospital room with both boys.
These hospital chairs are, in fact, creatures from the Spanish Inquisition. Torture.
Joel is sitting on Kirk’s bed.
Kirk is here because the herpes virus he acquired during his Being Abused Period has made it impossible for him to pee.
Herpes has invaded his urethra.
The screaming from the urethral swab was pretty primal. Such screams will break the windows.
Shattered.
I held his hand, but I am utterly impotent to help him.
We make these videos, but there is a hopelessness that follows us like a cloud that hangs around the top of our mountain in the Blue Ridge.
It is a privilege for Joel and Kirk to be able to make what for us are Twitter PSA’s for Shatter Boys in the UK.
These would be men who remember just like Joel and Kirk will always remember, and at times both boys are provoked into remembering when swabs are stuck inside a twelve-year-old’s penis.
There are medications that will help alleviate some of the virulence of this attack by the virus.
Having low CD4 counts makes the disease process slip into high gear.
The media rah rah’s won’t tell you this stuff when they perform pom pom cheerleading backflips informing everyone that an AIDS-Free generation is right around the corner.
No one talks about how abuse can linger into adulthood with very real consequences.
It is a cultural secret.
Shatter Boys could help shatter some of that.
Sexual abuse is usually not a one-time thing, and it never entirely disappears from memory once you become an adult.
Boys who have been trafficked are especially exposed to abusers who are not well themselves.
At Smash Street Safe House, we call it rape.
Because that is what it is.
Joel and Kirk would like to make more of these Twitter PSA’s for Shatter Boys if they want.
Joel and Kirk remember.
In many ways, they might be twelve, but in many other ways they are compelled into the numb stoicism of adult men.
