Have you ever wondered what it is like on the dark side of life……..

I don’t know why I keep writing stuff down. Maybe I need to share what I feel with someone and no one cares nor listens……no one but you, an unnamed reader. Once I thought I could write what has happened to me down and tell the truth; speak up. I quickly found out the world doesn’t work like that. Now I write because I have to, because without it I’ll go insane. And when there is no more light, no more paper……I let my thoughts ride on the wind, knowing everyone will think nothing of it, another piece of trash flying in the wind, to be stepped on and thrown away. Kinda fitting.
What to say about me? Nothing. I’m no one, never have been and never will be. That’s just how it is. My folks were killed when I was five and I was placed in an orphanage. Beatings and rape were common there. Unlike many of the other boys at the home I had never been beaten before, I had never been held against my will, never felt that fear, that pure terror. I broke a rule I didn’t knew existed; the rule of silence. I reported it. I was sent to a doctor who checked me out and a female social worked talked with me. She thought I was notoriously lying and didn’t believe me. The charges were dropped as the doctor said he found no proof of abuse. Yeah right. I had been whipped the night before and he didn’t see that?! Justice is for the rich only, I guess. After that I learned well the rule of caution and silence.
I ran away from the home when I was eleven, thinking I would find freedom on the streets but found only darkness. The only thing that changed was who was abusing me; using me. I was still a pawn in someone’s sick and twisted game that I still don’t know the name of.
It’s a whole world, a hidden and dark world. Everything’s for sale here; sex, youth, drugs, life and death. You can buy it all. From time to time the police will, more for the sake of appearance, arrest someone but it’s always the small fish; unimportant and replaceable. Arresting the small drug dealers is a regular process while arrests in sex crimes on minors, boys or gays are few and far in between. Girls and women are a little better off there. Don’t really know why. Maybe it’s just more known, more seen and more accepted?
At first death seemed to be better than this to me. I tried suicide a few times but never went through with it. I came to realise that no matter happened; I did want to live. It’s strange how much you can adapt and change to fit in, to survive. Pride is a very small meal for a kid and you quickly learn to lose it. Dignity is unheard of if you want to live and courage is for those who want to die. Life becomes a painful process where you seek forgetfulness in whatever you can find. Once I took everything I could; booze or drugs of the cheap kind, made little difference to me. I only needed to escape a life that would kill me if I thought about what I was doing. But that’s the whole point; just do and don’t think. You can’t afford to think. You can’t afford to play ‘what if’ or dream away. Life is here and now and nothing can change it. No one cares anyway.
I can never forget the past but by day I can pretend I don’t care. In the dark of the night I become a boy again, scared and frightened. I crawl up in a ball and fight to stay awake because as soon as I close by eyes I feel eager and cruel hands reaching for me, touching me in places I don’t want to and forcing me to do and say things I can’t live with if I force myself to remember.
I’m not that stupid; I know this is wrong. But the law is one thing, reality something else. The circle goes far and reaches many important and up-held citizens. I’ve even heard of a Senator member and several policemen who often walk these streets eager to buy young flesh; male or female. The rich and powerful can do whatever they wish; what can we down here at the bottom do about that when the middle classes won’t even see us? When did you, dear reader, last give money to a homeless? Last think of all the children living on the streets? Last wonder what they are forced to do to survive? If ever those thoughts have been yours they have come and gone as quickly as an unpleasant nightmare. You can’t solve a problem people won’t even admit is there. The perfect cover indeed.
Today something happened. Something terrible. Well, more so than usual anyway. John died. He killed himself. Drug overdose. I can’t be sorry for that. He was 16 going on 100 and had full blown AIDS. This job will do that to you. You can’t afford to demand protection so…. It probably doesn’t work anyway.
I saw him; John. He looked happy in death; a smile curving his lips that seemed to light up his starved and thin body. I was never very close to John but we had met at the Centre downtown. He was an alright guy just……tired. Generally tired of everything. Like most of us I guess.
I wonder who’ll take over his clients. Not that he had many regulars. He was getting too old though he tried to lie himself younger. I works on 7th Street so I think Connie will take over from him. Connie, or Connor as his real name is, is alright but way too valuable and weak to do this. I know that in less than a year it’ll be him lying somewhere. I just hope that when that time comes it’ll be by his own hands and not some crazy customer or killer. We had a serial killer in this area some years back. He killed boys, about 12, and washed them, dressed them in white and put their bodies near a statue of an angel, their hands folded over their chest as in prayer. Sick as it may sound they all looked more at peace in death than they ever had in life. I think the killer actually believed he was helping but failed to realise that even when life is Hell humans fight to survive. That is the nature of things.
The highlight of my day was a five-dollar bill an old lady gave me when she saw me standing on a corner. In her eyes I read she knew more than she let on; maybe she had even been where I am now. As I write this it’s for the first time in days on a full stomach. Bless fast food stores for low prices.
I’m running out of paper and the sun is almost down. I have to end this now. I think I’ll go to the Centre first and see what’s happening. Later I’ll see if I can’t make some money. Like John I’m getting too old for anyone to want me but maybe I can find something else. There’s always a job for someone willing to do next to anything for it.
But one of these days………..one day I will be free. One day, somehow, I’ll break free. I will. I’ll have what I always wanted; peace.

~Scott