WHO READS THIS BLOG?

In tough times, whether those are due to social change like the industrial revolution or immigration or the shift from rural to urban, whether due to stigmata like ethnic or racial categories or sexual allegiances, or due to violence in revolution and formal war, or due to frontier exploitations like cowboys and shanghied sailors, boys have been used as kindling for the fires of men. Whether working in coal mines or as chimney-sweeps or as armed mercenaries, boys are expendables. There is always a fresh supply. Survivors are often ready to turn and exploit the next generation. But a few try to explain, educate and protect boys. Tim Barrus is one of those persons. I have joined him as a sympathizer and co-writer. I have said our two readerships are quite separate and he has challenged me to point out my readers. I think I’ll just use this blog.

Tim explains his boys as being “at-risk” in multiple ways. First, they are HIV-AIDS carriers who must obey a rigid regime of drugs to stay alive. Even then the meds are not always effective. Since my background is academic, governmental and religious institutions, that suggests readers along the lines of healers and change-makers. They are not interested in the erotic possibilities. They want clues to the management of the pandemic. For instance, this sort of risk is inevitably entwined with drugs. Marijuana makes the nausea of the antiretroviral drugs tolerable. Injected drugs spread the virus. Sex for sale also demands drugs in order to tolerate the work. Some boys had infected mothers.

Originally I met Tim through his Nasdijj books so it’s always my point of reference, but this frustrates Tim because to him it means the “memoir wars,” a dead end. In my opinion, the NA faker accusations were mostly smoke-screens. The real issue is why abuse, neglect, alcoholism, broken families and so on are fine to write about when the people in the stories are Native American (not us), but suddenly disbelieved and disallowed when the people are “suburban white”? Why is the same book suddenly unworthy if the author is cloaked, a practice common since before the invention of movable type? And why does white and “suburban” mean privilege? Are minority awards just “pity prizes?”

If white writing about Indians is a great crime, why is it all right for Tony Hillerman to write murder mysteries about Navajo people, describing their ceremonies and legends? This is not a hypothetical question for me as I AM writing about the Blackfeet, their ceremonies and legends, their history, individuals that I know, political patterns, and so on. I am perfectly willing to support and encourage actual Blackfeet writing. I am NOT going to ghost write books for them. If they can earn MD’s and PhD’s at high prestige universities, which they do, they don’t need me. This is not the 19th century where some gentleman writer from back east comes to get interesting material to exploit in a book. Those who did (McClintock) made records that are invaluable today.

I should disclose that Bob Scriver -- after I had been divorced from him for years -- was savaged in much the same way as Tim Barrus except not about writing. Bob simply needed money and was being harassed by AIM (threats of arson), so decided to solve the problem by selling his artifact collection. Philip Stepney, the curator of the then Alberta Provincial Museum (now the Alberta Royal Museum), had been trying to capture the Scriver collection of artifacts for many years. The threats and actions were drastic and dire. Not least were the consequences to Bob’s health, including mental health. Stepney himself, carrying a curse, died of a rare cancer.

After Bob had died and his estate had disappeared into Montana Historical Society storage (the money diverted to lawyers), the same threatening tribal people were irate that he didn’t leave everything to them. They didn’t really want the stuff. They have even less money to manage the collections and properly protect the archives. They wanted the political capital and to quietly sell what they could for personal profit. Ask about the Museum of the Plains Indians. It’s an old story on the rez. It’s what people who have been colonized learn to do. Ask around in Kandahar.

Bob’s situation was more painful than Tim’s in one way. In the Sixties Bob and I became Bundle-Keepers, so quietly it almost amounted to secrecy, but a matter of spiritual importance to us. Instead of selling off artifacts to museums back east, we were keeping the ceremonies alive, investing money in their perpetuation. Those private objects weren’t sold until after Bob’s death and even then some of them were not sold, but rather seized at border crossings and covertly given to individual Blackfeet. Being a Bundle-Keeper is an obligation I respect and have tried to fulfill in part by composing the Blackfeet materials available here and at Lulu.com/prairiemary. I do not attend ceremonies. At any rate, this is a source of solidarity with Tim.

Next after that is an interest in the morality of sex that I relate to the UU ministry. Of all the categories of right/wrong, this one has been most derailed by technological development. Birth, death, and sexual behavior have all been revolutionized along with the ways we value human identity and organize our society. We have been forced to recognize that homosexuality is present in about ten per cent of all mammals. Scientists studying voles discover that sexual fidelity is controlled by one gene. Artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogate gestation, DNA identification, and organ transplants, all meddle with assumptions deep in our behavior and legal arrangements. They no longer fit very well. The ensuing issues of guilt and secrecy have real consequences, sometimes evil. Much work to be done here and many quietly ponder the issues.

Actual babies are an issue Tim and I do not share. He loves babies, has two little granddaughters of his own, wrote an article about baby massage, and early in his working career in a Chippewa construction camp (he was the teenaged cook) cared for an abandoned baby while its mother was in jail. When he says this, I believe it. He has put many years of work into the protection and nurturing of disabled children, including diapered teenagers. I have not. I have no intention of starting. He can tell me about it. On the other hand, I’m absorbed in the discoveries about human development, especially the brain, so I meet Tim there. This is a literary and philosophical alliance that may be of interest to others.

Another difference is my interest in local history, geology, governance and people. I tend to post my family issues to separate blogs, like www.swanrivermanitoba.blogspot.com. Book and movie reviews are of interest to my readers, but not so much Barrus. We share interest in art and the Human Potential Movement.

Tim and I do not make money from writing. I’m on social security. He’s paid to direct Cinematheque, his at-risk-but-gifted boys’ school that turns out videos. We don’t have to make compromises or pretend to be who we are not. We don’t spare each other. Eyes on the goal please. The goal is of our collaboration to increase understanding and provision for boys at risk. This goal will not go out-of-date.


TIM’S RESPONSE (I asked for it.):

The public/private thing comes roaring in here like a trainwreck.

I have learned some things I did not know.

Pedophiles. To the boys, they just come with the territory. My own reaction is anger. Their reaction is fear.

It makes no sense to me (it never will) that these men seek to have sexual encounters with males who are infected with the HIV virus. I just don't get it.

The boys are afraid of being victimized -- hurt -- physically.

I used to dismiss this fear.

I was wrong.

The boys have been hurt -- physically -- because I was not diligent enough.

It will never happen again.

We're public (some art is public, some isn't; if we were just a group home it would be different, but we are an ART program) but only to a certain extent and it is a high-wire balancing act.

I was horrified when Tristan was fist-fucked by a pedophile and Tristan almost died. Other boys have been seriously harassed. One boy got in trouble with the law when he beat a pedophile who had been stalking him relentlessly.

It's the stalking that is a new one on me.

It's the length these people are willing to go (travel to a foreign country) to find the boys.

The last go-round was a man who called himself a journalist. He got way too close and it was my fault.

I will never do another interview. It's dangerous.

This is all new territory to me.

The people who do NOT go away (they are driven) who would (and have) hurt them.

So we are out there to a certain extent with our art. But not so out there with our somewhat vulnerable selves.

It's always an issue.

In fact, it has been brought to my attention that kidnapping is a possibility and I need to be vigilant.

How is all of this drama possible.

It's not that the boys are victims as much as it is that people SEE them as victims who can be victimized (I am learning it is a cycle) again and again.

I have a fourteen-year-old who wants to film a documentary about homelessness. In the past, I would have said: go for it.

But now the image of a fourteen-year-old out there on the street with a camera by himself is more than scary and I have said no to this project.

I try not to become conservative. But my first responsibility is their immediate safety (many of them have parents who have abused them and are on the warpath to find them) and it is a burning, explosive issue. I have hidden boys from fathers. I have moved boys around like it was a game of chess. I have seen the cigarette burn scars on their bodies. I have seen the X-rays of bones broken and healed over but not well and not correctly, I have seen the bruises, I have seen the broken noses, and I see the terror all the time.

I once thought that doing art would be the (esoteric) challenge and being safe was just down toward the bottom of my list.

I was dead wrong.

Yes, we do make art. But this is about STAYING ALIVE so we can.

I wish I could say law enforcement is a help. That's a laugh. Law enforcement sees the boys as the problem. They get locked up all the time for violations like breaking a curfew law instituted in 1939 that no one pays any attention to. We avoid law enforcement like the plague. Please don't write to me about law enforcement being our "friend."

This is the real world. Not day care where little boys want to be firemen and policemen. In our world, the status quo sees the boys as analogous to pieces of meat. Hanging on to your humanity is the biggest challenge of all. -- t

(The best way to access the Cinematheque videos is through Facebook. You'll see some of his readers there.)

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I thought this image might be too rough until I read the following linked story.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jun/16/holocaust-on-stage/