Tim Barrus: Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!

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Tim Barrus: Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!

They were hookers. It was the women who took me in and showed me the ropes.

"We'll turn you into a good little whore," they said. We laughed a lot back then.

Women like me. In my own way, I like women. Sometimes.

It wasn't what you think. I could already fuck like a puppy. What the women taught me was how to be safe.

I don't mean safe sex.

I mean safe from being beaten up. Raped. They like being raped or they wouldn't be selling it is how the typical thinking goes.

I used to go down to Fisherman's Wharf with the other flower children and we'd sell our hand-made poetry books for a dollar to the tourists getting off the boats from Sausalito. I could sell more poetry books than the women could. Especially if I took my shirt off.

I could make a lot more money selling sex than I could poetry books.

So some old guy wants to pay you to blow you so fucking what of it. Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!

Some men have to pay for it. Some men want to pay for it. Some men will fuck you, beat you up, rape you, and beat you up again. Then they rob you.

It happens. If you're out there sucking cock for cash, it will happen to you, too.

I know a lot of women. All of them are whores. They taught me what they could to play it safe because some men don't want sex; they want to kill you. I never met a whore who liked men. The whores I know hate men with every bone in their junkie bodies.

I know a lot of boys who are whores as well.

Sometimes someone will come along and tell us that we shouldn't call ourselves that name.

Give a good whore a laugh, baby.

There has to be a better name. Especially for a male.

In fact, there are lots of names you can call it.

But whore says it all and it has an edge you cultivate. That edge says: I might be a whore but I am dangerous. Fuck me but don't fuck with me.

It took me a while to get out of the business. We call it "the life." It can be a sort of living death as well. Like anything else, it's what you make of it. Most whores make a mess of it. We call that Whore Drama. Whores have Big Girl drama.

I keep telling myself that I've left the life.

But every now and then I stop the world and wonder.

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