TIME WAS a very inconsistent thing when you were stuck in the dark. It felt like we’d been sitting there against the wall for hours, but when someone opened the door, the outside light showed the shadowed gray of dusk instead of midnight black. Even that small illumination made me squint. A hulking form filled the doorway, features indistinct.
“Water,” he said in a gravelly, heavily accented voice. This accent I recognized: French. He set a blue two-gallon jug of water on the floor and left.
I heard the word water and it was as if my whole body suddenly realized it was thirsty. I crawled forward, feeling a bit like a cockroach in the dark. I almost wished it was completely dark. A complete absence of light, total blindness, somehow seemed less disturbing. My brain knew the room was empty, but the varying levels of darkness and shadow had me imagining things that weren’t there. Creepy-crawly things. Rodents. Snakes. This was like my phobia about walking somewhere when I couldn’t see my feet, only magnified.
I grabbed the jug and dragged it back to the wall where I’d left Henry. “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked, twisting off the cap and sniffing at the water. I didn’t pick up any strange odor; mostly it smelled like the plastic container and dirt.
“It depends on where the water came from.” Henry shifted a little closer. “We’ll have to risk it. I don’t think we can count on them bringing in a case of filtered, bottled water for us.”
I tipped the jug up to my mouth. I swear I could feel the stale, flat liquid soaking into my parched cells.
“Not too much,” Henry warned, reaching for the water. “It won’t do you any good if you barf it back up.”
I didn’t want to stop, but I knew he was right. “We should ration it a bit too, yeah? There’s no way to tell how much water they’ll bring us.”
Henry took a few swallows and set the container aside.
“Question.” I slid down until I lay on the hard ground, pillowing my head with my arms.
“Shoot.” The vague form that was Henry mirrored my position.
“Before you came to Cameroon, when you were living on the street, you had sex for money, didn’t you?”
There was a long pause. The tension growing in the room was a physical, palpable thing, lurking in the shadows.
“How’d you come up with that?” Henry asked finally.
“Thinking. It makes sense, and I’m curious if I’m right. And”—I looked around the small, dark room—“we’re not going anywhere.”
“My life story doesn’t exist to entertain you.”
“I’m not looking to be entertained. I want to understand you.”
“Why?”
“I like you; I like who you are. I wanted to figure out what drives a person to live on the streets for two years and suddenly come to Africa to be a missionary. You have to admit, it’s not a common story.”
“So what do you want to know? You want me to admit that I was a rent boy? Sure, I can admit that. It’s not a pretty reality, but no one promised me everything had to be pretty.” The hard edge to his voice was so different from the calm, controlled Henry I’d known the last two days, I cringed back.
I wouldn’t be put off, though. “How? I mean, how does a person get into that… field?” Given everything we’d been through so far, did it really have to be this awkward?
“It wasn’t that difficult, actually. I had wandered into one of the soup kitchens one day and met a guy my age. We became friends of a sort. I said something about being turned down for yet another dead-end, minimum-wage job. It’s crazy how hard it is for fifteen-year-olds with no ID to get a job.” I couldn’t see it, but I’d bet money he rolled his eyes. “He said he knew a way I could make decent money—fifty bucks a night if I was lucky. I laughed and told him I wasn’t that desperate. Eventually I got that desperate. I told him I’d do it once, just to tide me over for a couple of days while I tried to work something else out. He showed me the ropes, so to speak. I made fifty bucks, and all I had to do was go down on a couple of dudes.” He sounded colder, more distant, than he had at any time before this. I shivered despite the warm climate.
“I take it the fifty wasn’t enough?”
“I managed to make it last a week. But then it got cold and none of the shelters had room. I tracked down my buddy and asked him what I had to do to make enough money to find a room for rent with a couple of other guys. It sort of snowballed after that. Within two months I had a place to stay—small and crappy as it was—that I shared with a couple of other guys, and I was bringing in serious cash. I wasn’t rich or anything, but a guy who’s young and willing can actually make decent money.”
“It didn’t bother you, what you were doing?”
“At first. Then I discovered that alcohol and drugs had a way of numbing the righteous part of me—small part though it was.”
I couldn’t define the emotions swirling inside me, let alone which of those emotions likely stamped my face. Pity. Disgust. Guilt. Curiosity. I thought back to all of the stories I’d read with my GSA work about homeless youth and prostitution and the terrible cycle that was so hard to break. Drugs. Disease. They were only a part of it. Even if the body survived it, what kind of psychological damage did it do? “I’m sorry,” I finally said.
“Jesus, don’t. Don’t feel sorry for me. It wasn’t like someone was taking advantage of me or forcing me into it. I didn’t have some pimp threatening me. I went into it with my eyes wide open. I probably could have found other options eventually, but it was easier and, let’s face it, profitable to sell my body.”
I didn’t believe it was that easy. Not for him.
I wanted to touch him, offer whatever comfort I could, but I didn’t know how he’d react to that. “I’m glad you gave up that life. You’re worth so much more than that.”
He didn’t reply, but his breathing became more relaxed. “It doesn’t have to be a tragedy, you know. There are some guys who enjoy it and can make a good living. It doesn’t have to be—” He paused as though searching for the right word. “—sordid.”
The door opened again. This time someone tossed a bucket into the middle of the room. “A piss bucket.” The door shut behind him.
“Oh, good. And here I thought we were going to have to dig a hole with our hands.” I kept my voice light. Subject change? Who, me?
Henry snorted but didn’t say anything.
“How’s your hand?” I could tell Henry didn’t want to talk anymore, but I couldn’t turn off my mouth. If I shut up, the nerves and fear would come back. Henry would have to deal.
“It’s fine.”
“Not getting worse?”
“I said it’s fine.”
Pause.
“What are we going to do?”
“Isaiah?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut it.”
I shut it and stared up into the blackness. Sounds of the forest—animals and insects rumbling and chirping—the murmurs of men outside, the occasional rustle of leaves. I focused on Henry’s breathing. I tried to match the regular inhales and exhales. In. Out. In. Out. I fell asleep with images of Henry illuminated in the neon glow of city lights, do-si-do’ing with a dozen faceless strangers.