everyday life & health
Behind a strip of gay bars in the heart of Houston’s Montrose neighborhood sits a shaggy 25-year-old in ratty clothes, perched on top of a fence clutching a plastic, red gas can.
Two older men in tight jeans look him up and down, but shake their head as they pass him by. As the men walk off, he follows them, telling them that he will sell them the gas container that he has just found on the street for a dollar. They tell him, ‘No.’
He really isn’t interested in selling his gas can though. He’s trying to sell himself.
Stephen is a male prostitute and is addicted to crack cocaine. He’s been in Houston for more than year, living on the street, having sex with men, so that he can get enough money to buy more crack. Although he says isn’t gay, he sells himself to men, many times for less than five dollars a trick.
“I don’t have prices,” said Stephen. “It’s just like I take what I can get. I do everything, but I don’t let them fuck me in the ass, cause I’m not gay. I’ll fuck them in the ass, but I can’t do it [let them do it to me]. Gay guys are like that, and I’m not gay, and I can’t relax the muscles in my ass enough for them to stick their dicks in me.”
Stephen has been living on the street off and on since he was 17 years-old. His mother, a recovering addict, divorced his father when Stephen was younger. Stephen left home and started doing drugs: heroine, marijuana, cocaine and crystal meth.
He hitch-hiked his way from Washington state to Texas, along with some friends. Along the way, Stephen got into an argument with the man he was riding with, and was kicked out of the car in Houston leaving him without shelter, friends and money.
One day a man told Stephen that he would pay him $20 to look at his penis and Stephen agreed. Now, eight years later, Stephen is still on the street turning tricks. Nowadays, he’s living underneath a Mexican restaurant eating out of dumpsters.
“I don’t like doing it, but there’s no other job that I can have that can support what I do,” said Stephen. “I think I could quit if I met the right girl someday, maybe. That might make me want to stop.”
Only a few blocks down, still on the same street in Montrose, waiting underneath a lamp post is a different boy toy. James, a 43-year-old black bisexual, is also a street prostitute. He looks a little better off than Stephen though. Dressed in a woven “pancho” with the hood pulled up, James paces under the yellow street light, waiting for his next trick. A waiter by profession, James came to Houston from Galveston a few months ago, but says he was unable to find a job.
“You have to have a car in Houston,” said James. “I am saving up for a car and I'm half way there. I live by myself and have a nice apartment. As soon as I get enough money for a car, I will quit.”
Unlike Stephen, James seems to enjoy the sex at times. With a diamond-stud nose-ring and no drug habit, James seems better off than his competition down the block. He claims that he makes about $500 a week, charging $10 for a hand-job, $30 for a blow-job and $50 for anal sex.
“It’s a job,” said James. “You gotta do what you have to do.”
“Doing what you have to do” is an all too familiar a story to Paige Mahogany, who sits in a Montrose-area McDonalds on Westheimer, sipping on a cup of orange juice.
Mahogany, now 35, is biologically a man, but has been living as a woman since the age of 17. When she was kicked out of her parent’s house because of her lifestyle choice, Mahogany took to the streets where she became a prostitute.
“I know exactly what these people are going through,” said Mahogany. “I feel so bad for them, but it is a decision that they have to make, whether or not to get off of the streets and work legitimately.”
After being arrested and spending seven and a half years in prison, Mahogany now heads up Community Awareness for Transgender Support, which counsels Montrose’s street prostitutes. CATS passes out condoms and tries to assist in getting jobs and kicking drug habits. Mahogany says that many transgender men find themselves out of work, on the streets and addicted to crack cocaine once their families abandon them.
“It just isn’t something that anyone should have to subject themselves to,” said Mahogany. “Working the streets out here is dangerous. I am lucky I’m alive. I have lots of friends who aren’t.”
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