/^~V7 tephen is an 18-year-old male prostitute who has been working on the streets since he was 16 or 17 years old. He identifies himself as gay and has sex primarily with male clients. [5]
wait too long—up to an hour at most. When a customer comes along we work out what’s going to happen. We normally go to his place—sometimes mine. We do it, I get paid, he leaves his card or phone number and goes. Normally the whole thing usually takes about an hour and I usually see the guy again—in the next few weeks. But overall there is little preparation involved.
I don’t mind doing this. It can be fun at times. You get to make a lot of money, working very small hours—normally everything goes well. If I thought there were better alternatives around (and there aren’t), I’d take them, but at the present moment in time I don’t mind.
Source: Perkins & Bennett, 1985, pp. 196-199.
older partners. Male prostitutes also have fewer career aspirations than do nonprostitutes and are more likely to view themselves as addicted to either drugs or alcohol (Cates & Markley, 1992). More than 50% of male prostitutes report using alcohol and a variety of drugs with their clients and commonly accept drugs or alcohol as a trade for sex (Morse et al., 1992).
Like female prostitutes, male street prostitutes have more psychopathology than nonprostitute peers (P. M. Simon et al., 1992), which may have to do with their dangerous and chaotic environments. They are more suspicious, mistrustful, hopeless, lonely, and often lack meaningful interpersonal relationships (Leichtentritt & Arad, 2005). These feelings may develop out of the distrust that many have for their clients; clients may refuse to pay for services, hurt them, and/or force them to do things that they do not want to do. In fact, more than half of male prostitutes report that they are afraid of violence while they are hustling (Scott et al., 2005). The majority live alone, with no partner. This may be due to the type of lifestyle they lead or to the sense of hopelessness they carry with them. Although many would like to stop prostituting, they feel that they would not be able to find other employment (P. M. Simon et al., 1992).