I was a rent boy - ask me anything

[cumulus.james]

How did you get involved in being a 'rent boy'?

My uncle was one. Some ladies in the neighborhood started pimping him around was his story.

It is an odd story. I started feeling sexually confused at 12 yrs old in a time when there was still a lot of homophobia, and no homosexual education and no one to turn to. A chain of events occurred. I got an erection in the showers after PE when I was 13 and was teased, so I started to bunk off from school on PE days. Then one night there was a current affairs show that said there were truant officers or something ready to get errant kids like some sort of ******* child catcher and it scared me. So I bunked off the next day but was scared of getting caught and hung around the bus station. I think (I am not 100% on this) I saw someone my mum might know. So I went to hid in the toilets.

Public toilets in those days were what was called cottages. Cottaging was cruising for gay *** in public toilets. There was lewd graffiti and drawings and stuff on the walls and holes in the partitions. I saw a man masturbating. I was curious.

So I gradually kept going back looking then started to have some physical encounters with men. And I performed oral *** on a man just before my 14th birthday.

Just after my 14th birthday a man offered me money, I accepted, and he did something nasty. Cried myself to sleep. I have never, not once, celebrated my birthday ever since.

But I was poor, struggling with my sexuality and lonely. I now knew a way to get money. So I kept going back. I was 24/25 last time I did it for money.