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 sex 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 sex 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.