On Duty: The Travails of a Male Prostitute

BEST FEATURE STORY- Writeshop on Gender, Sexuality, and Reproductive Health
Sponsored by: Ford Foundation Indonesia, Media Advocates for Reproductive Health, The Visayan Examiner


It was 10 in the morning. I went to Plaza Libertad to finish my proposed article on street children few weeks ago during the College Press Conference. The dried leaves on the ground stubbornly escaped the sweeper’s eyes along the way through the cemented pathwalk. On my way, I saw a young lad curled on a stone bench near the fence. As I passed by him, he hurriedly woke up. He was so thin and tall, wearing a shirt that obviously not been washed for weeks. I said “Hi!.”
Meet seventeen-year-old Geric, eldest of Nestor and Crisanta’s nine children. Geric got as far as grade six and stopped due to the classic reasons of poverty and family circumstances, ultimately pushing him to roam around the city. The gnawing in his stomach became an incessant itch, weirdly comforted by the bulky stone bench in the plaza. It was almost “home” offering him warmth, a place to dream for food.
Last September, his mother Crisanta died giving birth to her ninth. He found his drunkard father and his other siblings disappear like mists in their shed at Fort San Pedro.
All of a sudden, lured by the pain of neglect and hunger, his thirst for survival turned him into a freelance prostitute.
Unlike these “macho dancers” and registered male sex traders in gay bars, massage parlors, lodges, and KTV bars, Geric finds a comfortable nook for his trade at Regent Cinema. He goes to work almost everyday including Sundays and Holidays. Geric gets a hundred pesos per client in good days and measly ten pesos during bad days. More often, he offered sex in exchange for meals. His life right now revolves around the dim and unventilated cinema. The broken chairs and stinky odors are the silent witnesses of his so called “job.”

As far as heresays would allow, Geric is quite knowledgeable about AIDS or STD’s. But the using of condoms or of smearing tests in the nearby Reproductive Health Clinic is foreign. All that he understands is that “…basta lang may makaon ko OK na, indi lang gid mag pangawat…”
Is poverty the excuse of prostitution? Or it is just a matter of poor choice? There are many persons like Geric whose burdens since early childhood carved what he has become. What is worse is, it has become common and ordinary that plague the youth.
In an interview with Virgie Advincula, a social worker connected with Process Foundation, “prostitutes here in Iloilo City fall between 14-48 years old, both male and female, but the average “active” number ranges from 18-22 years old.” In relation to that, according to the City Ordinance 2002-237, known as “An Ordinance Promulgating Policies for the Prevention and Control of STI/ HIV AIDS cases in Iloilo City,” the commercial sex workers must be registered in the City Health Office for them to have a health certificate popularly known as the “pink card.” By this pink card the managers of the casa’s and KTV bars are assured that their “alaga” or sex workers are safe from STD’s, gonorrhea, HIV, and AIDS. However, in the case of Geric, freelancers or unregistered sex workers (street based) falls at the average age of 18 and below. They cannot be traced for HIV infection. Last year, there are already 13 cases of HIV in the city as per record, not included here are the budding population of freelancers. The government has no control over this.
In the Social Hygiene Clinic, there really are some freelancers that undergo gram-staining. Some of them came from Tanza, Rizal, Timawa, Baluarte, Villa, even Banate and some northern municipalities. It is just disappointing to note that gram-staining cannot detect AIDS/HIV, only gonorrhea, syphilis, and other same related diseases. In the current update of UNAIDS, the population of HIV/AIDS infected living children and adults reach the maximum of 39.4 M at the end of 2004.
These are just grim facts that threaten Geric. A child, who should rather be in school and not having his “duty” at the cinema or watching obsolete sexy films flashing on the wide screen repeatedly throughout the day. What is ironic is that our laws, however stringently enforced they may be, seems impotent to solve and salve Geric’s doom - or soul. We have begun to believe that there is nothing more we can do. He is a person that has submitted himself to his fate. He has become one who discovered hope through sex. He is just one of hundreds of prostitutes of Iloilo City searching for appeasement to his hunger, for the transient hours of love and belongingness, however superficial it may be. Is life really harsh for some people, or are the situations just mere outcomes of poor choices?
Last December 31, 2004 is his third year at Plaza Libertad, and all that burns in his young mind is just food for survival in his daily trod in the cemented jungle of prey and predator.At this moment, Geric is on duty. Who knows how many Gerics there may be?