No way! The days when young male prostitutes used to stand around the station and make good money offering sexual services to well-heeled men are said to be long over.
In the bushes. They know all the local homeless people, the female prostitutes and their pimps very well. The vast majority of them take drugs themselves or sell them, just like Honza.
Honza takes a drag on the Marlboro I offer him. He will tell us his life story for CZK He lived on the street and took showers either at the station or in the homes of his first clients. He believes real money can only be made in the luxurious or mid-level gay clubs for which Prague is rather notorious. Those running gay enterprises bet on that; the rooms are always immediately adjacent to the clubs.
He is used to people trying to trip him up. His own social work clients have robbed and threatened him more than once. Originally a professional textile artist, he has spent many years as a social worker and street worker with all sorts of children and young people who end up on the street without any help. A significant portion of his social work clients are male prostitutes. Our interview was scheduled for Shortly after he comes out from the next room in which he regularly meets with his social work clients, most of whom are former prostitutes, both female and male, the vast majority of whom have been on drugs.
Some of them are Romani. The social work clients can cook food and spend their free time at the center, talk about their problems and work in the workshops. When they are thrown out of the homes at 18 and go into the larger world, they leave their family behind. Once you throw these young people onto the street, what happens?
