It’s Tuesday morning and I’m sat on the tube with my wheelie suitcase tucked between my legs and my rucksack on my lap.
I look up at a homeless man across from me, while other passengers desperately avoid his gaze. My wallet feels unusually heavy in my pocket: I flick through the twenties, pull out a fiver and hastily hand it over before getting off.
This was the day I realised that I was just as homeless as this man, but the privileges life had given me – how I look and how I speak – meant that there were other options for me. The night before, I’d sold my body for £200 while staying in a gay sauna in central London.
LGBT homelessness is an invisible crisis.
Statistics show that between 20-40 per cent of youth homeless identify as LGBT+ (which is hugely disproportionate given that LGBT+ people make up just 7% of the population) – yet government reports on UK homelessness don’t even mention LGBT+.
But that’s because you don’t often see LGBT+ homeless on the street. Homeless gay men (the most affected demographic) are using saunas, sex work and hook-up apps like Grindr to survive, and they aren’t talking about it because of shame.
This is how I survived, too.
I came out to my parents in 2012, and our already fragile relationship broke down soon after. Whenever I did go home, my parents kept my toothbrushes out of the way, fearing ‘contamination’, which only compounded the feeling that I was dirty and shameful.
Eventually I stopped going home altogether.
Graduate job prospects this side of the financial crisis weren’t great either, and I soon looked for any opportunity to keep myself from sleeping on the street.
When the zero-hour contracts dried up, I was forced to sacrifice my body in exchange for a roof. I didn’t tick enough boxes to get help from government agencies and charities; one of them told me I should carry on sex working as it might be my ‘best option’.
Soon after, I was diagnosed as HIV positive.
My health deteriorated and I was hospitalised on several occasions, and it was around this time that I discovered gay saunas as a place to stay.
Stripped bare of visual clues, you could never tell who was homeless or not, you were just another man in a towel
They were free for men under 25 on some nights, and there was a TV room, showers and often plenty of opportunity for sex work.
Inside the sauna it felt like the shame of the world outside evaporated in the steam; it was, in theory, a safe space. But that came with plenty of caveats as the lines of consent were often hazy.
I soon realised I wasn’t the only one using saunas as a refuge. My suitcase was too big for the lockers so I had to check it into the office, where it was promptly lined it up against a wall of suitcases almost dominating the room.
Stripped bare of visual clues, you could never tell who was homeless or not, you were just another man in a towel.
I stopped being homeless about five years ago.
That’s when I met a wonderful actress named Rebecca Crankshaw who did what the government in Finland is currently doing to fix the homeless crisis – she gave me a home, no questions asked.
If you look at me now, you’d never think I’d been homeless. I just don’t tick the box.
I feel incredibly lucky because my story is not unique, but I’m not vulnerable and I don’t feel shame anymore. I do what I can to support the LGBT+ homeless community by speaking out about my story.
If I don’t, people won’t start seeing this as a problem and nothing will change.
I’m currently performing in a play at the Pleasance Theatre, Islington called No Sweat, which explores LGBT homelessness in saunas. We need to lift the lid on this serious issue.
Hidden or not hidden, homelessness is an epidemic affecting more people than any of us can imagine.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing platform@metro.co.uk
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/27/homeless-sold-body-gay-saunas-12313545/
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