19 Mar 2009
Rent or Mortgage?
The shop that sold me a candy pink fluffy 80s style tape recorder last year closed its doors for the last time on Tuesday. It was a clear sign to me that the recession takes pity on nobody. Our gay bunker is being shaken to its shiny happy core and while some gay businesspeople scratch their heads bemusedly and plan how to counter-attack, others are running for their lives. Gay nurses, advertising execs and estate agents have all been “terminated”. How does one pay the mortgage when nobody is looking at one’s slick ads in the glossies or buying ones fabulous range of penis inspired spoons? Who is going to bail us out?
Bailing yourself out is an expensive business. Basically, you need money and to get money, you need to have something people want. For many, there is only one thing left to sell.
Themselves.
In desperation, Spanish men are drifting back into the world’s oldest profession. In the golden 90s and noughties, immigrant Brazilians, Romanians, Cubans and the odd Moroccan had that niche market completely cornered. Now, many locals are muscling in. And I thought cockfights were illegal.
The Spanish government has finally started urging people to spend, spend and spend. The idea seems to be to get people to buy locally produced goods. Will any of that consumer patriotism dribble down to society’s underbelly? Do people who use the services of rent boys care about what happens to the Spanish economy, or will foreigners' discounted sexual acts mean that it all ends up in a mass rent demonstration outside the offices of the Ministry for Trade and Commerce? Will the nouveau Spanish rentboys demand better rates of pay or will foreign rentboy vigilante groups start roaming around Madrid, ridding the streets of the competition? Are there any more questions I could ask?
Rentboys are just like any one of us, in fact they are us. They are our neighbours. They are the cute guy we see at the bus stop. They eat, drink, read GCN, go to Dunnes Stores and have sex. But how many of them actually chose their profession because they wanted to? As economic necessity pushes many of us to the limit, let's not forget to look out for others. Now may just be that time.