BY JOHN MORRIS
She sits on the steps in front of a high-end clothing store. The gate of the store is down, since it is hours past closing, three a.m. Alex, which is both her real name and the name she goes by on the streets, is sitting with her legs wide open and her head facing down. She is eating Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream.
“This all I had to eat since earlier,” she said, still looking down into the container of ice cream. “I been out here since earlier trying to make some coins,” she said. “Coins,” is a term used among street prostitutes for money or tips from a date.
“Alex pull your skirt down, I can see your thing,” another tranny prostitute says jokingly. Alex and the two other trannies sitting on the steps began laughing. This type of teasing and laughing among trannies is common. It is called “reading,” which is a way to taunt or insult another person by having a ferocious vocabulary, a talent that seems almost innate in all tranny sex workers.
Since 2012, Alex has been a tranny sex worker on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, an area notorious for gay and transgender prostitutes. Alex, who is originally from Sacramento, California, turned nineteen last month. “My birthday was March 12th, I’m a Pisces,” she says as her face lights up.
Milkshake, the tranny who teased her about her skirt a moment ago, says, “Girl you have the right sign because you be giving me fish all day.” Once again, Alex has just been “read,” and the three tranny’s burst into laughter again. Alex quickly pulls it together and said, “ Girl, I know you not throwing shade. Bitch, don’t come for my wig,” Alex yells. The trio continue laughing, but there’s a seriousness in Alex’s face and Milkshakes knows she needs to back off.
Underneath the teasing and playful “reading,” there is vulnerability about Alex. She has an innocent face and calm demeanor. Among all the trannies on Christopher Street, Alex maybe the nicest, and most relaxed. For minutes at a time, she’ll be sitting in the midst of other trannies, laughing and yelling, but seemed to be somewhere else. Then she’ll look at the ground with an expression like she trying to figure out a difficult math problem.
Alex, came to New York in 2011 after being kicked out of her parents’ house for being gay. “I came out to my father my senior year of High School,” Alex said, looking straight ahead, as if she was envisioning the moment. “Me and my father got into a fight. He grabbed me by my neck and picked me up off the floor,” Alex said.
“I started crying. “My mother was telling him to let me go, and he let me go,” Alex said, still looking straight ahead. “I just remember cursing at my father, yo I was screaming. And I never cursed at my mother or my father, ever. But yo that day, it felt like I was having a panic attack, and I blacked out.
“I remember what he said to me too, ‘I don’t have any gay sons,’ Just like that. I’ll never forget that shit,” she said.
Alex’s story is not an uncommon one, especially within the LGBT community. Runaway or “throwaway” LGBT youth are prime victims of prostitution. According to a study published in 2007, by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, LGBT youth account for 40 percent of all homeless youth in the United States. Moreover, the study also cited that 35 percent of runaway and 36 percent of throwaway LGBT youth have experienced violence from their parents for being gay.
Alex ran away from home in 2011 and came here to New York City, where she met an older guy. “I came to New York because I was talking to an older guy online,” Alex said. “I had been talking to him on the computer for months before I actually came to New York,” she said.
“When my father kick me out, I called him and told him I had been staying with a friend but shit was getting crazy, and I couldn’t stay,” she recalled. “He told me I could come visit him in New York, and he would pay for my bus ticket,” Alex said.
“When I first got here to New York, he didn’t even pick me up from the bus terminal,” Alex remembers. “I didn’t know nothing about New York. I had to find my way around,” she said.
After moving in with the older guy, things quickly turned bad for Alex. “I was staying with and he was buying me stuff, taking me shopping. But it’s like, at the end of the day he just wanted to have sex with me,” Alex said.
“At first I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t care. But after a while I didn’t want to have sex with him no more,” she said. “He turned into a different person when he saw I wasn’t trying to have sex with him,” Alex recalled. “He came home from work one day and we got into a fight and he kick me out,” Alex said. Alex was back on the
street.
Alex went to different LGBT shelters for a place to stay, but was turned away because there was no room.
Kate Barnhart, the founder and director of New Alternatives, which is a New York City based non-profit, which advocates for homeless LGBT youth, says Alex’s story is one she sees often in her program. “The services are no where near the population,” Barnhart said.
“If you figure probably four thousand homeless youth in New York City, and we have less two-hundred beds,” Barnhart said.
“Queer beds, we have ten beds at Silvia’s place, ten beds at Trinity, and then Ali Forney have less than fifty. So that’s still seventy beds for the whole city for queer youth,” Barnhart said.
Barnhart says that once LGBT youth are turned away from the shelter system, most resolve to illegal forms of survival. “They hook up with people and go home with them,” she said.
When Alex couldn’t get into any shelters, she soon turned to the streets. She started hanging with other transgender sex workers on Christopher Street. “It was like I saw a lot my friends doing it and it was something I had been thinking about.”
According to the Task Force study, among homeless LGBT youth, transgender people are more likely to fall into prostitution than their gay and lesbian counterparts. Barnhart says, “Trans women are more visible, because a lot of the gay men are on website like Rentboy.com and Manhunt.com, but a lot of the trans women are still on the stroll.”
Barnhart also argues employment discrimination is a major factor. “Transgender have the most difficulty finding jobs, because even employers who are willing to work with gay men and lesbians, still may discriminate against transgender,” Barnhart said.
“It’s kind of like the final frontier of discrimination,” said Barnhart.
She also points out bullying as fundamental in this issue, “They also having a really hard time finishing school because a lot of them get bullied so bad that they just drop out,” Barnhart said. “If you don’t finish school, your less likely to get a job. So it’s just all a big cycle,” she said.
As for a government response to this issue, Barnhart says, “The city budget year after year, they would cut the runaway and homeless youth budget, and we would all go to city hall and be like give the money back,” Barnhart said. “We could never get ahead. We could never get more money because we were trying to fight for what we already had,” she said.
However, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, she thinks that things are get better. “There’s finally a bit of a change because de Blasio made it so that runaway and homeless youth money is part of the regular budget. So it will just occur every year, its not like we’ll have to fight for every year,” Barnhart said.
Barnhart also said resources are another part of the solution. “They need jobs, and if they can’t get jobs in the regular work force, then we need to create jobs programs for them,” Barnhart said. “And we need housing, so those are the top two,” she said.
Barnhart also added, “A lot of our young trans folk have gone through a lot of trauma, and that affects their functioning and they could definitely used mental health help for dealing with that.”
It’s now almost four a.m. and Alex, who is wearing a black mini skirt with a white t-shirt tied in the back, is still sitting on the steps, waiting for a date. “You have your slow nights,” she said. “A lot of the girls are at Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. Usually when it’s slow over here, that’s where everybody’s at,” she added.
A few minutes later a guy with baggy clothes and a baseball cap walks up and asks Alex for a cigarette. After Alex gives him a cigarette, she offers him a kiss too. The guy whispers something in her ear, and Alex quickly jumps up showing her slim 5’11 physique, and caramel skin.
As she walks away with the guy, she looks over her shoulder and says, “We be back.” She turns into a dark alley with her date.