Hall Rentboys, Barflies and Kept Men Men Involved in Sex With Men For Compensation in Prague

Sexualities
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Rent-Boys, Barflies, and Kept Men: Men Involved in Sex with Men for
Compensation in Prague
Timothy M. Hall
Sexualities 2007 10: 457
DOI: 10.1177/1363460707080983
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Article
Abstract Since the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Czech

Republic (epitomized for westerners by Prague) has acquired a
reputation for sexual liberalism and has become a major
destination for tourists from developed countries seeking sexual
opportunities. Little attention from policy or social theory
perspectives has focused on Czech males involved in commercial
sex. Drawing on the authors larger ethnographic project on gay
identities in Prague, this article looks at the experiences of gayidentified men in Prague involved in homosexual commercial sex
and some of the problems they face, and considers the
relationship of compensated sex to other aspects of local gay
scenes.
Keywords commercial sex, Czech, homosexuality, male
prostitution
Timothy M. Hall
University of California, USA
Rent-Boys, Barflies, and Kept Men:

Men Involved in Sex with Men for
Compensation in Prague
Introduction
In recent years, the Czech Republic and particularly Prague have become
known both regionally and internationally as a major destination for
tourists seeking sexual opportunities both gay and straight (Golgo, 2003).
Soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, tourists from neighbouring
Austria and Germany began visiting cities in what was then Czechoslovakia.
They were drawn not only by curiosity about their neighbours who had
been hidden for so long behind the Iron Curtain, but also in increasing
numbers by a growing sexual mystique around Eastern, Slavic women and
men, seen as wild, passionate, uninhibited in some ways more primitive
and natural than the restrained and civilized Germans (Bunzl, 2000).
Sexualities
Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 10(4): 457472 DOI: 10.1177/1363460707080983
http://sex.sagepub.com
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Sexualities 10(4)
Tourists and guides alike described Prague as the new Amsterdam

(Dolealov, 2003), connoting a city of decadence, inexpensive for the
Western traveler with hard currency, and with few social or legal restrictions regarding indulgence in alcohol (Btora, 1995; Hall, 2005),
recreational drugs (Csmy, 1999), and casual sex either heterosexual or
homosexual an image bolstered by the export of female and male fashion
models, and of gay and straight porn videos produced by both local and
international studios (Marritz, 2007).
It is of course difficult to evaluate discourses of sexual tolerance: what
aspects of whose behavior, attitudes, or formal legislation, and in comparison to what or to whom? By many objective measures, the Czech
Republic has a more liberal stance towards sexuality than do many Western
countries: relatively low age of consent (15 for both heterosexual and
homosexual sex), effective legality of adult sex work, frank and generally
uncontroversial depictions of sexuality and nudity in the media, and recent
approval of a form of gay marriage, among others. Certainly the contrast
with some Eastern European countries such as Romania or Russia, where
homosexual individuals and groups continued to face persecution throughout the 1990s, is striking (tulhofer and Sandfort, 2005). The Czech
Republic is also among the least religious countries in Europe (though with
a visible Catholic and Hussite heritage and a small but vocal Christian
political party). However, these tolerant attitudes and behaviors are most
prevalent in the cities and among the younger generation, while many older
and less urban Czechs regard extramarital or non-heterosexual sexuality
with ambivalence or dismay. The experiences of tourists visiting an urban
metropole such as Prague only indirectly reflect life outside the city centers
or the daily lives of most Czechs.
Part of the Western gay fantasy of Slavic sexuality since the early
1990s derives from the relative availability in post-socialist countries of
heterosexual-appearing men who are willing to engage in sex with other
men (Douglas, 1998; Persky, 1996). This entails sex-gender dynamics
different from those described in ethnographies of Latin America and the
Caribbean, for example, where local categories include heterosexually
identified men who play the penetrative role in same-sex encounters and
often represent themselves or are locally construed as hypermasculine
(Carrier, 1995; Murray, 1995; Padilla, 2007). Nor does Czech culture
traditionally elaborate a third-gender category (Hall, 2003), though the
Czech medical establishment recognizes transsexual individuals in terms
framed by Western biomedicine and treats them accordingly. Drag
performance also exists across Central Europe as a form of theater.
However, neither of these are particularly associated with sex work as is
the travesti figure in parts of Latin America (Kulick, 1998) or the hijra in
India (Nanda, 1998). While Czech gay subcultures recognize that some
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Hall Rent-Boys, Barflies, and Kept Men
men prefer to play the aktivn and others the pasivn role in anal sex
(Prokopk, 2001), they elaborate this distinction much less than some
other cultures. Likewise, interviews with gay tourists in Prague failed to
elicit consistent representations of Czech men as either hypermasculine or
particularly feminine (or predominantly tops or bottoms); instead they
were contrasted favorably with Western gay men in terms such as uninhibited, unpretentious, and friendly. Western tourists perceive the
image projected in locally produced (and internationally marketed and
financed) gay pornography as a polymorphous (Bunzl, 2000: 8590) and
natural pansexuality (Quin, 2005).
This international marketing as a sexual paradise by both local and
foreign enterprises has profoundly shaped the economics and social structure of gay life in the Czech Republic. Alongside the significant heterosexual sex industry in Prague and the border towns, Prague has an
extensive homosexual commercial sex scene with many gradations:
cruising grounds, penzione for tourists looking for rent-boys, strip clubs
and saunas. (Many English-speaking expatriates and tourists throughout
Europe use the term rent-boy to describe males who engage in compensated sex and guidebooks often refer to availability of rent-boys or escorts
at particular venues.) Gay Praguers are frequently reminded of the
presence, money, and activities of Western tourists, and a spectrum of
commercial sex activities paralleling and intersecting mainstream gay bars,
cafs, and discos.
Origin of the project and methods

Since 1999, I have been doing ethnographic research in the gay communities in Prague, looking at processes of identity and community formation.
My fieldwork included regular attendance with informants at several gay
clubs. I visited most gay establishments in Prague at least once, including
the three main rent-boy clubs. I also visited gay establishments in Brno,
Bratislava and some smaller towns.
Following participant observation methods (DeWalt et al., 1998), I
became part of several gay social networks, establishing ongoing working
and friendly relationships with a core group of 14 gay-identified Czech and
Slovak men (born 19701982) in Prague, meeting their partners, roommates, and/or families, and spending time with them in diverse settings
over several years. I have also known some 46 gay- or bisexually-identified
men in Prague (born 19551982) over a period of years, with whom I
have conducted multiple open-ended life-history interviews (Plummer,
1983). I also interviewed some 18 gay foreigners living in Prague and a
number of local experts, community leaders, and entrepreneurs for their
perceptions of the local gay community.
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All interviewees knew of my university affiliation and that I was writing

about gay life in Prague for publication. They were aware that they could
request some or all of their statements not be used. The Institutional
review boards at UCSD and the University of Chicago reviewed research
protocols for ethical considerations. Unless interviewees were highly
fluent in English, interviews were conducted in Czech. In most cases, I
wrote up the notes in English shortly thereafter. The clinical (Herdt,
1999) and person-centered (Levy and Hollan, 1998) ethnographic
approaches in which I trained emphasize psychological case studies; thus
I use direct quotations sparingly in the following.
Early in my fieldwork I was struck by the prevalence of commercial sex
within the gay scenes in Prague, both more widespread and more visible
than in US or Western European settings that I knew. This was particularly brought home as I saw a group of friends and informants in their late
teens and early 20s, including the young man described later in this article
as Petr, transform into a pattern of part-time or full-time sex work during
my first year of fieldwork. I met Robert when he was no longer actively
engaging in commercial sex, but I saw the difficulties he encountered
returning to conventional employment. In all, my gay- and bisexualidentified informants included some eight young men (born 19731984)
who were currently or previously involved in commercial sex on a regular
basis (not counting two others who had performed in erotic films).
Scholarship of commercial sex in the Czech lands

Scholars have recently begun surveying the history and social setting of
heterosexual sex work in the Czech lands during the 19th century and the
First Republic (Haman, 1999; Lenderov, 2002). In a 1993 national
survey, Weiss and Zver ina found that 9 per cent of men and no women
reported having paid for sex at least once in their lifetime and 3 per cent
of women and no men reported ever having engaged in sex in return for
financial compensation. On follow-up in 1998, 14 per cent of male respondents and no women reported having paid for sex and 4 per cent of female
respondents and no men reported having accepted money for sex (Weiss
and Zver ina, 2001: 8893). No surveys have explicitly examined homosexual commercial sex in the Czech Republic. Aside from some case studies
(Nedoma, 1962) and journalistic accounts (Dolealov, 2003), male
commercial sex in the Czech Republic remains largely undocumented and
under-theorized.
There are several stories to tell here regarding men and youth who
participate in commercial sex in Prague. In his two documentaries Body
without Soul (1994) and Not Angels But Angels (1995), and the feature
film Mandragora (1997), Polish director Wiktor Grodecki depicts the
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lives of young men selling sex in Prague in the 1990s. His films focus on
the least empowered of Czech males engaged in sex work: often fleeing
abusive homes; exposed to violence from rivals, pimps, and clients; eventually hooked on hard drugs and sometimes contracting HIV. There is a
different story to tell regarding heterosexually-identified students or
young men during their military service who engaged in occasional sex
with men for spending money. None of these groups have much contact
with the mainstream gay scenes in Prague except through a handful of
establishments (bars and guest-houses) oriented towards homosexual
commercial sex. In his essay on gay Austrian tourists who visit Prague
looking for sexual encounters with young Czech men, Bunzl (2000)
describes and interrogates the Orientalist views of many Germanophone
tourists in Central Europe.1
The present article tells a different set of stories: those of young Czech
men who identify as gay and see themselves as part of the gay community
and who also engage in various forms of sex for compensation. This article
describes various strategies used by men who engage in sex for compensation, some ways that young gay men become involved in it, how they
represent themselves and their activities, and some of the problems they
face. It thus aims to fill an important gap in our understanding of gay
males who exchange sexual services for various forms of compensation by
blurring the lines between sex work unitarily conceived and more
nuanced forms of compensated sex (Agustn, 2005a).
The makeup of homosexual commercial sex

in Prague
There is almost no historical documentation of male commercial sex in
Prague for the period since 1989. Neither the main local NGO concerned
with women sex workers and trafficking nor the Czech police agencies
collect information on males older than 18 who engage in sex work (La
Strada and the Czech Interior Ministry, personal communications).
Projekt ance, a small outreach organization for young men involved in
sex work, has not collected much systematic information (Laszlo Smegh,
personal communication). Reports of arrests for procuring, contributing
to the moral delinquency of a minor (the charge for compensated sex with
someone under 18), and similar infractions suffer from uneven enforcement and are difficult to interpret. The brief history given here is largely
drawn from the account of one informant who frequented the rent-boy
clubs in Prague throughout the 1990s, as corroborated and supplemented
by anthropologist Fabiano Golgo (personal communication) and his
research assistant who interviewed male sex workers in Prague in the late
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1990s, and by my inquiries within the gay community regarding the

organization and history of local gay establishments. Owners and staff of
the rent-boy clubs themselves appeared to change frequently and were
unwilling to speak with me on the record.
When Western tourists began arriving in the early 1990s, the mainstream gay scene and the commercial sex scene were both intermingled
and poorly organized. There was little infrastructure: a few small bars,
one or two gay dance clubs at any given time, and few if any accommodations with English- or German-speaking staff friendly to gay tourists
seeking sexual opportunities. When the clubs were closed or unavailable
to young men seeking sexual opportunities (compensated or not)
because they looked too young, too disreputable, or had had conflicts
with the management they would hang out in known cruising areas
such as the main train station where they risked harassment by police or
thieves (cf. Persky, 1996; Quin, 2005; Schluter, 2002, for comparable
descriptions elsewhere in Eastern Europe). Some tourists sought younger
partners than would be legal or feasible in their home countries, taking
advantage of the lower age of consent and looser enforcement in
post-revolutionary Czechoslovakia.
From the mid-1990s, homosexual commercial sex in Prague developed
a more formal infrastructure. Entrepreneurs, both local and foreign
opened several guesthouses catering to male tourists seeking male sexual
partners (some actively oriented towards commercial sex). Around the
same time, a 24-hour bar opened within walking distance of the train
station, where rent-boys could congregate at any time and meet clients
free from harassment by the police and out of the cold in winter. Over the
next few years, imitators followed at locations around the city center.
These clubs also served as sites where some younger gay men first became
involved with commercial sex. Gay youth learned that the club near the
train station often had the largest gathering of gay and bisexual men their
own age, and was the only gay club with a dance floor open on weeknights. Towards the end of the 1990s a higher-end, more expensive class
of callboys and escorts began to appear, groomed by the management at
several strip clubs. They usually spoke English or German at a conversational level and worked through agencies that arranged for their
housing, gym membership, and so forth. They also tended to be
somewhat older up to mid- or late 20s, though still young-looking as
the more upscale clubs have a stake in ensuring that their employees are
of legal age.2
The vast majority of males involved in commercial sex in the Czech
Republic in the 1990s appear to be Czech, Slovak or ethnic Roma from
the Czech and Slovak Republics (92% in one survey by Projekt ance from
1999, reported in Dolealov, 2003: 92). This stands in sharp contrast to
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women engaged in heterosexual commercial sex in Czech Republic, many

of whom are from Eastern or Southeastern Europe.
Case studies
Discussions of commercial sex often ignore the fact that people engage in
sexual acts for many reasons: gratitude, pity, admiration, or affection;
desire for security or companionship; to make someone jealous, enact
revenge, or outdo a rival; to obtain payment or a favor none of which
entail or exclude sexual desire and pleasure. Some interactions (especially
with foreigners and tourists, who are perceived to be wealthier than most
locals) are entered into partly because of financial considerations but may
be leavened with a mixture of romantic ideas on both sides (cf. Brennan,
2004; Kempadoo, 2004). Often these exchanges are expressed as gifts and
friendliness rather than quid pro quo transactions. One unanticipated
finding from a demographic survey I distributed was that a number of
young men who admitted to having sex for money also reported having
paid others for sex.3 Like Robert, they may participate as consumer or
seller of sex depending on their finances and their desires at a given time.
Others view some regular clients as a sort of friend, and in some cases
progress to the point where a client or potential client becomes a
boyfriend. As recent studies of women who engage in commercial sex have
increasingly noted, many only do so occasionally, either to supplement
income from other sources or to support themselves between other jobs;
often they see sex work neither as a defining feature of their identities
nor as a long-term or full-time career (Agustn, 2005b, Keough, 2003).
Similarly, many Prague men who on some occasions engage in commercial
sex may at other times serve as unofficial tour guides, interpreters, or as
intermediaries in finding and negotiating for sex with others.
All this makes it difficult to define commercial sex or who counts as a
participant within the Prague gay scene, as much of it occupies a spectrum
of contestability: time-limited, framed as a gift, occurring within a
relationship with financial benefits. Though some who engage in sex work
full time or nearly so, as Petr (described later) has come to do, may
acknowledge a status as prostitute, most do not. (None of my informants used the term sex worker. When speaking English, Czechs tend to
say prostitute or bitch; in Czech, the colloquial term is lapka,
roughly streetwalker.) Both the commonness of commercial sex and its
relatively fluid boundaries generate an anxiety among many men on the
Czech gay scenes, and a need to draw lines locating the pale of acceptable
behavior somewhere beyond ones own actions. While Czech society
generally holds tolerant attitudes towards private sexual behavior (Hall,
2003), compensated sex and particularly the explicit exchange of sex for
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money, though legal, are marked rather than unmarked forms of sex.4
Most of my informants involved in sex for compensation strove to represent themselves in the least stigmatized light possible when interacting
with their mainstream peers. Some openly denied past engagement in
commercial sex if the subject arose, while others presented themselves as
having participated in less potentially stigmatizing activities such as go-go
dancing or stripping, but not having exchanged sex for money (Morrison
and Whitehead, 2005; cf. Salamon, 1989).
The cases that follow demonstrate three strategies of sex for compensation: the barfly, sex for pocket money, and the kept man. These forms
are neither exhaustive nor exclusive, nor do they represent distinct types
of persons, but they sketch out the variety of behaviors between explicit
sex-for-money transactions and romantic/sexual interactions construed
by all involved as non-commercial. Though these are not clearly defined
emic categories, I argue that many persons on the gay scenes implicitly
recognized them. The barfly strategy and sex for pocket money are
effective ways of resisting identification as a sex worker, the one because
it is (initially) occasional, and the other because sex, when it occurs, is
bound up in multiple exchanges of services (such as interpreting) for gifts
(such as drinks). Similarly, men on the gay scene do not usually use a single
word or phrase to identify relationships that they consider to be heavily
influenced by one partners financial advantages, but they often comment
on these obliquely: Of course, Jardas bringing his new boy, where
everyone knows that Jarda, a successful Czech businessman in his 50s, is
dating a different blond in his 20s every few months. Friends and
acquaintances are generally discreet regarding longer term relationships
with obvious disparities in finances and age or attractiveness; however,
when problems such as infidelities or monetary conflicts occur, they are
quick to invoke the basic inequality of the relationship (implying a less
solid emotional foundation) as explanation.
The barfly: Robert

Robert was born in 1982 and grew up as the youngest child of a family
in a village about 100km from Prague. Though not wealthy, his parents
own a small business and live comfortably. Much of his impulsive
behavior has been excused as a consequence of a serious childhood illness
and he has been somewhat indulged as the only son. His parents encouraged him to find a job after he finished vocational school at 18, though
they recognized that local work was scarce. For nearly two years, Robert
managed to put them off with tales of seeking work in the city and the
difficulty of finding accommodations. In fact, he would go to Prague or
the nearby town for days at a time and hang out at the train station, in
parks, or in bars, and network through the local (mainly heterosexual)
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marijuana-smoking youth. They might stay in a bar until morning, or

sometimes Robert could sleep on someones couch or find a sexual
partner. On occasion, he would go to a rent-boy club in Prague or to the
train station, where he met older men who would buy him drinks or food
and perhaps hire him for the night.
During his 19th year, the year before I met him, both his drug use and
his involvement in sex work escalated. Robert progressed from marijuana
through hallucinogens to pervitin (desoxyphedrine, an amphetamine
common in Central Europe) and cocaine. To pay for his increasingly
expensive habit, he began turning tricks full-time. This lasted about half a
year before Robert decided that this was not how he wanted to live: he was
sleeping with middle-aged tourists and businessmen several times weekly
just to pay for his drug habit, leaving him little time for other interests.
Luckily for Robert, he had an intact and relatively forgiving family to
return to an attitude probably enhanced by their ignorance of his activities in Prague (though they knew of his sexual orientation). He stopped
going to Prague for some time and sobered up. In seeking more conventional work, however, he encountered many of the problems faced by
young men who have been in the black or grey markets sex work, selling
drugs, working for cash and without proper documentation. They often
owe months or years of back taxes for health insurance and social services
and they lack qualifications or references for formal employment (both
very important in this post-socialist country).5 Roberts enthusiasm at
finding a job was greatly diminished when he discovered that the government would be garnishing about a third of his salary for the next two
years, leaving him unable to afford accommodation in Prague other than
a workers hostel, and even that only on a tight budget.
When I met him, he was working part-time, living with his parents, and
again visiting Prague on the weekends. He was no longer turning tricks
on a regular basis, but he still knew a couple of middle-aged Germans
living in Prague with whom he would stay when he needed money. During
this time he found a new sponsor, Bedrich, a Czech businessman in his
40s who frequented the sex clubs in Prague and liked to have sex with
multiple partners. (Sex clubs offer the possibility of sexual encounters
with other patrons in small booths in the back or in a darkroom. Some of
these also cater in part to an S/M or leather crowd. Patrons resist paying
for sex here, as a violation of what they feel is the non-transactional ethos
of sex clubs.) This was a new thrill for Robert, who became one of
Bedrichs regular extras. Bedrich would subsidize Roberts drinks for the
evening and supply marijuana and sometimes harder drugs for their
potential sexual partners. This phase lasted about six months but eventually ended, as Bedrich was unreliable, often more interested in drugs than
in sex, and would sometimes abandon Robert for other partners.
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Three years later, Robert is in his mid-20s and again living at home in
the village, renting from his parents and working in construction nearby.
When business is slow, he comes to Prague. He still visits his German
acquaintances when he needs cash, either sleeping with them for money
or gifts, or acting as a mediator when they want to solicit Czechs who do
not speak German. When I visited him and his family in 2006, he was
again smoking marijuana regularly; at least two dealers in the village now
supply harder drugs, and he and several heterosexual friends take pervitin
when they can afford it.
Robert expresses mixed feelings about his previous activities. He says
that he was happier when he was younger because he was more desirable,
Everyone wanted me then, men and girls. On the other hand, his work
gives him a local identity as a man: even though he is often disruptive and
undisciplined, his faults are viewed as masculine faults and his family
accord him much more respect than before. Though Robert has no moral
qualms about commercial sex as such, he distinguishes among different
forms of involvement in it. When I recently asked about his former schoolmate, for instance, he replied with a mixture of contempt and jealousy,
Radims in Prague these days sucking cocks for cash. Radim identifies as
heterosexual and was living with an older girlfriend in Prague before she
broke up with him; now he spends most of his time in gay clubs with
clients. Robert feels that Radim is motivated by laziness and drugs rather
than sexual desire, whereas he himself engaged in compensated sex both
with his preferred gender and in a more occasional way.
Robert demonstrates a mixed repertoire that blurs the lines between
what is locally recognized as commercial sex and other forms of sexual and
economic relationships. Though he has, on occasion, exchanged sexual
favors for money, he more often tries to find some other approach. Robert
prefers to trade his companionship, interpreting abilities, and youthful
charms for money or favors without usually engaging in sex. He attaches
himself to an older partner who will subsidize him, put him up for a night
(or longer), or buy him drinks, and persuades former lovers or new
acquaintances to lend him the money for a bus ticket home on Monday
morning. Occasionally he even pays it back. This mixed, partial, and
variable engagement with sex for compensation allows Robert to present
himself convincingly on the gay scene as an amiable opportunist rather
than as dependent on commercial sex (in contrast to his former friend
Radim, or to Petr, described next).
Sex for pocket money: Petr

Sex for pocket money can lead into full-time sex work. Petr was the leader
of a group of some four or five boys, ranging in age from 17 to 22. He
was barely 18 when I met him through his mid-20s boyfriend, with whom
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he was then madly in love. Petr was an incorrigible flirt with a penchant
for older men and a large circle of casual acquaintances. He came from a
middle-class family and was attending a college preparatory school
(gymnzium), though he had no concrete plans to attend university.
Like most Czech students, Petr and most of his friends were
chronically short of cash when I first knew them. Often I would see them
together at the main gay disco, discreetly passing around a bottle of wine
that they smuggled into the club to save money on drinks. A few months
later, however, the situation changed. Petr had found a new friend,
Zdenek a few years older than most of the boys in the group and always
dressed in provocative clothing: tight-fitting, often sleeveless shirts and
tight pants, and with bleached hair. After Zdenek joined their group, I
saw them much less often in the mainstream bars. When I did encounter
them, they were evasive about where they had been. Suddenly they had
money not only to buy their own drinks, but new mobile phones and
new clothing as well. I would sometimes see Petr later in the evening
with men who were clearly clients Germans, Britons and Americans in
their 40s and 50s. As the months passed by, Petr spent more and more
time in his new role and less and less time with his old friends. When I
pressed him on the matter, he seemed embarrassed but explained, You
know I like older men anyway. Its not hard for me to go on a date with
someone like that. His former friends who had not followed him into
sex work expressed disappointment and dismay when they talked about
Petr. As his former boyfriend told me, I didnt want to believe it about
him at first. He comes from a good family and I dont understand why
he does this. He doesnt need the money.
When I left the field two years later, Petr was still in school (and now
spoke excellent English and German, practiced with his many clients),
though he had not yet matriculated at university. He continued to live at
home with his parents who appeared unaware of his activities. By that
point, however, he had largely discarded his former modesty about his
source of income while among his peers. He was bragging to his schoolmates about getting money from tourists in return for sex, and he had not
held any other jobs. Petr was quite visible in his involvement in sex work
and would likely be unable to hide his past should he choose a more
conventional gay lifestyle. However, like most of the young men in similar
positions whom I interviewed, he has no clear plans or aspirations for
other work when his career as a rent-boy comes to an end.
The kept man: Richard

Richard exemplifies a third pattern that I describe as the kept man. Like
many (though not all) men in this situation, he himself does not use this
term; however, most of his friends and acquaintances on the gay scene did
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know him as a younger Czech man with an older and much wealthier
foreign boyfriend, and commentaries on the dynamics of their relationship
constituted much of the gossip about him.
Richard was in his mid-20s during my fieldwork, and was widely
rumored to be a former prostitute. Several times during the first few
months that I knew him, he himself brought up these rumors and denied
them. When he was drunk, which occurred on many evenings, he would
complain No one understands me. They tell stories about me for no
reason. Richards official employment had been in minimum-wage jobs
with no real future until, at 24, he met his boyfriend Hans, whom
Richard described as his first real love. A German businessman some
eight years older than Richard, Hans owned commercial real estate and
other investments around Prague, including the flat where Richards
mother lived.
Richard lived with Hans and worked at various odd jobs for Hanss
business, including chaperoning Hanss business partners when they
visited, typically ending in a rent-boy bar or strip club. Hans also picked
up rent-boys himself from time to time. Richard had very mixed feelings
about this: he did not mind if Hans engaged an attractive young man for
the two of them to share, but he became extremely jealous when he
believed that Hans was alone with someone else. On these evenings I
would often encounter him in a pub, consoling himself with beer.
Their relationship was frequently stormy and strained, with short-term
break-ups a few times a year followed by emotional reconciliations. On the
one hand, both seemed to regard themselves as genuinely in a dating
relationship; on the other, Richard was significantly younger and more
attractive, as well as being a Czech citizen, while Hans had all the financial
advantages, though a foreigner. Neither seemed to be entirely clear about
their commitment to sexual fidelity, each allowing a certain amount of
sexual activity outside the relationship and yet frequently becoming jealous.
In a sense, Richard had achieved the goal of many young men who engage
in sex for compensation. He had found a wealthy foreign boyfriend and
his feelings were not motivated only by thoughts of material comfort. On
the other hand, their relationship remained heavily coloured by the
exchange of youth for wealth, leaving neither partner entirely satisfied.
Moreover, Richards social interactions outside their circle of mutual
friends (mainly German speakers) were constrained by the rumors that he
had been a rent-boy before he met Hans.
About a year after my main fieldwork ended, Hans left Richard for a
younger man. Richard then dated an older American expatriate for a few
months. When I last spoke with Richard in summer 2006, his feelings
were mixed. He remembered being in love with Hans and expressed both
sadness and anger at the end of their relationship, but did not want to go
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back. He had a new job that kept him very busy and was again looking
for a boyfriend.
Conclusion
For many of the gay-identified young men in Prague who participate in
commercial sex, the problems they face are not the dramatic ones described
in local tabloids or Mandragora violence, HIV, drug overdoses though
these occur. Most male tourists who come to Prague for commercial sex
seek youthful partners, so careers are short. Used to high compensation for
short and flexible hours (at least on good nights), some former rent-boys
find it difficult to work for the minimum wage, but often lack the skills or
credentials needed for higher-paying jobs. As several of my informants
discovered when they tried to find formal employment, those who have
not maintained a regular job or student status will be liable for back taxes
and other penalties. Some manage to acquire an older boyfriend who will
support them for a period of time. Many seem to end in the service
industry as waiters or bartenders, especially in gay clubs, making use of
their language and people skills. More subtly, and especially significant for
those who participate only occasionally in commercial sex, a reputation as
a former rent-boy can follow one for a long time.
Throughout this article I have tried to give a sense of the range of sexual
and romantic interactions inflected with considerations of financial advantage that take place on the gay scenes in Prague, from clearly recognized,
one-time trades of sex for money to much longer-term and multiplex
relationships. The evaluation of these interactions as motivated by financial
consideration is often contested as either or both participants resist identification as someone who pays for sex or who sells it. Part of that resistance
often lies in construing such labels so that they apply to others, as did
Robert and Richard. Understanding the spectrum of commercial sex
within the Prague gay scene, likely similar in ways to many emerging gay
scenes across the region, requires taking these multiple forms and contested
identifications into account, whether from the perspective of public health
or social interventions or from the more ethnographic project of understanding the subjectivity of those who engage in it, whether as seller, buyer,
or commentator.
Acknowledgements
I thank Robert, Richard, and Petr for their friendship and help, and Fabiano
Golgo, Ivo Prochzka, James Quin, and Jaroslav Zverina for discussions. Sealing
Cheng, Hulya Demirdirek, Deborah Elliston, Jack Friedman, Leyla Keough,
Laura Agustn, and three anonymous reviewers for Sexualities commented
helpfully on earlier drafts. Training grants from Jacob K. Javits Fellowship
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Sexualities 10(4)
(US Department of Education, PR# P170A70655); UCSD School of Medicine

(NIH #5T32GM07198), OBSR, National Institute on Aging (#5 T32
AG000243), and NIMH (#5 T32 MH01909815) supported this research.
Notes
1. I do not overlook the presence of Czech clients; however, the financial
resources of Western tourists drive male sex work in Prague to a greater
degree.
2. Raids on child pornographers and child prostitution in Prague and other
European cities in April 2001 motivated club management to keep out
underage youths thereafter.
3. One hundred and forty four Czech-speaking men aged 1861 were surveyed
in three gay bars (not oriented towards commercial sex) and two gay social
organizations in 2002. Nineteen per cent of respondents reported having
accepted money in return for sex and 22% reported having paid for sex; 9.7%
had done both.
4. Terms borrowed from structuralist linguistics into cultural anthropology. The
unmarked form of something is the default and unremarkable, while the
marked form is seen as a special case or a deviation. Post-structuralists note that
marked forms are often viewed as defective or suspect (See Derrida, 1976).
5. Golgo (personal communication) heard similar complaints during his
interviews with male sex workers in Prague in the mid-1990s.
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Biographical Note
Timothy McCajor Hall received his PhD in psychological anthropology in 2003
and his MD in 2005, both from the University of California, San Diego and in
200507 was post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. Currently he is
resident in psychiatry at UCLA. This article comes out of this ongoing
ethnographic research on gay identities/communities in the post-socialist Czech
Republic. Other research interests include eating disorders, substance abuse, folk
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