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The First Story: Trent

I was born with girl’s hormones. When I was 17, I had a friend who was a man who was older than me. We were at his house while the other household members were at church. He called me to ask me to watch television with him. But then he put in CDs with porn videos, as we continued watching, he asked if we could do it. I accepted because I also had feelings for that man. He had the lubricant, so I didn’t feel much pain, I enjoyed it. Later, when I was at a nightclub, someone took a picture of me there, and my parents saw that picture and found out I was gay. My father was a soldier, and he went to the police station and spread the photo and told everyone that if they see me, they should report to the police. When I heard about that, I had to leave my hometown and move to the big city. I felt bad about that, and in the bus, I was crying the whole way here. Until now, my parents haven’t called me to see how I’m doing.

In the city, there was a house which had an open corridor, so I used to sleep there at night but the people who lived in that house saw me sleeping there at night. So, what they did before I came, they poured water on that place, yeah, so that when I came to that place it was wet. But I found a wooden vending stall that was empty, so then I was sleeping there, and the owner didn’t find out, but later he found out about that because he saw me sleeping there and he said, ‘so you’re bringing bad luck to my business, you can’t sleep here’. So, the next day I found another corridor which was not far from that place, but it seems that the owner organized some people to come and beat me up, so when I was sleeping there in that corridor, there was a group of men coming there to where I had slept the night before. They threw a lot of stones, they thought that when I was pummelled by stones then I would wake up, but I was not there. They said to themselves, ‘he maybe went out to find men to sleep with’. I was not very far from them in the bushes, I was praying that they could not see me. So, they waited and waited, but they couldn’t find me and they left, and after that I said to myself, ‘this is not a safe place for me, I’ll go and sleep under the bridge’. I would find men to sleep with before I went to the bridge, so that I could have food. So I slept there, but one day I went to a bar during the night and found some GSDs, they were playing music and dancing to the music and so I said yeah, they are just like me, so I chatted with them and they said, ‘oh you are like us, let’s take you where we live, okay’ and those guys were living in a guest house, and the owner allowed them to stay there because they were bringing in customers, the GSDs and women were sex workers. I stayed there for some time and hung out with those GSDs until I got used to how to live like that.

The Second Story: Quinn

I grew up playing with girls, and I wanted to wear a dress to the mosque instead of boy’s clothing, but I was not allowed, and I cried about that. When I was 14 years old, I was studying at a boys-only boarding school. I saw a boy have sex with another boy, I was afraid to try myself, but when I came home during the holiday, there was a young boy who was playing football with my younger brother. That boy said, ‘if I win against your brother, you should give something of your body, if he wins, I will give you money.’ That boy had already tried his luck with me, he had seen me playing with girls, so he guessed that I had girl’s feelings. So, he tried his luck again. He won, and I went to have sex with him for the first time. I felt pain but after that, when I went to school, there was a boy who approached me and since I had already done it, I did it with him.

In 2015, there was a time I got a customer through Facebook and that man told me that he lived in another part of the city, so I had to go there. When I got there, that man was not alone, there were two men with him in the house, and they all wanted to have sex with me at the same time. But I didn’t want to, and I told him that this is not what we agreed, and I refused. But they wanted to do it by force. As we were still fighting, the others said, ‘okay let him go, but let’s take everything he has’. So, they took my money and phone and everything. Then they let me go. But when I went out, they told the motorcycle taxi drivers near that house, ‘do you see that man, he is a gay’, so the motorcycle taxi drivers were shouting at me and started to beat me. But then one of the drivers said, ‘don’t beat him, he is a human being too, what he is feeling is his own business, you should let him go’. So those men stopped, and I took a bus and went home. That driver who had stopped the fight had called a friend of his who was a bus conductor to come because I had no money to pay for the bus.

My friend Neysha looked for customers from nightclubs. Neysha was arrested once and forced to spend six months in prison because she could not pay the fine. In prison, she was put in a separate room for GDS persons and forced to do the hard labour considered to be women’s work, such as gardening and carrying firewood, which the male prisoners then chopped into smaller pieces. When she returned to her rented room after being released from prison, thieves had broken into it and had stolen all her possessions. Although Neysha had HIV and needed medication for it, she was not given any medication in prison and became very ill.

The Third Story: Devin

People used to talk about me when I was a child, my voice was like a woman, and I behaved like a woman. It was my uncle who did that to me when I was 14. We were living in a family house and the toilet was outside. There were dogs roaming around and I was afraid to go to the toilet alone. I told my grandmother I was afraid, and she told me to ask my uncle to go with me. So he used that chance to do it. My uncle did a trick and said, ‘let me teach you a game’, and showed me a porn video of men having sex with men on his smartphone, but said ‘don’t tell anyone’. So I learned that game and even used to teach it to other children. We did it several times, until my other relatives noticed there was something different about me and they forced me to tell the truth about what had been going on. Then the uncle was trying to defend himself against the family members saying, ‘it was the devil who convinced me to do that’. They did not kick him out of the family, but they chased him away from the family house. But I felt something tickling in my anus, I wanted to have sex more and more. So I found men to have sex with me. I feel like I’m half-man, half-woman, because where I live right now is a rented room near my family house. My other uncles live there and if they see me dressed as a woman, they beat me, but if I’m in my room or go out to meet men, I can wear what I want.

One day I was doing sex work on the streets with a GSD friend and a policewoman arrested us. When we went to the jail, the police gave condoms to the other men in lock-up and said, ‘these are gays, you can do whatever you want to them’. But luckily one of those male prisoners, he was the leader in that cell. He defended us and said, ‘no, you have condoms, but you will not do anything to them.’ And even when he was released, he said to those other men, ‘you are not allowed to do anything to them’, and he came to bring us food after that (prisons do not give food to prisoners). He was the same age as me. When he spoke, everyone listened to him. They always sort of elect a leader in the men’s cell.

After that, that man and I had a relationship for 3 years. But we broke up because that man was so jealous of me, he once beat me with a broken bottle [showed the scar on his face]. He took me to the hospital afterward. Also, in that house where I rented a room, when that man came to be with me, he wanted everyone to know about our relationship, and I didn’t like that.

Nowadays women invited me to dance at their celebrations like birthdays and weddings, they said I am charming and make the party fun. Even the women guests cannot compete with my dancing.