A bitter tale of two male prostitutes

"Deden", 29, came to Jakarta from his hometown of Cirebon, West Java, seven years ago seeking a better life.

He came from a happy but poor farmer's family. They never had enough money and his education stopped at junior high school.

At first, he worked in a shop before going to Taiwan to work in a factory when the economic crisis first hit the country in 1997. But then he returned empty-handed. He later married a girl in his village and returned to the capital.

As he could not find work, he quickly said yes when his friends offered him a job as a commercial sex worker in a gay male brothel in Central Jakarta.

We met recently at a shopping mall, a place that Deden said he no longer visits much.

"I prefer to stay at home and receive customers there. I've been a hustler for two years now, and I'm not that young anymore, but I still don't know what to do with the future," said the good-looking man who has this wicked smile.

"I don't want to be a hustler forever. I will start my own business soon when I have enough money," he said while puffing on his cigarette.

"Robert" was a hustler based in Kuta, Bali. I met him in Bali around 1995.

"I came to Bali for a holiday, got robbed by a boy. I was left penniless. Then this rich Indonesian guy saved my life. After a short holiday romance, I decided that life wasn't that bad at all. I'm gay and I enjoy sex a lot, so why not become a hustler? I got all I wanted, sex and money," said the Dutch man who had a degree in hospitality and tourism.

Robert had a nice bungalow close to the beach. During the day time, he would go to the beach to get a tan, while in the evenings, he would be in bars and clubs, hunting for a man. He worked on his own.

Unlike Deden, Robert's parents were divorced when he was five years old. His father abused him all the time and his uncle raped him when he was 12 years old.

While Robert enjoyed having sex with men, Deden does it for a living. Both have experienced being beaten and forced into having some kind of a kinky, strange sex.

Both are aware of AIDS, still they have unsafe sex from time to time. In 1996, Robert found out that he was HIV positive. I went to visit him in 1997. He was in a pretty bad way, looking like a living skeleton. A year later, he was dead.

In the meantime, Deden still has unsafe sex although he says he knows the risks.

"I have my blood tested every three months or so. I know the risk of unsafe sex but sometimes my clients don't want to use a condom. I can't reject them or I'll lose money," said Deden bitterly.

Shockingly, there are some 50 "massage parlors" for gays in Jakarta alone. Most of the prostitutes are aware of AIDS but at the same time continue to engage in unsafe sex.

Each parlor has more than 10 hustlers, so you can count yourself how many clients they have each day, and how fast the AIDS epidemic will proliferate in the next few years. Unless something is done to prevent it, cases like Robert's will continue and more will die unnecessarily.

-- John Badalu