Happy Hookers

Happy Hookers was my last selection for this year's Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.  This documentary explored the all too familiar queer cinema topic of male prostitution, but this time in India.  The story is much the same as it has been told before, but the subjects are somewhat more sympathetic in that they are trying to support families and not just themselves.

This documentary, like the others in this genre, showcased young men in need of making money to survive by moving from their small town to the big city.  However, many of the young men in this documentary are not gay, have a wife and kids at home, and have far more to lose than just their dignity in this work.  They live in a society in which homosexuality is a social taboo.

I have seen many documentaries and fictional accounts on this topic and none before have ever had such a lasting effect on me.  Is is that I am getting older and more sensitive the topic of exploitation of youth?  Or that I can now understand how one wrong turn can lead to a long series of events that are not only beyond your control, but make you feel like you will never make your life your own again.