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Where the Boys Are

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"This ain't for everybody," he says suddenly. "To me it's sickness. Even though I do it. You gotta be something wrong with you if you can participate in something like that. What ordinary, normal person would participate in something like that? I might not do what some other guys do down there, but at the same time I still participate in what's going on down there. That makes me no better than them. No matter how I make my money, it's still foul."

Before he leaves for the Stroll, Lee excuses himself, walks across the front yard and relieves himself on the side of his parents' house.

Will Lipe, a St. Louis police officer who works out of the Ninth District, has come to a meeting of the Locust Business Association in order to bring those present up to date on what the department is doing to combat prostitution in the neighborhood.

"Over time we have gotten buildings in the area torn down in which prostitutes would take their customers and do whatever," Lipe says. "We do occasionally have the vice squad that goes down there and picks up male prostitutes, just like they do with female prostitutes that you see on TV. Undercover, targeting the customers or targeting the prostitutes themselves."

One resident has joined the business owners at the meeting and asks what to do if she sees men hustling. "If you see them and you think they're engaged in prostitution, call 911," Lipe advises. "We'll dispatch a car that should -- at the very least -- run them out.

"Unless they actually see them engaged in prostitution, solicitation, et cetera, they can't really charge them with that," Lipe goes on. "But they can arrest them for bench warrants. I would say a large percentage of them have bench warrants."

(A few weeks later, Lee will be arrested on the Stroll for outstanding warrants -- driving without insurance or a valid license -- and spend four days in jail.)

"There is male prostitution in the area. We are aware of it," Lipe assures the group.

But the same cannot be said of some of his superiors.

Harry Hegger, division commander for the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth districts, says he hasn't heard the area around Washington and Compton referred to as "the Stroll."

Police chief Joseph Mokwa, however, is familiar with the situation.

"The department is aware that there are some prostitution issues, and we've been aware of it for some time," Mokwa says. "We're trying to collaborate with the Salvation Army, and we recently had a meeting with the circuit attorney, and the public safety director for the city and neighborhood residents. As more residential development continues in this area, there's going to be less tolerance of that kind of behavior.

"We're also looking at long-term solutions to try and make sure we don't have recidivism," Mokwa goes on. "The best solution is to modify the lifestyle of people that are engaged in prostitution, and get whatever kind of systemic problem -- whether it's alcoholism or drug problems -- that's forced them into this lifestyle. Secondarily, if that's not productive, we'd like to have the judges prohibit the people from being in the area that they've been arrested in the past. Thirdly, I guess we'd have to incarcerate people if the behavior didn't stop, and diagnose why they're in that area in the first place."

Harbor Light security manager Sam Taylor pilots a Salvation Army van around the neighborhood several times every week, telling loiterers to move on. Having patrolled the Stroll for years, Taylor thinks police should focus more on the johns.

"I'm not saying they're not doing all they can," Taylor says as he cruises the area late one night. "They've been stepping up their efforts. Maybe the officers who ride through here should spot some of these cars that come around the block five or six times, get a license plate and run 'em. Then you'll see where most of these guys are coming from" -- the implication being that johns are commuting in from the county.

"Just in the last six months to a year we kind of hit critical mass, having enough people where we felt like we can start making a difference here," says Wade Paschall. "We said to the police, 'Hey, we live down here, we work down here and we want to help you guys in any way we can.' We are just in the beginning stages of doing that, but I think you're going to start seeing a lot of cracking down."

A lot of times the way you can tell that they're here for sex work is that they may stand against the wall and may peer into cars for long periods of time. Another way to tell is if they're walking around and they're not walking around for any particular reason."

Some people have a special talent for discerning the flavors of a fine wine, others for identifying rare species of insects. Anthony Galloway can spot a male prostitute from a distance of 100 yards.

An openly gay, 23-year-old black man, Galloway works for the St. Louis Effort For AIDS, specializing in outreach to at-risk gay men of color. On this pleasantly cool Thursday night, he's making his rounds on the Stroll, handing out "Safer Sex Kits," each of which contains three condoms (two regular and one flavored), a packet of lubricant and a sheet of safe-sex tips. By the time he's done he'll have given kits to about half the two dozen or so men he encounters. Later tonight hustling will be even more bustling.

Galloway has been handing out the kits on the Stroll for five years. Somebody has to do it, he says, noting that Harbor Light doesn't distribute condoms and the St. Louis Department of Health and its Metropolitan Center for HIV/AIDS Services, located nearby on Grand Boulevard, will likely move soon. HIV and AIDS, meanwhile, are on the rise in St. Louis, which also boasts the nation's second-highest rate of gonorrhea and ranks third in chlamydia.

Galloway, who distributes condoms in "public sex environments," including clubs and places that sell pornographic materials, speculates that the down-low phenomenon, coupled with garden-variety Show-Me State homophobia, combine to draw johns to the Stroll. "Missouri is a highly conservative state. It's very homophobic, which has a lot to do with the amount of down-low men," he theorizes.

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