A life at risk: Fleeing to Paris from Caribbean homophobia in Saint-Martin

This is the first of three articles about homelessness among the Caribbean’s Black gay, bisexual, and transgender men and the lives they lived elsewhere after they fled from local homophobia.

 

The interviews were conducted jointly by Erasing 76 Crimes and the organization Saint-Martin and Sint-Maarten Alliance for Equality (SAFE).

In the first interview, Chavez (pseudonym), speaks to 76Crimes/SAFE about his past, his upbringing and his scars. Ready to do anything to escape the homophobia of his native island, including his homophobic relatives, he traveled frequently and took risks in places where he had neither personal attachments nor support. He shares his memories and talks about his itinerant lifestyle.

Could you describe your background, Chavez?

I’m 31 years old and I currently live in the Paris area, but I’m a native of Saint-Martin, which I left several times, in order to escape from family and social difficulties related to LGBTphobia. Especially during my teenage years.

St. Martin is a small and quite homophobic island. During my youth, it left its mark on me: difficulties to establish friendships and intimate relationships, a society where everyone knows everyone, etc.

Growing up in an evangelical Christian family made my situation worse. I was the black sheep of the family. I could not trust anyone. It made me sick.

My family was not okay, the church was not okay, school was not okay. I was brooding and having suicidal thoughts. This was around 2008/2009. My mother was ashamed of me and actively encouraged me to go elsewhere. I was 16/17 years old.

I got to know [the human rights and anti-AIDS organization] Aides Saint-Martin. With a small budget, they were able to accommodate me for three months in a hotel, in order to avoid wandering the streets of the island, which was my worst fear.

I was feeling really unhappy and desperate at that time of my life. Knowing that I was in a precarious situation, I had even started to enroll in the army.

During this time, I also adopted risky attitudes and began to

learn how to sleep with men for money. I was an escort-boy. I became an underage sex worker in spite of myself and lost a lot of friends.

After my stay in the hotel, I lived with people, but it was never free. Either I gave them money in compensation, or I gave my ass. In any case, I couldn’t stand the island or my life anymore.

In fact, it was during this time that I started to dabble in drugs and at times I was unknowingly drugged and sexually abused. As a Black, poor, male person, I was not going to file a complaint because the gendarmerie on the island at that time was only interested in stories of shootings and settling of scores. Friends and I were made to feel guilty when we reported being sexually and socially abused.

How did you manage to get out of that?

I was advised to leave the island and go to France. In the end, it was a meeting in Saint-Barthélemy with a rich American who changed my destiny, while I was working in a hotel-restaurant there, at the end of my high school years.

After two hectic years in Manhattan, the end of my contract led me to have to come back to Saint-Martin, before leaving for Paris in late 2013.

Once I arrived in France, I was back to the same problems I had when I was younger, having to start from scratch in a new environment. However, for me, I preferred this life a thousand times over having to stay in Saint-Martin where my loved ones are.

So I shared a 20m² flat near Rouen [in northern France] with four other West Indians, while I was scouring the gay dating sites, looking for benefactors. With my train ticket paid for, I came to the capital to share my charms with rich one-night lovers. At least, that’s how I paid my rent. It’s been a difficult life where I’ve often encountered violence whether it takes the form of beatings, racism, or sick jealousy.

At the end of 2014, I once again sought to be able to escape these difficulties, by moving to the south of France. And there again, I experienced problems in being able to stay, to the point of landing in a shelter in a small town in Aveyron [in southern France], where the hours were strict in order to be able to eat, enter and exit. At 22 years old, this was driving me completely crazy and I absolutely had to get out of this vicious circle of homelessness.

After many other adventures, I moved closer to Paris, because I don’t have a driver’s license and I could hardly be autonomous in the middle of the rural setting of the Massif Central foothills.

Did you ever manage to settle down in one place for good?

Over time, I was able to acquire a certain stability, and today I live in a shared apartment in the Yvelines [just outside Paris] in a large apartment.

Over the years when I look back, I have always been able to find the positive in the negative. Maybe that’s what kept me going. But today, I am more reasonable in life and I know how to set my limits when I have to. My life is not great, but I am happy with the person I have become as I mature. Currently, I have been unemployed since the beginning of March, but nevertheless, I am dating more healthily than in the past.

As far as my close family is concerned, we have a relationship that remains distant, but that is also my choice. The distance protects me, I think, because my family and I are not on the same page religiously. However, my relatives can see that I have not become a delinquent and that reassures them, in my opinion.