Boy of God
Words and Images by Ryan Youngblood
The Hotel was alive for a Tuesday night. Its usual patrons were all present, colorful characters that made the scene, almost as if they knew what they were, making every gesture, every drink, every word as true to their archetype as they could. Congolese and European businessmen, Chinese contractors, journalists and NGO workers found shade here each night and for a moment they were all equal. The Hotel reverberated a mixture of Nigerian and Congolese music that sounded like homemade hip hop. The Afro-Pop’s charm was its recurring beats and simple melodies that had echoes of traditional African mambo chords. Occasionally, it would unapologetically rip a beat or a tune or a lyric from an American rap song. The Hotel was filled with a neon glow; greens, purples, yellows, and blues were hanging as Primus and Simba beer lights. Cheap, Chinese party bulbs and a disco ball threw tiny dots of colors in random, moving assortments along the floor while dancers stood in front of the mirrors on either side of the DJ box, watching themselves twist and turn their bodies. The Hotel was in fact a hotel, yet also a dive, and a brothel, and it had no name on the side streets of Lubumbashi, Congo.
Pascal ran his acrylic nails over the plastic table cloth, his curved prosthetics feeling nothing and feeling everything. His velour lashes arched under his eyebrows and regarded the scene in pleasure and approval. The night was his day and the moon his sun. Around him sat other boys and girls, some young and some not, all attired in the sultry, perched on high heels and flying in and out of the group like birds of prey. The boys seeming especially close, and even more vulnerable than the girls with their playfulness, like celebrities would change their names to Beyonce or maybe Désiré, laughing at the tables of beer while they were plucked away and adopted like orphans by new partners every night. Pascal, as with other prostitutes, found purpose and joy in his work; a challenging narrative with its inconvenience of the missing lines of poverty, abuse, or abandonment, objecting your need to understand this side of The Hotel and how someone could become a Pascal. He didn’t see himself as selling his body, but rather donating his love. There were moments in his eyes where a young and wounded Pascal still lived, the past hiding in the black of his pupil in a loveless and empty home, but the moment left as The Hotel was now his home, a commune for the lost and found. The bass was the pulse of The Hotel and it continued to give life to everyone around, most of all Pascal. It was the happiest and saddest place you might ever see.
Behind the Project
In collaboration with the CDC and Columbia University, I was commissioned in 2019 to follow a male prostitute who was a PrEP participant. PrEP is an HIV prevention strategy where HIV-at risk/HIV negative individuals take anti-HIV medications before coming into contact with the virus to reduce their risk of becoming infected. Boy of God is my own remembrance and recollection of the male prostitute scene in Lubumbashi, Congo. On the street corners and in the brothels were an innocence and darkness that lived together so harmoniously that they at times couldn’t be told apart.