Every Sunday morning in a second-floor apartment in Astoria, Queens, the Rev. Louis Braxton Jr. rouses a half-dozen sleeping bodies from bunk beds in two cramped rooms littered with stiletto heels and skimpy dresses.


Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Michelle on a street in Jackson Heights, Queens, where she works on weekends. She said that she was beaten by a group of young men last year.
The groggy young adults reach for their makeup kits and fight for the lone bathroom. Once their makeup, hair and clothes are just right, they trudge into the living room, holding handbags and teetering on high heels, and sit facing an altar set up by Father Braxton.

An Episcopal priest, he says Mass and prays for their souls. He makes passing references to sins of the flesh, appropriately enough, since his flock has spent the previous night working as prostitutes on the “tranny stroll” near Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, where men go for quick sex with men who look like women.

These worshipers — Princess, Kelly, Michelle, Skye, Gianni and Terry, all teenagers or in their early 20s — are slender, stylish and soft of voice, and will smack anyone who questions their femininity or asserts that, biologically, they are still males. Transgender is a term they will tolerate, and the place they call home, Father Braxton says, is probably the only homeless shelter in New York specifically for transgender youth.

The shelter is called Carmen’s Place and was named after Carmen Solis, a missionary who started a youth outreach program at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Astoria, where Father Braxton was the pastor. After the church closed in February for financial reasons, Father Braxton, 50, rented a nearby two-bedroom apartment above a clothing store on a section of Steinway Street lined with hookah shops and ethnic food stores.

While there are a few shelters for young gay people that are open to transgender youth, the residents at Carmen’s Place, who usually find out about it through word of mouth, say they feel more comfortable being with others who share similar experiences.

The shelter runs on a shoestring, relying on donations from supporters, but it is still a struggle to pay rent and buy food, Father Braxton said. He and a small staff of volunteers help prepare the meals and try to turn the residents away from prostitution and persuade them to go to school or find a job, and help them find a place to live.

Father Braxton strongly disapproves of the prostitution, but he says kicking residents out for peddling their bodies would only make things worse. So as they leave the shelter dressed in skimpy outfits, he reminds them that the shelter door is locked from 2 a.m. until sunrise and leaves them with his standard parting wish: “I hope you get arrested.”

“That’s the only thing that stops them — at least for a few days,” he said. “These kids have been kicked out of the other gay youth shelters in the city by breaking rules and curfews. We’re their last hope. I can’t throw them back on the street.”

Father Braxton does have rules. No sex with customers within five blocks of the shelter. Sex with shelter workers is forbidden, and sex with other residents is strongly discouraged.

The residents take hormones — often bought illegally on the street — to develop breasts and hips and to deter masculine traits like Adam’s apples and whiskers. Then there is the endless mirror time. The shelter’s many wall mirrors are so important that they have been given names, like Sheila and Beulah.

“They’re very concerned with appearances,” Father Braxton said. “They’re looking for someone to say, ‘You’re beautiful, I love you.’ ”

This same need is part of what compels them toward prostitution, he said. “To them, their only asset is their bodies, and their only coping strategy is to sell themselves for sex.”

During a conversation at the shelter, Princess added, “I like the attention; it makes me feel loved.”

Father Braxton asked, “You really think these men love you?” Princess did not answer.

The residents spend a lot of time on their looks. They search their gray metal lockers for the right combination of cutoff tops, tight dresses and miniskirts or hot pants. They go shopping and get their hair and nails done. Cellphones ring constantly with calls from strange men.

In the early hours of a recent Sunday, Michelle, Kelly and Princess talked with various men on 76th Street near Broadway in Jackson Heights. They disappeared every so often, for what they later said were brief sexual encounters.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/nyregion/02shelter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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Man [...] must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." (Jean Paul Sartre, 1943)