ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on ethnographic research among two categories of male sex workers in the Dominican Republic in order to describe the relationships between gay male tourists and the Dominican men they hire on their trips to the Caribbean. It examines the consequences of the ambivalent negotiation for the emotional and economic organization of gay male sex tourism in the Caribbean. The chapter focuses on the ethnographic material presented to examine the specific expressions of highly ambivalence for the gay sex tourists and Dominican sex workers with whom the research was conducted. The types of economic support received from steady foreign clients further demonstrate the importance of regular clients to sex workers’ economic situation. The ambivalence sex workers feel toward regular clients manifests itself in a number of ways. D. MacCannell’s framework is useful in relation to the construction of sexuality more generally, and homoeroticism in particular, in sex tourism encounters.
