Youth Homelessness and Kink Community: An Unexpected Path to Belonging with Cutter Ray Palacios
Episode NotesThis week on Young People at the Front, Tonny, Robin, and Fatine open with banter about meeting your younger self. Then, Tonny sits down with Cutter Palacios, an actor, intimacy coordinator, and mental health educator whose story rewrites what survival, resilience, and belonging can look like. Cutter moved to Los Angeles at 19 with $500, a dream, and nowhere to go. For two and a half years, they lived out of a compact SUV — sleeping beside a fire station in Burbank, brushing their teeth at Starbucks, and chasing auditions between shifts at Canter’s Deli. What started as survival became a study in self-sufficiency and courage — and ultimately, a search for community that would lead to an unexpected place: the kink and sex-positive world of Threshold.In this candid conversation, Cutter shares how that world became a lifeline — not just a place of sexual exploration, but one of trust, structure, empathy, and belonging. It’s where they met their first roommate, found affordable housing, and eventually helped lead and found new organizations like The Next Generation Los Angeles (TNG-LA), a free, sliding-scale community space for 18–35-year-olds exploring consent, identity, and connection.Tonny opens up too, reflecting on his own experience navigating youth homelessness and the quiet shame that can come with survival. Together, they dismantle stereotypes, redefine what “home” really means, and explore how unconventional spaces from dungeons to diners can become sanctuaries for healing.It’s a vulnerable, funny, and radically compassionate episode about finding your people, claiming your story, and remembering that community real community is always a little inconvenient.Topics Discussed in This Episode“If you could meet yourself at any age…” — a banter that turns surprisingly therapeuticCutter’s move from Texas to Los Angeles at 19Living out of a Chevy Blazer, brushing teeth at Starbucks, and chasing auditionsThe invisible face of youth homelessness in LATonny shares his own experience surviving in his car while attending culinary schoolThe turning point: discovering the Threshold communityHow sex-positive and kink spaces became a lifeline for belonging and supportFounding The Next Generation Los Angeles (TNG-LA)Community as inconvenience — why showing up mattersBreaking stigma around “van life” and redefining homelessnessHow kink culture models consent, care, and mutual trustMental health, identity, and finding balance in the entertainment industryThe four pillars of human need: belonging, independence, generosity, and competencyFrom isolation to partnership — Cutter’s reflections on love, safety, and purposeWhat “home” really means when you build it yourselfConnect with Cutter Palacios@TNGLosAngeles — The Next Generation LA LinktreeMental Health Resources: Association of Mental Health Coordinators
