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Anal The Forces of DarknessGregory Dark entered porn in 1983 with Let Me Tell Ya 'Bout White Chicks. The nihilistic filmmaker did more than anyone to change the direction of porn to the nasty and anal and change fan's selection criteria from primarily seeking a star performer to frequently seeking a star director - be it Dark, John Stagliano, Bruce Seven or John Leslie. Gregory directed 1984's New Wave Hookers, the most influential sexvid of the last quarter century next to The Adventures of Buttman. "Two low-lifes - Jamie Gillis and Jack Baker - dream up a call girl ring where the whores turn tricks to new wave music. The ultimate Dark Brothers movie combines humor, stylized sets, and a rich variety of editing styles." (AFW 96D p.261) Other raunchy Gregory Dark material includes Blackthroat in which Erica Boyer lives out her screen name as Double Penetration Slut. "The Dark Brothers don't make tapes for the couples market. Show this one to most women and they won't laugh. But there's another kind of market of guys in fraternities and horny old men in their lodges who will probably watch this in total awe, and may even chuckle at the insanity." (Bob Rimmer, X-Rated Videotape Guide p.336) Blackthroat appeared in 1985 and featured its own rock music with the chorus, "You're gonna see black heads sucking on white heads and white heads sucking on black heads." Dark usually portrays blacks as morons in his flicks, reflecting his experiences with urban blacks. But the dialogue he gives them is no more obscene than what black nationalist Spike Lee writes for his actors in such mainstream films as Do The Right Thing. Gregory received assistance from VCA producer, drug dealer and rich kid Walter 'Dark' Gernert until the two split in 1993. Between the Cheeks, 1985, is a classic anal featuring detailed closeups of Ginger Lynn, Treanna, Gina Valentino, Lori Smith, Sheri St. Claire and Summer Rose taking it up the ass. The ladies also suck the guys cocks between reamings. Female performers usually take enemas to clean themselves out before engaging in on-camera anal sex. One reason that backdoor sex is so nasty is that the rectum seems designed for expulsion rather than penetration. The skin of the rectal walls is thin, lacking any kind of immune barrier. During anal intercourse, the skin tends to chafe and expose tiny capillary endings, causing tiny amounts of bleeding. In porn, men usually pull out of the anus in porn before ejaculting on the woman's face or body. What appears degrading to women, may, in the age of AIDS, be life-saving. Between the Cheeks 2 explores the psychosexual world of a mental patient with delusions of being a pimp. He believes the soul is in the colon and that aliens are trying to enter us through our asses. Salvation lies in not defecating. Following in the footsteps of Gerard Damiano and Henri Pachard, secular Gregory produces work obsessed with sin and punishment, particularly his Creasemaster series, New Wave Hookers 3, and The Devil in Miss Jones 3-5. His films produce shocking and unerotic images of, say, a naked fat lady in Flesh, that seem designed to punish viewers for the sin of using pornography. "New Wave Hookers is often unerotic," notes Jim Holliday, "which is Gregory Dark's purpose - to slap America across the face and to explore new depths of depravity." Gregory sent this synopsis of the The Devil In Miss Jones 4 to reviewers in advance of the tape. Justine Jones (Lois Ayres) realizes she's never going to get out of hell unless she blows Cerberus (Kevin James). Swallowing her pride, along with a little jism, Justine gives Cerberus the best skull he's ever had. Negro (Jack Baker) looks on. Moving down, Justine and Negro descend into the Perverse Room... Negro leads Justine down to his favorite room in hell, the Racists' Room...where dead racists are forced to have sex with their most hated ethnic groups. A dominant Black Chick (Purple Passion) punishes an American Nazi member as two Zulu Warriors (Robbie Dee, F.M. Bradley) double penetrate a lily white Southern Belle (Patti Petite) while Justine looks on in shock. When she asks Negro why there aren't any black racists in hell, he tells her that a black man who hates whites isn't prejudiced, he's smart. "I like examining the dynamic of how women control men," says
Dark, "how we in society have set up mnemonic symbols for how strong
an image sex is, and what this does to us as men. Why do we see the way
we see? What if we took this to a different place? What would we see?"
"I do my own thing," says Gregory. "I want to make nasty, wild, hardcore sex, but I also want to... examine what sex is. "I constantly try to shock the audience. I don't want people to ever know what they're going to see in my movies. Like a carnival - a freak show." Gregory wears his performers down until he gets what he wants from them. "Sex is at once a pleasant experience and a nightmare. If you're in the dream state, you can f--- whoever you want. You can design the woman you want to f--- and she can be any way you want. "Women want control and they want to f--- with your head. Men are more sensitive than women. Women have this innate ability to manipulate. It's men who have placed them in that spot. "Women hold their pussies as sacred. They know the price you have to pay if you want to get it. I resent that. I fall prey to it like every other man, but I resent it and I'm conscious of it and seek in my daily life to avoid it. "Just like Stagliano is obsessed with butts, I'm obsessed with the control that women have over men, and one can do the reversal like in ju-jitsu. "Women are aliens to us and we are aliens to them. What they say we don't understand and what we say they don't understand. That also makes relationships interesting. I try to shoot a sex scene like I'd shoot a fight scene. "It's like early Bruce Lee. I'm trying to do Hong Kong movies with sex. They've got Jackie Chan and I've got Lovette." After the 1986 Meese Hearings, Gregory jumped out of porn. "I'm 34 now. I feel like an old man. I don't even like to do nudity anymore. No brutality. Heavy feminist parts in all my films. Ok, I slid in to adult films for a few years, but it's the kiss of death. This is not a moral opinion. But the grand scheme of the country is against these sorts of things. Features and TV are safe. You don't hire curious directors. You hire safe people. I don't have money to defend myself. I'd rather sell shoes than go to jail." While Dark retreated to hard R, "spouting and whining all the way like one of his never-satisfied characters," the Mitchell Brothers saw a chance to regain the porn spotlight. "Like revelers in Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of Death, most porn producers and performers persisted with the Darks in thinking that their dream factory was immune to contagion. But by the middle of the '80s, the AIDS virus had worked its way into the blood stream of the heterosexual community. The Mitchells saw a perfect way to step back into porn." (Burning Desires) Why not remake Behind the Green Door as a safe-sex film? The sequel appeared in 1986, starring Artie Mitchell's girlfriend Missy. First known as Missy Manners, Missy's real name is Elisa Flores. She was a former aide to conservative Senator Orin Hatch. Behind the Green Door II received plenty of attention for its casting of the Republican porn star and its use of condoms which made it in the early era of AIDS the first safe sex porno. Missy appeared on talkshows around the nation promoting the movie and its safe-sex theme. She even did a Playboy layout. Jim Mitchell bragged it'd make other porn films "obsolete. And if those other porn producers didn't like it, tough shit. It's a whole new world out there." But as is the case throughout history, from the early Christians to Jim Mitchell, almost all who proclaim that it's a new world, are wrong. Jim's pride went before a mighty fall. Despite it's publicity, Behind the Green Door II flopped. Screw called it the most disappointing sex flick of the year. It had all the typical Mitchell Brothers problems - garbled sound, no plot, poor lighting and amateurish camerawork. The movie ended the Mitchell Brothers attempts to make a great movie. At least Bob Rimmer and Adam Film World liked it. "...The sexcapades of Missy, a flight attendant who journeys into a fantasy world peopled with unusual sex and the kinky thoughts of a disabled vet. Plenty of orgies and a freak show of possibilities. Big budget entertainment worth looking at." (AFW 96D p. 249) Missy remained Artie Mitchell's slave for years. She did almost anything he wanted, such as exposing herself to strangers and even engaging them in sex. Artie beat Missy savagely, sometimes knocking her out cold. Screwing with her heart and mind amused him. Once, he took her to the home another girlfriend, Joanne, and made the two beautiful women have sex with each other before he screwed each and left them crying. Missy eventually entered numerous self-help groups to overcome her addictions to drugs, alcohol, punishment, degrading sex and Artie Mitchell. Today she's married to a successful entrepreneur and they have two sons. The family divides their time between two homes - one in San Francisco and one in the Southwest. (John Hubner) George McDonald lives in the same apartment that he first rented in Sausalito in the early 1970s when he was a new porn star. Married for 20 years to a woman he only sees on weekends and holidays, George works on roadcrews or washes dishes often enough to pay the rent and buy groceries. He spends most of his time reading in the Sausalito Library or helping his favorite widow polish an epic poem she's worked on for years. In 1991, Jim Mitchel, frustrated by his brother's increasingly erratic ways caused by his drug addictions, shot several bullets into Artie, murdering him. A few days later, Jim hosted a wake for Artie at O'Farrells. With the help of a clever lawyer, Jim received a prison sentence of only six years which he didn't begin serving until late 1994. With credit for good behavior and time served, he could be out in 1997. Best of the '80s Every Woman Has A Fantasy was the best film of the 1980s according to Jim Holliday. Next came Let's Get It On With Amber Lynn, Chamelions: Not The Sequel, Wild Things, Wild Goose Chase and Trashy Lady. In the AVN Tenth Anniversary Supplement, Jim listed the best porn video of the decade from February 1982 to February, 1992 as Unnatural Phenomenon followed by Buttman's Ultimate Workout, Mad Love, Dream Girls, Dangerous Stuff and Blame It On Ginger. Best Babe: Ginger Lynn. Runners up include Amber Lynn, Victoria Paris, Nina Hartley, Barbara Dare, Hyapatia Lee, Christy Canyon. Combustion Central (babe s who are hot): Bionca, Erica Boyer, Debi Diamond, Alex Jordan, Amber Lynn. Best Marketing: Vivid without question. Best Director: tie between Alex deRenzy and John Leslie. Also heavily considered: Henri Pachard, Cecil Howard, John Stagliano, Eric Edwards, Bruce Seven and Michael Carpenter. Best Stud of the Decade: Peter North. Cash Register Cunt Who Conned The Entire industry: Traci Lords. Runner-up: Stacey Donovan and Alexandria Quinn. Anal Revolution Sodomy has been a porn staple since before the days of the Marquis de Sade. "In a business where bad girls are good and badder girls are better, the anal sex explosion of the mid-'80s separated the bad girls from the really bad girls," writes Michael Louis Albo in HEVG. In straight porn, anal sex means a man penetrating a woman though occassionally women penetrate men anally by using dildos. In 1996, mainstream finally got into the act. Five features focused on male-female anal sex including Crash and Thieves. Sodomy is even more routine in novels such as In the Cut. The anal revolution signalls renewed attempts to test the limits of acceptable expression. "In the way that formerly outrageous words no longer incite us and strong metaphors turn to cliches," writes Dr. Stoller, "so nudity's power has been reduced. A tougher pornography is required these days to sustain the risk... that is needed for excitement. It is not so easy now for voyeurs to live dangerously." David Cronenberg's Crash describes people living in a mechanical world inimical to deep feeling, struggling "to soar beyond the world of bodies to a different, more meaningful experience." Like many in today's sex-drenched but dissatisfied culture, they are looking for Something More. As Ballard tells Catherine in the final scene, "Maybe next time, darling, maybe next time." (Vogue) In early 1998, Pat Riley writes on RAME: "I think there's far too much anal sex [today] and in particular anal sex done with a mean spirit. Back when Borsky was in his prime, I thought his anal sex segments were very good. There was a feeling of chemistry between the people: the innocent girl (as much as they can ever be innocent) giving it all to the male. And, I suppose, the dilation (the drop shot on the open asshole) was the next best thing to the internal cum shot. Also Borsky until a few years ago used to get the new girls even before, and sometimes instead of Ed, and, I suppose I'm a sucker for a new girl. There were even some Pleasure Productions movies with people like Brittany Saks, one of which I remember had the theme of the girl not wanting to do anal and then finally relenting. If you go back even earlier to the Caught From Behind and Backdoor To Hollywood series, there was often the same sort of scenario (Ali Moore in CFB #3 comes to mind)." Caught From Behind Bill Margold says he thought up the Caught From Behind series which Hal Freeman began in 1983. In the original, Ron Jeremy plays a sex therapist who specializes in anal sex. Behind #2 led to the California Supreme Court's 1989 Freeman decision which ruled that porn performers are actors not prostitutes, effectively legalizing porn production in California. Caught From Behind 4 features Keli Richards taking 15 inches of Dick Rambone up her ass. The next edition features interracial anal sex as Buffy Davis moves into an integrated neighborhood. Bruce Seven helped launch the anal sex explosion with 1983's Aerobisex Girls which presents girls who had never done anal sex or other girls before. AVN reviews Virgin Cheeks: "Since the concept hit big time in the early 1980s, anal-themed sexvids have been sure sellers. Forget about clever dialogue and expensive sets and concentrate on these three-ways, foot fetish scenes, dildo action, and rear-end action. Keli Richards knows how to take the big one and Erica Boyer explodes with eroticism." At the end of the debauchery in 1985's Loose Ends 2, Bruce Seven tells the Dark Brothers "Eat your heart out!" "Sex in America has to be nasty," says Bob Rimmer, "a leftover from Saint Thomas Acquinas's belief that it's "the union of two sewer systems"." Ernest Green aka Ira Levine remembers this Sunday morning shoot. "Rad has delicate sensibilities... He lets Keith, a Euro-perv, direct the scenes he considers too disgusting. So Keith comes onto the set, rubbing his hands with glee, and says, "First we'll shoot the anal, and then we'll break for lunch." I said, "Keith, are you sure we couldn't break for lunch first and then shoot the anal?" He pats me on the shoulder. "My boy, if this sort of thing troubles you, you're in the wrong line of work." "The anal was shot with a young woman [Maizie] who specializes in anal... She wants an enema. She said it's because the scene calls for the guy to first f--- her vaginally and then in the ass and to come on her face. She said, "I don't care if I get shit on my face, so long as it's my own shit, but I feel sorry for the rest of you. If you want my shit all over your faces, that's your problem. But I don't care to do that." We all agreed with that logic. "They [the two performers] did the scene. Unprotected. Lots of ramming in and out. Then they had oral sex. He popped all over her face. She went raging out of there with semen all over her hair and face, saying, "I want to take a shower, I want some shampoo. You guys always want to see someone come on my face, and then after they do, you don't want anything to do with me."" Buttman John Stagliano John Stagliano's The Adventures of Buttman, 1989, influenced porn more than any other sex flick by developing an adventurous pro-am alternative. Until Buttman, most porn directors, no matter how low the budget, tried to make a movie. John took the camera off the tripod and pioneered the gonzo genre that dominates video porn at the end of the century. Usually his own crew, John produces his videos at bargain rates of $6-$15,000 each which frequently gross 30 times that amount. The Adventures of Buttman is a series of loops connected in an odd way. "It starts melodramatically, with quirky Jamie Gillis, then it becomes the cameraman's story. Although it is aimed at the buttman, and the whole thing is from that point of view, even the non-assman will like it. This is a sensuous feature. Few pornos are... Great skin tones, even with dyed blondes in bright sunlight. You don't know what is coming next as person after person is spied on or plays to the video camera." (AFW 96D p.247) An American Buttman in London appeared in 1991. "Stagliano's Buttman character heads to Britain where he joins his pal Dario (Rocco) on another erotic journey where English bottoms are marveled at, sought after and screwed till the boys are sated." (AFW 96D p.247) In Buttman goes to Rio 4, John Stagliano brings along his friend Joey Silvera who keeps striking out while everyone else scores. In Buttman vs. Buttwoman, "Stagliano and Bruce Seven create a masterpeice of tease, sleaze and raunchy hot sex. They throw in the whole kitchen sink and the viewer comes up the winner again - nobody has this kind of respect for the porn viewing audience. These two guys raise the standards of heat and excellence in erotica." (AFW 96D p.251) In Buttman's European Vacation, Stagliano heads to Europe with his Italian friend Rocco Siffredi to explore the nether regions of the randiest women they can find. "Two hours plus of non-stop high-voltage hardcore." (AFW 96D p.251) Today's anal queens include Lovette, J.R. Carrington, Rebecca Bardoux, Bunny Bleu, Nikki Sinn, Roxanne Hall, Jordan Lee and Tammi Ann. Some leading females such as Christy Canyon refuse to do anal while Savannah and Asia Carrera were long time holdouts. Those who do the nasty deed get top pay - over $1000 a scene for the most beautiful women. Ed Powers frequently gets the leading ladies' first anal scene because he's so charming, tiny and generous. He's rumored to pay up to $10,000 for a woman's first on-screen experience of anal sex. Performer Nick Long wrote on RAME in January 1998: "You would find many of the performers hate anal, but given the choice of working, or not working, they take the work. You'll also find that the anal retentiveness of the industry at the current time is one of the reasons there are many gals who have a love/hate relationship with the business." Rosebud "Madness and masturbation are inextricable linked deep in the human psyche," says porn critic and performer Scott Mallory, "brought to the fore in this singular case by a box of Rosebud Production videos, primarily of the anal variety, all set forth to promulgate the concept of nasty girls doing dirty sex for the enjoyment of politically incorrect men. "...As the night wears on and the drugs wear off, watching a f--- tape requires too much effort and is an endeavor too ridiculous to defend. I need more beer to be able to sleep before I have to wake up and write about this shit. The people who are in these movies don't watch them... and why I'm viewing these masturbation helpers goes to the core of what I hate about them: people doing porn videos only for the money. "The performers have something better to do, the directors and crew are looking for cable-TV money, the producers have three children and a wife to protect from such graphic horribleness, and critics are jerk-off artists with an all-access pass to the world's largest porn shop. "Nobody in Porn Valley wants to be creating smut, and the real victims are the poor slobs paying good money to see young girls f--- men they don't like. Porn is a hard life, and it doesn't get any easier sliping tapes in and out of an overworked VCR. The mind reels." (HEVG) Background and Comment on the Anal Sex Explosion The ancient world sexually divided between penetrator and penetratee rather than between heterosexual and homomsexual. To penetrate showed status, and still does. One reason for porn's anal sex explosion is that is succors a male desire to dominate women. In anal sex, the penetratee is vulnerable to pain, while the penetrator gets a tight warm hole to pound his penis into. While the penetratee may experience pleasure, it's the penetrator who usually gets off. While both parties are susceptible to disease, it's the penetratee who risks the tearing of sensitive anal tissue. Women suffer a higher likelihood of catching AIDS from a man than men do in catching AIDS from a woman. Also, in anal sex, the man doesn't risk impregnating the woman, thus sustaining the male fantasy of screwing woman after woman without fear of commitment and responsibility. Going through the back door is a taboo act that many men can't or don't want to do to their spouses or girlfriends. Porn is a fantasy. It shows what men want to see more than it shows what they want to do. "Let's deal with the latest trend in "freak show porn," namely spitting and popping into gaping assholes," writes Jim Holliday in the 9/96 issue of AVN. "When did spitting around, on or in some sweet babe's asshole become erotic? Perhaps to a Generation-X nihilistic attitude boy, but not to the normal porn boy. I can point to a scene touted to me as candidate for award material. All I saw was a taunting, giggling gorgeous gash with the superb ability to provide a freak show scene. Freak does not equate with constant, sustained eroticism." (AVN) AIDS - Porn's Pain in the Ass American producers usually require performers to take AIDS tests at least every three months, if not every month, and present a photocopy of the negative result before working. Standards around the rest of the world are more lax. The Europeans, for instance, almost never use condoms while Americans frequently do, particularly in politically correct productions, such as by Vivid director and producer Paul Thomas. Gay porn mandates condom use. "The vast majority of male porn viewers do not want to see condoms in explicit movies," notes Jim Holliday. "Further, woodsmen do not want to wear them. Any opinion to the contrary is personal and spoken with agenda." (AVN 9/96) Jeff Knapp: "I am not fond of condoms in real life as they do dull things... But I can't see how that argument can apply to someone I'm not going to feel. What do I care if Steven St. Croix's dick isn't feeling as much as I can?" (rame) "Aha," says Pat Riley. "The two types of porn viewers... "Think back to when you were a pre-puberty youngster who thought girls were icky... Your favorite movie - showing my age here but you can make the conversion - was a war movie with John Wayne or a Western with Gary Cooper. That wasn't John Wayne on the screen as the submarine captain blowing up the Japanese battleship; that was me! "Fast forward to 1997. It's not St. Croix screwing that girl, it's me. At least if she's good looking, has a nice personality (read: submissive), hasn't been worn out by every dick in the land... So I care if St. Croix's dick isn't feeling as much because it's not St. Croix's dick, it's mine. "But it's not only the physical feeling, it's also the fantasy of impregnating the female. I must be the only one outside of the religious right who thinks sex is for making babies. I love the fantasy of getting the girl pregnant - the most erotic thing in the world - and if you show a condom, the visible chances of her getting pregnant are close to nil... "All those who likes facials out of hostility to the female are babes in the wood when it comes to controlling and degrading the female. By making her pregnant you're controlling her reproduction... Cum on her face can be wiped off in an instant; it's tougher to get rid of an embryo... If she doesn't, it's nine months of morning sickness, bloating, clothes that won't fit, difficulty sitting down, getting up, birth..." (RAME) Anal queen Barbara Doll, a veteran of 150 sexvids including Anal Plant, Backstage Pass, Hot Spot and A Rear and Pleasant Danger, tested HIV positive in 1995. Mainstream media and the PC element in X-rated entertainment, and those frightened by them, came out with apocalyptic warnings that virtually every performer in the industry would contract AIDS and die. See for example the article on Doll in the first issue of Men's Perspective. "It's a small miracle that the entire industry isn't already HIV positive." After Doll's two positive HIV tests, talent agent Jim South said it seemed "that was the end of pornography as we know it." Ona Zee, a veteran of over 1000 sexvids, spoke in the same tone. "The industry doesn't want to know about this question. They are wearing blinders and hoping, praying that nothing happens." Even before the Doll incident, going back to the early '80s, numerous persons inside and outside the industry predicted AIDS would wreak havoc on performers. Here's a typical statement from Vanity Fair's March, 1987 issue. "For in the age of AIDS, nothing could be more crazily chancey than the multiple-partner unsafe sex practiced by porn stars (who are also often substance abusers and/or bi). The Meese Commission may not have to make a move. The porn industry seems intent on sodomizing itself into extinction." AVN took the opposite approach of most media and initially wrote little about the AIDS scare. Instead, the magazine which is part of the porn industry, worked with pornographers to minimize bad publicity which could've shut down Porn Valley. While hysteria about heterosexual AIDS infected many of America's elite in politics, civil service, medicine, media, mainstream Christianity and Judaism, entertainment and academia, AVN helped keep the hysteria in porn under control. But in what AVN's Mark Kernes and Gene Ross did write, reveals that they and probably much of the magazine staff had the same apocalyptic attitude as the rest of the media. This "sky is falling" approach shows in Gene's following column (AVN 6//95 p.10). "In my 27 years of journalism, I don't recall ever using the word imbecile in print, but it disturbs me to think it will obtain frequent flyer status in months ahead when describing the mindset of this business regarding AIDS." To translate Ross-Speak, the AVN Vice-President criticizes the porn industry for not being as hysterical about AIDS as he is. "If one is to gather anything from the tenor of the April 28 [1995] performers' meeting, the conclusion is that we seem to be outfitting our own militia of delusional love children..." These "delusional love children" turned out to be right and Gene Ross to be wrong. "It's past time for the adult industry to take bold initiatives. A universal mandate for condoms, a toned-down lifestyles...beats the hell out of caskets... The alternatives are less appetizing...be they a total industry shutdown, a reassembly of the talent pool...or total abstinence from hardcore. "This magazine endorses life whatever it takes." Thus, the magazine of the industry believed totally without evidence that because of the "threat" of heterosexual AIDS, hundreds of performers' lives were at stake as well as the industry's very existence. To its credit, AVN rarely published these nonsensical views. But it tells you about AVN's commitment to truth and its lack of a basis for good values, that it can be blown away so easily by hysterical lies. In the same AVN issue, Mark Hanau of A.I. Multimedia writes in with the following thoughts which AVN headlines as "Ignorance Is Bliss": "Fear can result in actions that are neither rational nor logical. The news that antibodies to the HIV virus have been found in the blood of Barbara Doll has been received by the industry with hysteria...If the adult industry buys into the AIDS terror campaign, the US government will close us down on health not moral grounds. "At the last meeting of the Free Speech Association, I offered to inject a sample of Miss Doll's blood to demonstrate that I am prepared to stake my life on what I am saying. I will also be happy to be her sexual partner. I do this after ten years of research, not for publicity or shock value but to counter the AIDS hysteria." AVN's Mark Kernes responds. "As you admitted at the above-mentioned Free Speech meeting, you are not a medical doctor... That makes your opinions on this subject...of no value. "As to your offer to inject yourself with some of Barbara Doll's blood to prove your point - sorry, but there are laws against assisted suicide... Anyone in the adult industry who takes your wishful thinking seriously is...due for a sad awakening." Neither Ross or Kernes or AVN have apologized for lying to their readers about the risks of heterosexual AIDS. For a non-drug using straight, the chances of catching AIDS approach that of getting hit by lightning. See Michael Fumento's book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS. AVN describes the early 1995 performers meeting about AIDS in its 5/96issue: "What seemed lacking was the realization of personal responsibility, the idea that if you think that using a condom is necessary to your personal safety, then be prepared to insist... and be prepared to lose work for sticking to your principles. Every crisis seems to bring the industry closer...but in the end each performer will be responsible for his/her own safety. The only question is whether he or she has the courage to walk that moral high road." Men's Perspective opines: "Remarkably, after all the furor and bitterness brought on by Barbara's false positive, the industry did nothing to formulate a coherent condom usage policy." Barbara Doll originally came to America with her husband because its porn industry provides better working conditions and better pay than anywhere else in the world. "In France, they put 20 guys on you and pay you $300," says Doll. HEVG says that after her HIV Positive test, various pornographers paid Barbara to return to France. How many other porn people have contracted the disease and been paid to leave quietly? AIDS was supposed to change the way the sex industry but it didn't. Instead, the deadly virus devastated gay and drug-using mainstream entertainers. Straight porn folks were fine except for a handful of gay or bisexual drug-users such as John Holmes, Mark Wallice, R.J. Reynolds, Wade Nichols, and Chuck Vincent. In early 1997, John Stagliano and Nina Cherry tested HIV positive. Numerous other persons tested inconclusive for several months, perhaps because of a flu-like virus many caught at the 1997 Consumer Electronic Show. During these frightening months, leading production companies like Vivid and VCA made condom use mandatory on their sets. In the spring, Jordan McKnight tested HIV Positive. Despite the politically correct rhetoric, porn's AIDS cases demonstrate that the disease does discriminate - gays and intravenous drug users are far more likely to get it than straights, women more likely than men. |