The porn industry is a multi-million dollar giant that has grown to an unbelievable size over the past twenty years. In this age of AIDS and other nasty STD's, it could be argued that porn performers are engaging in an activity that is inherently dangerous, and that they are putting their health and lives at risk every time they fuck for the cameras.

Those working in the porn industry will deny this. They consistently say that their 'circle' of porn stars is completely safe, and that they are at a lower risk than most other people in the world because they work with performers who are tested every 30 days for HIV.

My personal view is that this is bullshit. Working in porn is dangerous. And I'll post some facts here that proves this is the case.

In 1998, after enjoying years of relatively HIV free movie making, the San Fernando Valley in the USA was rocked to the core by an AIDS scandal that put the fear of god into just about every porn worker in the world. In that year, five performers - one male and four females - tested positive for HIV, the worst outbreak to date in the heterosexual side of the industry. At least two of the infected performers appear in a movie called Fluff Whores. Brooke Ashley was one of them. The 25-year-old Asian-American believes it was on that shoot that she was infected, during unprotected anal sex. Marc Wallice, a veteran male performer who was one of her partners, also tested positive for the virus.

When three more female stars tested positive (Tricia Deveraux, Kimberly Jade and Caroline), fingers were pointed at veteran porn stud Marc Wallice, who had worked with all the girls recently. But worse was to come - evidence surfaced to prove that Wallice had been working with falsified HIV tests for some time. So how did he slip through the net?

'Fluff Whores' production manager Randy Munee, whose job it was to check the HIV-test results that performers are supposed to bring with them to the set, recalls that "the producer let Wallice work without proper paperwork. Wallice had a Xerox so bad . . . it looked like a Xerox of a Xerox. I told him that it didn't fly with me." Munee also maintains he never saw Brooke Ashley's test results at all.

"I was known as an anal girl. I was a girl they called for D.P.'s [double penetration]," says Ashley, who lives alone in a Los Angeles apartment. (Her 7-year-old son lives with her father back home in Kansas City.) Over the past six years, Ashley has made lots of porn videos and lots of money - in one month late last year, she estimates, she came close to raking in $20,000. She spent it just as fast. "I worked a lot and I did well for myself. But when you make that kind of money, you don't think it's ever going to end. I used coke and speed and I don't deny it, but I never used needle drugs. Part of the hard part of this business is dealing with how fast you are going. You need to cope. You get depressed."

Though she has required her partners to wear condoms before, Ashley says that on Fluff Whores, "I was going on faith that no one would shoot with forged documents. I had known Marc for years, so I didn't make him wear one. I was going on good faith."

The party is over for her, and she doesn't have much to show for it. "This business has been a part of my life for so long it's like a part of my family. I was practically a kid when I got into this," she says, near tears. "But I never put anything away on the side. I have no retirement, no savings. Nothing.

"Yeah, I heard she's got AIDS or something, or HIV, whatever," says Midnight Video general manager Karl Sorvino, pointing out that his company did not shoot the video, but merely acquired it for sale. "It doesn't mean anything that she has AIDS. Look, this chick took 50 guys in the ass in one video! This is a surprise? If anyone was going to get it, it was Brooke. Now she's raising a big stink, but no one cares."

Cash Markman winces when he hears these comments repeated - and, as director of Fluff Whores and The World's Biggest Anal Gang Bang, perhaps he should. A scriptwriter-turned-director who usually works with bigger budgets and actual plots, he seems slightly embarrassed about his participation.

"That's the only gangbang I've done, and I am not trying to pass the buck, but I had to do it," he says, sounding remarkably like a man who's passing the buck. "I was obligated contractually." The scene was the producer's idea, Markman swears. Though the plan was to find 50 men to have anal sex with Ashley, Markman estimates about 40 finally performed, and recalls that Ashley did, in fact, ask some of the men to put condoms on and declined to work with a few others - who were promptly told to leave the set. (Ashley has claimed that "it was in the contract that I could only have half the guys wear condoms.")

"I don't think we had any internal pop shots in that one," says Markman. "But it's completely possible that she got HIV on the set. The timing seems right. On the other hand, if you smoke five packs of cigarettes a day for 10 years, can you really pinpoint the day you got lung cancer?"

Markman says his bad feeling about the shoot only grew worse when Munee told him some of the men were presenting HIV test results that had been photo-copied. "He told me [the producer] was going to get into trouble," Markman recalls. "He should have been demanding originals. I wanted to walk off the set. I probably should have."

The rash of positive test results hit at a time when the industry was bigger than ever, generating close to $3 billion in annual revenues and employing thousands of people in and around Los Angeles, up to 400 of them performers. (Adult Video News estimates that last year 250 production companies released more than 8,000 new X-rated video titles.) It also came at a time when porn is being creatively defined by the work of a handful of rogue directors such as Paul Little, a.k.a. Max Hardcore, and Rob Black, who produce some of the most hard-edged, bizarre and unpleasant sex scenes imaginable.

The HIV outbreak touched off a heated debate within the industry. Some directors called for mandatory condom use, others wanted it optional, and a few didn't want condoms at all. Most straight performers would prefer to use condoms, as most gay performers already do, but up until now, most of the production companies have balked at letting the talent suit up before diving in.

"Watching people use condoms in porn is like watching the Raiders play touch football," remarks one industry insider. "It's not what people want to see."

HIV came remarkably late to the heterosexual porn industry. Aside from the legendary John Holmes, who was felled by pneumonia brought on by AIDS in 1988, and John "Buttman" Stagliano, who tested positive last year, there have until now been only a few scattered cases of confirmed infections.

Holmes' widow, Laurie, who performed in porn videos under the name Misty Dawn, says she saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, as her husband lay dying in his Sepulveda hospital bed. "I tried to warn everyone and they wouldn't listen," she says. "They were trying to say AIDS wasn't in the industry, and I'm like, 'No, no, no!' They kept saying John contracted the virus outside of the industry, that he was a junkie and he was gay and all this stuff that simply wasn't true. They were just lies to protect the industry."

Two main camps have emerged: those companies and directors who are willing to let performers use condoms - now seemingly in the majority - and those companies and directors who opt to rely instead on the most advanced virus-testing procedures, plus "personal responsibility." Not surprisingly, the divide is somewhat along class lines, with the better-established, more "respectable" companies declaring unequivocally for condoms. And while big-name contract stars have some say in what kind of sex they have and with whom, the lower ranks are filled with newcomers willing to do whatever they're asked in order to get inside. At the same time, says Mark Kulkis, former director of public relations for the Chatsworth-based Legend Video, "Some of these bigger companies are using scare tactics on the talent, telling them they won't hire them at all if they work in videos without a condom."

Jeff Steward, Legend's general manager, is one of the more vocal critics of mandatory condom use in adult videos. "The companies that are going condom-only are doing it for the wrong reasons. They are just trying to be P.C. And it won't work anyway, because they'll do a sex scene, pull the condom off and then come in the woman's mouth. Or they come in a glass and have her drink it. How's that safe sex?"

Bud Lee, a veteran porn director who frequently shoots big-budget productions for Playboy and other large adult-entertainment companies, contends that "if you make a hot product with beautiful, great sex, people won't give a damn whether or not there's a condom in it. It's when you make a shit production for $15,000, shot in one day by a clueless director and a set manager who couldn't stage a dog fight, that you have to use the excuse of being filthier and nastier in order to sell your product."

Legend's Steward would seem to agree: "If you look at our titles, if you cut out the sex, you're left with about five minutes of nothing," he says, but adds, "Look, if I rent a porn video, I don't want to see condoms. Porn is fantasyland. Who wants porn that is politically correct? A movie that relies on sex will sink with a condom."

"We owe it to the public to stop the ruse that [porn] is just fantasy," counters Lee. "Gays don't see unprotected sex as fantasy, they see it as watching death on the screen."

The wild cards in the controversy remain directors like Paul Little and Rob Black, who have never been much for marching to a party line, or indeed getting anywhere near it. A 40-year-old former UPI photographer, Little came to L.A. in the early 1990s to produce videos that represent the very antithesis of safe sex: In one signature scene, the director himself ejaculates into the anus of his partner, who then pushes the semen back out into another woman's open mouth.

"What I think constitutes good porno can simply be put like this: Porn should be a little over the top," he explains, slouching behind a large desk in his office at the Chateau du Max, his three-story, 5,600-square-foot mansion in the foothills of Altadena. "My philosophy is that it's not that shocking or newsworthy that a girl dressed like a whore lets you fuck her up the ass. Good porno is when you have a girl in the picture who looks sexy but innocent. When a little girl like that takes it up the ass, now that's a story! That a has compelling human interest to it!"

To be sure, as the sole male in most of his tapes, Little also puts himself at risk, though given the statistics of female-to-male transmission of HIV, at considerably less risk than his sex partners. He remains ambivalent as to what he will do now. In the course of an interview, he indicates at one point that he's going to begin using condoms, then says he doesn't want to make any "rash decisions," preferring to "take it on a case-by-case basis." He notes that he usually works with "fresh girls" with whom he feels safer having sex than with veteran actresses who have been "used up."

Still, he admits, "It's never going to be business as usual again. Them days are over. People are starting to fall like bowling pins, if you'll pardon the analogy, so people are really taking it seriously now. As far as how it's going to change the industry, it's going to have a profound impact. Though not so much that the consumer is really going to notice. There is still going to be the same activity going on in the tapes, with the exception that condoms are going to be used in quite a few videos. And I think that is good, because it helps set the tone for people watching the videos."

THE ADULT INDUSTRY MEDICAL HEALTH CARE INSTITUTE (AIM)

In the Sherman Oaks offices of Protecting Adult Welfare (PAW), a sort of XXX crisis center just down the hall from Jim South's World Modeling Talent Agency - the very center of San Fernando Valley smut - former porn star Sharon Mitchell (Joy, The Load Warriors) greets many of the performers who come in by their real first names, giving them hugs and pecks on the cheek as if they were visiting family. And in a way, this is her family - however dysfunctional it might be.

Known among skin-flick fans for her wiry frame and New York City streetwise sexuality, Mitchell, 46, quit performing for a stint behind the camera, then finally left the business after a "crazy fan" tried to kill her. Now clean and sober after a 16-year addiction to heroin, Mitchell continues to work closely with the adult industry. Certified by the California Association of Drug and Alcohol Educators, she is the in-house counselor for the PAW-created Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM). While she clearly sees the dark side of the business, she has made her peace with porn and her past.

"I won't turn my back on the industry. That's where I came from. It no longer works for me, but it does work for others," Mitchell explains. "Truthfully, I might have just said, 'Fuck it.' I mean, I had a lot of core issues with this business, but I really couldn't do it. There are so many other women and men who need to know the life experience I've had here, and that's what I bring to this office."

While she may seem at times more big sister than professional therapist, she has tracked the progress of HIV in porn first-hand. When performer Tricia Devereaux first tested positive in January, it was Mitchell who charted the genealogy of her sexual relations in an effort to stem the spread of the virus. Using Devereaux's day journal, which identified every performer she had worked with and when, Mitchell cross-indexed that information with the industry's records on test results. Performers who might have been exposed to the virus were quickly placed on an industry quarantine, and anyone who had not cleared a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) DNA test, the most accurate test currently available, was required by PAW to test negative twice in order to be cleared for work again.

"With Tricia's genealogy, I started with about 75 people who may have been exposed," Mitchell says, recalling how she and Bill Margold - a former porn agent, current director, sometime performer and, as the self-styled "St. Francis of Assisi of X," the founder of PAW - burned the midnight oil, poring over records and working the phones. "We went one by one. We looked for everyone who'd DNA'd out. Who had current test results and who didn't? And everyone was considered high risk, whether or not they wore a condom.

"By the second generation of the genealogy, we were dealing with such a scare, because we were dealing with multiple partners over a period of time, when [Devereaux] was only using the ELISA test," Mitchell says. (The ELISA, or enzyme-linked immunosuppresent assay, is considered less accurate than the PCR test because it tests only for antibodies to the virus, which can take up to six months to develop.) "I had to contact relatives, loved ones and pregnant mothers in an effort to get them in here and get them to take DNA tests." She felt something like a Western Union messenger delivering death notices during World War II.

Yet if Mitchell and Margold thought they would receive substantial assistance from the industry, they were wrong. "We did not have help from the manufacturers," Mitchell says. "It was pretty much the talent who came forward and helped us with the genealogy. The manufacturers don't like to know the reality that Bill and I bring to the world. Their attitude was 'Fix it! Do whatever you have to do, but just fix it!'"

Their experience on the Devereaux case, tracing the potential path of the virus, meant that when Brooke Ashley tested positive, they were able to more quickly establish the dimensions of the quarantine. In porn, the rules of confidentiality that traditionally govern how medical professionals and counselors handle test results don't apply, can't apply. "In this industry, if you have been exposed to the virus, the rules get turned upside down. We do what we have to do to save lives," Mitchell says. "If someone has been exposed and they are on a set, I have to call over there and say, 'Excuse me, this is Mitch. Can I speak with so and so?' In one instance, I made enough phone calls that four or five sets were shut down across the Southland in one day. We have to do it that way, and people understand."

Each time it began to seem as if the virus might have been contained, and that it was safe for performers to venture back under the bright lights, another performer tested positive: Devereaux in January, Brooke Ashley in March, a Hungarian performer named Caroline in April, Marc Wallice later that month, Kimberly Jade in May. A sixth performer, initially identified by AIM as positive, has since tested negative elsewhere and been cleared to return to work.

The potential for HIV to cut a deadly swath through the industry's small pool of talent was instantly clear. In a matter of months, the virus had come close to doing to porn what its opponents had long failed to do: put it out of business. "If it continues to spread in the business," says Ashley, "this will give the government the perfect opportunity to step in and say, 'Enough is enough,' and either shut the industry down as a health hazard or seriously regulate it." At one point this spring, most of the performers in town were under orders not to work - at least until their tests came back clean.

Marc Wallice, whose 17-year body of work includes Anal Savage, Anal Anarchy and The Creasemaster, among more than a thousand other films and videos, has become the target of accusations that he is "patient zero" - the performer who brought the virus into the business. He says his PCR test results were disclosed to him in late April during a conference call with Sharon Mitchell and several others. This week, in a telephone interview, Wallice alternately raged against his accusers and whispered his devotion to the industry.

"I was trying to hang on, and all of a sudden I started hearing these wild things - that I was using needles, that I was doing gay outcall, that I had known I was HIV positive for years," he says. "What about all the directors who are fucking the girls in the bathrooms on the set? Where are their tests? There are so many holes in this case."

Wallice contends that there was no problem with the test result he provided on the set of Fluff Whores. "I gave the P.A. my original, he made a photocopy of it and gave it back to me. I showed him the original. I always had original tests on the sets. If I did have a fake test, where is it? Show it to me."

As to his possible infection from intravenous drug use, he says he only briefly experimented with needles years ago. "I was hanging out with a couple of other female performers, and they were shooting junk. I was smoking coke, but I dabbled in it a little with them."

Shortly after Mitchell announced his HIV status at an April 30 industry meeting, Wallice dropped out of sight. For three weeks, he shuttled between three motels, scoring and smoking coke - to the tune of about $2,000 a week. "In the back of my mind I was probably hoping I would just pass out and not wake up," he says. "Not because I am guilty of anything, but because I wanted the pain to stop."

He was eventually sketching on coke with two women he had met at one of the motels and - in the paranoid belief that they were setting him up for a robbery - had the desk clerk call the cops. Wallice was immediately busted for possession of cocaine. "I was tweaked. My brain was gone. It's all sort of a blur now."

Looking back over his career, Wallice is stunned by the wreckage.

"I was at the top of my game. I was finally doing what I had dreamed of doing, which was to be making movies instead of just performing in them," he says, his voice starting to crack. "Now I have gone from making $6,000 a month to getting $500 a month from unemployment. Thank God I have a mother who loves me."

Sharon Mitchell and Bill Margold reject any assertion that Wallice - or any other performer - can be defined as "patient zero." "Remember, Marc worked with Tricia [Devereaux], and he could have gotten it from her," says Mitchell. "People keep telling me it's unlikely she gave it to him, but goddamn it, we don't know." The likelihood of ever knowing for certain is slim, she continues, because it's difficult to get the whole truth out of people about their private lives - even porn stars. "I can tell you, as a counselor, that people come in here and disclose information to us bit by bit," she says. "But really, no one tells us everything. There's still a lot of denial."

Ferd Eggan, AIDS coordinator for the city of Los Angeles - who during the '70s was himself directing porn films with titles such as Straight Banana - agrees that it's difficult, as a result of their usually chaotic private lives, to trace the source of transmission among porn stars. "To rely simply on testing, even if it is PCR DNA, is to allow your performers to be infected," he says. Though he is the city's point man on the disease, Eggan says the industry has not called him about the recent outbreak. "Oddly enough, they don't consult with me on these matters."

Indeed, what has most characterized the industry's response to the threat of AIDS is its determination to deal with the situation - or not deal with it - within the "family." This becomes clear back at the PAW office, when porn talent agent Jim South wanders into a room where Margold is talking with a reporter.

"You're talking with a reporter about AIDS in the industry?" he asks incredulously. "And you think this will help?"

"We can't deny that it's happening," Margold replies. "That definitely won't help."

"Sure," South says, and stomps out of the room.

Margold looks at the reporter. "There's a lot of disagreement about this issue."

For a man who has spent three decades enthusiastically preaching and practicing what he likes to call the "Gospel of X," Margold now seems oddly weary. Drained. The band may be playing on, but the tune now seems to be "Taps."

"Finally, after all these years, I realize that recess is over in the playpen of the damned," he says, repeating what has now become his catch phrase. "We either have to accept our responsibility or we are finished."

Sharon Mitchell was out of the porn industry and she didn’t want to have anything to do with it again. Sharon Mitchell had spent 25 years in the Adult Entertainment Industry as an actress, had appeared in over 2,000 movies, had been a dancer who performed in venues all over the world, and had produced and directed over 42 movies. But in 1996, Miss Mitchell suffered a near fatal attack on her life by a crazed fan and she says this event changed her life forever. "I had been a heroin addict and an alcoholic," explains Mitchell, "and those addictions had left me ravaged in many ways. Then when the attack happened, a profoundly negative experience in so many ways, it was like a wake up call. I realized what I had been doing with my life, while profitable to be sure, and was just an attempt to stay in a safe little world I thought I completely understood. I knew that I needed to get away and pursue an another avenue of growth away from the sex worker industry."
Shortly after the attack, Mitchell returned to college and became a certified counselor specializing in HIV and Chemical Dependency. Along with this she also sought treatment for her addiction and underwent psychological therapy. "I knew that this was what I really wanted to do with my life and I found that my experiences would help me in my training and in helping those who are going through similar ordeals. As I’m fond of saying, when you lived the life I had lived, you are a walking term paper. I ended up attaining California certification in Phlebotomy and doing my final paper on HIV/AIDS . But I also found myself wanting to blame the industry for all the bad things that happened to me."

Then in 1998 there was an HIV outbreak in the adult entertainment industry involving many people that Mitchell had worked with when she was in movies. "I saw what was happening and, because of my associations, experiences and my training I knew I had to do something. I was asked to sit on the board of a free-speech collation as a talent advocate and it was then that I found my calling to go back to be as effective as possible. I decided to join with Dr. Steven York (an internist who is highly regarded throughout the sexworker industry), who is now the medical director of Adult Industry Medical (AIM), to plan out and orchestrate AIM’s creation. Both in light of what was happening and because they knew we were committed to creating something that had long been needed, a laundry list of industry sources gave me the support that I needed to found AIM."

AIM quickly blossomed into a fully modern and successful non-profit organization based in Sherman Oaks, CA. Today it serves sexworkers and the general public with HIV testing, counseling of many types, Gynological services, STD testing and treatment, industry-related educational groups, and videotape informational materials. The main testing procedure performed by AIM is the PCR/DNA test for AIDS. Why does AIM use this test? They say because it is the best test for early detection of HIV and works as a stellar monitoring screening test for adult entertainment workers and the sexually active. And why not the ELISA test, which is the standard for most doctor’s offices? Because it tests only for the antibody that can take up to 6 months to mature in a young healthy person and thus has a six-month testing window. In that time, AIM accurately claims, an epidemic could spread throughout the porn industry. The PCR (polymearase chain reaction) tests for the HIV inhibitor itself (the disease) and through an amplification process, HIV can be detected just after about 2 weeks thus shortening the danger window for mass infection. This test has become the standard used in the adult entertainment industry in the USA mostly because of the work of Mitchell and AIMs advocacy.

AIM claims to have successfully prevented the spread of HIV in porn for the last 4 years and evidence seems to point to that being a fact. AIM has performed over 15,000 tests over 4 years and has had only 2 false positives and no false negatives.

Part of this phenominal success is due to a standard AIM has struggled hard to have implemented in the industry. They have insisted that sex and sex entertainment workers must be tested every 30 days and indeed most producers, both on a major studio and small independent level, will not hire even established talent if they do not have a DNA test less than 30 days old. One such filmmaker, Eddie Coates, editor and owner of www.sik-fuk.com located in Palm Desert, CA, swears by these tests. "Whenever someone approaches me to do a scene, or even when I hunt down a girl to appear in one of my shoots, I make sure they have one of those (PCR/DNA) tests. If they don’t, it’s always a no-go."

Many testimonials from performers run in a similar vein. "I find it hard to imagine myself being in this industry without the support and services of AIM, " says Alexis-on-Fire, an adult film star, dancer and contortionist. "I was not an adult actress before AIM's inception in 1998 so I can’t say from direct experience what that would have been like. I initially got into the sexworker business after a long time friend took me to a strip club where she worked. Many years later I was inspired (to get into adult films) by Miss Nina Hartley after meeting her at a Lifestyles Convention workshop titled ‘What Fourteen Years in the Adult Industry has Taught me‘. After working in the industry and hearing about AIM, I decided to start out as a volunteer once a week in October of 2001 and fell in love with the people and whole concept of AIM. I am there a few days a week now and do a lot of administrative tasks like answering questions on the phone and in person, faxing tests and anything else that will help. Being at AIM has made me realize my calling in life and I'm looking forward to taking the STD classes for AIM and going back to school to earn a Master’s degree and eventually a Doctorate so I can teach, write and counsel as well."

"In regards to what I have heard around the industry about what AIM contributes," says Alexis, "I have spoken to a number of people, including retired performer and current AIM office manager Laurie Holmes, about this and we all agree that the current 30 day test that all adult performers take for HIV, and the database kept of these results as well as the partner notification service for any positive tests, make it possible to quickly notify others that have worked with an HIV positive person that they need to be quarantined and come in for testing. Many filmmakers, like Sean Michaels, won't hire or work with those with any HIV test but a PCR/DNA Test from AIM. Also, although most performers don’t use condoms, the numbers are rising, with 17% currently choosing to follow this safety procedure. All of these things I think immensely add to a safer environment in an industry that could very easily suffer major STD causalities."

AIM does offer a great deal of services relevant to sexwork all conveniently located in one place, something relatively rare for a medical facility to do with a large flow of cliental. Some of the services (and the approximate time they take to return results) AIM offers on a walk-in basis are HIV PCR/DNA tests (1 day), Chlamydia & Gonorrhea tests by urine (1 day), HIV {ELISA} & Syphilis panels {RPR} (1 day), Hepatitis ABC panels (3 days), Herpes IGG Antibodies 1&2 (4 days a piece), drug & alcohol screening (2 days), urinalysis (1 day) and throat cultures (1 day). By appointment, AIM also provides vaginal cultures (3 days), wet mounts (1 Day) thin prep pap smears (2 Days) and Hepatitis A & B vaccines. Also, testing is available through the overnight mail or FedEx, with results returning in 2 to 3 days by phone and/or fax.

Also, AIM offers a variety of counseling, lectures and training to both organizations and people. Members of the AIM HealthCare Foundation are available to speak or present workshops to many different agencies. Most of the poignant training obviously is for their main clientele, sex workers. but drug, alcohol and psychological counseling are also available. "We really want to go that extra mile," says Mitchell, "and be sure to keep everyone informed and as healthy as we can. We provide one-on-one counseling for those who need it. We do lots of outreach work to sex clubs, bath houses, swingers sites and porn sets. We have worked hard to make our website, www.aim-med.org, an ideal outlet for information on STDs. our services and as a link to other organizations that deal with these issues." AIM also produces pamphlets to distribute to those who come to their facility and those who contact them. Furthermore, Mitchell and fellow porn veteran Nina Hartley have produced a videotape which details common questions about the business, the risks involved and how AIM can help out aspiring and current sexworkers, that is provided to those interested free of charge.

So what does the future hold for Ms. Mitchell and her unorthodox health care crusade? Expanding their work to help treat the open minded public is one goal AIM is working hard to facilitate as well as adding to their list of affiliate draw stations across the country, including a brand new of 17 in Beaumont, so sex workers and others can enjoy the benefits of STD and other testing in their own area. "I know that I’ve found my calling doing what I do with AIM, says Mitchell, "helping people help themselves." In a business infamous. for alleged exploitation, it seems Mitchell and AIM’s concern for those involved definitely bucks the trend.

The main need is preventing sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV, which causes AIDS, in a line of work in which men and women may have dozens of sexual partners in a matter of weeks.

"We talk about sex in great detail, and in a nonjudgmental manner," Mitchell said. "We don't deal with shame."

Each month, AIM sees 400 to 500 adult entertainers, who are required by most of their employers to provide blood and urine samples for HIV and STD tests. Mitchell and others enter lab results into a database that tracks cases. If the clinic finds that a disease has been contracted, AIM notifies those infected and any of their partners they may remember.

AIM's services don't end there. A sign in front of the office attests: "Health for the Sex Worker in Body, Mind, Emotion and Spirit." The clinic offers 12-step programs on drug abuse as well as an anonymous support group that addresses negative body image, low self-esteem, abusive pasts and other afflictions common to the industry. Meetings are closed to the public to prevent fans from pestering porn stars.

The holistic approach also means making the clinic's atmosphere as comfortable as possible, porn-style. A coatrack with condom-shaped hooks adorns one wall. A bowl of condoms greets visitors, and a sign warns interlopers, "Absolutely No Soliciting or Casting." On a table sits a gift basket of lubricants, ready to be raffled off, with proceeds benefiting AIM.
The clinic also helps prevent disease from spreading, said Peter Kerndt, director of the STD program for the county health department, which does some of AIM's lab work.

The screening system, however, isn't foolproof. For one thing, adult performers can get tested at any medical office, and the porn industry's STD database only includes those tested at AIM, Mitchell said.

"We don't offer a 100% guarantee," said Steven York, a Northridge internist and AIM co-founder. "We're trying to make porn as safe as being a prizefighter. We don't pretend for a moment that there aren't risks. We just try to reduce those risks."

Kerndt agreed. "The risk is certainly not zero. But AIM is providing an important service to high-risk professionals vulnerable to STDs. Having an advocate for their health is important."

As an advocate, Mitchell describes herself as the "auntie of porn." The Valley Village resident left the industry five years ago after a two-decade career. She greets patients with hugs and reminds them to eat their fruits and vegetables. She compliments the gold necklace with the triple-X charm worn by one client and the "Porn Gone Public" T-shirt of another.
And when a porn actor admits he cannot remember how many partners he has had in the last two weeks, Mitchell gently scolds.

"You have to keep track," she told him. "You have to remember."

Later, Mitchell greeted another actor, 30-year-old Chris Evans, like an old friend. "So good to see you," she said, handing him a plastic cup and directing him to the bathroom for a specimen.

Evans said he worries about HIV. "Getting an STD is one of the realities of working in the sex industry," said Evans, who would only agree to have his stage name published. "But I don't want to die from AIDS."
AIM also helps Evans and his girlfriend, also a porn star, grapple with the emotional pitfalls unique to the adult industry, such as jealousy when partners have sex with other actors.

Funding for the clinic comes from porn companies, donations and fees for health screenings. Mitchell said AIM is struggling for grant money from companies and agencies hesitant to help a nonprofit associated with pornography.

The clinic has its critics. They say AIM, by embracing the porn lifestyle, actually promotes unsafe sex, let alone immoral behavior. They contend such a negative message is particularly harmful to minors.

"Porn stars pervert teenagers," said Richard Enrico, executive director of the Foundation for Moral Restoration, a Christian anti-pornography group based in Chantilly, Va. "They shouldn't be surprised if they get STDs. You do something wrong, you deserve what you get."

Mitchell is familiar with the objections. She says she co-founded AIM in part to clear her conscience "because I'm not quite right with everything I did in the industry.

"I can't give people morals," she said, sighing. "But I can help them."

ANOTHER BAD TEST CASE

In yet another instance of a phony AIDS test surfacing in the adult industry, performer Max Steele in early April allegedly presented forged HIV documentation on a porn set to enable him to work there.
The good news is that Steele is apparently HIV negative. A staff member of the AIM Healthcare Foundation, which conducts much of the AIDS testing for the adult industry, said Steele tested negative for HIV on Monday April 9.
Steele was seen recently in Comeback Pussy 37 from Elegant Angel and Shane's World 26 from Odyssey Group Video.
An e-mail received April 11 from porn performer Kaylynn alleged that Steele "submitted a falsified HIV test on a set this past Sunday, April 9th, 2001. The test was an altered copy of an HIV test collected and reported by AIM Healthcare. The last current test AIM has on file for this individual is dated February 21st, 2001, and good through March 21st, 2001.
"Both AIM Healthcare and the 'performer's' agent, World Modeling Agency has been contacted and has in their possession a copy of the falsified HIV test. I encourage all producers and performers alike, to take a very careful look at all HIV tests, as they are easy to alter."
Copies of Steele's and Kaylynn's were provided to AVN by Kaylynn and the dates on Steele's test appeared to have been forged. Kaylynn and Steele shot a scene earlier that week for Alex Sanders and Phyllisha Anne for a new foot-based series for Odyssey Group Video. AVN was unable to reach Steele for comment. However, Steele tested HIV-Negative as of May 9.

 

After reading the facts, I leave you to your own decision about the safety of porn performing. All I can say is thank god for organisations like AIM, who are doing their bit to prevent HIV becoming the modern day plague.

 

Doctor Dan

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