As one of the first pioneers to organize AIDS testing, Sharon Mitchell well recognized the urgent need for awareness and education of sexually transmitted diseases, and believed that, in general, studios should be fiscally responsible for ensuring the health and safety of all performers.
I think we should be paying for an entire battery of tests including pap smears. Everything that we recommend in our newcomer packet should be paid for by the company, and I think that since they’re not going to use condoms these things need to be continuously monitored even more than they are now. If people aren’t going to use condoms they should choose this test every two weeks or every ten days, and they should really tighten all the eclipse periods and window periods so that there is less of a chance of anyone getting anything. The way it is now one individual works for forty companies and one company doesn’t want to take the responsibility of paying for it, and they want to put all that responsibility on the actor. They’re doing the minimum with what they can do — what they can afford — and so we’re looked at as a necessary evil. Then, they could always use condoms, god forbid. What the fuck is that about? For Christ’s sake, we offer condoms — you can’t even see these things [in movies].
On January 24, 2012, The Los Angeles Times reported that L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed a binding law stating that porn performers must wear condoms while working in areas requiring a city state permit. The law requiring condom use among porn actors is believed to be the first in the nation by local government. While the AIDS Healthcare Foundation regards the law a victory, some production companies are concerned about financial losses and believe movies depicting the application of condoms don’t sell as well and that several performers prefer not to use synthetics, particularly during extensive shoots. Companies have threatened to move production outside of city ordinances to continue production. According to the L.A. Times report, the new law does not apply to filming on certified sound stages that don’t require permits. Presently, in addition to Los Angeles County, shooting hardcore material is legal only in the state of New Hampshire therefore compromising outside considerations for now. Adult historian William Margold believes rather than imposing condom use for all sexual scenarios in adult productions, STD testing should be stepped up to twice monthly, and intravenous drug testing should be implemented in movie productions in exchange for condom free oral sex, mandatory condom use for anal sex, and arbitrary consideration for vaginal activity. In May 2012, L.A. Weekly News reported the L.A. Council’s chief administrative officer requested a ninety-day extension by the city to determine how exactly to enforce new laws requiring condom use at on-location porn sites. Furthermore, the LAPD and the L.A. Fire Department do not have the inspection skills, or manpower necessary to implement the mandate.
During our interview, Mitchell believed the application of condoms would be a win-win for everyone.
They say, “We’ll sell more without a condom.” Why? There’s still that theory that people want to see what they can’t do. No one lives without a condom in real life so they want to view people at risk or whatever. It probably would take a survey to find out the reason why. I mean, I used condoms most of the time from when I started testing. I would work with people that I knew continuously. If I worked with someone that I didn’t know that well, I would always use condoms. Even I was condom optional until about the last three years that I worked. If I knew someone, and I knew that person was getting tested, I would forgo the condom. I worked with Marc Wallice once without a condom while he was positive. For the most part, the last few years, I used condoms all the time.
Fifty-two year old Marc Wallice tested positive for HIV in 1996 and contaminated several women with the virus after allegedly concealing his positive status from the industry for a two- year period.
When I started this whole process, when I founded AIM — he [Wallice] was the guy that gave six women HIV. I had discovered that I had worked with him right about the time that he had gotten HIV. I’d probably been exposed so many times to the virus and built up some tolerance, but I don’t know. They say people build up a resistance to these things. There are also theories that if you go back to Eastern European ancestry and your family history has had the bubonic plague, that that insulates some. Who knows?
My theory is the public are going to watch porno one way or the other — you make it, they’re going to buy it. If there’s a condom, they’re still going to buy it.
COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS
Violation of Claudia. COURTESY OF VIDEO-X-PIX
COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS
COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS
COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS
COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENJI
COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS
COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS
Sharon Mitchell at the former AIM offices. COURTESY OF HUSTLER VIDEO
14.
Kay Parker
The Conduit
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENJI
“Who I am at this point in my life is a spiritual mentor. The career was a piece of my past that brought me to this point with wisdom and understanding.”
— Kay Parker
Born and raised in Britain post World War II, Kay Parker’s memories of her first four years in Birmingham are at times grim. As an asthmatic sufferer, Parker welcomed the occasional reprieve when her father, a Navy man, brought his family to the lush islands of Malta (meaning “honey sweet” because of its diverse bee population) where he was stationed on two occasions during her school days. The change in environment and mild climate not only improved her health, but it infused Kay with optimism and hope, traits that have remained with her to this day.
At age twenty-one, Parker transplanted to New Mexico, “The Land of Enchantment,” where she was hired to work in an upscale boutique in Santa Fe. Although Kay had excelled during previous work experience as an au pair in Germany and was fluent in the German language, she was ready to broaden her horizons. After remaining in New Mexico for a year, Parker eventually found herself living in San Francisco at the height of the sixties revolution. She continued to expand her employment options which included managing a small rock band. During her free time, Kay delighted in absorbing Indian and Japanese cultures and cuisine while studying acting. When the opportunity arose through her friend, the late adult film thespian and director John Leslie, to appear in a non-sex role in an erotic movie directed by Robert McCallum, Parker accepted the invitation after much deliberation. In 1976 at age thirty-two, the curvaceous, natural beauty appeared in her first scene depicting sex, and later gained notoriety for portraying a woman who embarked upon a sexual relationship with her adult son in Taboo (1980). Kay believes her sensitive approach to the subject of incest in a highly acclaimed performance was an empowering experience that has helped to facilitate immense personal spiritual growth and development. She does not subscribe to coincidence or accidents. Her 2001 autobiography titled Taboo: Sacred, Don’t Touch: An Autobiographical Journey Spanning Six Thousand Years is written in an easy flowing and convicted prose as Parker shares with readers the joys of her esoteric and extraordinary live(s).
In her present role as a teacher, counselor, and metaphysical guide, Kay Parker has a heightened awareness of serendipitous moments which have proven to bring enlightenment and clarity to her journey and to the lives of others with remarkable precision. With grace and dignity, Parker apperceives her present state of being as an integral step progressing toward a continuum of harmonious peace, a devout calm with God, and with the universe.
I interviewed Kay Parker in November 2009.
True Brit
I grew up in Birmingham which is in northern England, and during that time, it was just after WWII. I was born in 1944. It was very grey and miserable. I actually don’t remember anything before the age of four. I think that’s a
lways an indicator that things were a little grey.
The earliest memory I have is of a dollhouse that my father had made me. He was actually a very talented woodworker and he was very artistic although he never developed that. My earliest memory is of that dollhouse, a beautiful dollhouse, and it actually had a little flushing toilet in it.
My father was in the navy so when I was four or four and a half we were stationed overseas on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. We actually spent two tours there. We went there twice during my childhood which was a Godsend for me because it was so beautiful there at that time. My childhood was interesting because I experienced that diversity of the greenness of England and then the Mediterranean. It was just beautiful with beautiful waters. We got to live fairly well when we were overseas because my father had what was called an overseas allowance so we had a little more money. We didn’t stay on the military base. We always lived in the towns such as they were. It was very interesting; it was a nice time. When we would go back to England, my health would deteriorate. I had asthma as child.
I wasn’t happy being in England because it was just too difficult. My father coming from the war, he’d had a very specific traumatic experience where his ship was blown up and it went down; he was one of a handful of survivors — these were the experiences that were never spoken about. One of the terrible things about war is that for the most part, men never get to recover from it. My dad never really recovered and my family took the brunt of his pain. My father would fly off into rages and there was physical abuse, although we didn’t call it that in those days. If you spoke out of line, you got slapped. There were times when he would fly into a rage and one particular time, he turned on my brother who was six years younger than I was. I thought he was going to kill him so I intervened. I jumped in between and said, “Hit me instead”. It didn’t happen all the time, but you had to walk on pins and needles.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom. Women in those days, under those circumstances, didn’t go out to work. I’m the middle of three and I have an older sister, and there is such a thing as the “middle child syndrome”. The middle child tends to want to be the peacemaker. That was absolutely me because I am that person in terms of what I call the archetype that we manifest our gifts. Mine is what I call the idealistic peacemaker so I was doing that even as a child. I couldn’t quite figure my parents out. I’ve always said that when you finally resolve your relationship with your parents, you’re done.
In Britain, it was interesting because our school had been an army barracks and it was remodeled into a school. The school system in England is different than it is America, but I don’t remember too much about school in the early years at all. When we were in Malta, it was very different, obviously. There were always one or two friends around but I didn’t hang out with cliques or anything like that — I was kind of a loner. It’s tough on kids when you move around a lot.
In the English school system there’s an examination that children take at the age of eleven years old and it’s called the eleven plus. If you pass, you have the option of going to either grammar school which is college prep basically, or technical school. If you don’t pass you go to what they call a secondary modern school or a basic high school, and you’re out by fifteen or sixteen. Surprise, surprise, I passed the eleven plus and I went to grammar school. I was the first in my family actually, to do that. Then we went back to Malta just after I had started in grammar school and they were studying a different syllabus. Our school was dealing with the Oxford and the others were dealing with the Cambridge. By the time I got back to Malta, they’d gone back to the other syllabus so it was one of those situations where I would have had to have recapped two years. I opted out.
I read a lot as a kid; that was my main hobby. I also had a hobby when I was growing up that involved cutting out pictures of film stars in any magazines that I could get my hands on. I would meticulously paste them in my scrapbooks, and frequently, I would pick Hollywood couples and put them on one page; they would each have a page. Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson, Doris Day, I loved, of course, and I loved Hollywood musicals. They were lifesavers for me especially when we were in Malta. On the Naval base, they showed films and a lot of them were Hollywood musicals. Of course, those were the days of the old Hollywood musicals. They were fantastic. What was curious about the scrapbooks is that they were tucked away in my parents’ attic in their home in Kent, and years later, I think it was back in the mid-1980s, my mother revealed to me that they had come across them and they had burned them. Not maliciously — they were just cleaning out. My mother said, “I didn’t think you’d like them dear. I didn’t think you’d want to keep them,” and I went “What?” You know, in a funny kind of way, looking at it from a metaphysical kind of perspective, maybe by burning them it allowed them to go beyond the physical in a positive way.
I had no aspirations at all, really. We weren’t taught to have dreams and to aspire or to have high goals. We weren’t supposed to do that. It wasn’t part of the cultural upbringing. I didn’t have parents who said to me, “You know, honey, whatever you want to do, you can do if you set your mind to it.” I think there was still so much recovery from the war. It was all they could do really, to survive. You know after the war we used to have food rations — I do remember that. You couldn’t have more than your quota.
I had a role model who was a friend of my mother’s. Actually, later on we became friends because we were more on par intellectually and mentally. This woman had raised two daughters and went back to school herself. She ended up working in the penal system in England. In fact, she ended up working in Maidstone Prison which was a big prison in England. She was able to establish programs for the inmates and these were heavy-duty fellows. I remember that she would arrange an evening where people could come from the outside world and interact with them. It was called “rehabilitation” which was so smart as far as I’m concerned. I remember sitting in a room with these guys, this was maybe in the late-1970s, and having a conversation with one of the great train-robbers. One of the men who had been involved in that was there and I remember speaking to him. You know, these guys were kind of withdrawn, but they were approachable to some degree. I was so impressed with her. She did something that I thought was extraordinary in terms of setting up those programs in the prison. There is very little, if any kind of rehabilitation, for men. I have a friend who is a judge on the east coast and we talk about these kinds of things all the time. It’s just shocking that there are so few programs and so many men incarcerated. What a great thing to do and I aspired to sort of be like her. She was an amazing role model for me because she went beyond the norm.
Recently, she and her husband actually came to stay with me. They now live in Australia, but I cannot communicate with her because there is still a way of dealing with the world that I call very British. There is skepticism. It’s almost like a subtle anger. Whenever we talk, she never asks how I am. It’s more about money and prestige, and practical, linear stuff. Even though it is her way of caring, I can’t respond on that level. Not too long ago she sent me what can only be described as a personal greeting and I thought, “Oh well, it’s there somewhere.”
I left school at fifteen and a half. I was very surprised actually, that my parents allowed me to do that, but they didn’t resist. The first job I got was in a hairdressing salon. Things were very different in those days of course and it was a salon in a town near where we lived where only the “better wives” went. You just couldn’t walk in off the street to get an appointment. It was definitely for the upper class. There was a perfumery downstairs, and then upstairs, was the hairdressing salon. The women who ran it were so rigid, they were much like the teachers I’d had at school! It was okay, because I thought that at least I’d get some training and they did send their girls to London to study cosmetology. After about three months, my father made me quit because I used to come home smelling of perfume. He just didn’t like it. After that, I worked
in a stationary store, and then I took a job in London in another store just to get out and spread my wings a little bit. There were several jobs. I remember working in an English teahouse and I did baking for a few months. Finally, when I was just about to turn eighteen, I left England with a friend, and went to Europe and hitchhiked around Europe.
The Accidental Tourist
We were on the road about five weeks or so. We didn’t have much money at all but. In fact, my father drove us to the train station — this is kind of profound — as we were leaving, because he could not tell me he loved me, he thrust a small amount of money into my hand. It wasn’t much at all and he kind of grumbled “Take care of yourself, you’ll be back in six weeks, mark my words”. He was expressing what I would later come to understand as jealousy of my freedom. He couldn’t speak honestly about his feelings, so that was the way he expressed whatever it was he was expressing.
Six weeks later, we were in Germany and my traveling companion’s money was stolen when we were youth hostelling. She wired her parents and her parents immediately wired back and said, “Come home. We’re sending a ticket, come home.” I stayed. There was no way I was going back and giving my father the satisfaction of his words coming true. I couldn’t do that. That was my motivating force to keep going actually, so it served me in the long run.
GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985 Page 46