The Other Hollywood

by Legs McNeil

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: They drew my blood again, and they sent it out to a clinic that could do a DNA test over the weekend. Almost immediately, people were calling me and asking me if I was okay.

  BILL MARGOLD: In 1997, I’d gotten Sharon Mitchell to be the AIDS matron—the HIV genealogist—although I’d already created the groundwork for genealogy as far back as 1993, with the first outbreak. So now Sharon Mitchell was going to be paid for doing this—which I didn’t really mind, though up to that point nobody involved with PAW (Protecting Adult Welfare) had been paid.

  SHARON MITCHELL: I quickly amassed information on what kinds of tests existed. I got information as fast as I could. I brought it back to the Free Speech Coalition board, and I said, “I need about thirteen thousand dollars to start this testing site.”

  BILL MARGOLD: Almost immediately, Sharon Mitchell wants to get paid more and more and more and more.

  SHARON MITCHELL: Now, it just so happened that the Protecting Adult Welfare office had a sink—which is the only legal requirement to draw blood. And it was next to World Talent Modeling Agency. So I was given the grant—and as people were going in and out of World Modeling, I’d just grab them, draw their blood, and send them back out. They were like, “What! I’ve just been branded!” They were like cattle; they didn’t really know what hit them. But that’s the best way to start an industry standard for HIV testing.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: How did people find out? The Norton Clinic was instructed to call the agent if anything happened, so they called Jim South to have him contact me. I wish they would have contacted me first—at least give me a day to go and get the test again.

  Apparently, Jim South called me from his office when there were other people there. So they knew he was calling Trish Deveraux to say that her HIV test was indeterminate. Unbelievable. He should have gone into a private room or something, you know?

  Everybody was calling me: “Do you have AIDS? Are you going to die?”

  I’m like, “Well, I’m waiting for another test result. Maybe it’s a false positive.”

  MARC WALLICE: I was as big as I could be in this industry. Everywhere I went on the street, people would say, “Hey, Marc!” “You’re that guy!” I was with Elegant Angel for a year. This was my first series, Tails of Perversity. My first shot.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: After the first positive DNA test, I wasn’t really in denial, but I was like, “Maybe I’m really not HIV.” It was just shock: “How could this happen?” I saw everybody’s tests before I performed with them. I’d had sex with only two people outside of the adult business, and both times it was with a condom. And I don’t do drugs. So I was just sitting there thinking, “I don’t understand.”

  It was after the second positive that I started thinking, “Wow, I got this.”

  MARC WALLICE: Every film in the Tails of Perversity series got three and a half stars from AVN except the last one. It got four stars.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: Nobody knew where I got it. Then rumors started spreading. I gave Sharon Mitchell a list of everyone I’d had sex with for the previous six months. She said everybody on that list had to get a DNA test to prove that they didn’t have HIV.

  And the people who had been with me for less than one month before had to get a DNA test, wait a month, and get another one. So they were basically quarantined from the adult business.

  MARC WALLICE: At Elegant Angel, we are the kings of anal sex. That’s what people want. If you can get the majority of the scenes to be anal, why would you say no?

  If there’s a beautiful girl I want to see having sex, and she doesn’t do anal, that’s fine. I wouldn’t turn a beautiful girl down that doesn’t do anal over an okay-looking chick that will take it up the ass.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: I felt sorry for those people. I thought, They can’t work for a whole month because they had sex with me. It was weird; I felt like I was now a potential infector. Nobody else became positive from me, but I still hurt those people; they were sitting at home going, “Do I have HIV? Can I ever work again?”

  MARC WALLICE: I still give plenty before the anal ever happens. The anal just tops it off. Occasionally, like in the second to the last scene in Tails of Perversity 4, it’s straight anal—“Let’s not even fuck her pussy, except for the DP!”

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: Most people were very sympathetic toward me. In fact, they had an industry-wide meeting at VCA about what was going to happen. Were companies going to start shooting with condoms?

  In fact, I ran into Mr. Marcus there. He was one of the people quarantined because of me, and he was so nice to me.

  MARC WALLICE: I’ve been making the best movies at Elegant Angel since Tom Byron left. I was all Patrick Collins had, until he hired Sean Michaels. I love the guy, but the truth is his movies fucking suck.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: I mean, I can understand it that people were saying, “Well, maybe she’s doing drugs; maybe she’s hooking on the side.” But there was this person who said they saw me at a party shooting up heroin.

  First of all, I don’t go to parties. And second, I’ve never seen a person shoot up heroin, let alone shoot it up myself. So I thought, How could a person say that?

  That was one of the main things that made me realize I just needed to get away. Because I knew that people were looking at me and wondering, “What did she do to get this? What did she do different from what we’re doing?”

  MARC WALLICE: I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been on a set where someone has had a test one, two, three, four days old, which is just a giveaway that they’re faking the dates. I was one day over the deadline, so I changed the date. But I did not fake a test.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: I think I contracted HIV through Marc Wallice. Because when I looked at his test, I saw the name Mark Goldberg—which is his real name—and I saw negative for HIV next to his name. The name and the HIV screener was all I looked at.

  Later, I saw a test from 1997, the same period when I worked with him—and it said he was a forty-four-year-old female named Mark Goldberg who was negative for HIV.

  Marc Wallice was thirty-nine and a male.

  BILL MARGOLD: With the outbreaks in 1998, Sharon Mitchell assumes command of the HIV testing. Then she decides that the world isn’t big enough for the both of us and figures she’ll squeeze me out of PAW—or at least remove me from the medical parts of PAW. Which, if I had capitulated, would have gutted me.

  So I just decided to squeeze her out, by giving her an organization called AIM: Adult Industry Medical. I created it spontaneously. I told her, Now you have your own business. Emphasis on the word business. And more power to her.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: I worked for John Bond two different times—with Marc Wallice—in two weeks. So it was definitely one of those times. Most likely it was the second time: It was anal both times, but the first time was a facial. The second time he came on my ass after the anal sex.

  So I thought, two to one, Marc had HIV at that point, came on my ass, and some of it got into my body.

  SHARON MITCHELL: Every time someone would come up positive, we’d sit in a room and argue for three hours. After a couple of months we finally figured on a standard, and we implemented it through the Protecting Adult Welfare and the Free Speech Coalition.

  That was when I started to lay the groundwork for my Adult Industry Medical connections.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: When Sharon Mitchell got my list, she went through it and supposedly everybody on it tested negative. I found out later that Marc Wallice had never gone in to get a test. He had called her and said, “Oh, no, I got a test. I’m fine.”

  For some reason I’ll never understand, Sharon Mitchell apparently trusted Marc. She said, “Oh, okay, no problem.” And she called me and said, “Everyone you’ve worked with is negative.”

  I was like, “Okay. Then where’d I get it from?”

  SHARON MITCHELL: Tricia Deveraux came up positive on January 7, 1998. So we pushed away all the boxes and had an industry-wide meeting at VCA. I brought in some ed
ucators from around the local area, some doctors, people from UCLA and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and we decided that PCR-DNA was the best way to monitor for HIV.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: Then Brooke Ashley came up positive, and she turned in a list, and again Marc Wallice was on the phone saying, “No, I’m negative.”

  SHARON MITCHELL: Marc Wallice was HIV positive, and he was so ashamed that he went to any length to hide it. He went to anonymous testing centers—and at that time people were getting the ELISA test intermittently, like once a year, or every six months.

  MARC WALLICE: Why did I prefer the clinic on San Fernando Road? Because it cost five dollars.

  SHARON MITCHELL: PCR-DNA is the best test because it will not hide a positive reading if someone’s on medication. Whereas it would on the ELISA RNA test—which is why we don’t use that. The ELISA test is the antibody test, which has such a long window period.

  There’s too many partners—we found that out with Trish—that can be exposed in the six months that it takes to determine if there’s antibodies to HIV. PCR-DNA tests are for the actual DNA of the actual HIV virus itself.

  MARC WALLICE: Sharon Mitchell checked the code number of the March 1998 ELISA test, and it checked out. She called the lab. It matched. So it was not a faked test.

  I gave PAW my last six or seven tests. One of them listed my age as forty-nine; some say thirty-seven, others thirty-eight, thirty-six. I never tell them my age.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: Then, within another two months, there was Kimberly Jade and a Hungarian girl named Caroline. And they all turned in lists, and Marc Wallice was on all of them.

  SHARON MITCHELL: When Trish stepped up and gave me her list, I was in the right place at the right time to actually do something. It really became more and more clear as the fifth and sixth girl got HIV. The one common denominator name on all of their partner lists—that hadn’t been tested, and had been indeed actively avoiding tests—was Marc Wallice.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: Eventually people started saying, “Well, where’s Marc’s DNA test?” And they asked Marc to go to AIM and get one, but he didn’t want to.

  SHARON MITCHELL: I thought to myself, “My God, what has this fucking society done to impact such shame on someone that they have to consider this diagnosis different from cancer?”

  My thought was not, “What an evil son of a bitch.” It was, “What the fuck can I do to make this different? What can I do to make my part of the world a little more functional, and a little more clear, and level the playing field?”

  MARC WALLICE: I was doing great. Producing, directing, making more money than I’d ever made acting. The reason I stopped was that Patrick Collins started insisting that I get all these tests.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: Supposedly, Patrick had to bring Marc over to AIM, and Marc was crying.

  MARC WALLICE: It was said that I had to be dragged into PAW to take my PCR test. That’s bullshit. Fucking lying, asshole punks. I wasn’t crying, and I wasn’t dragged in there.

  SHARON MITCHELL: I called Marc, and I called him, and I called him, and he actively avoided me. Finally I had to call his boss, Patrick Collins, who was in Budapest, and who has little tolerance for these things. Patrick’s got a very booming voice; I think I must have heard him screaming in both ears that day, even though he was in Hungary.

  So Patrick had his wife in L.A.—who was pregnant and had a baby in the backseat—go pick up Marc Wallice and bring him in for testing.

  MARC WALLICE: I said, “Let’s go in there and get this taken care of.” I would’ve never gone in there if I knew I was positive. If anyone came to my house and dragged me, I’d fucking break their neck. They just kept making suggestions. I said, “Fine, let’s go.”

  SHARON MITCHELL: We brought Marc to Dr. York’s office in Mission Hills. Marc did not want to do it—he kept trying to get up and get out of it, you know, because it was apparent that he knew.

  He had no visible signs of HIV. And, remember, Marc was an old drug user like the rest of us, so him looking a little thin and worn was not a big deal. His appearance wasn’t a big issue, but his behavior was disturbing.

  MARC WALLICE: If I knew I was positive, why would I ever have gone to PAW to take a test? Why wouldn’t I just say, “Fuck you. I don’t have to go there. And I’ll just quit the business right now and direct.” Wouldn’t that have been much easier than going up there—knowing that I was going to come out positive?

  SHARON MITCHELL: Everybody was trying to give him a break, but there was no way around it. I mean, there was a night where we had a general meeting at the Sportsman’s Lodge, for industry only. That night, I was absolutely, 100 percent sure because I got Marc’s results back, and he was avoiding me. He kept saying, “Do I have it or what?”

  I said, “You have to come in so we can discuss your results.”

  And he wouldn’t come in.

  MARC WALLICE: Patrick Collins found out I was positive when he was in Europe. He kept telling Reuben Swift to call me, but I wouldn’t take his calls. If Patrick wants to talk to me, he’ll call me. Why does he keep sending his flunkies to call me?

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: Was Marc Wallice in denial? I don’t know. I actually do a little better just assuming that he is.

  The adult industry came to the conclusion that he was the one who gave it to the four of us, although he denies it. He may have known or may have not. Probably he did.

  SHARON MITCHELL: At AIM Healthcare, our release says that we have the right to disclose your results with or without your permission because there’s so many partners in jeopardy.

  So I had to go in and show his release test to Steven Hirsch, Steven Orenstein, Jeffrey Douglas, Russ Hampshire, and everybody else. They said, “We’ve got to close the doors to the press and just make the fucking announcement.”

  And I did—and everybody went crazy. But once the reality was out—that HIV had hit the adult entertainment industry—it got compliance within that community pretty quick.

  MARC WALLICE: I would never have gone up there if I had known I was positive. But nobody is listening to those points. They are just listening to the gossip which is saying that I knew I was positive for all these years because I had faked a test years ago.

  TRICIA DEVERAUX: I have HIV no matter what, so I just have to let go. Every once in a while I think I’m gonna go ahead and prosecute Marc Wallice and put him in jail. But then I think, I’ve already put it to rest once. Why dig it back up again?

  MARC WALLICE: I have no idea where I might have caught HIV. It had to be from the set. It couldn’t have been at the awards show because I wasn’t shooting any drugs or doing any street whores out there in Las Vegas.

  I don’t want to sound like an idiot, but maybe I had a nick on my balls from shaving. All the sweat and shit when you’re doing a “cowgirl.” All the sweat is dripping down there, and you got a little nick at the base of your dick.

  Who knows? How can you prove that?

  SHARON MITCHELL: I had the joy of having to tell Marc Wallice that he was HIV-positive. It was awful because I go back years with him—getting high and partying and just being a roommate and a brother, you know?

  I discovered some very sad things. From his viral load, he appeared to have had it for quite some time.

  MARC WALLICE: I suppose this will be the new thing on CNBC. I’ve seen people on TV say that they’ve done it purposefully. I saw it on Geraldo once—this black guy who was proud of being positive and infecting four hundred people.

  This is nothing that has been proven yet. I don’t know how they are going to prove it. It’s not true.

  SHARON MITCHELL: A viral load is the amount of a virus that is detected in your system. It’s a measurement per two milliliters of blood of how much of the virus is in your blood. When I test someone and they come back positive on a PCR-DNA, I run a Sero conversion, and another couple different tests, including the viral load test. With that and a Western Blot, I can usually tell how long a person has had HIV.

  MARC
WALLICE: I hate to say it, but I’m going to laugh my ass off when the next person comes up positive that I haven’t been involved with. I won’t laugh for the person, but I will laugh for the idea that Marc Wallice infected the porn girls. Take that and stick it up your asses. And it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen.

  SHARON MITCHELL: The PCR-DNA test turned out to be amazing because there has been absolutely zero spread of HIV in the adult industry—since Marc Wallice—because of the HIV monitoring system.

  There have been people who have gotten HIV, and who might have brought it into the industry, but they haven’t worked yet—because we’ve written all the policies for the companies that say you have to have a clean bill of health before you work.

  I mean, it’s happened where they’re unzipping their flies, getting ready to have sex with a girl or two, and they call up going, “Hey, we’re about ready to start a scene, where’s the fax?”

  And we’re like, “Hold on, it’s positive.”