Best Sex Writing 2013: The State of Today's Sexual Culture

by Неизвестный

  In 1998 industry insider and former porn star Sharon Mitchell launched the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), a nonprofit where performers could get tested and treated. By the next decade, it was the epicenter of the industry’s official testing protocol. Performers working for major production companies such as Vivid, Evil Angel and even the more online-focused Manwin are tested monthly and must show proof of negative HIV results when they arrive on set.

  In recent years AIM even began posting the results of porn stars’ tests on a restricted website, which producers could check to see if an actor was good to perform.

  That all changed last spring, when a website called Porn-WikiLeaks put online, for the world to see, performers’ medical records, apparently culled from AIM’s database and sometimes matched with addresses that are federally required to ensure movie performers aren’t underage.

  At about the same time, AIDS Healthcare Foundation was filing complaints against the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation as part of its mission to get condoms required in porn. In AHF’s view, testing service AIM was the new enabler in the industry’s denial about condoms.

  On one front, AHF alleged that AIM was violating performers’ federal privacy rights by making their test results available online to producers; on another it said AIM wasn’t properly registered as a clinic, which was true.

  Legal action by AHF ultimately toppled AIM last May, when the organization closed its doors. The Free Speech Coalition stepped in with a replacement system called the Adult Production Health and Safety Service, which promised to honor privacy while administering the once-a-month testing protocol.

  The industry argues that its testing system works by quickly alerting it to new HIV cases, leading to shutdowns of production, preventing HIV from spreading on set.

  Of the ten HIV cases in the porn industry that both the AHF and the Free Speech Coalition agree have cropped up since 2005, the industry says nearly all were contracted off-set, the implication being that many of the original virus carriers didn’t work in the industry. FSC chair Douglas says, “In all of the tens of thousands of unprotected sex acts [since 2005], there is only one documented occasion where someone transmitted HIV on the set. That’s a regret. It should never have happened.”

  STD rates for performers are “much lower” than those of the general population, says FSC executive director Diane Duke. Such numbers are hard to calculate, however, because porn’s population of workers is transient and changes by the month, a fact Johns Hopkins M.D. Lawrence S. Mayer noted in an industry-commissioned report that debunks studies claiming high STD rates in adult video, which he called “without basis in science.”

  One of the industry’s more unsavory arguments against using condoms is that some of its HIV cases occurred when male straight-porn actors engaged in unprotected “crossover” work in gay porn, or had relations with gay men in their personal lives.

  In 2004, when James contracted HIV after his visit to South America, Ron Jeremy suggested with a metaphorical wink to this author that there are a lot of beautiful women in Brazil, “and some of them have dicks.”

  Derrick Burts, the performer who tested HIV-positive in 2010, was quickly outed by industry insiders as not only a crossover actor—he did both gay and straight porn—but also as a prostitute whose “escort” services were advertised on gay site Rentboy.

  “I do believe that there should be strict rules for crossover,” porn star Shay Fox tells the Weekly. “That’s where the problem is.”

  A former porn star who did not want her name used says that many who work in adult video believe “HIV is hard to get.” And, she added, “It really is.”

  The subtext among some straight actors is that it’s hard to get—unless you’re gay.

  At a summer press conference, AHF’s Weinstein called criticism of crossover performers “ just code” for gay bashing. He told the Weekly, “There’s a myriad amount of dangers” for all performers “and the reality is you can get tested today and get infected tomorrow.”

  Indeed, some porn insiders admit that run-of-the-mill STDs are common—so much so that outbreaks are sometimes “covered up with makeup so it doesn’t show up on camera,” says former performer Gina Rodriguez.

  The industry’s testing system “is a joke,” she says. “Think about it. This is the truth. If I took my test twenty-nine days ago, I’m okay to work with you because I have a valid test.”

  The “dirty secret” of porn isn’t “crossover,” says Weinstein. It’s taking escorting jobs, or what some in the business call “making appearances” with fans such as Charlie Sheen. (Sheen seemed to have no problem tracking down some of his favorite adult performers during his famous meltdown last winter.)

  “I said fifty percent of the women in porn were ‘escorting’ back in the late ’90s,” says adult filmmaker Whiteacre. “The number is certainly higher today.”

  Escorting is porn without the lights and cameras but definitely with the action. Whether it’s safe is a question for its practitioners. Some experts say, ironically or not, condoms usually are required by the individual women themselves for such off-set activity.

  “Even if the girls are using condoms when they’re escorting, it’s doubtful they’re going to be kept totally clean,” says former performer Rodriguez. “There’s a lot of contact there.”

  Some of the biggest names in the business, such as Charmane Star and Sativa Rose, can easily be found offering private meet-ups—by the hour—on some of L.A.’s classified-ad sites. It’s not clear if someone is just capitalizing on the monikers of famous porn stars or if such ads are for real. Neither of those advertisers responded to our email requests for comment.

  One porn star, Adora Cash, openly advertises on her own site that she’s an “adult film star, escort, domina” and “webcam fetishist.”

  And a performer who quit the business last year and is now a full-time escort told the Weekly that prostitution is so widespread that “most of the female porn stars are escorts.”

  “Most of all the girls I know that are porn stars I met on set—they all escort, all of them,” she adds. “These performers are going out and being irresponsible in their own private sex lives.”

  An uneasy compromise may be the answer. Condoms for anal and vaginal sex are on the table at Cal-OSHA, as officials there draw up the new rule to cover porn. AHF’s Weinstein says he won’t demand the use of condoms for oral sex. It’s a compromise, he says, that is “a reasonable accommodation” for both sides.

  And that fine-tuning would save the “money shot” because blow jobs wouldn’t violate the OSHA rule under development. “There would not be acceptance of condoms for oral sex,” Weinstein acknowledges.

  Free Speech Coalition chairman Douglas, a powerful voice in the industry, says, “I’m very much a ‘never say never’ person. I’m interested in a good-faith effort” toward compromise.

  Yet FSC executive director Duke warns, “I don’t think the industry will budge” by agreeing to the compromise plan coming before Cal-OSHA.

  Larry Flynt and Vivid CEO Steven Hirsch, for example, continue to resist the use of on-set condoms for any reason, and Hirsch threatens to leave Los Angeles if restrictions come to pass. “It’s a possibility we will be shooting outside California” if the condom rule passes, Hirsch tells the Weekly.

  The adult-business news site XBIZ conducted a poll over the summer asking industry movers and shakers if they would leave California should condoms become specifically mandatory: More than 60 percent said yes. “I think that it’s very possible that an exodus would happen on some level,” says XBIZ managing editor Dan Miller.

  Weinstein is among many who think the threat to leave Porn Valley is a bluff. Although porn productions are common in Florida and Nevada, and New Hampshire recognized freedom-of-expression protection for porn in 2008, California is the only state where making adult video is widely protected. “That’s true,” says adult-industry lawyer Diamond—thanks
to a 1988 state supreme court case, California v. Freeman, which found that prostitution could be tolerated in cases where pornographic imagery was being produced.

  “There’s only one state where [porn] is not considered prostitution,” says Weinstein—California. “I think if the industry tried to pick up stakes and go, there they would have difficulty. They can’t exist as an above-ground industry anywhere else but California.”

  “They’re not going anywhere,” agrees porn veteran Margold. “We have been blessed with the Freeman decision.”

  Attorney Douglas of FSC says the threat to leave is real, though, noting that much production has already gone to Florida, where online juggernaut Manwin has a large presence, and to Nevada, home of the brothel.

  “The adult industry is incredibly mobile,” he says, “and there’s production everywhere. This is a huge amount of money and commerce and employment that would be driven out due to the threat of bad regulation.”

  A springtime party at R Lounge in Studio City is billed as a chance to meet porn stars, and it is. The high rollers driving up to the red carpet in German cars have to pay a cover charge. The women, of course, get in free. And for the most part you can smell them before they even enter the doors of this modern, minimalist club.

  A cloud of marijuana smoke precedes a trio of performers in ten-dollar minidresses and Lucite stripper shoes. They can barely keep their clothes on as a dozen photogs from websites you’ve never heard of go wild.

  One woman flashes her breasts, another turns around and exposes the back of her thong, and when the performers plop onto a low-slung couch there’s no need for that wiggling wardrobe dance familiar to any woman who has worn a short skirt. Panty shots are part of the deal.

  The other side of the often dull and technical nature of on-set porn is the “lifestyle” beyond the set. While many female performers view men as “walking wallets,” as Margold puts it, they also sometimes genuinely embrace the party and the chance at a side-door entrance to stardom.

  Jenna Jameson is perhaps the ultimate porn success, a woman who never did the kind of “gonzo” films that give performers STDs, an entrepreneur who ultimately produced and distributed her own product. Sasha Gray, who quit the industry earlier this year, has crossed over into indie film (The Girlfriend Experience) and cable (Entourage). The new girls want to be Jenna and Sasha.

  Many female porn stars have taken to social media to brag about their cars, their designer handbags, the celebrities they get to meet and the crazy parties they attend. There’s plenty of hope among the new talent, even if the jobs are more scarce than they’ve been in a generation.

  Tom Byron, a legendary performer, is thoughtful, honest and reflective when the Weekly catches him between takes on the set of Star Wars XXX. He’s been around the industry long enough—nearly thirty years—to remember the days before testing, which he called “scary.”

  “Should we probably use condoms?” he asks. “Yes. Do people want to see it? No.”

  Indeed, the biggest problem for porn is the silent majority: the viewer, the connoisseur, the guy with his thumb on the fast-forward button. Like spectators at a Roman gladiator battle, they want porn to show them the money.

  Margold, who has watched the industry progress since Linda Lovelace discovered the fictional clitoris in her throat in 1972, is very much pro condom. In fact, he thinks performers should be tested for intravenous drug use and that new performers should be at least twenty-one.

  But, he argues, the consumer’s carnal desires are too powerful for even the state of California’s workplace police to overcome.

  He delivers the money quote, the bottom line:

  “We’re gotten off to, by society, with its left hand,” he says, “and then denied with its right hand. The very people who jack off to us don’t give a damn about us, and probably won’t.”

  Lost Boys

  Kristen Hinman

  Life is life, and you gotta do what you gotta do. It’s like everybody can’t be a doctor, a teacher, or have rich parents take care of us. And it’s gonna teach us, like—when we get older, we’re gonna be stronger, ’cause we know life experience and stuff like that. And we’re goin’ to know what to do in certain situations because of what we’ve been through when we were younger. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive.

  —female, age sixteen

  The first night Ric Curtis and Meredith Dank went looking for child prostitutes in the Bronx back in the summer of 2006, they arrived at Hunts Point with the windows of Curtis’s decaying Oldsmobile, circa 1992, rolled down. Curtis, who chairs the anthropology department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, had done research on the neighborhood’s junkies and was well acquainted with its reputation for prostitution (immortalized in several HBO documentaries). If the borough had a centralized stroll for hookers, he figured Hunts Point would be it.

  But after spending several hours sweating in the muggy August air, the professor and his PhD student decided to head home. They’d found a grand total of three hookers. Two were underage, and all three were skittish about climbing into a car with two strangers and a tape recorder.

  Dispirited though they may have been, the researchers had no intention of throwing in the towel. They were determined to achieve their goal: to conduct a census of New York City’s child sex workers.

  Even before they’d begun gearing up for the project two months prior, Curtis and Dank knew the magnitude of the challenge they had on their hands. No research team before them had hit on a workable method of quantifying this elusive population. For decades most law-enforcement officials, social workers, and activist groups had cited a vast range—anywhere from tens of thousands to three million—when crafting a sound bite pegging the population of underage hookers nationwide. But the range had been calculated with little or no direct input from the children themselves.

  Over time, the dubious numbers became gospel.

  In similar fashion, monetary outlays based on the veracity of those numbers began to multiply.

  The $500,000 the federal government had allotted for this joint study by John Jay and New York’s public-private Center for Court Innovation was chump change compared to the bounty amassed by a burgeoning assortment of nonprofit groups jockeying to liberate and rehabilitate the captive legions of exploited and abused children.

  Now Ric Curtis intended to go the direct route in determining how many kids were out there hooking: he and Dank were going to locate them, make contact with them, and interview them one-on-one, one kid at a time. If they could round up and debrief two hundred youths, the research team would be able to employ a set of statistically solid metrics to accurately extrapolate the total population.

  It took two years of sleuthing, surveying and data-crunching, but in 2008 Curtis and Dank gave the feds their money’s worth—and then some.

  The results of the John Jay survey shattered the widely accepted stereotype of a child prostitute: a pre- or barely teenage girl whose every move was dictated by the wiliest of pimps.

  After their first attempt flopped, the two researchers switched tacks. They printed a batch of coupons that could be redeemed for cash and which listed a toll-free number that kids could call anonymously to volunteer for the survey. With a local nonprofit agency that specialized in at-risk youth on board to distribute an initial set of the coupons, the researchers forwarded the 1-800 line to Dank’s cell phone and waited.

  It took almost a week, but the line finally lit up. Soon afterward Dank met her first two subjects—one male, the other female—at a cafe near Union Square. Both were too old to qualify for the study, and the man said he’d never engaged in sex for pay. But Dank decided to stay and interview them.

  The woman said she had worked as a prostitute and that she was confident she could send underage kids Dank’s way. The man said he was twenty-three, just out of jail and homeless.

  “Out of the two of them, I thought she would have been the catalyst,” Dank says now. �
��But his was the magic coupon.”

  Within a day her phone was “blowing up” with calls from kids who’d been referred by the homeless man. Almost as quickly word got around that two professors were holding late-afternoon “office hours” at Stuyvesant Park and would pay half the going rate for oral sex in exchange for a brief interview. Before long the researchers found themselves working long past dark, until they’d covered everyone in line or the rats got too feisty.

  Nine months later Dank and Curtis had far surpassed their goal, completing interviews with 249 underage prostitutes. From that data, they were able to put a number on the total population of New York’s teen sex workers: 3,946.

  Most astonishing to the researchers was the demographic profile teased out by the study. Published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2008, Curtis and Dank’s findings thoroughly obliterated the long-held core assumptions about underage prostitution:▶ Nearly half of the kids—about 45 percent—were boys.

  ▶ Only 10 percent were involved with a “market facilitator” (e.g., a pimp).

  ▶ About 45 percent got into the “business” through friends.

  ▶ More than 90 percent were U.S.—born (56 percent were New York City natives).

  ▶ On average, they started hooking at age fifteen.

  ▶ Most serviced men—preferably white and wealthy.

  ▶ Most deals were struck on the street.

  ▶ Almost 70 percent of the kids said they’d sought assistance at a youth-service agency at least once.

  ▶ Nearly all of the youths—95 percent—said they exchanged sex for money because it was the surest way to support themselves.