At 41, it seems my adult film knowledge is more than a bit outdated. I have to admit that I had never heard of Rhodes before. …Īnd for a moment, and I hope a long moment, we will all judge the extent of our excesses and mitigate the dangers they pose with moderation. While many roll their eyes at porn actors, without an audience they wouldn’t exist. People can judge him for his excesses or his career, but it was us who wanted to see those limits pushed and us who consumed the product he became. People have bantered about why we care if a porn star died, have said that he brought this on himself, have locked themselves in rooms in tears, and even been so crass as to say he deserved it. Brett Edward Stout at offers a nice summation of the reactions and adds his perspective: There’s been a lot of reaction to the death of Rhodes and the range of points being made are numerous. Rhodes to film a solo scene that day, Mr. Nevertheless, Randy Blue still managed to get Mr. “They said, ‘Your test results came back, and you’re H.I.V.
Rhodes found this out when he went to shoot a scene for Randy Blue, a company that requires testing. And then, a few years ago, he tested positive for H.I.V.Īccording to Mr. Rhodes went from using steroids to dealing them. Jacobs, who did not respond to calls for comment for this article, fell away. Rhodes got into fights with boyfriends, and the police would be called. “And people were always trying to push drugs onto him.” Rhodes on-screen and was a friend for the last several years of his life. “People faulted him for doing steroids, which was the thing that allowed him to be the ideal they wanted,” said Samuel Colt, an actor who appeared with Mr.
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Rhodes, whose given name was James Naughtin, was signed to Falcon Video in 2004, and became one of a handful of recognizable faces in an era when the industry was going through a painful economic contraction, thanks to online file sharing and free pornography sites like Xtube. (The blog was taken down last weekend, shortly after news of his death ricocheted around the Internet.) Over the last few years, he had also been the author of a harrowing (and frequently clever) Tumblr feed, on which he detailed his escapades escorting, his rampant steroid use and his stories of winding up in psychiatric wards after crystal meth binges. He appeared regularly on Page Six, spent time with the designer Marc Jacobs, was profiled in magazines that had nothing to do with pornography, and shot an ad campaign for Loehmann’s. In the NYT article by Jacob Bernstein (who recently penned another article on the tragic death of another gay man, Bob Bergeron, a New York City therapist who committed suicide earlier this year), it was clear that Rhodes had led a fast life: A June 20 New York Times article reported that he was HIV positive. Erik Rhodes, a gay porn star, died June 14 of a heart attack in New York City.