HOT HOUSE FLOWER
Gay porn star Marc Anthony speaks to Amanda Elliot about
his battle with drink, drugs and HIV.
Marc Anthony has vivid memories of sero-converting in the back of a van in
a car park in Leicester. Shivering, sweating and aching, he was wrapped in
a blanket and held by his friend and manager, gay photographer Jay Eff.
“I was hired by an agency to do a strip job. I’d felt ill before
I started the strip. But I had a job to do so I did it.” That was in
1996. These days, with an undetectable viral load and a CD4 count of 400,
HIV is the least of his problems. For the last eight months Marc has been
battling - and beating - the triple demons of booze, cocaine and sex addiction.
He is far more likely to be found doing the circuit of AA meetings in central
London than the circuit of gay strip clubs across the UK.
Late starter
“By the time I came out as gay I was 25 and already had a wife and two
children - now 11 and 13. Then I got 18 months for GBH (he had accidentally
run over a policeman) and was shipped to a C category prison.
“I started getting feelings when I saw this man, an escort, in the prison
shower and in his little Union Jack shorts.”
This man introduced Marc to a ‘lifer’, in for armed robbery, who
took him under his wing.
“This lifer was a lovely bloke who commanded a lot of respect. He told
me: ‘Just accept it - you’re gay’ and I did and I was so
excited. He introduced me to an older, much creepier lifer who took me into
his bed and fucked me.”
“I had suppressed these feelings for many years. I’d had one encounter
with an army cadet in the toilets when I was 14. But I got caught so I retreated
back in the closet for another 10 years. I was a boy from the valleys where
you never saw blacks and gays.”
Playing catch-up
By the time he was released, Marc was sure about his sexuality and went to
tell his wife.
“She took it quite well considering. We are still mates today. Within
eight months, I was in London. It was my dream - I finally felt freed.”
With a fist full of contacts in the gay sex industry, Marc was determined
to live out his sexual fantasies and make up for lost time.
“I ended up at an escort agency. We sat behind one-way glass while the
men picked us out. It didn’t scare me, it turned me on; it was exciting
- a bit like being in a fish tank. It was one of my fantasies. Money was not
my first priority.”
He soon got to know the gay clubs and ended up in Heaven nightclub on Saturday
night where he attracted a lot of interest. “I was always a smiling,
happy bunny. I couldn’t dance but had loads of energy.” It was
here he met the celebrated gay photographer Jay Eff.
“He avoided me like the plague. I thought he looked very punkish. But
one night I was skint and he offered to do a picture of me for Boyz - £60,
cash in hand.”
This was the start of an enduring and successful friendship and business partnership.
Jay got him touring on the amateur and professional gay strip circuit, entering
him into Mr Gay UK. He never missed an opportunity to get Marc’s picture
in the gay press.
“Jay was on a mission to make me famous. He was my minder and my conscience,
mother and father.”
Marc’s film career started in 1994 when he was flown to Sitges, near
Barcelona, to star in the first Man4Man porn movie.
“I was on top of the world. It was fantastic. It was my first trip abroad.
We were really mollycoddled. I got £800 for it.”
Bjorn again
When Marc speaks of his porn acting career, it is never with regret. He loves
almost everything he has done. He said most of the British porn he starred
in involved pretend sex, so condoms were rarely an issue on set.
“We’d do a wrap pretending to have sex and then all the actors
would disappear downstairs and shag like crazy for real.”
His first taste of real stardom and hard-core porn came when he was flown
over to Miami to work with the legendary director Kristen Bjorn.
“He really worked you hard: do this; wait there; put that in there;
do that. It was hardcore - not fetish - with lots of hard-ons, rimming and
close ups. That wasn’t acting.” His most famous Kristen Bjorn
movies, Isle of Men, A World of Men, and The Anchor Hotel, are porn classics
and the ones Marc most enjoyed.
“I enjoyed working with him and respect him. He is serious about what
he does and does it all himself”.
He admits being struck by stage fright but avoided the ‘fluffers’
(people employed to help actors restore their hard-ons) or the drugs (Viagra
gave him a headache) preferring to use magazines to restore his performance.
Marc strayed into kinkier films with the company Hot House but it frustrated
him that he was always cast in the ‘active’ role when he felt
more comfortable as the submissive ‘bottom’.
He says HIV was “never mentioned” on film sets as this could seriously
affect your career. In America, actors are generally expected to use condoms.
According to Marc it is the French, German and east Europeans who push the
boundaries.
Demons and the dark side
After his diagnosis, Marc became increasingly paranoid and unstable. One evening
soon after, he smashed up the flat and the cooker, then took a plane to Paris
to live with a man and run underground parties. “It was alright for
a while but I was in denial.”
After a year he returned to England, but his demons came too. He did a couple
of Hot House films in the States but ended up serving four months in jail
for a drug and psychosis-induced air rage incident on a transatlantic flight.
“After my diagnosis I felt filthy. I felt I had this creature in my
brain. I started to get more and more paranoid. But in retrospect, I think
my lack of self-worth was a drug thing rather than and HIV thing.”
At this point he started using more drugs, including crystal meth, and drifted
into the darker side of the gay and fisting scene. He would go to the gay
nightclub FF and then disappear into to arches to have sex with anyone and
everyone.
“Some of the men were really ugly, really nasty. I didn’t care.
I was totally vulnerable; on a death wish. I didn’t give a shit. I call
this my dark time. I was at my lowest ebb. I was addicted to cocaine and alcohol.”
On the eve of the new millennium he started injecting drugs. “I even
banged up cocaine and vodka.” Marc now traces his addictive behaviour
and low self-esteem, not to his overnight porn career or his HIV diagnosis,
but to “deeper” demons from his early years.
Marc grows up
Finally, last year, he says he made his “first grown up decision”.
“I realised I couldn’t go on like that anymore.”
By August 2004 he had finished with his boyfriend (who is also addicted to
drugs) and started attending AA meetings. At first he found it hard going,
sharing his experiences with others. But the meetings have started to pay
off and he now has a key worker for his drug addiction.
“I have had a few set-backs but I have picked myself up again. It’s
really hard - but I know I am getting through it. I am determined. I have
started to write things about my life and am thinking about the future. I
realise now I was doing drugs and drink for all the wrong reasons. Drugs have
been a waste of space in my life.
“Part of my problem was coming out so late. I had no gradual build-up;
no counselling and support. I just launched myself into the whole drug, sex
and fame thing and lost myself.”
Marc still sometimes hankers for the days when he would travel across Europe
with friends “having the time of my life”. But he also knows the
time has come to move on.
To young men facing similar choices he cautions: “Don’t get carried
away by the euphoria, glamour and fame. Imagine your feet firmly attached
to the floor.”
He is keen to work as a chef and start to be “a proper dad” to
his kids. Under the supervision of his doctor, he is taking a ‘holiday’
from his medication (“the efavirenz was playing havoc with my head”).
He lives in north London with his much-loved Jack Russell Max (“I couldn’t
have got this far without him”) and is optimistic about the future.
“I am grateful for each day I am here. These days I have more respect
for life and people.
Drug and alcohol addiction advice and support:
Alcoholics Anonymous: www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk
0845 769 7555
Turning Point: www.turning-point.co.uk
0207 702 2300
Turning Point ‘Antidote’: (LGBT services) antidote@turning-point.co.uk
0207 437 3523
Narcotics Anonymous: www.ukna.org
