“You hear rumors about straight performers all the time. In October, when the alarm bells were first sounded about the still anonymous Patient Zeta, porn star Courtney Cummz told The Daily Beast she was “terrified” by stars who cross over, and thought the Occupational Safety and Health Administration should step in to prevent it. Many female performers believe that the risk of contracting HIV during a scene is vastly increased if their male partner participates in gay porn. The reason for two distinct names is that in the porn industry, doing both gay and straight porn-called “crossing over”-is both relatively common and also fairly taboo.
Like many male porn actors, Burts sometimes went “gay for pay,” performing in both straight porn with women under the name Cameron Reid, and gay porn with other men under the name Derek Chambers. When it comes to working in a sex industry, however, “straight” is a flexible term. And no HIV-positive performer has stepped forward to admit to working with Burts.
The new question became: How did Derrick Burts, who says that outside of work his only sex partner was his girlfriend, get infected? The answer to that question may reveal some hard truths about the porn industry. Burts remained anonymous until earlier this week when he announced at a press conference that he was the so-called Patient Zeta at the center of the lurid guessing game.īut that didn’t put the matter to rest. Per industry protocol, AIM immediately notified the porn community that an infected performer was working in their midst, and the bombshell announcement temporarily brought the mainstream porn industry to a virtual standstill.