Powers Shoots HIV-Positive, Hetero Scene

Brooke Ashley was frowning a bit when she walked, with boyfriend Eddie Wood, onto her first adult set in seven years.

"Ed, I think we might have a problem," she disclosed to director Ed Powers. "I forgot my AIDS test."

See? Who says there are no HIV jokes out there?

The reason Brooke can make that joke, of course, is because she's one of seven performers who contracted HIV in 1998 after having sex with actor Marc Wallice – and her life just hasn't been the same since.

When we last spoke to Brooke several months ago, she was living in Texas and undergoing chemotherapy treatments to get rid of a hepatitis C infection. But on July 20, the day of the Powers shoot, she was giddy, feeling a bit better ... and much in love with her new boyfriend, Eddie Wood.

"Me and my boyfriend met recently through a Web site that puts together HIV-positive singles," she said. "We're both HIV-positive and both hep-C positive, and I'm on treatment now. It's a chemotherapy treatment; I've done six months and I have six months left, and I'm trying to clear the hepatitis-C completely."

But Brooke's a born performer, and she's yearned to get back in front of the camera again ... so enter veteran producer/director Ed Powers.

"This came about because Brooke called me," Powers explained. "She has kept in touch through the years, and I've known her since she was 18 years old, and she's still in the business. She still is and always has been and always will be Brooke Ashley, and yet there are other dimensions that people, regardless of what they're going through personally or health-wise, get a chance to do, and this is what I'm here for: I'm here to capture a moment that's going to be fun. I'm here to capture everything."

"We never know what's going to happen," Powers said before his performers arrived. "You never know how the guy is going to perform, but he is very confident and I'm confident in him, and I always feel like I'm disarming and non-threatening, so I'm expecting it to go well."

And go well it did. Brooke and Eddie arrived carrying Big Gulps from 7-Eleven – after all, porn is thirsty work – and everyone took seats in Ed's living room to discuss the action that was to come – and inevitably, the conversation strayed to STDs and related subjects.

"A lot of the Republican and conservative groups, they're not allowing kids to be educated about HIV or STDs or hepatitis, or to use condoms, or to decide these things on their own," Brooke stated. "So when they end up with these things, it's really tragic. Kids are having sex and doing things at a younger age now."

"People in society in general take STDs lightly because they compare that to HIV in the sense that, 'STD's aren't going to kill you'," Ed added. "But STDs are going to wear down your immune system."

Brooke's own double affliction was the prime example.

"It's like putting two chronic illnesses on your immune system, taxing it at the same time," she noted. "They feed off each other and make the other one progress faster."

"I've been upset with mainstream media lately because in movies and TV shows, they're really trying to downplay hepatitis, like it's nothing. In the new Nicole Kidman movie, they made a reference to somebody having hepatitis-C as if it was no big deal."

Brooke's a talker, and the health discussion probably could have continued for several hours, but that wasn't the afternoon's purpose. Ed gently herded the lovers up the stairs to his bedroom set, and after choosing which lube and sex toys to use -- "Although we are usually condom-only," Ed noted, "today, we don't have to use condoms; only on the toys." – the couple climbed on the king-size bed and began getting it on.

Thankfully, Powers' early nervousness about the scene proved baseless. Eddie, a construction worker by trade, had little trouble being excited by his girlfriend, and seemed not at all intimidated by the cameras. Of course, watching Brooke pleasure herself with fingers and dildo before the boy/girl action started couldn't have hurt, and when she moved to suck his cock, it was ready for her.

The pair essayed mish, doggie and both cowgirl positions during the hour-long shoot, with Brooke as sexy and (let's face it) off-center as she's ever been, but Eddie plugged away in all positions, occasionally stopping for a sip of soda and later learning to hide the lube bottle under a nearby pillow for fast access.

After their fourth position, Eddie's wood seemed to waver a bit, but with Brooke's sexy encouragement (and her hand on his balls), he managed a pop to her face and chest, completing the landmark scene.

"I don't like to emphasize the affliction," Powers noted before the scene began. "I like to emphasize the fact that I've always been proud to capture first-time moments, even in the careers of girls that have been in the business before. This is going to be the first time Brooke has ever worked with a significant other, and it's going to be his first time altogether, and I just think it's going to be fun, too, because they will have this to reflect on, like all the other couples have; once you make one, you have something to look at and sometimes laugh at – it all depends – and to have fun with it."

Powers isn't sure just which volume of Dirty Debutantes this will appear in, but look for it in stores sometime in early September.

Note: There is one other known case of two openly HIV-positive performers having sex in a hetero production: Tricia Devereaux and John Stagliano in Buttman's Toy Stories, released in 1999. - Ed.