10 years after John Thomas was diagnosed with HIV, the 33-year-old Londoner is having some of the best sex of his life. It just so happens that now it’s in front of a camera… (see John bottom for four guys below)
Entering the adult film world had been something John had toyed with from the age of 21 and throughout his twenties while working as a theatre director, but it wasn’t until he turned 30 that he decided to take the porno plunge.
In the age of PrEP and undetectable = untransmittable (U=U), John’s HIV status never once proved to be a barrier to his adult film aspirations – though he does admit he knows of HIV-positive models who believe they’ve been overlooked because of their status.
“When I applied to Tim Tales, which is the company I started working with, I disclosed my status as part of the application and it wasn’t a barrier to working with them at all,” John explains.
“In my experience, people who are in porn are either positive and on medication, or they’re on PrEP, so the risk of HIV transmission in the gay porn industry is minimised.”
He goes on: “There are still models who don’t want to work with HIV-positive performers. I’m aware of one performer who I would have wanted to work with, but they wouldn’t have wanted to work with me because of my status.
“I tend to think of it more as their loss. I’m not going to carry the burden of somebody else’s ignorance or prejudice.
“And they are by no means the most exciting model I could have worked with – and I’ve worked with a lot of really good people…”
John suggests those who lived through the Aids crisis and have long had it drilled into them that condoms are the only way to protect against HIV are the ones who find recent medical advances such as PrEP and U=U “difficult” to comprehend.
“I still get comments. Some comments and messages I get are coming more from trolls, and others are coming from people whose knowledge or opinion is different,” he admits.
“There was one guy who, when I shared my story, at one point said ‘This guy needs to be stopped, he’s spreading Aids through the porn industry’. It’s obviously not coming from an educated place, but it’s obviously a consequence of talking publicly about sexual health.”
“I feel most powerful after I get my STI results saying you’re all negative. The longer we leave getting tested when we’re sexually active, the more that cloud of doubt can creep over us and can make us feel nervous, anxious and worried” John concludes.
“The longer we leave it, the dark and bigger that cloud gets. When we have that clean bill of health or the treatment that we need, the sun comes out – we feel good, we can approach that boy we like and have sex with the people we want to have sex with.
“Knowledge is power, and it’s empowering being able to take control of your health.”