by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

One afternoon last week I was surfing porn in a Laval café.

Sitting with me was Lara Roxx. We were trying to figure out if she was in the movie Split That Booty 2.

Neither of us had seen the original Split That Booty. I'm sure it wasn't a fish-out-of-water story starring Ray Liotta and Helen Mirren.

Lara was curious if she was in the sequel, because it was while shooting that film that she contracted the HIV virus.

There in big letters beneath the crouching girl with the white hotpants is written LARA COX, the less-than-Flintstonesque alternate name for the 22-year-old.

You'll recall how the news of her infection shook up the world of porn last year. California legislators promised to force condoms onto all actors, before quickly abandoning the idea.

Lara has since been hanging around in deepest Laval, watching TV.

I'd wager that Lara has the loudest ring tone on the planet. The cellular subwoofer is surely draining her battery. Before the phone went dead she got a call from some porn star in L.A. informing her of six starlet acquaintances recently sidelined for 10 days with "the clam." Chlamydia.

"I have friends from down there who aren't in porn, you know," she tells me. "I make friends easily."

Lara doesn't seem to ever say anything bad about anybody else, although she'd be well within her rights to do so.

On one discussion site for pornographers, several posters make vitriolic, mega-mean-spirited put-downs of Roxx.

On a local discussion forum, rumours fly about her re-entering the sex trade. She has no such intention. But it wouldn't necessarily be illegal if she did. Thus far under Canadian law, only HIV-positive people who have knowingly had unprotected sex without informing their partner have been convicted of criminal charges.

In spite of her name appearing on the Split That Booty 2 box, Lara's photo was nowhere.

Eventually we gave up as she checked her e-mail and an HIV-positive dating site, where her profile reads, "Who's afraid of a porn star?" I encouraged her to write back a 37-year-old in Edmonton. She considered him too old but wrote back anyway.

I rang up Luke Ford, the porn journalist from L.A., to ask if I was being too dainty in thinking it ghoulish to market a film of somebody contracting a deadly disease. The Australian-born Ford is a bit of a celebrity eccentric. He reports on porn scandals while struggling to practice his adopted Jewish faith.

Ford's answer was surprisingly cold. "I don't consider it any more heinous than selling other porn. She signed a contract for the rights of the scene no matter the consequences. It's just like you could still see a ballplayer breaking a leg or spine or getting killed in the performance of his sport. I don't see much of a difference between selling a video wherein somebody contracts a deadly disease to selling a video wherein you see somebody's soul die."

Ford says that he's noticed something "dying within" porn starlets after a while. "The more I see, the more I've become hardened and negative in my views. At first I thought it was just consenting adults doing risqué things. Now I see it as more damaging."

He notes that Brooke Ashley caught HIV in The World's Biggest Anal Gangbang, which was available for all to see. "I don't know a single instance where a producer has been smitten by conscience," Ford says.

Eventually I got somebody on the phone at TT Boy Productions, the company that made the movie. He refused to provide his name but reassured me that Lara had been cut out of the film.

Lara trudges on. She's slated to start a job for $11 an hour downtown as a customer service rep. She sometimes sweats at night and wonders why.

She's still determined to start a foundation to help others stricken with HIV and encourages others to help, which they can do by e-mailing lararoxx@yahoo.com.

"The money will go to people that are HIV positive and all alone," she says.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca