Police found him unconscious in the Qdoba restaurant bathroom on the 100 block of West Jackson on Friday morning (8 June). He had attended the Exxotica Expo, an annual adult convention, in Chicago. Rhodes quickly realized that he was not feeling well and cut the evening short.Gay porn star Dave Slick has died at just 26 years old after an annual sex-themed expo. Rhodes was hired along with another escort to perform for a wealthy client (according to text messages later read by his brother), the two men continued the evening on their own, having sex and doing drugs. so alone,” he wrote in a post just weeks ago. Rhodes turned increasingly to the Internet, using his Tumblr feed and his Facebook page to discuss his sense of anguish. Colt said.Īs the novelty of being in pornographic films wore off, Mr. Rhodes to film a solo scene that day, Mr. Nevertheless, Randy Blue still managed to get Mr.
“They said, ‘Your test results came back, and you’re H.I.V. Rhodes found this out when he went to shoot a scene for Randy Blue, a company that requires testing. And then, a few years ago, he tested positive for H.I.V.Īccording to Mr. Rhodes went from using steroids to dealing them. Jacobs, who did not respond to calls for comment for this article, fell away. Rhodes got into fights with boyfriends, and the police would be called. “And people were always trying to push drugs onto him.” Rhodes on-screen and was a friend for the last several years of his life. “People faulted him for doing steroids, which was the thing that allowed him to be the ideal they wanted,” said Samuel Colt, an actor who appeared with Mr. I thought, ‘If it pays the bills, why not?’ ” “And I was a little naïve about how much money he was making. Naughtin, who is straight, was inclined to be open-minded about his brother’s new career. Rhodes took a stream of low-paying jobs, working at a CVS and a sex-toy store, before moving into stripping and then pornographic films at 22.Īt first, Mr.
Rhodes grew up with his identical twin, Jon Naughtin, in Massapequa, N.Y., two children whose parents had a long and nasty divorce. He was totally self-aware, and the stories he would tell me were unbelievable.” Mickey Boardman, the editorial director of Paper, said, “We would see him out all the time,” adding: “He was hilarious. And the fashion connection and the fact that he had a brain elevated him from your everyday escort-slash-porn-god and gave him texture.” “He was Thor, the Hulk and the rest of the ‘Avengers’ cast wrapped in a gay package. “The gay porn audience often looks to a hulking macho fantasy, and he provided that,” said Michael Musto, the Village Voice gossip columnist who was friendly with Mr.
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Rhodes, whose given name was James Naughtin, was signed to Falcon Video in 2004, and became one of a handful of recognizable faces in an era when the industry was going through a painful economic contraction, thanks to online file sharing and free pornography sites like Xtube. (The blog was taken down last weekend, shortly after news of his death ricocheted around the Internet.) Over the last few years, he had also been the author of a harrowing (and frequently clever) Tumblr feed, on which he detailed his escapades escorting, his rampant steroid use and his stories of winding up in psychiatric wards after crystal meth binges. He appeared regularly on Page Six, spent time with the designer Marc Jacobs, was profiled in magazines that had nothing to do with pornography, and shot an ad campaign for Loehmann’s. THE bereaved reactions on Twitter came from all over: Kim Hastreiter, the editor of Paper Magazine Bruce LaBruce, the independent film director and Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters, who called his recently departed friend “brave” and “honest.”Įrik Rhodes, 30, a 6-foot-4, 258-pound gay pornographic-film star who died last Thursday in Manhattan from a heart attack after a nearly decade-long career that had made him an unlikely celebrity in some New York social circles.