Porn Valley- Gene sez: In the following article Lara Roxx is giving her age as 21. Weren’t we being told that she was 18? And of course, my source in Vegas tells me that she’s more like 32. Nevertheless, read on.

She’s always been in a hurry to grow up, prove herself, get rich and become famous.

Fame has struck, though not in the way Lara Roxx hoped it would.

The 21-year-old Laval native was thrust into the spotlight last month when she was found to be infected with HIV, weeks after going to California to earn her fortune as a porn star.

She filmed 18 unprotected sex scenes in her brief career, including two with actor Darren James, who has been tagged as Patient Zero in the first HIV outbreak to rock the adult-film scene in five years; a handful of actors have tested positive so far.

“I always wanted a public career,” Roxx said yesterday without a hint of self-pity in her voice. “I guess this is the way it’s going to be.”

Roxx, who prefers not to use her real name, doesn’t like any of the labels society wants to stick on her: stripper, sex-trade worker, victim. She’s broke and homeless, but plans to use her new fame to steer other young people away from the choices she made.

Roxx wants to set up a foundation to help HIV-infected youth and those from troubled homes. She also wants to record a CD.

“I always lived life at 2,000 miles an hour,” Roxx said, over a greasy breakfast at a Ste. Catherine St. diner. “My mother told me to slow down, but I thought I was moving at the right speed and everyone else was going too slow.”

She began stripping at 17, moving between noncontact strip clubs like Super Sexe, Les Amazones and Chez Paree for the next three years.

Her parents split up and neither of them felt equipped to have their headstrong daughter at home.

She got an apartment. Stripping paid the bills, though she viewed the work as little more than nude modelling. “No one touched me,” Roxx said.

She then began working in massage parlors, where clients received sexual favours along with their rubdowns.

By the time she was 20, Roxx was working as a prostitute and appearing on local X-rated Web sites. Last winter, she did a film shoot in Montreal with James, though that probably was not when she was infected.

In mid-March, armed with a plane ticket paid for by a California porn producer, she headed to Los Angeles. Her plan was to earn enough money to come home, buy a condo and a car, and prove to her parents she was a responsible adult. It was a short trip.

“The first thing the porn industry does is desensitize you sexually,” Roxx said. “I went into it with strong ideas about what I would and wouldn’t do. It didn’t take long before I realized that I didn’t have many choices.”

She quickly learned women willing to have unprotected sex earned more – as much as $1,000 U.S. a day.

In California, porn actors are routinely tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Roxx was tested for HIV the day she arrived in Los Angeles. She was clean.

Naively, she believed the testing regimen meant that the work environment was safe. She threw herself into the work, describing the encounters as “like one-night stands without the crap.”

“When it doesn’t hurt, it’s OK. It’s never pleasant, but it can be funny. You fake it, you moan. You crack each other up.”

The 18 scenes she shot included lesbian acts, oral sex and masturbation. That was when she had her second encounter with James, an anal-sex scene that also involved a second man.

A few days later, she began to feel sick. She developed a rash and came down with a yeast infection.

On April 10, she was diagnosed with HIV. She used some of the money she’d earned to repay the cost of her plane ticket to Los Angeles. The rest went to medical care.

Her family sent her airfare and she came home to Montreal. She lived in Laval for a while with her mother, but the two fought and she left.

“I know this is a lot for my mother to accept, but I really need her. She’s the only one I want with me right now,” Roxx said.

She’s living in a downtown shelter for women while she sorts her life out. From her backpack, she pulled a dog-eared pamphlet for a volunteer-training program she wants to take, part of her plan to start the foundation.

Montreal criminal lawyer Daniel Lighter is exploring whether Roxx has grounds for a civil suit in California.

“We’re looking at agents, actors and producers to see whether there are liability issues,” Lighter said in a phone interview.

Details of the Lara Roxx Foundation are still being finalized. Donations can be sent in trust to Daniel Lighter, 500 Place D’Armes, Suite 2350. Montreal, H2Y 2W2