Wade Nichols (October 28, 1946 – January 28, 1985)

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Dennis Posa, aka Dennis Parker, aka Wade Nichols (October 28, 1946 – January 28, 1985) was an actor and singer from Freeport, New York who started his career in pornographic movies.

His first feature film role was probably in the 1975 gay adult film Boynapped!. He subsequently appeared mostly in straight porn films shot in New York such as Barbara Broadcast, Jail Bait, Summer of Laura, Punk Rock, Marishino Cherries, and Teenage Pajama Party. Posa was credited as Wade Nichols in most of the adult films in which he appeared.

In 1979, using the name Dennis Parker, he recorded a disco album on Casablanca Records entitled Like an Eagle. The album was produced by Village People creator / producer Jacques Morali. The title track was released as a single, and appears on the 1994 box set The Casablanca Records Story.

Posa (still as Dennis Parker) also joined the cast of the soap opera The Edge of Night in 1979, as Police Chief Derek Mallory.

Seriously ill by October 1984, Posa was unable to continue working on The Edge of Night and his character was written out of the show. The date of his death is commonly reported as January 28, 1985, but the Social Security Death Index indicates that Posa died in March of that year. (According to a persistent rumor the cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but this has never been confirmed.) In a tribute to Posa in a 1985 issue of Soap Opera Digest, fellow The Edge of Night actor Ernie Townsend wrote, "He died in early January after a long and painful illness that took away a talent in its prime."


AIDS Quilt

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Nichols

Further Readings:

Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality by Patrick Moore
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press (January 14, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080707957X
ISBN-13: 978-0807079577
Amazon: Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality

The radical sexuality of gay American men in the 1970s is often seen as a shameful period of excess that led to the AIDS crisis. Beyond Shame claims that when the gay community divorced itself from this allegedly tainted legacy, the tragic result was an intergenerational disconnect because the original participants were unable to pass on a sense of pride and identity to younger generations. Indeed, one reason for the current rise in HIV, Moore argues, is precisely due to this destructive occurrence, which increased the willingness of younger gay men to engage in unsafe sex.

Lifting the'veil of AIDS,' Moore recasts the gay male sexual culture of the 1970s as both groundbreaking and creative-provocatively comparing extreme sex to art. He presents a powerful yet nuanced snapshot of a maligned, forgotten era. Moore rescues gay America's past, present, and future from a disturbing spiral of destruction and AIDS-related shame, illustrating why it's critical for the gay community to reclaim the decade.

More LGBT History at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Gay Classics