More than any other part of a man’s body, I’m obsessed with noses. Specifically the big, strong angular ones. It’s why I always used to melt when the man who would become porn star Adam Ramzi would walk into Akbar or Faultline back when I lived in L.A. A few months later I returned to New York, and forgot about him until earlier this year when a friend asked me if I would interview Ramzi, who was my friend’s current porn obsession. I hadn’t heard of him yet. When I found out Ramzi was my big-nosed crush, I knew it was time for us to chat. I wound up back in L.A. this past week, and though Ramzi’s since moved to San Francisco, we were at least in the same time zone and able to Skype more easily. For the next forty-five minutes we talked at length about his unusual entry into the industry, how porn gives his younger self a chance at victory, and the perception of his work and persona in the Armenian-American community.

Adam B: Adam, I knew you only from sight when I spent some time in L.A. a couple of years ago, and I just remember you were always the hottest guy in Akbar at all times. But I didn’t know that you were destined to be this super hot porn star. How did you get into the industry?

Adam R: Well, I was in a program at Antioch University, working on my masters in LGBT psychology and while that was happening I was approached by Chris Ward, the head of Raging Stallion, because he saw pictures of me somewhere. He said, “You’re exactly what we want for our brand. Would you be interested in something like this? We’d make it very great and very fun.” At first I scoffed at it and was thinking that’s not really something I’d be willing to do. It’s too risky. It’s too weird. But then the more I thought about it, it seemed to make a lot of sense, and I tried to think of a way to tie it into my studies. Because a lot of what I was looking into in my program was about the shame around gay sex, bottom shame, guilt, just a lot of feelings around gay sex and how the word’s been stigmatized, and also people’s reactions to sex work in general, even my own reactions, thoughts and judgments on what it really meant to be in porn. So I just thought it would be kind of a risky little challenge that I could set for myself to try one scene and see what I thought about it. I ended up getting kind of a lot out of it and decided to keep doing more. Each scene has been its own experience, its own adventure, its own set of circumstances, and I really enjoyed it.

Can you take me through some of the ways that you feel like you’ve developed in each scene, with specific examples?

I mean I could talk about that for hours because every scene you get something different out of, depending on the kind of chemistry you create with your scene partner. For me chemistry is really important, and I always thought that what I wanted to do was establish some kind of connection with my scene partner that translated to my scene. The scenes where I was able to establish that chemistry was exciting in their own way but also you learn a lot from when you don’t have chemistry with them, and that’s where the performance aspect becomes really important. For example, my very first scene was with Joe Parker. He and I basically hit it off instantly and I thought it was the coolest thing that it felt like we were teammates, you know what I mean? It was interesting when about five scenes later, I worked with someone that I wasn’t really interested in. Even attraction-wise it wasn’t there. I thought if I tried that whole teammate thing that would work. But we didn’t connect on any level. So it became a very inward experience, which was also interesting and kind of gratifying. In other scenes I think the director’s also really important. I had one scene where the director and I didn’t get along very well and that was eye-opening in a whole different way and I realized that at some point you have to be careful, because I felt like I was selling sex out. Sex is really important to me, and I think it’s really special, and I hated that I was doing something involved in sex that was absolutely no fun. It just really depends. There’s a lot of nuances as to how to make a scene go well and sometimes even if it doesn’t go well during the filming the performance aspect of it really shows up on camera, onscreen. You can still make a really great scene based on editing and if you’re a good performer or not and if the director’s involved.

Adam Ramzi and Joe Parker in Adam’s first scene, in Hole 2.

Can you explain a little bit more about what you were studying that led to this porn work being your subject? I find this fascinating that your entry into the porn world comes from a place of queer theory and sex studies than the typical “I was down on my luck and needed the money” stuff like that.

Well, see, even that, what you just said, is what made me want to explore it. I think a lot of people have an idea that doing porn comes from this place of desperation. That’s what I wanted to explore about it. The stigma around sex, the stigma around sex work, and what kind of thoughts we have around gay sex in general as members of the gay community. For example, I thought it was really kind of noteworthy that somebody that I had dated long ago wrote to me when he first started seeing pictures pop up in his Tumblr feed and he wrote to me and was like, “So is this you? Did I actually see pictures of you doing porn?” I thought he was gonna pay me a compliment. I was excited to hear from this person again. He basically wrote me this big tirade of how disappointed he was. He wrote, “I really hold you in high regard and this really demeans you as a person and I’m really disappointed.” In none of what he wrote did he ever ask me how I was doing. He never said, for example, “Is everything okay? How are you?” I was like, “If you actually asked me any of that I would tell you that I’m actually kind of inspired by what I’m doing and getting a lot out of it.” That’s just an example of some of the reactions I’m getting. I had this really big discussion with my sister as well. She didn’t admonish me for doing porn, it was more about the fact that I kind of have this role in my family as the person who stirred shit and made weird decisions. So it became a discussion about that.

Like why do you always have to do something like this?

Yeah. “Why are you always doing crazy shit like this?” she said. And I said, basically, “You know what? You’re just going to have to trust me that I’m doing something that’s good for me. And get over your shit.” So I think it’s been sort of cool that I’ve been able to maybe maintain this goal to just explore what it brings for other people, and what it brings up for me. I think maybe even I in the past might have had these notions of people who were doing porn. That it came from a place of desperation and the reason why I think it makes sense for my studies is, what I’m trying to explore about the gay community and how it sees itself is that a lot of theorists in LGBT psychology who are in their fifties or older, they come from a place of such wound, such damage. “We are a damaged community and we need to fight our way through this damage.” Whereas I feel like now the next generation of gay kids are feeling very empowered by being gay and times are changing. Equal rights and all this shit. I feel like that kind of translates the same way into the porn world where people are kind of coming into their own by getting into the sex trade and sex work and becoming a more fully realized individuals and I’m excited about exploring that because that’s what it’s done for me. And sometimes to the detriment of my social interactions with people which can get kind of weird. I left L.A. a couple of months ago, when the porn wasn’t as prominent and I’d start getting text messages from people for the next few months who write, “I’m at the Faultline and I’m seeing you get pounded on the screen right now.” For some people it’s probably really weird and for some people it’s exciting. It was nice to hear from the people who are like “Good job, this is great” and others are like, “Can you please stop littering my goddamn Tumblr feed.” I’m like, sorry… It’s fun to see people’s reactions and I feel it’s given me a chance to really narrow down who my real friends are.

That’s interesting. I think it helps, though, that you’re so fucking hot. I know that’s a weird thing to put out there but I’m curious if you’ve considered that how we respond to your body might be determining how people react to your decision to do porn. That’s historically a common thing, the way gay people determine their bodies and what body types they like from porn.

To be honest I’m really surprised by some of the reactions that I’ve gotten because while I appreciate the compliment of course, I don’t think I have a very typical porn body, per se. I’m a little thinner than most and I kind of thought that that was going to be my downfall. I was expecting to see a lot of comments on the Internet like, “Who the fuck is this guy?” But for the most part the reaction’s been really positive and I’m really flattered by some of the shit people are saying. So I don’t think I want a porn body because this one’s doing me just fine.

So you’re not going into overdrive and working out before shoots? That’s part of the performance of porn and a lot of what porn star’s lives become.

Definitely. I try to be a little careful. I already really enjoy taking care of myself. It feels really good. I also think it’s been fun to move to a place like SF where people are not quite as body conscious and getting the reaction from people that I’m getting up here. Even the negative reactions have been funny. I walked into this bar in the Castro, and this woman in the corner was smoking a cigarette and she goes, “Where are you from honey?” and I say, “I’m from Los Angeles,” and she points up and down my body and says “That explains everything.” And I said, “I’ll take that as a compliment even if you didn’t mean it as one.” She winked at me. At the same time it was really fun to be flown up to San Francisco to do Cockfight with Landon Conrad and Shawn Wolfe, and Landon and I were on the same flight and we hung out before our flight, and he was like “You wanna get a slice of pizza?” My immediate thought was, “Are you kidding me? We’re about to fuck each other tomorrow are you sure you want to go on camera the day after wolfing down a slice of pizza with your scene partner?” But instead my answer was, “Fuck yeah. Let’s go get a slice of pizza.” It was great. And I think I looked alright in that movie. It’s easy to get in your head about shit like that but I’ve been working really hard on not letting myself go there. I think I look like a normal person. I’ll never do steroids ever, but I really enjoy taking care of myself. I think maybe being in the porn world has helped keep that going.

What I’m struck by in the past 17 minutes we’ve been talking is how much insight you have into your own experience which I find in varying degrees in some of the porn stars I’ve talked to. You’re obviously a very learned guy. Now your sister said that you’re the kind of person who stirs shit up in the family, but I’m curious if there are other moments you’ve had doing porn that make you look back and say oh that’s sort of similar to something in my past, or that’s like this moment when I was growing up. In other words, if I was telling your story Orange is the New Black-style with you doing a porno and flashing back at key moments to how you got there, what would the moments be?

My favorite example I’m going to give you is my second scene, which was in Timberwolves with Tommy Defendi. Working with Tommy was really great because I learned a lot about what it meant to be a sex performer and the thing that was really great about it was that as a kid I was always fascinated by sex and by men. I went to a really small private school and grew up in the Armenian-American community of East Los Angeles. It’s a small community and everybody knows each other and looking back on it, I was pretty obviously the gay kid, and it wasn’t so much about being gay that was scary to people, it was just that I was different. All the guys in my class liked Tupac and I was raving about the new Bjork album. And I loved playing that shit up. But at the same time I think there was a part of me that really wanted to be embraced by these guy’s guys. I loved watching these guys play basketball and take their shirts off and stuff like that. So there was a point during my work with Tommy where I couldn’t really get a read on his chemistry level with me, and I didn’t know if there was any and so at one point we were talking and kind of bro-ing out the day before our shoot. I basically said to him, “Tommy clearly you’ve been doing this a while. I’ve never seen any of your work but people seem to love you, they keep having you back and they love you apparently. But I just want you to know that I’m new at this, and I need to look you in the eyes tomorrow. Know what I mean?” He said, “Not really. What do you mean?” I said, “I need you to make me feel special.” And he looked at me and said, “Okay, I can do that.” He has his own process of how to get into his head and make the scene look great and while we were filming that scene I felt like that boy I was in high school had a victory. I felt like all those boys that I wanted that attention and validation from — I was getting it in this scene. That really translates on camera and I think that’s why that scene did so well. It got so much attention. We were both nominated for awards for it. Every time that I watch it I have to jerk off because I know that when I watch that scene I am living for it.

I have known lots of Armenian people and I always heard that it was a very anti-gay community and I’m curious how the reaction to your coming out has been and if your family has thoughts about your porn work?

Um, yeah, that’s a tough one. It’s really kind of sweet because it was definitely rough at the time when I first came out but it’s been sort of cute since then. I’m 32 which — I’m no spring chicken, but it was kind of cute, because I don’t really hang out with a lot of Armenian boys in the gay community, at least not in L.A. and it was really cute when I started seeing them come out to the Eagle and I’d always be polite and say hello here and there and there was this one who finally started talking about my place in the community and he was telling me that I was well-known and I said what are you even talking about, how do people know who I am? I just show up to these parties. He said, girl you’re like a pioneer, and I just thought that was so sweet because he was calling out that I was one of the first in the community to come out and be shameless about being a faggot. So taking that into the porn arena. It’s like alright, the cat’s out of the bag, he’s gay but then to take it that extra step further, I think it’s gonna be really weird when it becomes common knowledge that that’s what I’m doing because not many people in the community know about it. My siblings know about it. They each had varied reactions. One of my brothers said, “Okay that’s weird but that’s cool. Good for you.” The other brother said, “Why, why, why did you do that? You know it’s just going to ruin shit.” I had a cousin of mine who won’t speak to me because he just feels so uncomfortable. He basically found some photos when I got tagged on something on Facebook as Adam Ramzi and he basically called my sister and was like “Do you know about this?” I wish she hadn’t, but she said “No I don’t know what you’re talking about,” because she didn’t really know what to say, and he was like if your dad sees these he’s going to have a heart attack, we need to get these off the internet right away. It was like too late for that, homie. So basically I probably am going to have to get to a point where I’m comfortable enough to talk to my dad about it. But I did tell my mom about it after my first scenes, and she had her initial, “Oh dear’ reactions but the more I talked about it and I told her my intentions and she said, “You know what, you’re a smart guy and I’m glad you have your intentions clear and you have your head on straight so I’m with you ever step of the way.” My parents are not together and they’re very different people, so it makes sense I got that reaction from her, I’m not quite sure how it’s going to go over with my dad. But I feel like if I tell my dad I’ll feel more comfortable to go public with it, because eventually I want to write a book about it.

It could be the subject of a really good book and you seem like the ideal person to write about it.

I’m really excited about it actually. Like I said it has been an inspiring direction. It’s given me a lot to consider. I’m currently working on a licensure towards my marriage and family therapy and obtaining hours up here, so I was thinking that maybe once I finish my license I could maybe get into a PhD program and that would be what I would want to study and it would give me an excuse to publish. So far that’s the plan and if things go in a different direction I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. But that’s what I’d like to do.

You were obsessed with guys when you were young, when were the first time you did something? I’m assuming that the reaction was one of shame.

You mean the first time that I actually did anything with a guy? Oh absolutely. The first time that I was actually I went with my sister to a rehearsal. She was in a band at the time and she was 19 and I was 15 and she was in a band with all sorts of misfits and um, I came with her to her rehearsal and started getting very obviously flirty with her guitar player who was this bro from Orange County and he was flirting back and you know, he was 26 and he kept drinking beer after beer and before I knew it he followed me out to the bathroom and basically shoved me against the wall and started making out with me and I think the experience of it was so exhilarating and shocking, it felt like a dream. I had had a few beers myself and at 15 you can imagine what that’s like and I was almost hyperventilating because I was just so in shock and then when I heard my sister’s voice go “What the fuck?” and he jumped off me and I looked at her and I pretty much completely denied that I had any part of what was happening. He actually kind of took the fall for it. He didn’t want to get me busted so he basically said, “Yeah I’m drunk, I’m sorry he’s cute I went for it.” That was that. But that haunted me for so long. Over the next two weeks I wasn’t eating. I just felt terrible and for so many reasons, not only because I was caught but because it was clearly something was happening within myself and I think even the residual effects of that lasted a while because even with my first boyfriend in college I think I wouldn’t commit to the gay label because I just kind of thought it was something I was doing for a while. I was like I like guys they’re attractive, you know. I was getting laid which wasn’t happening before. I think I kind of thought of it as a phase. It wasn’t until my second boyfriend when I started actually feeling like it was nothing to be ashamed of anymore. That’s when I broke free from those confines and did it in a probably pretty dramatic way.

That’s fascinating, another example of the way that we’re a product of our childhoods. I also think that there’s something to be said that there is very amongst the It Gets Better and all this rah-rah language there’s often this glossing over of the experience that you described and which I also experienced, which was the first time is both exhilarating and produces psychic scarring sometimes and a deep sort of shame that results from, “I can’t deny this, I have done this.”

Yeah. It became real.

Adam Ramzi and Christian Wilde in Tight. “We have a really interesting little bromance going on,” says Ramzi.

Is there a place to which you are working and you feel like when you hit that spot you’ll stop? Or is it just something that you’ll know when you feel it?

I think I’ll know when I feel it. I’m already starting to feel it personally. I’m not saying it’s come to an end. I feel like at this point I’m feeling like I have gotten a lot of what I needed out of it. At this point the rest is just for fun and for money. I don’t think that especially because I — think I mentioned a little bit earlier — I recently had a really bad experience on set, and I feel like I’ve come to a place in my porn career where I don’t think I need to do anything that makes me feel like shit, ever again. So I feel like I’ve become a lot better at detecting what I want from the experience from making porn. For example, Cockfight. I made a lot of money from that, it was an amazing product, but shooting for four days in a row, I don’t think I need to do that ever again. Then also I feel like I know enough people in this business to know who are the good people to work with and who are not and I think, you know. I don’t need to put myself through any torture ever again. That’s basically where I’m at. I’m not done working but I will only do it if it’s something I feel will be 100 percent good for me and my soul and will make me feel good about the people I’m working with. I recently had my first shoot with NakedSword and mr. Pam and it came just a few days after my hellish shoot that I had prior to that. There was so much joy on the NakedSword set. There was times when I had to ask them to shut up because everyone was having such a good time — her crew are so nice and she’s just such a bubbly personality herself and it was just nice to be in that space rather than a space that included anxiety. I would just rather be in a play that is joyful about it. I think sex should be celebrated. And I don’t ever want to be in a situation where sex is not fun.

Ramzi in his first scene for Kink.com, for Men on Edge.

Is the shoot that was torture the one for Kink where you were actually being tortured?

No, actually that was amazing. I can’t wait to work with Kink again actually because that was another thing. That was a really exciting shoot the first time I did Men on Edge. What happened was my notion of being on a Kink set was called into question because you think Kink.com and you’re basically being tortured and humiliated and all this stuff. So I kind of went there feeling very nervous and then it was really neat to be in a waiting room full of other models and makeup artists and everyone was like, “Oh my god this your first time? Welcome! You’re gonna have the most amazing time everyone here is so amazing. Welcome!” There was so much joy involved. Everyone was so excited about producing this product that was based on kink sex. And it really was exciting. Once I got on set I was just able to let go and have fun. They gave me all these warnings of what it might be like. They gave me a safe word and you know how many times I used that safe word? Zero. I was like, “Gimme more.” I liked getting my boundaries pushed, and it was really fun to be game. No, the Kink shoot was not a torturous one. It was wonderful.

Overall in your life what is the best sexual experience you’ve ever had?

Oh my goodness. The best sexual experience I’ve ever had? Should I go cheesy on you?

Cock cheese?

No I don’t have any of that. I would have to say being in love produced the best sex I’ve ever had. It’s something that I miss a lot. My notions of what relationships should be like have changed over time but there was something really special about being in love. I had a partner who I’m still kind of stuck on a little bit, if I’m being honest, but we haven’t been together for three years. We had this thing we called love boners because if we said something sweet to each other, it wouldn’t even be sexy. We would say something sweet to each other and our dicks would start to rise. And I thought that was really special and unique and it is very rare. So I miss that a lot.

And very not porn in a way.

Right. Yes.

So the interview’s over, but what’s the rest of your day got in store?

I’ve been horny all fucking day. First though, I have to go pick up my car and spend a thousand dollars which sucks, so I’m going to reward myself by going to hang out with a good friend who’s a great cuddler and has a huge dick.

Watch Adam Ramzi flip-flop with Sean Zevran in Falcon Edge’s Stunners:

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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

It’s fitting that I’m at a restaurant on Bond Street called The Smile, because sitting across from me is a boy who almost never stops smiling: Levi Karter, the wildly popular porn twink from Cockyboys. Levi’s smile seems to stem from a place of contentment — with himself, with his identity, with his chosen profession, and with the makeshift family of friends he’s surrounded himself with — including Cockyboys head Jake Jaxson, who has become a mentor to him. It helps that Levi’s extraordinarily adorable and that his Paraguayan good looks have helped distinguish him from other young porn stars at competing studios. His fan base is both rabid and — like his fellow Cockyboys Jake Bass and Max Ryder — crosses gender lines. He has almost more female teenybopper types as his followers as he does gay men. Last year, he collaborated with Jaxson on Fuck Yeah Levi Karter, a kind of gay porn version of Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation made out of thousands of hours of footage he’s shot of himself from an early age to today. The film explored his exploits as well as his conflicts with his disapproving mother. Over nearly an hour, I spoke to Levi about a range of subjects, from his identity crises to the porn stars he idolized to his feelings about escorting as a support to his business.

Adam: I’m recording, feel free to record yourself, I know you love to do that.

Levi: Actually my phone is now maxed out on memory because of how much I record stuff.

Where did your impulse to start recording everything come from?

I don’t know. I’ve always had like a hobby or a passion for taking pictures and setting up photo shoots around my house. Even when I was in grade school. Then when I was 18 and I was stripping so I’d have to take more pictures and I just started recording my friends and I hanging out. Usually goofing off, getting drunk or something. Just stuff to laugh at. I always loved to record myself like that.

What were your friends like growing up? Were you hanging out with gay people or mostly straight people?

Um, growing up I guess I always had a girlfriend up until freshman year of high school when I came out. I had a girlfriend as a cover. But almost all my friends were girls and my best friend since fifth grade turned out to be gay as well. It was no wonder we got along so well. I was in marching band so I was hanging out with band geeks. But I was one of those people who was friends with the cheerleaders, people who liked sports, I didn’t have a special group. I always had a best friend and a group but I would never be in a clique.

Did you know you were gay from an early age?

Yeah. I think so. I mean I came out when I was 14. I was kind of struggling with that during my 8th grade year. It was kind of a dark year but I worked everything out.

What was so dark about it?

It was kind of like me accepting myself as being gay as well as my adoption issues. My mom adopted me from Paraguay, and I was just asking all those questions, why, how, etc. There were a lot of unanswered questions and I didn’t know how to feel about it for a while.

It was sort of like identity questions on so many different levels. Who am I? Where do I come from? And what do I like sexually?

Yeah. Just a lot of not knowing.

When you were young did you look up to porn stars or people who were in the porno world and always want to be like that?

Actually I did. When I was 14 and first watching porn, the first porn I watched was a Youtube video, the extended trailer for Schoolboy Crush with Brent Corrigan and Brent Everett. I always idolized Brent Corrigan. I still idolize Brent Everett.

What specifically about Corrigan appealed to you beyond, I’m assuming, his very hot body?

I don’t know. He just had a personality and everything. I didn’t even realize he was one of the biggest porn stars, or anything about his scandals. He was just really cool and fun to watch. Later I really grew to like Brent Everett more. I found out we’re a similar height. He’s tan but he’s Canadian. He has more tattoos and is more like a dude. He took his porn career farther. He’s still doing web shows and all that. Brent Corrigan went more Hollywood. That’s not really where I want to go. I steered more towards Everett.

So you’re happy staying in the place that you are, and you don’t think you want to get into acting or more mainstream stuff?

No. This is who I am. I like it.

Do you want to be like Brent Everett who’s been in the business for a long time, or is there another career you dream of getting into?

I guess the whole Brent Everett thing is just like, I will always be in the industry doing something, but I don’t want to be a washed-up porn star. Someone who is just always there and all of a sudden your fans just forget about you. That’s why Jake Jaxson’s mentoring me, and he’s getting me into directing and producing and editing and all that stuff.

I really liked Meeting Jasper, where he gave you the video camera and just sent you and Jasper to a hotel room. That was great.

That was my first scene that I made all of it.

What other stuff have you directed?

Right now I’m working on a proposal for a scene. I’ve gotta figure out who, what, where, who’s topping, bottoming, etc. Jake will be there with me and we’ll both film.

Who is it going to be with?

I don’t know yet.

And you won’t be the star?

Yeah. I don’t want to be in the film. I just want to record other people.

Ty Roderick, Levi Karter, and Hayden Lourd in Manhandle (2013).

Does Jake sit you down and show you work and make you look at angles and things like that? And does he encourage you to look at the work of other directors?

I mean I’ve gone on other sets. Jake told me to go watch other porn and look at the angles and action and all that stuff. I do like RFC — Raw Fuck Club — because I like the camera angles, and the way they move the camera. It makes me feel more like I’m there watching. Not just that someone’s recording someone. I guess it’s more a sex-tape feel. I like to record in that kind of way to make it look more realistic.

I feel like that’s one of the biggest things to happen to porn in the last 10-15 years. The fact that porn directors now are suddenly realizing, “Hey we have the stars, if we can marry the stars to the webcam and home video aesthetic and make it seem like two people are just passing the camera back and forth between them, we can one up the Xtubes and other sites.” It just extends the fantasy in a way.

It’s such a hit or miss though, because it could be really epic or it could be like, “Oh why is this just not free on Xtube?”

Let’s talk about your body. I know you started working out when you were really young. Do you have goals for your body? Because it’s pretty tight.

Thank you. I have this unfulfilled quest to be a solid 145-150.

Now you’re what?

135.

So you want to put on a lot more muscle?

Yeah cause if I got to 150 and then go down a little bit if I fluctuate it’ll go down to 145. At the moment I’m really happy with my body because I’ve been keeping it up and partying a little less. I went a little too hard for Pride. I’ve been seeing a lot of people my size and bigger and they’re too short to be that big.

This is this whole twunk phenomenon.

Yeah.

I feel like the twunk thing can very quickly make your more twink-loving fans disappear. I wonder how you maintain that line, you know?

I don’t know. I just try not to eat bad stuff too much. It’s really hard.

How disciplined are you?

No, it’s not that. If anything I’m not eating enough.

To bulk up?

Yeah. I bulk up and go to the gym three or four times a week and then ruin what I did that week when I go-go at work. If I don’t go-go or work for a weekend then my body will look better.

Because the aerobic activity of go-go dancing breaks down the stuff you’re doing to your body?

No, because I get drunk and I already have a fast metabolism and the alcohol breaks down muscle fibers and so I’ll just be skinny again.

Do you have any stalkers or disturbing fans?

Not really. I’m sure I do but I haven’t met them.

Nobody’s gone out of their way to be aggressive or weird?

No. Just at the bars sometimes. That’s just drunk people.

That’s sort of a function of how people can’t control themselves around porn stars and think you’re just game to fuck 24-7.

Well I’m asking for it, I’m in my underwear. But the thing that gets hard is when people are like “Oh you’re Levi Karter” or they’re like you’re a go-go boy or you do porn people automatically jump into, you want sex. Even though that is your job, it’s not something I’m looking at 24/7. I’m just looking for friends.

Let’s say we’re at a bar, and you’re trying to encourage someone not to make an outrageous move on you. What are your conversation topics?

Usually, what are you drinking? Can I have a sip? I’d probably ask if you’re on molly, cause I might be on it.

These are things you’re telling people and hope they don’t think you’re flirting.

Yeah I’m trying to keep it light.

Those are all things that sound like pick-up lines. Not necessarily like, “Have you seen any good movies lately?”

See, that feels like a pick up line to me.

Not “What are you drinking, can I have a sip?”

I feel like if you don’t ask too much about them you keep a distance. I always ask what do they do.

That’s a standard question.

Or I ask why do they not have a drink in their hands.

As a non-drinker that question drives me crazy. They always follow up with a thousand questions after I say I don’t drink.

Usually people at my bars say, “I’m gonna get one.” Usually if they don’t have a drink and they tipped me well I’ll come down off the bar and get the bartender’s attention so they can get one without waiting.

Let’s talk a little about Fuck Yeah Levi Karter. One of the things it explores is the tense relationship between you and your mom. Where are you at now?

I don’t know, I guess we kind of went through a rough patch and my mom now, we don’t discuss it, but we always end up discussing it every time I visit. We don’t really talk about it over the phone, it’s just like “Get your taxes done,” and stuff like that. We just don’t talk about it really but it’s been my mom and I growing up my whole life, and we’re best friends. Nothing’s gonna make us not talk to each other and be close at all. She says I could murder a person and she wouldn’t be happy but she’ll still love me and visit me and make sure I’m okay. She makes sure I still make rent, and I haven’t had to rely on her for support for a few months now. She’s slowly cutting me off because now I’m paying my phone bill and the rent and insurance.

That’s actually really loving because she’s making you self-sufficient. And you can make your own choices then. Do you see an end date to your scene work?

No. I never really look too far down the road for anything but maybe when it starts to get old. Maybe my passion or attitude will change. I’ll want to be behind the camera more than in front of camera. Even though I’ve only been doing this a year and a half, there are times when you’re like, wow this is a lot. I don’t see modeling for porn being something I’ll be doing until my forties and fifties at all.

What would somebody be really surprised to know you like sexually?

I like it really rough. Really hard.

Like getting fucked really hard or just being slapped around and tossed about?

That too I guess. Rag-doll style. And I like poppers off-camera. And I love threesomes.

I hate threesomes because I always feel someone’s always getting ignored.

No.

How do you do a threesome right

Make sure everyone’s included or involved or something. I don’t know.

What’s the ideal situation for one? Sometimes the thing with couples -

I love couples.

You do? I prefer two separate people. I feel like with couples you’re in the middle and they’re both obsessed with you.

You just said it!

For me that’s not the thing I like, but that’s what you like. You want to be adored.

Yeah but it’s not necessarily being the center of attention. I don’t know really.

Maybe they’re just more grateful when they’re a couple.

And they’re on the same page about what they want.

It’s not like one person likes one of you more than the other.

Yeah.

Do you have any fetishes?

I don’t think so.

You haven’t explored any kinky stuff?

I guess. But… not really.

What has been the most painful dick you’ve taken?

Probably Hayden Lord. It was really, really thick. That one took a minute.

But you got it in?

Yeah.

Did it end up feeling good or did you have to grin and bear it?

Oh, no, it felt great. It just was hard to get it in.

Are you still pretty tight naturally?

Yeah.

You haven’t been loosened up to the point of being an easy bottom?

No. The problem is I go on Grindr and I flirt and get pictures and I say we’re gonna meet up and never do and I’m just a big flake who stole your dick pic, so I advertise sluttiness but I never actually go do it.

You’re a tease on Grindr?

And at the bar I say, “I can’t do anything I’m in production” when I’m not at all.

But have you had boyfriends?

Yeah. I did have a boyfriend going into the porn business. I had a partner, Evan Parker from Helix Studios. He entered about a month and a half before I entered. I mean, we’re not together but we’re better off.

He’s been the only relationship or the longest relationship?

He’s been the only one in porn, but I’ve had a lot of, like, three- to five-month relationships. Short term. I’ve only had one boyfriend where I was on and off again for a year and a half.

Where do you think it comes from that you are sort of reserved or don’t do things with guys outside of porn?

I mean I always end up doing it but I just kind of — even though there’s protection you’re still risking something and even if it’s something curable, it could be a career-changing mistake or something that’s going to put you out of production for ten days and fuck everything up if you have a scene coming up. It’s just better not to fuck anything up. I just have fuckbuddies instead. I have two right now.

Have you considered going on PrEP? I’m on it.

Yes, I just haven’t got to it yet. I’m waiting for my medical card. Do you like it?

I do like it.

Do you lose weight?

No. I have had no side effects.

I’m always scared of taking meds and losing weight.

You do have to get tested every three months.

I get tested every month anyway. I haven’t barebacked for a year.

When was that?

My last boyfriend. It’s funny people on Grindr are like ‘BB?” and I’m like, “No I want to but I can’t.”

Do you like barebacking? Condoms never bother me at all.

No, I don’t really care. I know it feels better — just a little bit.

What’s been the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you on set?

I farted in Pierre Fitch’s face. We were posing for a picture and I was upside down and flexing everything and then it happened. My legs were on his hands and I was spread eagle with my ass facing his face. Also Bravo Delta did the SpongeBob laugh during a scene and I couldn’t get off afterwards. He sabotaged me. But other than that things are pretty chill.

When you have a scene coming up do you refrain from jerking off and sex so you can have a big cumshot?

I usually hold off one or two days but also if you stop for a week before you do it and that first little pop off is not the money shot, you kind of have to keep it going you know? Keep it in for a couple of days, but not, because if you don’t keep it —

Like you can’t just turn it off for a week and have sex and expect the first time to be an explosion? You have just go lighter but still keep your dick working — is that what you’re saying?

Yeah. I do that. And I don’t book myself for the weekend before and I hit the gym and I take creatine, casein and whey protein.

Do you have any interest in steroids?

Not at all.

A lot of people in the industry do escorting, is that something you’re interested in doing?

I’ve considered it but I haven’t done it. I don’t wanna step into that category. I don’t judge other people who do it but I don’t think it’s for me. I dance on the bar and get naked on camera and that’s enough. I don’t need to continue to go into that field.

It’s good that you know what you want. What about your friends now, the ones who you were making videos of when you were 16 — do you keep in contact with them and what do they think about your career?

I don’t really keep contact with too many of them. I keep up one with one of my friends, Sidney. She was the cheerleading captain and one of my best friends in high school. She goes to Cincinnati University and we keep up with each other. I don’t really talk to too many people from Athens. I keep up with a few of the gay friends but just to say, hey what’s up. When I get to town I’ll see a few people but I don’t really keep up with anyone.

Does anyone talk to you about what you do?

Yeah. They know and talk to me sometimes. But they have their own stuff to do just like me. We’re all far away and they’re in school and have their own surroundings and friends. I’m in New York and traveling or working or doing something. We drifted, basically.

What’s some of the dumbest criticism you’ve gotten?

On my real account if I posted a couple pictures of me without my shirt off. Someone from my hometown will say, “Oh such talent I just don’t understand why you would put it towards this.” There’s no changing their minds because that’s what it is to them.

Do you have a fanbase in Paraguay?

Yes. I saw an article online somewhere about “Levi Karter the porn star from Paraguay.” Who knows how famous I really am, though.

That should be your next Cockyboys movie. “Levi Goes to Paraguay.”

Yeah.

Watch Levi in his most recent scene, with Connor Maguire.

 
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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

In a comfortably cozy apartment on New York’s Upper East Side lives a quadruple threat: up-and-coming twunk porn star, boy pageant aficionado, aspiring superstar and the U.S. Marine Corps’ first openly gay rifleman. He sings! He dances! He shoots! He cums! His name is Leo Sweetwood, and as we talk late Sunday night, I find it hard not to root for all his big city dreams to come true. Or at least, for him to find success in one of his three different pursuits. At the moment, though, my money’s still on him being a long-lasting porn star. He’s got a great dick — not big enough that the novelty will wear off eventually — and more importantly, he cums a lot. After starting as a top, then taking a year off to become a reservist in the Marine Corps, Sweetwood came back as a bottom in scenes for everyone from Bound in Public to Man Royale. Now he’s moving back towards topping, with scenes lined up at Cockyboys and other studios. As the night grew dark, Sweetwood and I sat for 45 minutes and talked about everything from boy pageants to boyfriends to teaching military men a thing or two about gay people.

Adam: You have brought me up to an area of Manhattan that’s terrified me for years.

Leo: The Upper East Side? Really?

Leo in Falcon’s Alpine Wood Part 2

Really? Wow. I like the Upper East Side because it’s nice and quiet. A lot of my friends live in Hell’s Kitchen, but then my friend Killian James, who’s now my roommate, said he lived on the Upper East Side, and I came to see the area and I found there’s a lot of amenities that I wouldn’t find anywhere else. The gym is one avenue over, and then my tanning’s a couple blocks down and then the place I go grocery shopping is one block over. Everything that I need is nearby. If I need to go to Hell’s Kitchen to hang with my friends, all I need to do is take a ten-dollar taxi or take the 6 to the E and I’m there. It’s far enough away so I can have my own space, but close enough if my friends say, “Hey we’re gonna go out in 30 minutes, can you be here?”, I can be there in 15.

So those three things — gym, tanning, friends — is that your routine?

It’s kind of the Jersey Shore thing — GTL. I like tanning because I like being one color. I don’t want to look like an Oompa Loompa but I want to have a nice base.

You do have a nice base.

I like the golden look, at least for me. So that’s one of the things in my regimen, that I like to do. Once you’re done tanning you just feel “aaahhh.”

So how much time do you spend in the gym?

I have to go to the gym at least a minimum of three to five times a week. I can’t go as much as Killian does. He’s literally addicted to the gym. He gets more endorphins out of it than I do. He loves the gym for that reason. It’s one of his big stress reliefs. He’s probably in the gym, if not every day, then at least twice a day. So he makes me feel like a fat ass.

Leo Sweetwood fucking Micah Brandt in Sit Tight 2 for Falcon.

I was so twinky then.

Right. How did you come to the decision move in the more muscled direction? I was talking about this with Levi Karter last week. Don’t you put yourself in danger as a young twink performer by pushing it too far with the workouts?

I like the in-between where I don’t want to be classified as a twink but I don’t want to be classified as a muscle bear. I think Davy Wavy came out with the name twunk. I like the in-between where I can get cast as both and it’s easier for me to maintain that type of body than trying to be shredded 24/7 and I can’t have a carb unless it’s the first Monday of the month. I would like to be able to be cast with twinks, but I want to be the bigger twink. I also want to be the little guy in Raging Stallion scenes with the Landon Conrads and the big muscle bears. I want to be able to cross into both worlds.

Are you looking for longevity in the industry?

Yes. I know everyone has their expiration date in the industry and I would like to prolong mine, and so if I can I’d like to stay in the industry an extra two-three years beyond when my expiration date is. But I’d like to be in it as long as I could. I don’t care if you’re Justin Bieber or Timberlake, eventually no ones’ gonna care who the fuck you are if you can’t change or reorganize your image.

Your name first came up when I was interviewing Rafael Alencar and he said you ran into him on the street.

Yeah, I ran into him the first time, because the first time I ever made my Rentboy account was at The Hookies. It was surreal to see all the porn stars and people I looked up to in the industry. I met Rafael and he was really kind. I also met Mr. Pam and Boomer Banks. I got to meet all these amazing people I looked up to. So that day I was walking to my friend’s house and I saw him and I was like, “Hey Rafael.” We took a picture and started talking.

Have you kept in touch?

Yeah. I would say we’re acquaintances but we haven’t really gone to lunch. We’ll go to events and talk and mingle. He’s a great guy. I have nothing bad to say about him. He’s one of the veterans of the industry and I really want to learn a lot from him. I’d like to go to lunch with him and pick his brain and find out what he’s done correctly and what he’s done wrong, and learn from his failures. He’s a really busy guy though, and I wouldn’t want to be a pest to anyone in the industry. Cause there’s a lot of pests and I don’t want that label.

Do you have a boyfriend? Is there room for a relationship in your life?

I’m not really looking for one right now. It would be great if it happened but it’s hard with the escorting. It’s hard to find someone that accepts you for what you do. If you can separate sex, love and everything in between it’s a great gift that you can give to someone. But a lot of people can’t differentiate between the two. If you’re having sex with someone they think it’s love. In the end of the night, I’m in the person that I genuinely care about’s bed. If I have sex with somebody else it doesn’t mean that I have love, compassion, kindness, and a sense of intimacy that I have with this other person. I ‘ve been focusing a lot on my career. You have to in the porn industry. I’m with Fabscout. Howard’s my agent. I’m not exclusive with them, but sometimes Howard does last minute things. He’s like, “I need you to be on a flight in two days. Can you do that?” and if I’m dating someone I might have an anniversary, or you’ve made plans with someone’s parents. A lot of times people can’t handle that. We’re dealing with a lot of people that don’t have this industry. I have an alternative lifestyle. I have to work around my client’s schedules and that doesn’t give me a lot of time to plan with someone else in an intimate setting.

Have you had challenges before with people?

I get a lot of love and intimacy from my friends so there’s no need to have one person lock me into a relationship. I like the way Boomer states it. “Just love, whatever it is, love. Get your intimacy, your love, your kindness, your comfortability, your respect, from your friends. That’s the initial place you can find your love.” Especially in the gay industry a lot of our families reject us. We’re lucky because we get to pick our families.

Right but it’s like that with gay people at large, not just people who work in porn.

That’s the thing I love about the gay community. We live an alternative lifestyle that fits our comfortability. In the porn and escorting industry, now it’s not a secret anymore. You could say, “I work as an escort.” And it’s like saying, “I work at a bank.” It’s not that scandalous anymore.

They both involve large involve large sums of money, and both jobs require you to be greedy whores. Just kidding!

Yes! Ha! Money hungry.

Leo Sweetwood getting bukkake’d for Bound In Public.

Did you need to make your own family because your family doesn’t support what you do?

I actually had a really good childhood. I didn’t have an abusive father or a bad mom. But they were very corporate and that wasn’t the lifestyle I wanted. I wanted to do something in the entertainment industry. Porn was one of the things that always intrigued me. I want to do porn as long I can but when I’m not I’d like to explore different avenues. The way Katie Morgan did. She did her porn and then did a series called Having Sex, and then she ended up in Seth Rogen’s movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I’d like to do something like that where people know I have a porn background, but also know I can act. “He can sing, and dance. He’s an entertainer.” That’s where I think people get caught up – “Oh he just does porn?” At the end of the day porn is not just sex, we’re entertainers, acting 99 percent of the time in our scenes.

I’ll play devil’s advocate. Most people know that it’s very hard to make the crossover from porn to mainstream. When you started doing it, did you consciously think it was a realistic path from one to the other or was it a matter of necessity and then the entertainment goals came later?

In middle school I had a time capsule and it just got sent to me a month or two ago and it actually had a note from a friend who said that I talked about doing porn. That was in middle school. I think it’s always been there. I always wanted to do porn. I’ve wanted to do this for a while and I know I can branch out. Steve Harvey said, “Be so good you can’t be ignored.” You can ignore me all you want, but if I provide all you want at the end of the day — a script, a dancer, an extra for Broadway, I’m gonna do my best to get that part because I have something to prove, since you think I can’t do it.

Do you go on auditions?

I’m starting to actually! I have a little dance background because I do boy pageants, and especially in New York, I have more opportunities here. I go to the Broadway Dance Center and take two to three classes a week. That’s what’s going to set me apart from other people. Growing up in San Antonio we don’t have those opportunities. Being here and being 22 and have these opportunities, if you don’t take advantage of them, there’s no way you’re going to stand out in any audition. That’s why I moved to New York, and that’s why I’m taking advantage of every opportunity I can.

What on earth are boy pageants?

Do you know Miss USA and Miss America? It’s basically that for guys. There’s three top pageants. Continental. E.O.Y: Entertainer of the Year, and US of A, so those three pageants have a Miss competition for drag queens and pre-op transsexuals, and the mister is for guys impersonating guys. There’s a little section called “Mister” which is for drag kings. It’s a national thing. It’s been going on since maybe the sixties or seventies.

When you said boy pageants I thought it was something you did as a kid. How did you get into this?

In each drag house there’s a mother, like in Paris is Burning. In Texas there’s the House of Andrews, notorious for Tandee Andrews, Erica Andrews and Roxxy Andrews who was on RuPaul’s Drag Race. I belong to the Matthews House. My drag mother is Tersa Matthews. She won Miss Texas US of A and Miss Texas Continental, and what I like about her is she doesn’t care. She doesn’t give a fuck about really anything except trying to make people laugh. Her entertainment comes from comedy. She can lip-synch a song and she can dance the house down, but she’s amazing as an entertainer and that’s what I want to eventually be.

But you want to do this as a boy, not in drag?

Yes. She had a son, Jordan Matthews, and his thing is dancing and stuff like that. He had a son, Javi Matthews, who is my dad. He does ballet, and tries to do more sentimental songs. He is known for doing this Black Swan routine to one of Adam Lambert’s song. He tries to make the crowd cry.

What’s your act?

I prefer to sing. When I have to lip-synch, I’ll paint a mug. I have a “gay devil mix.” So I’ll be with all red hands and wearing a black soon, horns, and a devil face. I do this funny mix. I’m known for that. I’m known more for comedy.

Have you won any competitions?

I was Mr. Texas Continental and this year I gave it up to my dad, and he is now the current reigning Mr. Texas Continental. I’m going back to Continental this year for the national title because I was the runner up for All-Star Continental in Florida.

What’s your act this year?

I’ll be singing. It’s an original song. I sang it for my final night and I’ll be singing, probably the same song.

So this is kind of a two-pronged path for you. Boy un-drag queen and porn star.

Yep. Leo Sweetwood and another name which I compete under.

What is your favorite musical?

I’ve actually only seen two. I’m very uncultured in New York. I’m trying to get more cultured. I’ve only seen Matilda and Wicked. I loved Wicked and I saw it with one of my friends and I made the stupid comment, “Are they singing live?” I didn’t know because they were just belting it out and it was so perfect and it sounded like a CD or something like that. My friend was like, “Yes, you’re retarded.” Coming from San Antonio, we don’t get to experience all the Broadway shows.

It’s all-new to you. Do you have a lot of moments where you say things and your friends go “Oh honey, you have a lot to learn?”

Well especially in New York. I understand I’m uncultured.

I’m not throwing shade at all. Just asking.

Oh, I understand it. It’s like taking someone from the South and showing them a whole new life and that’s what I love about New York. That’s why I moved here. I’m wanting to learn everything I can. I don’t mind if you think I’m stupid or something like that. I’m still learning and I know I’m learning. Those Broadway productions are the same thing that goes into the pageants. So I can use what I know from one in the other.

I think that’s great, honestly.

If anyone in the industry has a critique I would love to hear it as long as it comes from a loving place, its fine. If you’re insulting me in a mean way, we’re going to have a mean issue. Like Howard, he’s very blunt, but I understand the way he is and I respect it. A lot of people in New York are very blunt and if you don’t have a tough skin it comes off as insulting. But if you take what they’re saying with a grain of salt and realize these people aren’t trying to hurt you or insult you, they’re trying to help you better yourselves because a lot of them see potential in other people.

Tell me about how your escorting is going? It’s only been a few months.

I feel like I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to provide intimacy, comfort, kindness, compassion and most of all love to all of the clients I see. Most of people have an obscure view of escorting. They think it’s dirty and raunchy and underground. That’s not what escorting is. Escorting is about being with someone for the pleasure and it all comes down to love and that’s what a lot of people don’t get. In New York you have a lot of older businessmen who work 80 hours a week and they just want someone to come and 90 percent of the time it’s not sex. They just want to have someone there. My clients want to just have dinner and go see a show.

This is the fabled thing that I never believe really happens.

A lot of people don’t really know how to attract what you put out. Whatever you put out in the world you’re gonna get out ten times. My roommate, he has a different clientele, and then my other friend Eli has a different clientele. So it’s all about what you’re best suited for. I feel my best attribute is, that I provide “The Boyfriend Experience” for lack of a better term.

When did you know you had a big dick?

When I got my first blowjob, the guy said, “Oh my god, you’re huge.” But when I got into porn I realized, “Oh my god, I’m average.” I’ve seen Boomer Banks and Landon Conrad, I mean you look at them and you’re like, “Oh my god.” I’m comfortable with my size unless I’m in a scene, anything after 9 inches I’ll hand a peanut because I can’t do anything with it. I feel like my size is good, and I’m comfortable with the length and girth and all that.

You were a top at first and then became more of a bottom.

Well my first scene was with Falcon, with Micah Brandt, before I left for the Marine Corps in 2012, and I think they initially thought I was bigger, muscle-wise, and when I got there I looked twinkier. We had a good scene and I got great feedback about it, which I was happy about, but then when I came back from the Marine Corps, I got typecast as a bottom and now I’m slowly getting cast as a top, because they know I can perform as a top. It’s easy for me to stay hard, to cum, and I naturally cum a lot. So I think a lot of companies are coming to me now asking, “Can you top in this scene?” because they need a good cumshot. Anyway, I really like performing as a top, and in real life I am a top. I can still find comfort in being a bottom and I play a good bottom in porn.

What prompted your decision to join the Marine Corps?

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed in 2011. September 2011 and I always wanted to do a military branch but I wouldn’t have done it unless I could be 100% myself. In San Antonio the Air Force is really big. My real dad was in the Air Force, so I was always pulled towards there. So I went to the Marine Corps and asked if they had a reservist program. Because I didn’t want to do it for four years. And they said we do have positions in the reservist because right now we’re closing down and the war’s over and we’re not really doing any more active listings, so we have an opening for an infantry rifleman. I was like that sounds fun. And they broke down what I would be doing. I left for boot camp in May 2012. During boot camp I actually didn’t realize but I was actually the first openly gay infantry rifleman in the US. Marine Corps. They didn’t ask me if I was gay, because Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed and they didn’t know how to handle the situation. So during boot camp I had to talk to a lot of officers to make sure my stay was okay and I wasn’t being treated any differently. A lot of the people in my unit had never met a gay person, so I had to teach a lot of them. I didn’t mind it. It was very repetitive but I knew I was doing more good than I would if I said, “Shut the fuck up, I don’t want to tell you.”

What did they ask?

“How do you know you want to be gay?” The biggest misconception is gays want to be women. They thought I wanted to be a drag queen or a transsexual.

You’re like, “No I’m a boy impersonating a boy, Mister Texas Continental.”

Right! They were like, “You’re not attracted to women?” I was like, “No I think women are gorgeous I just don’t want to have sex with them.” I was like, “When you see an Abercrombie and Fitch guy you think he’s good looking right?” They were like, “Yeah.” “But you don’t want to have sex with him right?” “No.” But I still had some conflict in the military with regards to my Christianity. I wanted to talk to chaplains, and one was trying to get me to go Exodus, which is the conversion therapy, and I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” He was like, “We see your parades have go-go boys dancing on floats?” I was like, “You have the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders dancing on your floats, whats the difference?” He tried to break apart the differences. I’ve read the Bible and I know the seven verses in the Bible that depict homosexuality, and he was trying to read those back to me, and I was like, “You’re missing the Leviticus laws, how can you apply this to me, but you’re not applying all these others that say you can’t wear different types of clothing made of the same material, and you can’t eat shellfish?” And he didn’t know how to answer that. We were there for three hours and dealing with it. I think I gave him a different perspective and I’m glad that I could give an officer something like that, especially as a recruit in basic boot camp. Once everyone in my unit realized I didn’t want to fuck them they were cool with me. They would joke and make me rate their hotness. “Why does he get a higher score than I do?” It’s funny, once you pass the fear of not knowing, a lot of people fear what they don’t know, once you get past all that people start learning and exploring and accepting. That’s what I feel like you should do, especially in the gay community. Go teach someone.

Well you’ve certainly taught me a lot these past forty-five minutes. Thank you, Leo.

Watch Leo in a recent Bound In Public scene below.

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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

When softcore porn pioneer Radley Metzger spoke at an event in NY after a raucous screening of his 1974 bisexual sex comedy Score this past weekend, the director made a point of singling out the writer who gave his gleeful masterpiece its subversive wit and charge: Jerry Douglas, the pioneering gay porn director behind acclaimed classics in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, including Flesh & Blood, Brotherhood, Buckleroos and more.

Based on Douglas’ hit play of the same name, Score told the story of a pair of married bisexual swingers, Elvira and Jack, who each pursue a homo-coupling with a pair of repressed newlyweds, Betsy and Eddie. Eddie, played by legendary porn star Casey Donovan (working as Cal Culver) eventually has passionate and explicit sex with Jack, played by Gerald Grant, though their hardcore scenes were cut out of the initial release and only restored for the Blu-Ray a few years ago. Asked by the clueless co-host whether Douglas approved of how Metzger imagined the sex scene that in the play version had happened offstage, Douglas voiced his approval. But the truth is that Douglas, who was on set directing the actors, was probably more responsible for putting this scene together than Metzger, who had little knowledge of gay sex or gay porn. In fact, when Douglas sold the rights to Score, he was shrewd enough to ensure he was allowed to be on set, which turned out well for both Douglas and gay porn fans everywhere. What Douglas learned on set he put to use in his incredible debut film, The Back Row.

But Douglas wasn’t exactly green when it came to directing or writing. A childhood job as an usher gave him the opportunity to witness legendary performances by Mae West, Monty Woolley, and Ethel Barrymore. His love of the theater took him first to Yale, where he got a degree in theater and writing, and then to New York, where he became the premiere director of sexually charged plays like Score that featured full frontal nudity. Then came Metzger, then The Back Row and his follow-up film Both Ways, which lost money. Douglas then stopped making porn, instead focusing on founding and editing Manshots magazine, one of the most celebrated publications that featured in-depth interviews with gay porn directors — both current and past, as well as legendary actors, cinematographers, and producers. Finally, in 1989, Douglas made his return with Fratrimony, and a flurry of award-winning films soon followed, all of which did something few other filmmakers were seriously attempting — to make films with engrossing and unusual stories where sex was seamlessly integrated into the story. Only Douglas’ friend Joe Gage has had the type of long-lasting career and made the kind of impact he’s made on the industry.

I met up with Douglas at his DVD-filled apartment on Riverside Drive where he smoked copiously and took me through his career highs and lows, his process for achieving a strong performance from a porn actor, and what he thinks of the industry today.

Adam: So last night, Radley Metzger said in his Q&A that Oh! Calcutta! was this pivotal play that started people making nude plays. Is that what inspired you to start doing them?

Jerry: I suppose that’s true but there were plays that came before it. The first play I ever saw that had nudity was a play called Geese. Then I was asked to come in and doctor a show called Circle in the Water which had the biggest advance sale of any off-Broadway show in history at that time, but from the first preview people were breaking down the box office door and demanding their money back. And I was called in and I got 11 weeks out of it by fixing it. That was probably the single most valuable theatrical experience I ever had in my life. Because I learned how to fix a show.

What was it about, and why did you need to fix it?

It was about a murder at a boy’s academy because somebody had sex with somebody and they didn’t want the secret to be exposed. It was embarrassing. Badly acted. I fired half the cast. I cut it to under an hour the first night I got there. We took no curtain calls, for ten days. And I’ll never forget the first night we decided to take a curtain call and got applause, and I knew I was doing something right. Circle in the Water was the first play I ever did that involved nudity. Tubstrip was the second. Score was the third. I did three plays in a row, and Score was pretty successful.

1996′s Flesh & Blood

Tubstrip, I’m assuming, was about the baths.

And Terrance McNally wrote a play at the same time called The Tubs, and as soon as Tubstrip opened he changed it to The Ritz. So the point is that it was a very easy transition. I obviously had a knack for working with people nude. I treated them like they were clothed. One of my proudest bows was that I have never ever been to bed with anyone I ever worked with — in publishing, theater, porn, forget it. You don’t shit where you eat. Though I’ve been tempted more than once. About the time that Tubstrip came about or maybe a little before, some people came to me saying, “Jerry you know how to do nudity why don’t you do a porn film?” That brought me to The Back Row. But before I did that film, Radley Metzger approached me and offered to buy the rights to Score. I said yes.

You went to Yugoslavia with Metzger to observe the filming of Score, right?

The whole purpose when we sold him the rights to Score, is that it was in the contract that I got to go and I got to be on the set because I wanted to learn how to make a movie, and boy did he teach me. The very first day on the set, Radley motioned to me and said, “Always put something in the foreground of the shot. Shoot through something, it gives it depth and makes it look silky. There were little things all the way through but I always remembered that lesson. We got along fabulously well together. Radley was very busy and under incredible pressure because he hadn’t gotten as many crew people as he wanted. He only had one cameraman. And on the second day he said, “Jerry you take care of the actors, I’ll take care of the technical stuff.” So I got to direct the actors and it was wonderful and I’d gotten exactly what I’d gotten onstage. I was not happy with the cast originally. I’m enormously happy now. I can say these things now because they’re all dead. I loved Claire but she was a cunt. A very difficult woman but I adored her and we got along fine together until she sued me. But that’s another story that I will not go into.

The two husbands in the movie are played by Casey Donovan, working as Cal Culver, and Gerald Grant who were both in gay porn. Casey later starred in your first film, The Back Row.

Cal was a good friend of mine. I wrote the introduction to his biography and in it I said I worked with Cal more than any other director. Twice on stage, twice on film and he wrote a column for my magazine Manshots for ten years until he died. But I never knew him. He was all things to all people. A chameleon. Whatever you wanted him to be, he would be. But I loved working with him. We went out to dinner and to movies and theater. My spouse John and I have been together 35 years and happily so. Luckily, Cal and John got along very well together, because John does not have a great deal of empathy for the porn industry. He dines out on the line, “The only fuck films I have ever seen are the ones I had to: Jerry’s.” It always gets a laugh. On the Score set, Cal and Gerry Grant had a game going to see how many crew members they could go through, and they went through them all like a dose of salt. They were keeping score themselves. When I began planning The Back Row, the first thing I did was call Cal. We had a wonderful time making it. I watched it about a year ago. My god it’s a curio. It’s antique. But Cal is beautiful in it.

Going back to Score, did you take inspiration for the characters of Eddie and Betsy from your own marriage? When Cal’s character goes to the bathroom to jerk off, I thought that might have come from your relationship with your wife before you came out.

That’s interesting. I know where the jerk off scene came from. I was married when I was at Yale. My wife Barbara and I had two very close friends at Yale, who were also married. One day Barbara came home to me. And she said, “I caught Paul jerking off today in the bathroom. And it destroyed her. Barbara had never caught me. That’s where that came from. Clear as day. But it’s what Radley sort of touched on last night that in those days there was the gay community and the straight community and the old joke about anybody who was bisexual was just a stopping place on the road to being gay. And I still sort of believe that. Anyway what I was seeing was not what the newspapers and magazines were saying. That there were bisexual individuals, but quite honestly what influenced Score was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I mean it is transparently obvious.

But in a wonderful way.

It’s a variation on a theme.

That’s one of my favorite things about genre in general, and that that the porn genre — when it does it well, it really does it well. 

Every one of my films is a variation on something else. Flesh and Blood is my Hitchcock film. Buckleroos is my John Ford film.

Even Jock-A-Holics is a take off on Schnitzler’s La Ronde, right?

Yes. Exactly.

When Score came out, did it raise your profile at all and do things for you in either the porn or non-porn world?

Neither. First of all, one of the reasons I had whatever success I had in the adult film industry was because I only made one film a year. I had a very good job in New York that I was making a lot of money at. And I had a very wonderful relationship that made me very happy. So on my vacation each year from the magazine, I went to California and made a fuck movie. I was the auteur who came to California once a year and made these incredible story films, which nobody else seemed to know how to do. I made fifteen, sixteen films. Eight of them won Best Picture [at the GayVNs]. That’s a pretty fucking good track record. Eight won best actor, eight won best director, and seven won best screenplay. So you know, the adult film industry was very, very good to me and I was good to it.

But I read that after your first few films came out, you gave it up for a while.

Well I did those three films in the early 70s, The Back Row, Both Ways and Score. I was making a wonderful living, I’d met John and we got screwed badly on Both Ways. I never saw a penny on that. And also I didn’t want my knees broken by the Mafia. So I stayed away for twenty years. Then when I started Manshots magazine. I did two or three interviews with porn stars in each issue and one interview with somebody behind the scene. The first person I ever interviewed for Manshots was Matt Sterling. The second or third one I interviewed was Rick Ford from All Worlds Video. Rick and I got to be really good friends, and I was always calling him and saying, “I haven’t gotten your new film yet and we’re on deadline you better send it to me.” Every time we talked he asked me, “When are you going to make another movie Jerry?” And I said never. And one day I was incredibly piss elegant. I said “Alright Rick, I’ll make a film for you, but you have to give me final cut, you have to give me a royalty and you have to give me Tim Lowe who was the biggest star around those day. He said, okay I’ll talk to you later, bye. Two days later the phone rang and he said, “Hi Jerry it’s Rick. I have Tim Lowe here and he wants to talk to you.” And that’s how Fratrimony came out. That’s how I got back into the industry. And of course Tim won best actor that year.

Next came More of a Man, which starred Joey Stefano.

More of a Man was really an incredibly elaborate film. By anyone’s standards but particularly by Rick’s who had no money. We had planned to do this elaborate overhead shot during Gay Pride for the final shot, but in a moment of inspiration these rosary beads fell out of Joey’s pocket onto a condom and that became the final shot of the film. After that year, I was sitting in the apartment one day and I picked up the phone and the voice on the other end said, “Is this Jerry Douglas?” I said yes. “Is this Jerry Douglas who makes films?” I paused and said, “Well yes.” He said “Hi, I’m a student at NYU and I’m writing my masters thesis on you.” Well, I mean that was jerk-off time. Anybody who has even the slightest ego would — well that was a lovely day. About a month later a friend of mine went to London and came back and handed me this publication like New York Review of Books, and do you know what the first article was? “An analysis of the Judeo Christian symbolism in Jerry Douglas’ More of a Man.” That was a great moment for me too. I still have that article someplace. So you see, I really do believe, and I’ve always said, I really believe that a hundred years down the pike, people are going to be looking at my movies, the same way that they’re going to be looking at Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton’s movies, because they were considered the devil’s workshop at the turn of the last century.

Which of your films are your favorites?

I love Flesh and Blood, that’s my favorite. And Dream Team. Those are my two favorite films.

I was just jerking off to Brotherhood.

Really? That’s the last film I did. You know Danny Roddick died about two or three days after shooting ended.

Yeah. He was such a beauty.

He was a drug addict and it was unfortunate. And it was sad too because he and the German boy — what was his name? I can’t remember. [Editor's Note: Jan Fischer] I really am getting a little senile these days. Anyway Danny and the German boy had been having an off-camera affair and I had to go to them both and say save your semen for the film, because they were fucking like bunnies. And it really shook up the German boy. That film came about because John Rutherford from Falcon and then Colt, and I had been friends for 20 years. I always joked with him and said I will never make a film for Falcon until Chuck Holmes dies. We always laughed about that. Then when Chuck died and John went to Colt, one of the first things he did was hire me, and that’s how Buckleroos came about.

Another fine film.

Yeah, I’m very proud of that one.

It sort of comes later, but I was going to say the amount of times I’ve jerked off to the Mormon scene I can’t possibly count.

Oh the Mormon scene is my very favorite scene in that.

I love that.

The two boys are just so dirty but also innocent at the same time. When they first appear at the door in their white shirts and ties, I get hard. And I don’t get hard at my own work. Although there is a certain amount of truth at what Tom of Finland used to say,“If I don’t get a hard on while I’m drawing a picture I throw it away”, I’m always too busy on a set to get a hard-on. I will think nothing of going up to an actor and saying, “Move your dick over here,” and take hold of his dick and move it. And it means nothing. It’s like I was adjusting a prop. People knew that. I always started my meetings with my actors by saying, “I’m in a very happy marriage and have been for X number of years and I’m not out to seduce you. But I’m a very touchy person and my hands are going to be all over you for the next six days or whatever it takes to make the movie.” And they understood that. As a result I’ve remained friends with many.

‘The Mormon Scene‘ from Buckleroos Part 2, starring Marcus Iron, Sammy Case, and Timmy Thomas.

Now let’s talk about your way with story. I’m the kind of person who will cum during the porn set up scene. Those are the most erotic scenes to me.

Oh yes! I always told an actor, and I believe this very strongly, “Did you ever go to bed with anyone for the first time and were absolutely sure it would happen?” The answer has to be no. It’s the sexual tension before the fly was unzipped that’s part of it. That’s why the shit on the internet is worthless. That’s why Joe Gage is such a brilliant filmmaker, because he saves that tension. I learned so much from Joe about sexual tension. Joe does that brilliantly. He and I have known each other since he was Tim Kincaid. We talk on the phone once every month or so.

Was there a film or films that influenced your porn filmmaking?

I can’t really say that there was a single film that influenced my porn filmmaking because each time I tried to choose a genre or a seed that was different. I’m not sure where Flesh and Blood came from except that I’ve always been obsessed with twins. I would have killed to have been twins. That’s the Narcissus thing.

Brotherhood has twins too.

And my first novel.

You’re also the only director who does something nobody does anymore and which the internet doesn’t allow for either: Your films usually feature one character who goes on a sexual odyssey and who play a part in almost every scene. Which goes against the late 80s porn cliché where each film would be two guys, two different guys and three other different guys for the finale.

Yes but you have to understand that I fought that all the way too. “You’re using Mark in too many scenes.” (Kurt Young) “You’re using Casey Donovan all the way through The Back Row! They wanna see fresh meat.” I said “They’ll see it, there will be fresh meat in every scene, but Cal will also be in every scene.”

1999′s The Dream Team, from Studio 2000.

Is the Mormon scene in Buckleroos the scene you consider the hottest you’ve ever filmed?

No. The hottest is the scene with Jeanna Fine, Kurt Young, and Hawk Mcallister in Flesh and Blood with all that gauze and all her desperation and wanting it, and him playing, keeping her at bay and getting everything he wants out it. That is the best scene I’ve ever done probably. The other scene I’m very partial to, and the only scene that’s ever given me a hard-on is the first scene in Dream Team in the back of the truck with Rick Chase.

Incest has also been a common thread in all of your films. When did that take hold in your mind?

I have no idea. I have no interest whatsoever in either of my brothers or my father, I am sure of that, and certainly not my mother. But the only thing I surf are twin sites. I’m not interested in that sort of thing except for twins. I’m obsessed with twins. I just finished my new novel which is about the pedophile priest scandal in Boston and I have great hopes for it being commercial. I’m at loose ends trying to decide what to do. I keep going back to an incest theme, and I think, Jerry you’ve done that so many times already!

You want to do a film?

No, a novel. I don’t think I’ll ever do another film.

Why?

Nobody wants me to. It’s like Billy Wilder said, when you get to be a certain age, they’ll give you all the awards in the world and won’t hire you. I knew the day I walked off the set with Brotherhood that I would never make another film and I said that to John that day. I said, “You heard me call wrap, that’s it. This is the last film I’ll ever make.” I’ve written several scripts since then, one I’m enormously proud of — mainstream film scripts. But I don’t know how to get it to the people who could produce it. It’s a huge film.

What’s it about?

I delight in telling people about it. John and I are both fascinated by the Holocaust and one day he brought home a book that he found in a junk bin some place and I looked through it and read through it, and there was nothing new in it and then I came to a paragraph about an Orthodox Jewish family who had hidden out in Berlin all during the war and it was getting to be the end of the war and the Nazis were closing in on them, they had to go into hiding. And they had to separate — the mother and daughter went one place, the father and the son went another, and the only person that would take the father and son was the madame of the best whorehouse in town. Is that not a great premise for a film?

It’s a great premise!

I’m very proud of it. I wrote it about four years ago. It’s a superb script and I’m pretty much my own worst critic and I do have an ego but it’s good. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written in any genre, any form, any format. It’s a wonderful story because you know, a Jewish kid who his so repressed and oozing juices, and this woman who runs a whorehouse for the Nazis who are in the place all the time, and she’s a resistance fighter hiding Jews in her whorehouse. And his dick comes alive. It’s not a porn film in any way. It demands two stars, a woman and a teenage boy. I’m really proud of it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s called Bordelloland because the boy’s favorite book is Alice In Wonderland, and that’s where he is.

Let’s dish about porn. Who’s dead that you can speak ill of?

Well I’ll tell you a story but I won’t tell you who it’s about. I was in the middle of a sex scene, when one of the actors came up to me and said, “You’d better finish this scene pretty soon because I’m a drug addict and I have to have my heroin within the next half hour.” That’s my favorite one.

At least he was honest.

The people I’m bitter about in the industry and there are very few, are still alive.

Douglas with Chi Chi LaRue ca. 2010. Photo: GayPornGossip

Who was the best to work with?

Kurt Young was one of the two or three best actors I’ve ever worked with in any form. He’s a brilliant actor. Go back and watch Flesh and Blood, he’s incredible. The scene with Tony Donovan in Dream Team. Wow.

Do you cast by looks or performance ability?

I’m a face queen. They have to have a face. It’s a movie. There are close ups. I’ve said there are four things an actor has to have to be cast by me. They have to have a face, a body, a dick and I have to get along with him.

One of the things that comes through in your films is that the actors themselves feel so suited for their roles.

It’s not that it’s because I spend a lot of time with them, which nobody ever did in this industry. I always started my relationship after the interview and the hiring.

Take me through that process.

Alright. My secret was that as the editor of Manshots magazine I got a review copy of virtually every film being made in the world. I watched every one of them. When there was somebody I found interesting, I assigned the interview for Manshots to me, so they didn’t know they were being interviewed for a film. They thought they were being interviewed for a magazine. The day I interviewed Kurt Young we went out to my car because we could not smoke on the premises. During the interviews with the actors I’d get a sense of how much of a veil was up, how many barriers were up, and if I could work with him. By half an hour into an interview with Kurt I gave him the script for Flesh and Blood and hired him. Then there’s usually a gap before we get around to the shooting schedule and I always came out from New York a day or two before and one of the first things I’d do would be schedule dinner with him or the two stars of the film — there were two — because I’d wanted to see what kind of interaction I’d get between them and we’d go out to dinner. And then I’d say, “Why don’t you kiss each other goodnight?” Or if they’re sitting in the backseat of the car I’d say go ahead and play with each other but don’t take your dicks out. They’d tease each other and have something to think about for the next 24 hours.

That’s a good bit of directorial manipulation!

Chuck Holmes believed you should never introduce your stars to each other until the day they walk on set. I didn’t agree with that. I agreed with the principle very much, but not the implementation of it. And I always encouraged them to kiss each other goodnight after our dinner. They couldn’t wait to get at each other the next day. The first thing I say to an actor is about being touchy-feely. I also say, “You’re not playing Joe Blow, you’re playing this character.” This is what I tell any actor in any production. Movie or play or stage or screen. I ask them to think, How am I like this man? How am I not like this man? How much of myself can I use and where do I go to find the parts that turn me into this man? Friends, famous celebrities?

You find that care almost nowhere in porn these days.

Absolutely. Let’s go walk now. I have to walk because I need the exercise.

When did you and John meet?

November 15, 1979. My 44th birthday and I was feeling very depressed and all alone and staring 50 in the face. I went to the Thalia Theater and that was back in the days when they were showing wonderful movies. And of course if you didn’t like the movie the audience was always terrific there too. John sat down in the row in front of me and he kept turning around and looking at me and I kept flirting with him and I put my feet on the back of the seat and poking him, and then I went out to the john after the movie was over and when I came back he was sitting next to me in the seat where I had been sitting. That’s how it happened.

How did it turn into such a long lasting relationship?

Not without its detours. That’s all I’ll say about that. We had our rough times. We had very rough times. We went to couples counseling for a year and we made it against all odds. I think half the secret was his mother adored me. John and I were separated for a year. He moved out and during that year his parents used to come over for dinner every month or two to plan how to get John back. Isn’t that something?

That’s another good premise for a movie.

His parents both adored me. And I adored them. I miss his mother more than he does. She was a wonderful woman. She was about this tall. Tough as boiled owl and underneath was a marshmallow if you got through the armor. I got through the armor very quickly.

But they didn’t know what you did for work?

No, but when they found out they didn’t blink. They never asked to see any films. But they were the first ones we called whenever I won best picture.

So it’s been over ten years since you last made a film, and you really don’t have any desire to make another?

Well I’d like to but I’m not looking for it.

What about the porn that’s being made today — is there anyone you like?

There’s no one.

Directors?

There’s no directors. Well there are three names that are well known today — Randy Blue, Sean Cody and Corbin Fisher. All three have really beautiful men who are mostly straight, although I have problems with what makes someone straight and not straight. And what I see on the internet is exactly where the industry was when I started in it: loops. You rent a motel room and hope you remembered to tell them to take off their socks. Nobody makes films anymore. Nobody certainly makes story films. And you know a Corbin Fisher loop when you see it, you know a Sean Cody loop when you see it and you know a Randy Blue loop when you see it.

Do you think it’s possible things will turn around and go in another direction?

The pendulum always swings and yes it will probably swing in the other direction. Because first of all, mainstream films and porn films are becoming closer and closer together. I mean, there have been mainstream films that have shown erections and all that. Did you see Blue is the Warmest Color? I never saw so much labia in my life.

What do you think about bareback porn? The mainstream studios are converting, because of things like Truvada and serosorting.

From the time I came back after the three films in the early seventies, when I came back in 1989, when I made Fratrimony, I never made another film without rubbers, but in my films rubbers were always part of the action. The rubber fairy doesn’t automatically make it appear. I thought it was an obligation I had to my audience and mankind. These days there’s a whole generation, yourself included, who never lived through it. John and I had to start again and build a whole new circle of friends. To that end I would love to make a film without rubbers, but I vowed when I was coming back with Fratrimony that I wouldn’t make a film without rubbers until there was a vaccine that was 100 %. So I wouldn’t make a film without rubbers, until maybe a year from now when Truvada is proven efficacious.

Well they’ve studied it.

But you need time. I’d love to do a film without rubbers. But in my downtime I have a couple of films in my head I haven’t put down on paper that I would really like to make and things I never got around to doing. In every film I tried to do something I hadn’t done before. That’s the secret to longevity both from an actor’s point of view and a directors point of view. Every film you have to do something different or you lose your audience. I always tell an actor, in every film you do find something that you’ve never done before. It may be as big as bottoming for the first time. It may be as small as kissing his ear. Always find something to keep your audience interested in you. Do you know what’s in my last film, Brotherhood, that was never in any other? Toe sucking. Which doesn’t do anything for me, but it does for some people and I had a very hot toe sucking scene — with Danny Roddick and Jan — that’s the German boy’s name! See? Not so senile after all.

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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Since filming his first scene with Deviant Otter earlier this year, Cam Christou has become the hot new kid in town, quickly moving on to Tim Tales, NakedSword, and Lucas Entertainment. Raging Stallion, a studio he thought he’d have to slowly work his way up to over the course of years, perhaps, called within three months. A gifted bottom, Christou’s taken the enormous cocks of Boomer Banks and Adam Ramzi, among others, and was gang-banged on stage at New York’s Black Party as part of Naked Sword’s The Pack. I called the up-and-cummer as he sped through the streets of South Beach on the way to brunch with friends. We talked about his tumultuous upbringing, his time in Afghanistan, and his take on barebacking for Michael Lucas.

Adam: So, did you grow up in Miami?

No. I was born in Greece and grew up in Bosnia, then we moved to America in 1998. I’ve been all over in the States. My mom moved down here about six years ago. So I’m down here once a month and I usually stay with her.

That’s a pretty unusual upbringing. What was that like for you growing up over there, and how did you end up coming here?

It was pretty crazy. My two families are huge. I was raised Greek Orthodox and Muslim, so my childhood, from what I remember was pretty nuts. Then when the conflict started in former Yugoslavia, we left in 1993 and moved to Germany where we lived for a couple of years and then we moved here. The majority of my childhood was spent on the road, moving from place to place.

How did your being gay play into all the chaos and big life-or-death concerns that your family was dealing with?

I think I was too young to realize what was going on. I was five when we left Bosnia. As far as my sexuality, I remember being four years old and like being infatuated with my male cousin. I think I even knew at that point. I was much more drawn to him. And I was more drawn to my mom than my dad, but when it came to looking at other boys, I used to pee next to my neighbor out in the woods when we lived in Germany. I was eight or nine and my neighbor and I started taking our pants off in front of each other in the closet and touching each other. I definitely knew from way early that I was in touch with my sexuality and that I liked boys.

Was there shame that came with it or were you pretty okay with that?

I don’t think it was a result of anything. My father was very strict. There were instances where he would take me to the museum, and I would point out the naked statues, female and male, and I would get punished for it. But I think that there was an aspect of my sexuality that was repressed by my dad, which caused me to rebel in my younger years. I lost my virginity when I was 15 and I finished high school, my parents divorced, and started college all in the same year. It was definitely like a big in-your-face moment for me. At that point I came out to my mom. I knew I was gay and I went off merrily to college. Growing up, just the fact that sex was not talked about, it brought out my sexual side more and more.

The first time was with a guy, then? No playing with girls or testing it out?

No. It was this guy I went to high school with. We didn’t like each other or anything. His parents were good friends with my parents. He was a tennis player and I ran track. We were in my room and I don’t know. Somehow the conversation turned to making out. And he was like, “Have you ever made out with anyone?” And I said “No.” And he said he wanted to teach me. So we started making out and pretty soon he was inside me. He was a pretty big guy too, so losing your virginity to someone like that was pretty crazy. It just unlocked Pandora’s box.

Pandora’s hole, rather.

Yeah. I couldn’t get enough after that.

If your first dick was really huge it makes sense that you’re the go-to-guy to take Boomer Banks and Adam Ramzi and Leo Forte who have big cocks.

Well they’re all variations on big cocks. Boomer and I have joked about this and I’m quoting him, his is more like “a TV remote.” It’s flat but big. But actually no, the first dick didn’t set the tone for me. Both of my exes are night and day compared to one another. One was not well endowed and he knew how to use it. The other was way too big but he didn’t know how to use it. I definitely think a six-inch cock can be much better than an eight-inch cock. There’s nothing wrong with that, trust me.

Cam in what may be one of last porn films ever, NakedSword’s Summer of Fuckin’. His scene with Adam Ramzi comes out in two weeks.

How did you graduate high school so early?

I placed further than my peers so I was taking a lot of AP courses in high school. Then I just accelerated my degree.

Where did you go to college?

I did undergrad at University of Florida. After I graduated I went into the military for four and a half years, and then I left the military in 2008 and did my master’s at UCLA and finished that in 2010 and then moved to Washington D.C.

What made you want to get into the military? I feel like if I escaped a treacherous civil war and had a lot of turmoil in my life, I might be naturally scared to get back into the line of fire.

I joined because my original plans were to go to medical school and they were going to pay for it. Granted when I graduated college I was 18 and had my head up my ass and it was either continue with that or do something and go to jail or go to the military and I chose the military. I didn’t think that I was going to go. I didn’t think that I would be on a plane to Afghanistan three months after joining. That wasn’t in cards for me. I was regimented. I knew what every day was going to be like. I was a combat medic so I was tasked to a marine battalion and we flew around and collected injured and dead marines in the battlefield. I grew to love it, and it put my life on hold for four years but I miss it a lot. I was kicked out for being gay. I was outed by a co-worker, who was a girl.

Wow.

After I left that, it took a couple of years to put things back together. It’s surprising there are a lot of veterans that I’ve met in the porn community. Leo Forte is one. He was in the air force, so we definitely connected hugely on that. I know mr. Pam has shown a great interest in veterans. Element Eclipse is a veteran as well. We were actually all stationed at the same station at the same time but didn’t know each other. That’s really surreal.

You and Leo Forte and Element Eclipse were all in the same place in Afghanistan?

We were all in the same place, and on the Adam Ramzi shoot, I can get confirmation for you on this, I believe all of us were stationed at the same station in the same year and we didn’t know each other or know we were going to go into porn. It was an awesome thing to find that out.

So was it dangerous for you in Afghanistan?

Yeah. I mean I was on the front lines. I was a paramedic on a helicopter in a war zone.

You’re still firing at people and trying to keep safe and out of the line of fire.

Basically.

What was the culture like for you there? Were you sleeping with other guys?

I mean, you’re gone for nine months at a time and there’s surprisingly an astounding amount of gay people in the military. But that all happened toward the later end of my deployment because when you start everything your body is so shell-shocked that sex is the last thing on your mind, honestly. I remember the first time I came was like 61 days after being on base and it was crazy. I guess I was still afraid of being outed, and I bottled it up and that aspect just wasn’t there. I certainly didn’t look at my co-workers in a sexual way.

Cam in Roommate Wanted, from June.

I don’t know. It was definitely a safe haven. You know it’s not allowed. I don’t know. I was always comfortable with my sexuality so I wasn’t going in to hide it like a lot of marines do. I went in because I wanted money. They promised me medical school and that’s what I wanted. I had a goal in mind and that’s the only thing I focused on. There was nothing else. Plus, let’s not forget, I was in a relationship when I joined the military that went on for five years while I was in the military. So while there was fucking around and everything, I knew why I was in the relationship, why I was in the military, and that there was a mission to be done. I didn’t let anyone get in the way.

How did this girl out you?

She was basically in love with me and I told her that I was gay and there was a two-month period of her basically not speaking me and then she filed a complaint with my commander and he knew I was gay and so did my battalion. But because she went on record and filed a formal complaint there wasn’t anything they could do. They couldn’t brush it under the rug because those were the rules.

When you got that news what did it feel like?

It was like someone pulled the carpet out from under me. I got kicked out and bottled it up and it took years of therapy to kind of smooth it out.

Are you pursuing legal restitution?

Yeah I’m part of a national lawsuit to get my benefits back. I hope I win. It would be very nice.

Do you still want to go to medical school?

I do. I am actually in talks to maybe go back into the military. I just met with a recruiter. There are definitely some plans right now.

So you’re back from the army and you’re dealing with it in therapy, and you’re trying to make sense of things. Which comes first: escorting or porn?

Porn had always interested me. I moved to Los Angeles after I got out and I remember I was dating this guy and I was telling him I had this huge interest in doing porn and he was like, “No you can’t do it.” It was always there. Porn came first. Escorting is something I started doing very recently. I actually love it now but it’s funny, mr. Pam asked me if I was going to escort, so did Boomer and Seven Dixon and I always objected to it because I thought I would not be a good escort and that I would let people down who were paying for my time. But porn came first. It took about four years to decide if I wanted to do porn or not. I spent the last part of last year getting my friends together and discussing it with them and I had really good support and so I went into it.

That’s sort of different from most of the porn stars I talk to.

The funny thing is, I don’t know if you watched the Golden Globes a couple of years ago, but Amy Poehler and Tina Fey were saying something about plans for porn and Amy said, “You know no one plans to go into porn.” It was a funny joke, but I don’t think most plan to go into it, most end up doing it because they fall into it or have nothing else. Others go into it because they’ve always had an attraction to it. I’ve always thought it was fascinating to put yourself out there like that.

I feel like the latter are the people who last the longest into it. The people who get into because they just want fame are the ones who don’t last long.

I’ve been surprised by the porn world. There’s a lot of love but there’s a lot of backstabbing and hustling. I’m open to the possibility of doing stuff behind the scenes, working for one of the companies. Helping with casting. I think my time in front of the camera is coming to an end. I’ve done it for a little over a year now and I really wanted to work with Tim and I did Tim Tales because I thought he was fucking hot, and my first scene I shot with him was fucking hot. It was magical. I wanted to work with mr. Pam and she called one day and I was ecstatic. Raging Stallion was at the top of my list in terms of goals. I figured I would work my way up to Raging Stallion. Three months after I started they called and said they were interested in me so that all happened at once.

What do your parents think about your career? Your father was repressive and your mom was accepting? When you decided to get into porn, what happened?

We don’t really discuss that. It’s just something that we don’t discuss.

Do they know?

They know I had a kind of coming out with mom that I discussed with mr. Pam and Boomer because they were pushing me to come out, tell my parents. I didn’t feel like it was pressure or anything I just told them I was going to do it on my terms and I did. I just recently discussed it with her and told her. Mom knows and we don’t talk about it. My mom is pretty chill, though.

It wasn’t a positive conversation then, I’m assuming.

No it was not. But it was very straightforward. I told her and that was it. My dad, I don’t know if he knows. I don’t care. We don’t have a good relationship. My mom, I can tell her anything. She’d stand behind me no matter what.

What was it like working with Deviant Otter?

He’s awesome. He knew it was my first time filming and he talked me through it. Obviously his shoot was very amateurish, just me, him and a camera. Lasted about an hour. And you know, I was super comfortable with him. He was really nice. Totally complimentary. I walked away wanting to work with him again. I was a little nervous at first. But he just guided me through it. I was happy to help his site launch. And we got a shitload of Vine hits from him putting it on the internet. SO I guess people liked it. The thing about that Vine though, is it looks like it’s bareback but he made it a point to show him putting the condom on at the beginning of the video. I didn’t film my first bareback until Lucas. I also find it funny in the gay porn community you have to defend and say “Oh no I didn’t do bareback. But that’s a whole other issue.

Well but the bareback thing with Lucas is controversial for many because he’s a major studio, but also because he used to go after anyone who filmed bareback porn.

Of course I mean, let’s look at porn as a political thing. People’s opinions sway in favor of things and against things. I think it’s all about being informed and how do I word this without sounding politically incorrect. I think that Lucas has been around long enough to know the market and bareback porn is what people want right now. They don’t want to see a condom. He has a business to run and he wants to give his fans what they want. I think that he is beyond educated on the health and safety of bareback and when you should do it and when you shouldn’t do it. And breaking that HIV stigma. I myself am negative, on PrEP. I’ve been on it for a while now, because my ex was positive and I wanted to take that precaution. I stayed on it because I knew that I was doing porn and doing porn with people who were HIV positive and healthy, and people who were HIV positive and not physically healthy. It should be an ongoing conversation. It shouldn’t just be an acceptance of, oh he does bareback porn and that’s okay. It should be something that’s discussed all the time. People need to be educated and if it’s going to take Michael Lucas to educate people on what HIV is and what undetectable means and when you should use a condom and when you shouldn’t have a condom and when you should talk to your partner about HIV, then I feel like it’s acceptable for that. That’s my personal opinion on it.

Rafael Alencar told me that the way Lucas does it is that he sero-sorts in addition to the PrEP? The people who are HIV negative are together and the people who are positive are together.

Yes, he groups his performers based on status. So that there’s no pushback from anyone. When they were casting me I was sat down and basically told what days I would shoot and who I would shoot with and what days I couldn’t shoot because that performer was positive. They were very professional and cautious in that sense. They were very communicative on that.

Was there any trepidation on your part about what it would mean for your career? Like you said, it puts you in a controversial place.

Controversy to me is an opportunity to discuss and educate someone. As an adult I come forth and open the book and you give your point of view of it and your opinion and then you take into consideration someone else’s. I wasn’t worried that there was going to be controversy because A) I’m not going to make a career out of porn; there’s very few people that are able to do that. I have mad respect for them. B) I view bareback porn, sex, and HIV a lot differently than someone else. It’s down to my opinion and my decision to decide to do that. I wasn’t worried. I look at it as more of an opportunity to discuss with people and with other studios as opposed to being shunned and have the finger pointed at me.

Watch a teaser of Cam in the big finale scene from The Pack below.

Though he admits part of his entry into porn was to fuel his ego, daddy porn star Allen Silver doesn’t care whether you think he’s hot. “If you are into hairless slim guys, more power to you,” he says. “But don’t dislike older hairy guys just because they’re not your cup of tea.”

It’s Silver’s fearlessness in entering the notoriously critical gay porn industry in middle-age that has earned him legions of fans, young and old. But fans are also obviously into his fur, and his gift for sucking cock and making eye contact — a practice he learned in his day job as a self-described “sacred intimate.” After appearing in Pantheon’s daddy films for a few years, Silver attracted the attention of Ray Dragon and legendary director Joe Gage who cast Silver in 2008′s Chainsaw as a dad who catches his sons jerking off and decides to join in. The buzz over the incestuous scene prompted Gage to cast Silver in Dad Takes A Fishing Trip, the following year, and that film’s success led to two more incest-heavy sequels and starring roles for Silver in several other projects as well. I’ve known Silver for four years (full disclosure: we had a great night of dinner and sex when he was in New York back in 2010) and observed his experience on the set of Gage’s American Bukakke a few months ago, but we’ve never really talked at length about his life. So I called him last week to discuss his day job as a sex worker, how he handles criticism over his age and how he approaches his controversial role as an incestuous father in Gage’s films.

Adam: We’ve talked about this before so I know, but just for readers, when you’re not doing porn you have two different jobs, right?

Allen: Right. I’ve been a web designer since the early 90’s and I just love doing that. I’ve been doing it for ages. I also do erotic work and massage work, and then the occasional porn.

Your erotic work isn’t typical rentboy work, it’s more healing and sex therapy-type stuff, right?

Yes. My approach to it comes out of my training with the Body Electric School. My approach is called Sacred intimate. The intention is that you have a specific intention coming into the session with me. I’ve helped men deal with a lot of things that you could call healing. Dealing with the loss of a partner and getting their sex drive back going, dealing with prostate surgery, or just facing something scary or interesting that they’d like to try that they can’t just ask a stranger in a bar or a random rentboy to do. I’ve got quite a good reputation. I’ve been doing it for 12 years or so. Also, I want to make sure I say is that I’m not a therapist and often I will work with people who are working with therapists. Often I’m the lab that’s a safe place for people to try out things they need to try out.

How did you first get into it?

It all was part of a longer self-discovery process for me. In 1997 I had an erotic awakening, I guess you could say, where I realized there was a lot more to myself and what I’m here to do. I started to learn more about myself. The big piece of my life is that I’m very sexual. I wanted to do something that fits who I am. That involved doing a lot of exploration, taking classes and I learned about this thing called Sacred intimate and that’s how that got started.

Tell me more about the awakening. What were you like before you had this awakening?

Well I was out. I came out when I was 26. But in 1997 I was not yet 40 and I did a workshop in which there’s erotic massage, breathing, role playing, all kinds of stuff going on. Basically my body got bigger, my energetic body got bigger, my sexual awareness got bigger and then I had to decide what to do with that because prior to that, all of my energies were focused around being of service, being a good boy, and taking care of others. But I wasn’t focused on taking care of my own needs.

You became a metaphysical top?

Ha! I’ve never thought of it that way but I guess you could say that. The period before was filled with little and not very satisfying sexual behavior and then afterwards was a whole different world.

When you had this awakening did you have a partner or were you single?

My partner and I had been together for ten years at that point and it’s kind of a strange synchronicity because he was also doing some other kind of work on his own, exploring ayahuasca and seeing what awakenings and insights he could find via that. He went off and did that the same weekend I went off and did my touchy-feely workshop and we both came back different. That was basically the end of our relationship. It just was not going to work after that.

What prompted you to seek these non-traditional awakenings? Were you both deeply unhappy?

I wouldn’t say we were unhappy I would just say we weren’t as conscious as we were later. We were very supportive of each other and helping each other learn and support stuff. There were no worries about either of us doing these things. And I didn’t go in with the intention it was going to change my life. I went into it with the intention that I was curious and wanted to learn more.

Were you a sexual kid? Were you fascinated with sex from an early age? When you had this awakening was it the first time you opened yourself up?

No, I was sexual very young. I first had sex with my friend when I was ten years old. We used to do all kinds of stuff. For both of us it was very clear we weren’t supposed to be doing this. It was evil and bad. So I stopped being sexual in my early teens and I stayed like that pretty much until my mid-twenties. I had very little sex during that period. I tried very hard to be straight. It didn’t work. I finally came out at 26.

What was that like? That’s certainly not a non-traditional path, but it’s definitely different from a lot of the porn stars that I talk to.

Is it? That’s interesting. I think part of it is just my age. I’m probably the last of a generation that really felt there were no gay role models. There was nothing to show me that it might be a path that could be okay. I know there are certainly places in the U.S. where people are not allowed to express their gayness without fear of great rejection, but there are at least images of gays out in the world. When I grew up everything was just about making fun of gay people.

What time period was that?

I came out in the eighties and immediately fell in love with somebody and that was my partner for ten years. Even though we were sexual there was a lot of shame attached to it, and a lot of the things that I was curious about doing he would pooh-pooh. Later I realized how much I had been keeping suppressed by not exploring that.

What were your hang-ups? What were the things you wanted to do?

I wanted to fuck. And I had this strong message that that was wrong and it took a while to get over it. It’s just such a huge core part of myself that either it was move into that or just go into demise because I couldn’t suppress it and have any kind of vibrant life. The few times that we would screw it would be filled with shame and guilt afterwards so mainly we just masturbated. Which is hard for me to believe, that I spent that much time doing that.

We all take our path. It took me a very long time, until I was 24 and had been out for six years, before I fucked somebody. I had been with somebody I desperately wanted to fuck and they wouldn’t let me because I hadn’t done it before. They didn’t want to be my first and it took me a long time to get into that. And I didn’t really get into bottoming until last year. Before that it had always been miserable and I always waited and thought there’ll be somebody who comes along and makes it fine. It happened last year. It’s strange how everybody takes these different paths.

Yep. That’s right. And there’s a whole weird thing around bottoming. The mixed negative messages around it. Which is a shame because the ass is such a source of pleasure. I’m not saying everybody has to get fucked but if you’re not enjoying the sensual pleasures of your butt you’re missing a big piece of your life.

Do you have specialties? Traumas you’re especially good at help people deal with?

Well, a small percentage is traumas. Mostly it’s people who are inexperienced and insecure and want to try something. A great example is what we were just talking about. I help a lot of men have good first experiences enjoying their butt. As far as trauma that’s been more abut coaxing someone out of a scared place. But I’ve had a number of successes doing that. One of my favorite stories is that I had two clients who came to see me. One for a number of years. I can’t tell you details but we got him where he needed to go. And then a few years later him and another client met and fell in love and are now happily coupled. So I feel like I played a part in letting them each get to a place where they felt comfortable enough to do that.

Do you still have any sexual hang-ups? Are there things you work on?

Wow. I would have to think about that. Nothing is springing to mind. Also sometimes you don’t know things about yourself. That’s a great question.

Allen and Jessy Ares in TitanMen’s Head Trip

When did you first meet Joe Gage and was he the first person who approached you about doing porn?

No. That was probably two or three years into doing porn where I finally got to do something for Joe. The first thing I did was a very soft porn kind of thing for Tom Bianchi and it was fun but it was a little stiff and awkward. The first one that was real porn was something I did for Pantheon. I was already friends with the guy who runs that company, Chris, and he asked me to do something with someone I found very attractive. That’s what I considered my first real movie. The reason I got to work with Joe was that at the urging of my previous boyfriend, not the one we talked about a minute ago, I contacted Ray Dragon and got to do a movie with him called Jonny’s Place, which was wonderful. And that’s how I appeared on Joe’s radar, when he saw the movie Ray had done.

Were you familiar with his work and what he was capable of?

Oh yeah. Like a lot of people, and this is what I run into a lot when I mention him to people, they think of all the classic movies — El Paso Wrecking Company, etc. — but they don’t know he started back up again making new stuff. That’s changed. More people know it now, but before then people would be like, “Is he still around? I remember his movies they were great.” But I definitely knew of it and when I became aware of him I checked out his newer stuff and liked it.

What motivated you to make the leap into porn and how did it change your practice? Were you worried it would change it for the worse?

Why I got into it was that in this process of getting to know myself, I realized I’m very sexual. And I have a prima donna aspect. I love to be told I’m attractive. And I also am a big believer in people having really good, connected sex. And I said wouldn’t it be great if I could do a movie, model that kind of behavior and maybe people will pick up on it and at the same time I get to have attention and whatever level of fame that comes with doing that kind of movie. To answer your second question, I was concerned about it changing my practice and my clients have changed and my approach has changed over time. When I first started doing my work as a sacred intimate it was pretty much all through recommendations. People would come to me every time because they wanted to explore bondage or had fear about their ass being touched. It was very clearly that they were coming in doing something specific. When the movies started doing well I got more people coming in because they wanted to be with Allen Silver. So I had to change my practice a bit and I put another category there I called “Erotic Play” which is just, you’re coming because you want to have fun. We’re not trying to fix anything or explore anything necessarily. And I love it. So that has worked. The challenge around it is I have had a few times where someone has come and have watched the movies a lot of times and have a certain image of me and then they’re with the real person and I’m just human and in the room with and they’re not sure how to interact with someone that they’ve spent a lot of time watching on the screen, so that’s been a challenge.

I remember when we had sex I had the same kind of reaction. Oh, yeah, he’s not Dad or whatever, he’s just a guy and we still have to vibe and get the energy together. Maybe it didn’t quite go that way.

I remember I liked it!

I liked it too but when you have a fantasy, when you think you’re going to have sex with a fictional character, nothing can live up to it.

Exactly.

I feel like a lot of things that sex therapists and probably sacred intimates have to deal with is the ways that people develop wrong perceptions about sex based on porn. I’m curious if you worried you were perpetuating the problem or did you decide that you would try to sort of correct it in some subtle way?

I don’t have a black and white answer for that because I think about that a lot. I can’t help think I probably do perpetuate it some, just because, I mean, we’ll film a scene over two days and then it gets edited down and multiple cameras make it look like I came four times and rested and went again, this totally unrealistic period of sex. Just going and going and going and shooting and shooting and shooting. Now I do feel like I have an opportunity to put out in those, because I do feel like I’ve gotten across eye contact and genuine connected sex, and passion. That’s what I always look for in porn and I feel like I get that across. Likewise when someone comes to see me personally, at least on that one to one basis I’m able to have an experience with them that’s just two guys getting together and doing stuff and not about performing for the camera. I always laugh when I see an ad for something that says, “Have sex like a porn star!” I don’t want you to do that! Have sex for fun and pleasure and relaxation. But don’t do it because you’re trying to show off for the camera.

Tell me about the first time you got onset for Joe, and what was that like? Was that Chainsaw?

That was Barnstorm. He interviewed me a couple of times, and then he would do things like have me walk. It was really fun because it was like, this is the real thing. I was like, “I hope this happens, but if it doesn’t it was still really cool to get to interview for him.” Then he gave me the go ahead, and then the actual filming was in connection with Titan. He’s a little different when working for Titan and working on his own. Titan has a longer, more intense working schedule. But he was a pleasure to work with. He’s like this big happy kid who loves playing around with naked boys making them do things. It’s hot and he has a very clear idea of what he wants. It’s efficient too, so I had a great experience with him right off the bat.

I think the first time you did an incest scene was Chainsaw, right? Was doing that a leap for you? I imagine in your practice that must have been something that came up with people at times.

Yeah you’re right, Chainsaw came before the Dad movies. Well I hold the dad-boy quote-unquote “incest theme” a little less literally than that. A lot of the stuff I do in my private practice, role-playing and stuff is around daddy-boy energy. I think it’s a really useful, fun and helpful archetype to play with and that the dad-boy thing doesn’t depend on age. Your boy can actually be older than you. So I kind of come at it from that perspective, rather than literal incest, even though that is what happens in his movies. But I did have to think about it a lot before I jumped into this. In the first Dad movie, Dad doesn’t have sex with his son although he helps him learn how to suck cock through a gloryhole. I just love playing with dad-boy energy. One of the things that I love about his movies is they have this kind of – they’re not literal and they are at the same time. It’s almost a comedy in some ways, what’s going on in them. But you can’t act like you’re in a comedy. You take the whole thing seriously, and yet these situations are so fantastical. These guys are just constantly throwing themselves at Dad. His boy wants him to fuck him. It’s fantasy. I look at it as fantasy and that kind of power play that most of us have fantasized about.

I remember when I did a panel with Joe at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs when I curated the gay porn for the hotel, we brought Joe and someone asked him about that, and he hadn’t yet done the Dad movies and he said I’ve done this scene where the boy jerks off looking at his father in the shower and Chainsaw, but he was like, “I won’t go that far to have them actually have sex. I don’t want to perpetuate that.” I’m curious, do you remember when you realized that things were going to go that far?

Yeah, sure Dad Goes to College. When I got the script for that, I had to decide if I wanted to go ahead with it at that point. I don’t know how to answer why I decided to go ahead, just what I said before; I hold it as a fantasy and an archetype rather than it really being actual incest.

And people forget there have been incest scenes in gay porn since the very beginning. 1983’s Men of the Midway for instance, by the great Roger Earl, features Paul Baressi having sex with his son.

Well it’s edgy and I think Joe pulled it off. You’ll notice there are certain things he does in that, it’s actually I’m pretty sure, always the younger guy instigating the scene with the older guy – that’s one piece of it. There’s also at least a mention that the younger guy is a college student. Even though you could pretend he’s younger than he is, we’re not pretending he’s 12 or something. And how many of us had wished we had an older someone to guide us and at least advise us and we were left on our own?

And so many twinks now go after daddies because of the access to porn, Scruff profiles of 18-23 guys almost always read “Daddy Chaser” now, whether they’re really equipped to handle it or not. Now I know that the Dad films were obviously successful but I’m sure you got some backlash from people over doing them? 

I was braced for that actually and it kind of never really came. The only kind of complaints I got from people are from people who think I’m too old to be doing this, which is okay, people can like whatever they lake, so it didn’t really get too much criticism around it being some sort of perverse thing, oddly enough.

I feel like a lot of shit and hate is directed your way from mainstream porn fans about your age. A. Where do you think that comes from, and how do you handle that? I saw you commented on a Sword post recently where someone made a comment.

Oh yeah, that was funny. I don’t take that thing very seriously. You get to like what you like. If you are into hairless slim guys, more power to you, there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t dislike older hairy guys just because they’re not your cup of tea. That’s how I take it. It says more about them than it does about me. But I gotta say the feedback about me has been really positive. The people who like me really like me, and that’s normal. It’s fine. I try not to take it too seriously. It is dangerous to Google myself randomly. But something’s working. My schedule’s full.

Going back to the incest thing, the other thing I wanted to mention is that I know that you did a scene with James Darling for Bonus Hole Boys, which has also become controversial about the daddy-boy thing.

Yeah that one I have not seen, it just came out. I have had such wonderful experiences with FTMs in the past that when they asked me to do it I immediately said yes, because that’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to explore. That’s one that I’ve gotten the nastiest feedback on. James is 26, in the story we make it clear he’s a college student, and he’s not a relation – he’s a friend of the family. But going back and looking at the stills I can see how people think, he’s a man who used to be a woman, and so there’s a little gray area on how masculine he comes across, and he dresses and looks very young, and it may be that that’s pushing the boundary a little too much for some people. All I can say is that James reads like a grown man in person. His masculine energy. It didn’t feel like I was with a girl or a young boy in that. It felt like I was with a man.

The one thing that’s weird with the Dad stuff, I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing or it’s because of you and Joe’s videos, and this is where I think your videos stand out is that you see a lot on the internet on clip sites, you see pairings of really unattractive older men with young twinks and that whole pairing is the one that feels the most disturbing, these low rent, low budget loops. I think the Dad films stand apart in some way, because it’s fantasy and the other seems like we forced this young guy to have sex with this 89 year old man to please a very tiny subset of people who want to believe this happens.

They’re taking that idea and pushing it to an extreme, and what they’re not doing is they’re not doing a good job. It comes across tacky and with poor production quality. Some of the people aren’t that attractive, and also what I see so much in that porn you’re talking to, it doesn’t look like they’re that interested in each other, or that turned on, or open, or connected. That’s what I look for. And it doesn’t mean that the people are in love, but it does mean that they care that the other person is in the room, and they have looks on their face like, “Is this almost done? I want my paycheck.”

Do you consider yourself Joe’s muse?

What a wonderful idea. I would flatter myself thinking that. Let’s say yes! (laughs) I can’t really say. You’d have to ask him that. I do know he puts a lot of care and thinking into when he did the Dad character. One thing he told me is that it made it harder for him to write for me because I’m a nice guy and he wants it to be real, so if he were to cast me as some dastardly mean guy, it just wouldn’t work. So it makes it harder for him to write to me. I just give that as an example as how deep his thinking is when he creates this stuff.

Do you have a dream plot or scenario, character, setting, milieu, genre that you’d want to take on?

I really love outdoor sex and I wish I got to do more outdoor sex in the movies I’ve done. But apart from that, quite a while back I fulfilled all my porn fantasies. I kind of really got to do everything I had fantasized about doing.

Who are your favorite co-stars?

Well, I have to mention my boyfriend Will Swagger, I got to do a scene with him and it was wonderful. Conner Habib is great. So much fun with him. Oddly there’s an obscure one I did called Rugged, and this guy only did a couple of movies, his name was Kegan Daniels and we had such a hot connection. I also had a lot of fun on the set with certain people I didn’t expect to, such as Girth Brooks who was just a blast. I’m trying to think of the guy who was – Mick Powers. We did Johnny’s Place together and afterwards we went out and went to a piano bar in New York and drank I had so much fun with him I would love to work with him again.

What’s been the most fun scene in all the porn work you’ve done?

I’ve had a lot of fun in most of these, probably the ones that stand out the most – the scene in Dad Goes To College, the scene where the student – Tommy DeLuca comes in, who is nervous about being naked on stage. I’m in there with Dale Cooper and so this kid pulls down his pants and his dick is gigantic and it was one of the funniest things and try to sit there and have a straight face because of course the scene was comedic but you can’t act that way when you’re doing it, and then I just had a beautiful time with him, having sex. And I just gotta say I feel like I had this arrival experience doing American Bukakke, because it’s just such a well-oiled machine how that whole thing works and I’m back behind this wall about to make my appearance in this scene and I just had this moment where I felt so lucky that I was there on that set about to do that with those people.

Let’s go back to your sex work – I imagine you see a lot of different types of problems from people and I’m wondering are there some that you’re seeing more and more of in recent years? Or is it pretty constant?

I can’t think of anything that’s changed in terms of the issues of people have. There’s a consistent discrepancy between what people think anal sex is supposed to be like and what it’s really like. I will tell you what happened since I’ve been seen as dad is that I’ve had very young people contact me and there’s an age below which I won’t see people, who aren’t serious about it, who are just immature and who just want the chance to talk to them on the phone and are trying to get me to jerk off with them on the phone.

That’s so funny because that’s exactly as a kid what I would have done, I remember looking up in the phone book the number for Dial-A-Stripper, calling and then hanging up really fast.

Yep. That’s exactly it!

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Sunday, September 7th – In the early afternoon on day two of Brooklyn’s two-day Bushwig drag festival, Jake Dibeler and I are hidden away in a quiet studio at the shambolic Bushwick arts and performance venue Secret Project Robot, talking about his provocative performance work for what he says is the first time. Dibeler doesn’t enjoy talking about his work because, as he tells me early on, the performances are just an extension of him, like an extra, tattoo-covered limb.

For most of the interview I glance at one of those limbs, Dibeler’s leg, where a tattoo of a wide-eyed-man wearing a ball-gag lies next to a tattoo of a cackling skeleton head. That juxtaposition seems to represent the recurrent theme pairings found in Dibeler’s work: dark and light, comedy and horror, death and sex, pain and pleasure, the internal and external. A typical performance will feature thrilling and carefully considered acts of violence, lip-synching, nudity, as well as expressions of naked, raw, seemingly improvised anger. Recently, Dibeler’s ventured into music making with a band called bottoms who have begun gaining a fanbase with their intense musical performances, which feature Dibeler in jockstrap, dress, wig, and zombie contacts writhing and singing at a pitch high enough to break glass over electro-metal synth and drumming. The group was recently signed to Atlas Chair, headed up by musician J.D. Samson of the bands Le Tigre and MEN, and their album Goodbye is due out in January. (Preview their lead single “My Body” here) Needless to say, this won’t be his last interview.

Adam: Jake, at the beginning of every interview I usually shit on each of my subjects.

Jake: I’m bartending all day. I don’t want to smell like shit.

Sorry. It’s the rules.

I guess if it’s the rules…

So just for uninitiated Sword readers, do you have a definition of what you do, what your mission is?

I’m the worst at this but everybody else writes about me and they always write better stuff than I can.

What’s the best thing someone wrote?

The best thing was Colin Self, who was writing something about me for something. He said that I combine the terrifying and the joyful to touch on historical anxieties surrounding HIV, gay suicide, depression, getting fucked by strangers in my basement. My performances are about me, they’re just a surreal diary form. That’s why it’s hard for me to talk about because they’re so basic to me, you know? I’m literally just thinking and putting it down and it comes out in this way. So the choreography and the music and the cultural detritus are all just pulled from the time that I’m working on the piece so they’re a pretty accurate, yet abstract representation of me.

They’re an extension of you, is what you’re saying?

Yeah. They’re a way for me to connect with people that’s pop, you know? I can be a little abstract but also have these things that people recognize. I also feel like in this way I can be a little more vague and people can just feel it a little more viscerally than having there be a plot, or really a structured narrative.

The one performance I saw most recently was the one you did at that gallery in Bushwick.

You saw “Kevin”.

Yes. Can you just describe what happens in that piece?

Well the piece always changes. In that performance there are three of us and there’s a lot of same-exacting I call it, where everybody’s doing the same choreography together. There’s also lot of blood.

You’re wearing nude dresses.

Yeah. I wear nude a lot, I always like to be in the nude or black. Because I hate having to pick clothes but also being naked is such a thing so I try not to use it too excessively, which is something we’ll talk about later because it’s the crux of my issue as a performance artist.

You’re also cutting yourself.

I try to crack a mirror and cut myself with it. But it’s not as dark as it sounds. No matter how dark I make things, people always find a way to laugh at it, there’s always a humor in it.

Well horror and comedy are on the same plane.

Exactly. People say to me, “Well I think they’re laughing nervously.” But I actually think people get it, you know? It’s funny, the idea of somebody trying and failing to hurt themselves, but in a way that’s silly, you know?

And then all three of you burst into Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Which made me think about that old myth about suicides going up over Christmas.

Yes. Which is a way of suddenly changing the tone — it comes right after the mirror. Which is just how it is. An explosion of nothingness. That Mariah Carey song is not about anything. I’m Jewish. I don’t have Christmas. That song doesn’t mean anything to me. But emotionally it’s just at this sort of apex. And it’s just the insincerity of it. To use the most insincere thing, that’s what people relate to, pop music and cultural detritus. That’s the most insincere stuff I can find. That’s the common thread with people. Pop culture – people get it. I’m trying to make it really easy for the audience at points.

That’s followed up by you sitting on a giant dildo singing Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry.” Which was hysterical.

Yeah. Totally. I’m always on the fence about being pornographic because – and you should ask me about that later, because that’s like – important – but the dildo it was like, it’s funny because people are like oh my god it was so big. But –

You have a huge hole.

Yeah I just slide right down on it. Haha. The dildo was the best part. Even trying to talk to you about it now, it’s just about what it was about. You’re riding a dildo and lip-synching a self-deprecating a girl group song. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that’s where I was when I was writing it. The idea of putting yourself in this kind of awful situation where you’re riding a dildo in front of a group of people and lip-synching and it’s kind of humiliating but since I’m choosing to do it, I’m not at fault. I’m not actually humiliated because it’s not an accident, but that’s what people relate to the most. The humanity of it. I was also, while I was doing it looking a seven-year-old child in the eye.

That’s right, there was a little kid.

Right. That was my focus! He was sitting right across from me with his hip dad.

The dad obviously thought it was okay to have him see it.

The kid was reading a comic book.

That’s so funny.

People are so insane. Get a babysitter or don’t come. Or you know what. Bring your kid and if he sees a fat person riding a dildo that’s that.

Why is the piece called “Kevin”? Who is Kevin?

Kevin comes up a lot, like he comes up in bottoms stuff too. He’s just somebody that I slept with and have really good sex with, but he doesn’t mean anything to me emotionally. I think giving him this weight is what’s really necessary to me. This person doesn’t even know about any of this stuff. It’s not even really about him. It’s him but it’s also about anybody. It’s just interesting to me to kind of be fake giving this person I slept with so much credit and reverence in the work. People are like “Who’s Kevin?” I’m like Kevin’s just somebody who came in me a whole bunch.

Why Kevin as opposed to some other person?

Because Kevin was somebody I was sleeping with when I was writing it, and Kevin is this person that I think is so beautiful and I always think he’s so out of my league but he always wants to sleep with me and every time it’s this huge thing for me like, “This person who is so out of my league wants to sleep with me.” He’s like, “You have the best hole ever,” I’m like “What???” It blows my mind. It’s like, I could never date this person because we don’t click mentally but sexually it’s so perfect, so he’s just like that. It’s not even like, this person, but that insecurity I have is totally summed up in Kevin. It’s not really about him, it’s about me. It’s about what he stands for emotionally, which is me not having any confidence sexually.

When did you first start performing?

I’ve always been performing my whole life but I guess, this type of stuff since college. It’s such an ingrained part of me that I didn’t think it was a thing. I obviously knew about performance art. I’d done theater for a long time, but I didn’t like performance art. I still don’t like seeing it. I find it boring. I’d rather see dance or theater. I think when you say performance art people think of one thing, Marina Abramovic or Yoko Ono. Which is not what I do. I do theater. Experimental theater. Dance. So for a long time I didn’t think about the fact that the way I’m processing stuff could be executed in this way. So I guess in college when I started being around people who were able to help me make this thing a reality, that was when it changed. I went to school for photography and once you’ve learned how to use a camera, bring a fucking book, it’s so boring. So I was just like, I can totally do this here and work on this on my own. I guess in college is when I started performing in this capacity to people.

Was there a progression from what you were doing in the initial period to the more extreme stuff now?

No, I’ve always been extreme. It’s always been like this. I’ve always used the same formula — pop music, sex, dance choreography, violence, blood, teen angst, but I’ve kind of come from performing like an angry teenage girl to a more subtle adult that’s angry about different things. When I was making work in college and post-college, I was angry about things like “I hate my body. I hate being me. I hate my parents.” Blah blah blah. Recently I’ve taken this shift to being like – it’s still the same but it’s more focused and the quality of the rage is different. I don’t know how to describe it. I was reading about David Wojnarowicz and all these people who were angry at the government and people ignoring the AIDS crisis and that sort of thing. The anger is the same but it shifted into an adult place where I’m not just angry about myself, I’m just kind of angry about everything. I’m not whining anymore.

I feel like that whole anger about AIDS and the government is performed every day on Facebook. How can you amp up that rage in a performance?

Well because Facebook isn’t about anybody. Facebook is a way that you put something out into the world but it’s not about you or your body. It’s not attached to a body. And you know the things that Wojnarowicz and the ACT UP people were angry about aren’t so much what’s happening right now. It’s still an issue but it’s not at the scale it once was.

People aren’t dying left and right and nobody cares.

People are more active in positions of power. But it’s about making the anger in yourself, in your body. I don’t use Facebook to express myself genuinely because I don’t think it’s the right place to do so because it doesn’t give me any catharsis. Everything in Facebook becomes the same thing no matter what it is. You can’t be poignant sandwiched in between Ice Bucket Challenges and viral garbage. It’s not the right place. If I have something to say I’m going to say it to a roomful of people who want to hear it. That to me is more interesting and it does more for me and does more for the people who are interested in it than putting something online and having people click on it.

Tell me about your sexual development. In my head you used to be a total virgin nerd and then all of a sudden something clicked and you suddenly wanted every dick you could get. 

That’s so crazy that you say that because I’ve literally been touching dicks since I was in kindergarten. A total nerd! No way. I was goth but I was still getting it. I’ve literally been sexually active with boys since I was in kindergarten. I haven’t had a break. I’ve been sexually active since the point when you don’t even know that it’s being sexually active. I lost my virginity when I was thirteen.

To a friend?

Yeah. Somebody at summer camp. I was the kid in the neighborhood sucking everybody’s dick. And it’s still the same.

Same act, different neighborhood.

Yeah. People still have no idea what to do with me. I’ve had the same desire for my entire life. It’s really crazy. I remember it all. I’m totally cognizant of it all. It’s crazy how I was totally sexually developed by the time I was a teenager. I’d had sex with older men, knew the whole cannon. There was nothing that I was not familiar with. Being so sexual in these formative years, I developed at the same pace as you’re developing as a person. It’s like I grew up into a woman and had already had a fist inside me. It was this not miraculous at the same level as everything else…

You were getting fisted as a teenager?

Essentially. Not necessarily fisted but like, yeah, like I was in that place. The same place I am now as an adult. Obviously it was different because it wasn’t as easy to sleep with people.

Were people wary sleeping with someone younger?

No. They loved little goth butt. Can you imagine going to meet with somebody and having a little 13 year old in a Nine Inch Nails shirt and sucking your dick and looking up with blue hair? It was harder to sleep with people because the internet had just happened. I didn’t even have a phone. I don’t even remember how I met up with these older dudes. They picked me up in their trucks, took me to construction sites and fucked me in the back of their trucks. If I’d had a smart phone back then I don’t think I’d be here. I’d be dead in a ditch somewhere.

What point did the depression become a major part and was the sex a way to deal with depression?

Totally. I had a great childhood as far as like, growing up gay, not a thing that affected me negatively. My parents could probably tell you more about my work than I could. They’ve been dealing with it their whole lives. I’m not even gonna go into it. It’s too perfect. It’s gross. I had the best upbringing. My parents are my best friends. So there was never a point where growing up gay was an issue. Like I said, when you’re growing up sexually so early, you’re not thinking about sexuality, it’s just happening. It’s instinctive. I think that led to me becoming a gay person and made it a lot easier because I kind of had been starting it young.

You didn’t have that awkward adolescence when they come out at 22 and behave like teenagers.

Yeah. People are like when did you know you were gay. I was like kindergarten. I never needed to come out to my parents. At a certain point they were like, “So seeing any boys?” I was such a faggot I didn’t need to come out. There was never a point at which I had to confront homosexuality. So that wasn’t part of the depression. I think that the sex and the depression are totally intertwined. Depression from sex, sex as way to deal with depression.

I have the same thing where in the beginning when I started having sex I would go into panic attacks and suicidal depressions after milestones, like, “I sucked a dick!” and in my head I’m really a faggot.

I never had that sort of shame, I guess, but it’s like since I had been having sex for such a long time, sex for a really long time felt like it didn’t mean anything because for so long it didn’t and I knew that the people I was having sex with didn’t. When you’re having sex at 13, sex doesn’t mean anything. There was never any “We had sex, I love this person.” I knew that. No crushes. “He likes me!” I always knew it didn’t mean anything. I had experience. So sleeping with people isn’t as emotional as it is for a lot of people. For straight people the sex is built up a lot, emotionally. When you’re in school and they talk about sex they talk about straight sex. For me it wasn’t, oh it’s a big deal. It’s just like, I had a dick in me. Doesn’t everybody? The depression really came from sleeping with people and having it sort of be like, just that always. Even when I’m dating somebody all I want to do is fuck people. Sex is just this meaningless thing that I crave so much. To crave something so meaningless and be thinking, “I know that this is so meaningless but it feels so good.” That drives me insane, to want something so bad that I know doesn’t actually matter but also is like nothing feels better than getting a dick put all the way inside me. I think the depression came from this place where it’s like “All I wanna do is fuck.” And even if I find somebody that I really care for and who really cares for me, all I wanna do is fuck. Sex is this thing that totally sucks.

Would you like to be with somebody and not have that behavior?

I’ll always be interested in being in an open relationship. I want to have sex with as many people as I can. Sex is so good. People have sex differently. I’ll have a lot of bad sex differently and that’s fine. But then I’ll have sex with somebody and it’s so good and it’s if I’m dating just one person, I don’t get that. And I need that as a person. I need to have these little bombs going off. I will always crave intimacy on that level. It’s like I love the anonymity that will happen sometimes and the risk. Being in a relationship is great. I’ve loved everybody I’ve been in a relationship and it’s been great. My therapist said I’m addicted to the serotonin my brain produces when I’m having sex. Whatever I do emotionally with somebody, I’ll aways want that rush.

You don’t consider yourself an AIDS artist, do you?

That’s why I don’t talk about it a lot. Because it’s not about AIDS. It’s about me. That’s just a part of it. There’s so many other things that the work is about too. Recently I’ve become more aggressive about it. I think bottoms is mainly responsible for it.

Explain what bottoms is.

bottoms is a band that I sing for with Simon Leahy doing programming and Michael Prommasit drumming. Simon and I work on a lot of things together and he asked me to sing for the band and I don’t sing, I never was in a band and I don’t know why he asked me but I think it was probably because he saw my energy and was like, you could probably do something. So I auditioned for them, which was not a real audition, he was like “You’re in the band, babes.” I went and started to sing and I can only sing this one way which is this very high pitched way. People say it sounds like an Asian girl, a 14 year old girl, or Kathleen Hanna.

It’s very unintelligible.

Simon never heard it. When I went that first day his jaw was hanging on the floor. He was like “Oh my god!”

You’re not turning pitch shifters on to make that sound?

That’s how I really sing.

I thought it was all effects.

That’s what everybody thinks. I just got a vocal transformer that I use to add effects to it , but that base high-pitch thing is all me. But bottoms is a vehicle for me to be onstage and be able to perform a super-concentrated version of the things I’m interested in but without the choreography and the scripts and dialogue. In my performances, I’m walking, talking and dancing and doing this and following a script and in bottoms I’m just yelling. So it gives me this essentially, exact opposite sensation then when I’m performing my work because I don’t have to have any rules. But it’s cool to be able to like bring what I do in my work in a different way and in a more – it’s cool people are dancing to our songs that are to me so dark and goth and about the same shit that I work on. Being upset in your body and HIV and suicide and so it’s cool that people are bouncing around and relating to it when it’s just another way for me to be performing.

Let’s talk about something you said I should bring up, which is the pornographic quality of your work.

Yeah. The bear community. Don’t even get me started.

You were in Pinups Magazine.

Yeah. I told Christopher Schultz for the longest time no. Because it’s not because I didn’t want to do it, it’s because at that point, basically, I’m chubby and hairy that’s the way God made me. That’s the way she made me. But I don’t feel an affinity with other people who are chubby and hairy. Most of my boyfriends aren’t chubby and hairy. I hate that people in the bear community make me out to be this spokesperson for them. Which is fine, except for the fact that like, I’m just sexually this body for them, and it makes me so angry because I don’t try to be nude or anything to arouse anybody. I obviously understand that they link together. Yes, nudity is appealing. I’ve watched plenty of people who were in the same position I am and I’ve been turned on. But I guess as an artist, I’m able to look emotionally at it. People see my work, and this is from endless emails and comments and messages that I get. People are like, “Woof! Jerked off to your performance.” I’m like, “Did you mute it? Because I’m talking about my pussy and there’s a Rihanna song in it.” I love porn and seeing men naked. I will look at fucking porn as much as I can all day. But I can’t enter something that’s not pornographic, pornographically. If that makes sense. So people who look at my work and say they jerked off to it, it’s like dude, maybe you couldn’t tell that I took six months teaching this girl how to dance, and paid for a studio and got all these people to come to my show. I’m not making porn.

That’s not a compliment to you.

It’s not a compliment to me. I think it’s rude. If I was just on all fours spreading my fucking ass for you and you want to tell me you jerked off to it, fuck yeah. Cause that’s what it’s for.

It’d be like saying to Karen Finley –

Great tits! Woof!

“I jerked off watching you pull that stuff out of your pussy.”

Woof Karen! It’s like, fuck you bears. I don’t give a fuck about you. I don’t care about your culture. I will make friends with people in a community based on common goals and things that I have in common with them and personality, it’s like, I don’t need to be a part of a community because you feel threatened being fat and hairy and you feel like the only way for you to be a part of something is to find other people who are fat and hairy –

And create a clique.

I don’t need it. They made me this spokesmodel and that’s why I stopped getting naked as much. The only way to stop people from objectifying me. I mean, I get it, but to a certain point, I get being turned on by somebody you think is hot. If you were naked right now interviewing me, I’d want to touch your dick, even though you’re interviewing me and we’re not in a sexual situation, I wouldn’t because it’s not what’s going on. So this shift happened and I’m trying to be more adult and less loud because I’m in a way, weeding out the people who are actually invested in it, and not just trying to see me naked. But it’s still so funny to me because my website’s a Tumblr and I’ll see where stuff goes. I’ll post a photo from a show and I can look at it objectively. I know what people find more explicitly sexual than others, and I’ll post something that’s mainly performance based. It’ll end up on some armpit blog. I’ll look at the blog and it’ll be blatant porn, blatant porn, blatant porn, me in high heels with a spilled milkshake. I don’t see how that fits in! It’s crazy to me how people can do that. If I was looking at a porn blog and I saw me pop up I’d be like “Get this the fuck out of here!” I just don’t understand how you could watch my work and get a boner.

Would you ever want to make a porn?

Yeah but it would be a porn. It would be me getting fucked. It would be a porn. The porn I like to watch is people having sex. I wanna watch people fucking. That’s what turns me on. If I made a porn it wouldn’t be a performance. They’re different. I don’t mind performing for people who don’t know what they’re going to see because I’m more interested in having an audience with people who are conscious about what they’re going to see and want to have the experience. I had someone come up yesterday who was bartending and she was like, “That was really inspiring.” I am not looking to shock people.

Do you see yourself in a continuum with people like Wojnarowicz or Ron Athey or Leigh Bowery? Are there role models in terms of what you do?

Yeah. But these people are all so incredible, and I don’t want to lump myself into them, that seems damning to them. Wojnarowicz is somebody that I have always been really inspired by in everything that he does. His painting, writing, performance, music, all of it’s been really incredible. Ron Athey is also still incredible and these people are like always inspiring me, but I would say that I mostly watch people like Pina Bausch, Edward Albee plays, Christopher Durang, these dark comedies, that’s where I go to see my niche. All of those people are people that I definitely feel like I have an affinity with. I mean with bottoms there’s a link to Leigh Bowery and Minty on a greater scale. But I don’t have the energy for that shit. Or the capacity to be in a wig all day. Totally, though. Those are people that I’m always thinking about.

What’s your performance going to be today?

I’m gonna slit my wrists on stage, maybe to a Karen Finley song, maybe to a Shirley Temple song. Haven’t decided.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Since the company’s inception, CockyBoys models have become a ubiquitous presence in New York nightlife, with stars like Chris Harder, Tayte Hanson, and Levi Karter making regular appearances at clubs all over the city, and even hosting their own weekly bash in Hell’s Kitchen. It makes sense, then, that nightlife folks would want to return the favor and infiltrate the porn studio — which is exactly what happened when Brooklyn’s own Andy Pandy, a documentarian turned club kid rapper, was hired earlier this year as an editor. Bringing his experimental film background to projects like Answered Prayers: The Lamb, the upcoming “Meet the Morecocks” reality series and others, Pandy’s got big plans for making it in the industry, and as a breakout nightlife star. I sat down with the self-described Pauly Shore-soundalike to discuss his unusual path to porn, his obsession with pandas and life as a newlywed.

Adam: When did you move to New York?

Andy Pandy: This time last year.

Where are you from originally?

I grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Berkshire County. Lots of woods and rich white people.

You have kind of an accent but it’s not Massachusetts.

People compare my accent to Pauly Shore. Maybe it’s a West Coast stoner accent. Ever since I was little people have asked me where my accent came from.

You grew up in Massachusetts and then —

I went to film school in Boston. Then I came to New York.

What kind of stuff were you doing in film school?

I was doing mostly experimental documentaries. Some performance too.

What kind of documentaries were you making?

A big one I made was about my mother, who’s a first generation Korean immigrant. She’s quite a character. She’s an avid hula-hooper and does acupuncture for free for the community as a missionary statement for God. She’s lived in America for 25 years but she speaks very little English. She finds these pockets of Korean communities wherever she goes.

That sounds compelling.

Yeah. The relationship I had with her at that point was pretty estranged, so I used the piece to kind of reconnect with her.

Why was it estranged, the gay thing?

No. We just lost touch. The language barrier was a big thing. Korean was the first language I ever learned, and it was a big moment when I lost it. I remember her crying on the phone and my relatives crying on the phone, when they realized I couldn’t communicate with them any more.

So there was a point when you were fluent?

Yeah. Growing up. But my parents divorced and I lived with the American side of my family, and I wasn’t exposed to the language on a daily basis. I understand it a lot more than I can speak it, still. But I can only speak it as if I’m talking to an old person. “I’m hungry.” “I need to go to the bathroom.” All the polite phrases.

That’s pretty emotional.

I wanna re-learn it. I don’t think it will take very long. I want to go to Korea and find the underground scene out there. There’s such a strong pop culture out there, so I figure there must be a really subversive underground. I want to find it and bring my character Pandy out there. But I have to learn the language first.

How did you get involved with Cockyboys? Was it the first time you started working in porn?

Yeah. I started in May after answering a Craigslist ad. First I was getting selects from the various projects. I had noticed Cockyboys before on my personal internet porn quests, and liked that they were different from the other companies. The porn was shot differently, with a shallow depth-of-focus and natural lighting, which I’m really into. The sex was more natural, which I’m also really into. Because I’m really into people who bring truth into porn. I think the reality of sex is so much hotter than what is portrayed in most pornography. CockyBoys has been a really good platform for that. Jake Jaxson saw my work — actually the first time he decided to hire me full time was when he was doing Answered Prayers, which is much more experimental, and I was in charge of making the opening credits for part 1 of The Lamb and he saw I was using my creative abilities to construct it. So he was like, “Let’s see where you fit in the companies.”

So you go in every day, nine to five?

Yeah. Monday through Friday. Right now I’m working on a variety of different projects. Sex scenes, short interviews. I’m also filming stuff. I’m not just editing, I’m also producing. But a project that I’m working on right now, that is gonna be more of a full time thing, is that they’re doing a reality show called Meet the Morecocks. I’m gonna be in charge of the reality show. It’s still in the developmental stage. It’ll focus on two characters and then there’ll be a sex scene between them. It’s so interesting how the company is run, and the relationship between the owner and the porn models.

So you get to hang out and observe that whole interaction?

Yeah. If I had a superpower it would definitely be invisibility. I love to be watching how things play out and how people interact. I find it very fascinating, especially in a dimension that is so unusual.

What’s something that you’ve observed and learned that you’ve been really surprised by?

I’m very surprised by the large female fan base. There’s definitely a large gay male fanbase of course, but the porn moms are very vocal on Twitter and social media. CockyBoys is very welcoming of that. A lot of my female friends don’t really watch pornography, or at least they claim they don’t. But these women are so vocal about the chemistry in the scenes and whatever. That was really surprising.

Do you have favorite models at CockyBoys?

I love Colby Keller. I’m supposed to interview him soon, which I’m really excited about. I don’t think I could really say a favorite though. I asked someone in the office who their favorite was, and they were like, “I can’t say that.” So I’ll make that my answer.

Are you working on a sex scene now?

Yeah, I’m finishing up a sex scene now, and then some recap montages of Tayte. I went with him to Westgay and filmed him doing his thing. Also some behind the scenes docs for the Answered Prayers DVDs.

Do you want to be a full-time porn director?

I definitely want to direct things and expand the creative direction of porn. I want to make stuff that shows the reality of what gay men are like. Coming from a documentary background, I just want to give insight on the world of gay porn in a truthful way.

Do you want to be in porn?

No. No way. I mean, not no way. No shade on people who are in porn but it’s not for me. I’m much more behind-the-scenes.

Do you have any porn influences?

Well, some of my influences are Travis Mathews, in terms of, like, let’s make it more realistic, and Black Spark in terms of the mystery element. I love the anonymity of it. That’s really cool territory. Those took me to another level. Also CockyBoys, of course.

How much input do the editors have in terms of creating the work? Is there a mandate like, we need this, this, this and this to be shown? How is the work creatively shopped?

Well the director, Jake Jaxson shoots something with a vision and then kind of gives it to the editors and explains the vision and then we create something and show it to him and he’s like, “Oh I like this, this, this…” So it is a collaboration. Nothing is so set in stone, and with Answered Prayers, they shoot it with a wide net, getting a lot of different things. So it’s up to the editors to figure out how to formulate and put something together. He has the main idea though, of the story and the look and how it should be.

When did you first start watching porn?

When I first had a laptop in high school. 14-15, something like that.

Was there ever a moment where you had a disconnect between what gay porn was really like and what sex was really like?

I wasn’t having gay sex until college, so it wasn’t until much later that there was any disconnect.

It was in college that you started performing as Pandy right?

Yeah. My panda nightlife persona came about freshman year of college on Halloween. I was coming up with ideas for a panda costume and I got way too into it, more so than anything ever. I realized it wasn’t a costume for me, it was my alter-ego. That Halloween I was a panda and it was a spiritual experience in a weird way. But then I didn’t think about it until I came to New York, and started going out and dancing and losing myself. I started dressing as a panda because I was like, I can do whatever I want in nightlife. There was that freedom. So one night I went out to this event and Trey La Trash was there with Cher Noble and Hamm Samwich, which is weird because they were never at this party usually, but that night they were. I would go to Trey’s event, Dizzyland and he posted on that Facebook page, like, “We love you Nike Panda. We love you Puma Panda.” So he was noticing me, and then I talked to him and he asked me to host his parties. That was my introduction into nightlife and seeing that this was something I enjoyed. He asked me what my name was and it just came out, “Pandy.” Since then it’s stuck. Andy Pandy. I try to look like I’m having fun, and inspire other people to have fun.

The light is hitting your face from over head and it’s making panda shadows on your eyes.

Haha, Cool. Awesome.

Why do you love pandas?

They’re really chill.

Aren’t they supposed to be really mean?

Are they?

Maybe that’s koalas.

Yeah. That’s koalas. Pandas are really chill and they’re a prized animal within the Asian culture, so it connects me to my Asian roots which I’d lost.

Now you perform as a rapper right?

Yeah. Nightlife is such a good platform for me. I’ve always wanted to perform and do music but I always thought, nah, I’m not a rapper, but going out night after night I was like, hey I can do whatever I want, and I tried it and began to write music. I like to use a lot of movie sound effects in my tracks. My first song, “Bamboozled” uses different internet noises, like the AOL messenger jingle, pitch corrected.

How does porn intersect with the Pandy persona?

Well porn is about freedom of expression too, with the body, and in nightlife it’s also the same freedom of experience. So for me that’s how they intersect. Also everyone has pseudonyms. They’re both very much about performing a character.

Feels a bit circular. You get some fame from the porn stuff, and that helps you get a name when you go out, and then at clubs you get a rep for your porn stuff, like, when I saw you perform you introduced yourself by saying, “I’m Pandy, I make porn and I’m a rapper.” I thought that was kind of a different hook to get people interested.

Yeah. It hasn’t gained a ton of momentum yet, but I think in the future it will with more music coming out and more of the porn stuff I’m working on.

You’re also married now. It’s been a week!

Well, yes, we had a real normcore marriage at city hall a couple of months ago and that was so uncomfortable. We were in these suits. It was a really hot day, I was sweating and you go into city hall and get a ticket and they call your number, you go in and get married. It was the most uncomfortable day of my life. Then having this completely opposite ceremony at Bushwig, where it’s just so free, it was just beautiful. My friend filmed both of these events and I’m really interested to get the footage and make a short experimental film with both weddings.

What works with your and your husband?

It’s such an energy thing. It’s hard to put things into words. I feel sometimes like talking about things takes away the importance of them. But he is a very loving and supportive person. I have never met anyone who is so supportive. We’ve been together since last November.

A whirlwind romance.

I just felt like I could immediately be myself. It’s great.

Do you have a wild sex life?

It’s pretty normal. Active sure, but wild, I don’t know. Are you talking about fetishes?

No.

I wouldn’t say it’s as adventurous as you might think. When I go out I’m not looking to be physical with anyone. It’s more using that sexual energy as a fuel to inspire me rather than get my dick wet. I’m more of a voyeur anyway. If I see someone in a club getting their dick sucked and seeing the men drawn to it like moths to a light, I’m fascinated with that. How they will take off their shirts and get into the flow of it and try to get their dicks sucked. It’s so interesting to watch as an observer. To see how sexual energy sells a moment.

Are you interested in power dynamics?

Yeah, and desire. What people truly desire and makes people come alive. Sexuality seems to be fool-proof in making people come to life. That really works in New York City. People don’t care about anyone else’s lives but then if sexuality becomes a part they wake up. If they’re turned on they always can.

Tell me about the most recent sexual encounter you had?

With my husband? Hah. I feel shy about it. I’d like to be private about it.

Well you’ve only been married a week! Have you ever seen a ghost?

When I was little, but I think I was just tripping and it was my dad’s workshirt. I thought the buttons were eyes. It’s weird you asked that though because I like to think of myself as the ghost of a porn set, because I like to be invisible and a voyeur. When I have a camera in my hand I don’t want people to notice me, I just want them to be themselves.

You’ve said that you’re a voyeur several times, but you’re also a performer. There’s a little bit of a yin and a yang there, not to bring it back to the Asian stuff. You’re a voyeur but people are forced to watch you.

Completely. Pandy’s all about that yin and yang, the black and white, the contrast. There needs to be that balance. Performer observer. My grandpa said, all you need in life is peace, balance, and harmony. I wear mostly black and white to remind myself of that contrast and how there are two sides of a coin and you can embody both sides.

What’s a porn scenario you’d want to explore as a director?

I’d like to make a porn set in the world of Brooklyn nightlife. There’s such a renaissance going on right now. You know that movie Go? Centered around a rave. It could be centered around the Shade party and all the different scenes could come together and have a scene. We could use local DJ’s. Cockyboys are looking to start throwing parties in Brooklyn.

Sex parties or just party parties?

Both. So yeah there could be nightlife pornography!

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

When he was 16 years old, Ashley Ryder got bored with taking cocks. There had to be something else, he told his friend, something more extreme and exciting, and soon, in a book of erotic drawings, he found an image of an asshole being stretched open, fisted, and a lizard being dangled near the gaping hole. He freaked out and became obsessed with fisting, with putting large items in his ass, and pushing, quite literally, his sexual boundaries. It set him on a path to becoming one of the UK porn world’s most truly uninhibited stars — gleefully tortured in group gangbangs, fisted and double fisted onstage and off, and taking enormous cocks without a note of resistance. Ryder wouldn’t have it any other way. “Don’t fuck me like your boyfriend, fuck me like you hate me,” he tells his many lovers.

Today, after eight years of building up a reputation as a performer at raunchy burlesque venues and in porn for companies like UK Naked Men, Eurocreme, Raging Stallion and NakedSword, Ryder has spent the last two years moving into directing, for BulldogXXX and Alphamale. Now a new crop of boys are being put through their paces by someone who really knows how to push their limits. His new film Penance features a priest who installs a glory hole booth in his confessional, and he’ll soon be starring in side project called “Fisted by the Stars.”

He’s made crossovers into the art world, appearing in risqué videos for other artists, and co-starring in a twisted, and critically praised film called Uncle David, with British performance artist David Hoyle. While in London this past weekend, I sat down with the legendary star to discuss his origins, the differences between American and English porn, and something he calls “dirty love nuggets.” Yes, we go there. You’ve been warned.

Adam: So since I’m only here for a short stay, I was looking to interview legendary figures of importance in the British porn scene. Everybody said “You have to talk to Ashley.” But you’ve only been in the industry for like 8 years, right?

Ashley: Yeah. It’s been a really short time. But I kind of hit the industry with my shows first, before the porn. I was kind of known for sitting on big toys even before I became a porn star. I don’t even think of my self as a porn star because I did so few. I only did 20 movies. But out of those 20 they’ve become quite epic. The first one I did for Steven Prior, he had like, an 11 ½ inch cock and that scene now, still gets coverage. I think it won an award for best duo, seven years later. There’s a scene that I did two years ago, that was never gonna be released for Dark Alley but they just released it. It’s a foot-fucking scene, I take a hand and a foot. That’s gonna get me some notoriety as well. I’ve been lucky really, I haven’t had to do a thousand films to get known. I’ve only done a few.

Well the amount of things you’ve had up your ass kind of balances that out.

Ashley Ryder’s Ultimate Anal was one of the biggest sellers for AEBN, and they keep bugging the company I work for to rerelease it. Maybe I’ll do another one because toys are bigger now.

You mean, toys are literally bigger, or they’re more popular?

I can take an arm past the elbow, up to here. I’ve taken a foot, not fully. I need a dancer or ballerina who can do pointe to do it perfectly. Darcy Russell would be amazing. A Royal Ballet male dancer who’d be up for it. That’s how it’s kind of really gotten. My shows are more important than my porn. I do a show around the corner at The Box in Soho where I sit on a traffic cone. Four nights a week.

You sit on a traffic cone?

Yeah. Here’s the act. I’m a builder I come out of the ground from a manhole and I come up onstage and these two girls come onstage and I kind of show off a little bit and spoof that Diet Coke advert. I shake a can and spray myself, and then I give them one and they do it. It’s really amazing. Then I get a banana out and pretend to give a banana a blowjob. Then they do it. She gets her tits out and wanks with the banana and then I get a sandwich out and by that time the voodoo magic works. The sandwich represents her vagina. So I’m playing with the sandwich like it’s a pussy. They’re like, “Oh my god I can feel it!” Then I take it one step further. I think, right, I have them. So I get the traffic cone out and I lube up the traffic cone and they’re like “You don’t want us to sit on it right? I’m like, no it’s for me.” And I sit on it.

Wow. Before you became known for your shows, you were involved in fashion, right?

I did one year at St. Martin’s in fashion and I hated it and left. I hated making clothing. I left that, and was working at Prowler, the corner sex and gay book shop and was escorting a bit on the side. People had asked me to do porn for ages, because I lost a load of weight when I came to London. I kind of caved in and did one movie, and it took ages to get released. And my friend asked me to do some pictures for his website, and during the photo session I got really bored with the top, and I was like, “Your cock’s not big enough”, even though it was really huge. But he couldn’t keep it hard. So I put my hand in my ass. So my friend who ran that website was like, “Come to New York and we’ll have you do a show.”

You performed at the Black Party.

Yeah. I was told it was going to be thirty people, in this quiet little venue in the middle of New York. I get there and it’s the Roseland Ballroom. I was like, “Shit what the fuck have I done.” I got so scared, but everyone there was amazing. I was carried through the main dance floor on a two-by-four by two guys. Candles all down me, like some kind of shot deer. Taken on to the stage, took the candles off me. Poured liquid wax all down my back. I was on all fours. The wax was way hotter than I thought it would be. And it washed down my back at once. My back turns red, and it starts to crust and dry, like I’m a wax statue. Then I stood up and we got the dildos and at the end, Adam Faust, who’s dead now, I think, and my friend who runs the company, they double fisted me and lifted me off the floor on both arms. They lifted me up spun me around and put me down again. That was the end. I came back to London. Sleaze booked me for a show. I did four or five for them. The London shows were great because I could see the audience. In London I kind of saw what the response was, and it really shocked me because people were climbing over the stairwells so they could get to the dance floor. So I said, well, maybe I could make some money on this. Let’s see what I could do. It was a time when London didn’t really do sex shows. Nowadays everybody seems to be putting a sex show in a club. It doesn’t matter where it is. It could be softcore or some really intense fucking onstage. Everyone’s doing it. Before it was harder to find, so I just did a solo show and toured with that.

I’d read that Cadinot and Bel Ami were the things that got you interested in porn, but when did the whole fisting thing start?

I got bored of cock at 16.

So you were hooking up with guys from what age?

13. I worked in a gay sauna at 16. I also worked at the Christian coffee shop at the other end of the street. I would go between the two. They did a really good chicken sandwich in the Christian shop and they had really good cock in the sauna. I said to my friend at 16, “I’m really getting bored of this. There must be more to it than this if people are still having sex at 30.” 30 seemed a long way. I went into Birmingham, and I went into a shop like Prowler, and I saw a Tom of Finland book, and a Hun book as well. There were cartoons which were so amazing. I was like this is amazing, is this even possible? People putting hands in each other? There was one picture of someone’s hole held open and he’s tied to the floor of the desert and there are hooks in his hole and they’re dangling a lizard in, and I got so hard looking at that picture. I was like, “I want that to happen to me! That’s so cool!” I just went online and tried to look around and ask people, and tell people that I wanted to try it. People dismissed me. I lost friends over it. People were like, “You’re too filthy, we don’t like you anymore. You have to go.” I got ostracized for wanting to go down this route. Then I started to meet older men who were into it, but I got turned away loads because I had no experience. I remember one guy, I’d gone all the way down there from my student halls, about an hour and a half trip to his place. I got down to his place and he showed me all his toys and they were huge, and I was like, “People can take these? I want to do this.” The guy was like, “I don’t think we should play. You don’t have enough experience.” I was like “What?” I was 20 at the time.

He missed out on the fun of breaking in someone for the first time!

Exactly. So I remember standing on his lawn as he shut the door in my face, shouting at the top of my lungs, “If you won’t fuck me, how will I get experience??!!” His neighbors were watching. I got quite angry. I had to meet some real —

Creeps —

Yeah, Creeps.

When was the first time it worked?

When I was 18 I had two friends who did it to me. It was my birthday and it took ages, but it was kind of in and out and not all the way up. It wasn’t until I came to London that I started to have big things put in. I met a friend of mine, Bjorn, when I was 21, and I also met these two guys who lived in Tower Bridge, and they kind of trained me. I met them on a Sunday, and I wasn’t working at the time and I stayed for six days even though my flat was across the road. I kind of became their uber-bottom. I would drop everything. That was when my training really kicked in and I started going in for more depth. I was always a depth boy. I always liked to feel it going in more.

I was going to ask if the thrill is about width or depth –

It’s depth. Width is nice too, but I like it deep.

How old are you now?

33

Wow, we’re the same age. I’m thinking about where I was at 16 and where you were, and it was a very different place.

I was 16 and just wanted sex. It didn’t matter about the person, anywhere I could go to find sex I would go.

For me my only outlet was porn.

I had a couple of porn movies. One had a guy fucking himself with his own cock. I tended to like stuff that was really circus freaky. But then with the Bel Ami side of it, that was just because they were boys you never saw anywhere. They seemed like gods. The ideals of what youth and beauty should be. They kind of still have that concept which I really like. But for me it was just like, they’re unobtainable people. I think it’s the extremes I really like. Regular sex for me is fun. But if you can do regular sex where it becomes an extreme, then you’ve got me. If you’ve got a 14-inch penis. Or if you can power-fuck so hard that you can make someone cry. That extreme element. Oral sex is fun, but I prefer if you face-fuck my mouth like it was my asshole. You didn’t care if I was gagging or not. Just kissing and having a little wank, it’s nice if you are really connected to that person, but if it’s a stranger I’m like fuck it. I need that level of energy.

Do you also like the rosebud imagery? That’s the part that really grosses me out.

It depends. There are some photographs where you just think, “What are you doing?” I look through people’s profile pictures anyway and sometimes I’m like, why have you taken your picture from this angle? Is that supposed to turn me on? Same thing with rosebuds. There are some pictures that should be banned by law. As for my own, I have one that I’m quite proud of that I send to a lot of people. I think it’s quite cute.

Alright, for the purpose of the interview, I’ll look.

I think a rosebud can be attractive, I don’t think an entire anal prolapse can be attractive. I think mine’s quite cute.

I mean, it’s, you know… I’m not judging. I was a top for a long time and never found the right bottom and now I’ve switched over. So it’s fascinating to hear the other side of it from you.

But of course. How much of a bottom are you?

I like it when I’m with a guy that I feel comfortable with. I can’t just be like, “Spit and shove it in.” I’m real tight.

Bottoming is like a religion for me. It’s one thing I wake up and think about every day.

What do you think about it?

Fisting is a drug. To have a hand inside of me, to a point where I can’t think of anything else. I can’t do anything, can’t focus. I just have to get it inside me. Sometimes when I’m filming porn, I get these bottoms who come and they are really complaining, I’m like “What the fuck are you doing here?”

In the past, the only experiences I had with bottoming were pure pain –

That’s part of it, you know. Some people get fucked by big cocks and some by small cocks. There are cocks that hurt and there are people who don’t do it properly.

I’ve definitely have people who didn’t know where to put it when they put it in. For me, I’m bad doggystyle. I’m much better on my back.

That’s internal alignment.

What about you?

I don’t mind. I really don’t mind. I’ll push back into it. I usually wear the tops out. I’m like fuck me harder, come on. No gentle shit. Don’t fuck me like your boyfriend, fuck me like you hate me.

What about douching? Lets say I was going to fist you after this interview, how much time do you need to get ready?

I could do it with a water bottle in the toilet. But that’s because I’m a professional. Some people do the whole six-hour douche, but that’s pointless. No one’s going to go that far into your colon. There are three holes in your sphincter. The outer one, the one that’s the anus top, then you’ve got your large intestine, and then into the small. It’s three. That’s all.

Ashley with Matt Hughes’ cock.

Where does the arm go to on you?

It goes all the way through and to the side and up around. Where the larger one joins with the smaller one. But that’s it. I’m a tube. It’s been pulled away from the wall lining for years. It’s kind of realigned itself. I don’t believe in the six-hour douching. I think it’s pointless. Especially if you’re only taking 11 inches of cock, which is the maximum people will ever take, you literally just need to do a simple douche of the first little bit. Also you’re inside someone’s ass. Shit happens babes. Don’t freak out if you pull out and there’s a little bit of corn on the end of your cock. It’s like, bad stuff happens. Wipe it off and keep going. Why is everyone so squeamish? I mean, yeah if you pull out and shit goes on the walls and everywhere, then yeah, that’s a problem.

That’s someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.

It’s happened when I’ve been drunk. I got asked to leave the sauna the other day. I was pissed [drunk], I’d been out with some friends. And it was like six in the morning and I drank a bottle of prosecco before I left the house. Went to the club, free drinks. Woke up in a cabin, being asked to leave. My towel was just filthy. I don’t know what happened. The glamorous lifestyle of Ashley Ryder… Haha.

Did your image take hold right away when you started doing porn, that you were this hardcore twink?

No, no one took me seriously. I would talk to people in clubs that didn’t know me and they would be like, “Oh shut up, you’re like, what? 16?” I used to use it to my advantage, to hide behind that. I could play the little dumb boy and just be like, “I’ve never had sex before.” People would believe that. To me, I was filthy through and through and through. I think that was kind of what made everybody a lbit more interested in me because I looked really clean cut but at the same time I was an absolute pig. It would shock people and I liked shocking people. Especially ten years ago when nobody would talk about fisting.

Having worked in America and the UK, I’m curious what you see as the differences between American and British porn?

American porn is way more into the body image, because you guys, although we do, over here, look after our bodies, not to the extreme level as in the US. It’s nowhere near the body level that the Americans have. But then again, our youth don’t tend to do so much sports, whereas sports is very important in America. For us it’s a little side thing.

Do you see any differences on set?

Professionally? I think the models from the UK that have gone over to America, come back with a different attitude to work because they usually end up seeing it as a career. In America you have way more chances to make it a career because there’s more companies to work for, but in the UK it’s really small. And there are all these different sites and not everyone will work with you if you’ve worked with someone else, but you know, there’s a shortage of models in the UK, because the industry isn’t nurtured here. Another difference is that the Americans come in and they’re hard instantly. It’s like where do you want me to fuck?

Ashley with Steve Prior’s cock.

But don’t you give them Viagra, same as in America?

Yeah but they still take forever to get hard. There’s this new breed of models in the UK, who are doing you a favor. They come in and they’re like, “Oh you want me to sit like this? Ugh, god, I’m so tired.” It’s like, we’re paying you to do a job here, come on. People that say they’re a bottom on my sets, and it goes in for a minute, and they go, “Oh I have to stop, it’s painful! It’s painful!” I’m like, “Fuck off!” This irritates me. You want to be a bottom in a porn film and you can’t take cock for more than a minute? What is this, some private orgy you thought you were coming to? You’re working. This is a concept, you know? You will take cock until I tell you to stop taking cock, and when I don’t want you to take any more cock you will beg me to keep filming because you want to take more cock, that is a bottom on a porn set. Same with a top. They should be like fucking a hole in the wall, and you just go, “Come on Joe, the hole’s here now,” and position them. They should just be ready and on cue all the time. And that’s the Americans. The Americans are great. But they are working on years of heritage. They have the ability to host their own sites in America. We can’t do that here. We’re not allowed to host a site in the UK. We have to find outside sources.

Because of the new censorship laws?

Yeah. So many laws. They were even gonna pass a law where we can’t be the intellectual property changers . So even a blog, we can’t be seen changing the information on our website. We have to be a third party to our own company.

That’s absurd.

So our returns on films are not as huge as a company like Raging Stallion. I have to say since the demise of the porn, in a sense, with free streaming and torrenting, I think a lot of people are relying on back catalogues still. You know? Thankfully the company I work for has a huge back catalogue. We have to pay licensing to the companies and everything else but I think there are a lot of sites that are struggling. There’s a couple of UK boys who are great. Kayden Grey is amazing. JP is amazing. There’s a few of them. Also In the UK, man can’t live on porno alone. You know? You have to have a main job and a porno job. You escort. Your porn is your billboard. Theoretically porn is prostitution but with really hot guys. You get paid to have sex with someone who’s hot. You know. And at the end of the day when people say, “I’m a porn star, I’m not a prostitute.” I think, why not? Because that’s where you’re going to make all your money. Working for me on my film is like having a billboard in Times Square. I’ll pay for advertising, blog coverage, I have affiliation links, basically cover all your work across a thousand different sites, and suddenly you go from being a tiny little ad in the back of a magazine to — on everyone’s home computer as a downloaded file. That why, you can charge more. Some here make a thousand pounds a night. It’s a business and you have to treat it like a business. You can’t just swan through and think, I’ll do a scene here and another there. You quit your day job, but it doesn’t work like that. It takes a long while. You have to get established. If you can get to work for a studio, it’s amazing because you’re a caliber or two above the other guys. And it’s coverage. Also in America the models do make more money, but so what? I’ll do jobs for a hundred pounds and I’ll do jobs for a thousand pounds. Does it really matter? It’s a job. If someone’s paying you to do something, I mean… yeah okay, everybody has their own price and you shouldn’t be exploiting. Guys here do amateur stuff, bareback for 50 pounds and they have thirty loads in their hole –

Does that really happen here?

You hear stories about that stuff from people. “Oh I did it for 50 quid,” and people have their own reasons why they did that, but I think if someone’s doing it because they’re just naïve to the industry, and the industry’s taking the piss out of them, that’s wrong. But I think different prices for different work. You’re a freelance model.

Do you bareback?

No I don’t bareback on film. What you do in your life is your choice, and how you choose to live that way, as long as you’re aware of the consequences of the situation, then, freedom to live. I think there’s a lot of people who don’t have that level of self-respect to go get checked out and go and be responsible about their own sexual health and that kind of irritates. Nowadays anybody who says they’re negative I don’t believe. I assume everyone is positive and infectious. I think you don’t adopt that attitude until you are with them on the day of the test and even then it’s like they could have fucked somebody bareback the day before. You just need to be sexually aware. Bareback porn is fine, as long as you are totally, 100 percent aware of the situation and what’s happening.

Would you ever want to cross over and make porn in the states?

Totally. That would be amazing. I would love to do that. I’m learning all the time. I got the camera two years ago, and in that time, I’ve directed 20 films. I’m like a factory pumping them out. And Penance, my latest, that’s been in the ABN charts top ten for 2 months now. I’m really pleased about that, because it’s the first film where I challenged myself with a script. I was like, let’s see if I can get these porn boys to recite these lines. It was a lot of fun.

What’s the concept?

It’s a gloryhole movie. But I was really bored with gloryhole films because nobody cottages anymore. Nobody sticks their dick through a toilet hole in the wall, and there are cruisey places that happen in clubs, but it’s a really old school concept and it needed something to freshen it up a bit. I was like, where do you have a partition between two men? A church. I was like how about the priest has a gloryhole in his confession booth, so he can tell the guys, get down on your knees and pray. So I wrote the script in like a day. My favorite scene is the one at the end with Alex Silvers and Kayden Grey – that’s the first scene where I learned how to film stuff when things get difficult. Alex is a great guy to work with, but sometimes he has a problem with loads o dialogue. I needed to come up with a way also to have him look like he was saying stuff, but then I could get him to re-record the lines later. It took nine hours, six of which were dialogue training. It was fun. We worked into the early hours of the morning, and I have it on my phone, I carry it around all the time, because I look at it and it was the first thing where I realized, “I can make a movie. I can actually make a film, not just porn.” I like that balance.

So the major challenge was dialogue, and sometimes your other challenges are sex, and models that don’t want to do stuff, or say they’re one thing and are another.

Yeah, I’m really into reactions. We are so used to being able to see a dick going into a hole, that if you can – someone crying and someone laughing, and if you put a penetration shot in between, you have two different feelings. I like the crying one.

You’re describing the Kuleshov effect but with porn.

Yeah. I like challenging porn.

The other thing about the UK is that you have all these restrictive laws but –

It’s mental – I get hours taken out of my movies,

But there are more hardcore things going on. Like Straighthell.net for instance.

Yeah, but nobody saw that in the UK.

Nobody saw it here?

Not at the beginning no. You could torrent it but you couldn’t go to the site. Now you have Breeder Fuckers. It’s the same site.

It’s bareback?

No. They just rereleased all of StraightHell under a different website name. Breeder means straight person.

Oh, obviously, I thought of breeding in the other sense. Anyway that stuff is so hardcore. It’s kidnapping straight guys –

It’s all faked.

I know it’s all faked but it’s really good.

I know how they make them cry. It’s a TV trick. You have a special stick and it causes vapor. It’s a trick.

But in a way it’s great moviemaking for porn. You buy into this insane premise.

But also they don’t do DVD and that’s the difference. If I was to do films that didn’t need an R-18 rating certification in the UK, I could do a hell of a lot more, but I think they can do Breeder Fuckers in the UK is because they aren’t based in the UK. I don’t know if they’re still in the UK as a company. Who knows? They’re probably left. Tim Tales left. Cazzo never was here anyway. Loads of them are going. If you want to go down that route, you’re fucked here. Chances are I may have to go.

Would you come to New York? You’d have a lot of fun.

Yeah, totally. That would be cool. But I want to campaign for fisting here. I want it to be legalized.

It’s still not legal?

It’s still considered GBH.

Grievous bodily harm.

Yeah, I’m a little murky on the terms. There are still things we need to fight for. But I think we get complacent in the fact that everything’s fine. I don’t know. I used to think we were the forefront of stuff but I don’t feel that anymore. I do in certain areas. People are like, Oh we’ve got married now, we’re integrated, and I’m like, fuck that I never want to be integrated. I don’t want to get married.

You want to get fisted.

Right. I want to walk around in underwear and fuck everything in site. I understand marriage for legal reasons. You’ve been together a long time and the other one needs legal rights if you die or get sick. But why do I want to dictate my life from a heteronormative institution? There’s nothing in that that makes me go, “Yay, let me join that. It’s so cool.” I’m happy being single. I like being the lover. I say who, I say when, I say how much. I don’t want to have that picket fence. I’d love to have a big house with a dungeon. Lots of money, big house, private dungeon. That’s all I want. Some would say that’s really shallow.

It’s not shallow. It’s honest.

I carry a picture around, if I could find him, he’s what I want.

A big muscle guy?

Extreme. Not just a big muscle guy. Extremely big. I feel like I should have to hang out in steroid spots.

Colby Keller and Ashley in NakedSword’s Golden Gate 2.

Come to the Chelsea gyms or West Hollywood.

I would love that. But remember they don’t live past thirty.

Do you have a dream actor who is your fist crush?

I’ve been fucked by Colby Keller and I’d like to get fisted by him. In an alpine lodge. That’d be very hot. In front of a fireplace. Maybe it’s Christmas time.

Call it Merry Fistmas.

I like Zeb Atlas too. I’m meeting Rocco Steele soon.

He’s so hot.

I want him to go deep. I’m gonna do some of my own “Fisted by the Stars” films. It’s gonna be me being fisted by lots of the big names in the industry. Rocco Steele is gonna be the first one. I’m gonna set up the camera. He’s coming over, and we’ll film an hour or so. I want arm and cock.

One of the things I’m most jealous of you for is that you got fucked by Matt Hughes. He’s my dream porn crush. He has an 11-inch cock. What was he like to work with?

He was really nice.

He’s straight right?

Yeah. Danny D is his straight name. It was fun. I may have been the second or third one to get fucked by him with him. But I can actually say that I was the first one to suck the cock to the base.

Wow.

He got really hard when I did that. He said wow nobody’s ever done that before.

Okay so now I want to hear your dirtiest sex story.

My dirtiest story? God… What do I want people to know, that’s the thing. There are some really filthy stories. I think I’ll let them be rumors. There are few quite extreme ones… I doesn’t feel filthy for me though. Being tied to a fuck bench in a club and having 20 guys have a go, that was kind of fun, but to me that’s an every day thing. I wouldn’t think twice about doing that. For somebody else that would be totally extreme. If this place, like suddenly turned super sexual, I’d totally bottom for everyone here. If people got naked and that statue came to life, and it was Mannequin meets Hot House, then of course, I’d totally bottom for every one here. Bukake the whole room, just fucking whatever. Me, I don’t find it filthy. It’s just how I am. Taking my clothes off in a public toilet when I was just turned 18 and my friends’ in the car outside and I’m being fucked by four strangers and I lie down on the floor butt naked and they shoot their loads on me and I put me clothes on without wiping off and I get back in the car and drive off. Or being taken to Paris when I was 22 and put on the bar of a sex club because nobody would acknowledge me. My friend was like you do this better than they can. And to put me on the bar and and I got fisted to about here. It wasn’t so deep then. Everybody wanted to know me. Or go to Berlin and being double fisted for an hour, totally pissed, standing on this platform, in my own world with this super hot German guy with really slim arms, and him just ruining me. I don’t know. Go to a French orgy where the bedroom was behind a bookcase. That was amazing. I was having sex with a bareback porn star at the time, and then he sent me an email about a party in Lyon, a scat party for guys under 30, and I never had the confidence to go, but I was always intrigued and he would send me pictures and the guys were like models, it was like Bel Ami meets French filth. That was too extreme for me.

Scat was too extreme?

It’s not my thing. I’ve tried it but I don’t like it.

You tried it?

Yeah I’ve given everything a go. Olives. Anchovies, whatever.

So you shat on someone or someone shit on you?

Someone shit on me. It was by accident to begin with, I don’t know how – I was rimming his hole and the next minute I’m like, what’s that? I call it dirty love nuggets. I spat it out and we just kept on going the way we were before. So I’ve tried it. I like olives, I like anchovies, but I’m not into scat.

Well I can only imagine the stories you’re keeping from me, given that those are the ones you shared.

Ha, but that to me seems quite normal. And I wonder sometimes if I’ve become numb to all of it.

I wonder that sometimes too, when I push myself. But my level is a little different from yours.

People say that to me — on my level, on your level, I appreciate that but I don’t see my level as being really high. And that kind of worries me sometimes because I think am I deliberately ostracizing myself from everyone else? Am I missing out on other opportunities? A few years ago I was like, why am I only looking for fisting tops? I spent my whole twenties experimenting with sex and finding okay I like olives and anchovies, and now I’m the same as somebody who only ever does vanilla bed sex. What’s the point of the last ten years if I’m only ever gonna meet somebody to get fisted, you kind of limit yourself. I like the option to be there.

But we all change sexually.

I still don’t want to kiss or hug.

When you’re 27 suddenly you start liking twinks instead of daddies. A year ago I wouldn’t have said I was going to become a verse bottom but I am, so I don’t know, maybe next year you’re going to be like —

Just hug me —

With a sweater vest and kids, and you’ll be married and registered at Sainsbury’s…

(laughs) I love Sainsbury’s homeware.

To purchase Ashley Ryder’s films, visit Eurocreme.

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Only a few months after winning Cockyboys’ So You Wanna Be a Cockyboy? contest, Tayte Hanson made it to the top of The Sword’s “Which 2014 Gay Porn Newcomer Gets You The Hardest?” poll, beating out newcomers like Rocco Steele and Cam Christou. Clearly he’s got something special, something that makes him stand out from the pack — and not just the long dirty-blonde hair that echoes the porn stars of the late eighties and early nineties.

The 25-year-old has a background as a professional dancer, big plans for building a personal brand, and a genuine sweetness about him that doesn’t seem to be covering up a dark or dishonest side. Though I half expected him to ask to meet at some swanky place, more associated with those — as Tayte seems to be — on their way up, we’re sitting across from each at a crowded Chipotle, as he awaits my go ahead to scarf down three delicious tacos. We talked about what motivated him to get into porn, sex with the high-school football captain and why his mom loves that he’s a porn star.

Tayte: Sorry I ordered already, I was so hungry.

Adam: That’s okay.

I couldn’t wait to eat. Chipotle’s my thing.

Is it really your thing? When you said to meet here, I wondered if you really liked eating here or you were just on a budget?

I love Chipotle. I’m from New Mexico so I’m all about Mexican food, and though Chipotle is not a good representation of it, it’s quality food. It’s cheap which, it is what it is, but it gives me enough calories to last me through the day.

So what are you eating?

I always eat the same thing. Three hard tacos with black beans and brown rice, sofritas, sour cream guacamole, and cheese, and hot sauce. I like it spicy.

Don’t let me stop you, feel free to eat. Where do you live?

I just moved to Astoria.

What precipitated that? Did you want to be closer to Cockyboys?

Well I was living with family. My parents have a house here, so they would be in town, once in a blue moon, but I just wanted a space of my own. I put a photo studio in my new apartment, because I’m doing a lot of photography on my own, so it’s perfect. There’s space, it’s right on the park, and it’s a house. I love suburbia so much more than the city.

I know you’re a nature boy.

Yes. It’s the New Mexico thing. I grew up riding horses and barrel racing and riding my motorcycle. Now I live here.

No offense, but then if your parents have two houses and you grew up doing all those fabulous things, it doesn’t sound like you’re from a lower income background.

I’m from an upper middle class family so money’s never been super abundant, but it’s been good. You know? It’s not like I didn’t have anything.

That is far from the normal story for most of the porn stars I talk to.

Yeah. Because a lot of times with porn stars it’s easy money, and that’s why a lot of straight guys do it. The money’s always the first answer. For myself there were two things that I required of myself before I started porn, which was, that money and fame were not the reasons I was getting into porn. If I had reasons other than that, I would let myself do it. But those are the reasons I would never do it because that’s when I see people get trapped in it. I was fortunate enough to go to college and I have three college degrees. I have an education and I can support myself in many different ways. But this is what I’m choosing to do. Which is nice, not everybody has that.

So what precipitated this choosing? Were you hanging out with a lot of porn stars? Were you in that world? How were you introduced to it?

Yeah, I was friends with a lot of Cockyboys, and I slept with a lot of porn stars in the past. It’s always a world that’s fascinated me and I considered it in high school and then decided no because I thought, I’ll be famous and I can fuck hot dudes, and then I realized I could fuck hot dudes anyway. Then Jake Jaxson approached me about two and a half years ago when they were doing Project Go-Go Boy. I was go-going for all the Boy Party events, because I love Justin Luke, and that was a nice little outlet because I’m a super exhibitionist. I love being up on a box and having all these people stare at me. It is what it is. That comes from the dance side of things. I’m a professionally trained modern dancer and that’s what I’ve done for most of my life. So something about being onstage and people seeing you, no matter what the venue is, it’s hot. But why I chose to approach Jake Jaxson right before So You Wanna Be a Cockyboy is that I developed a program to essentially teach adults how to teach children about safe sex and make it sexy, and my platform is “#SafeSexIsSexy”, that’s what the name of the program is. I needed something to spring that off of. I needed a fan base, which is growing slowly but surely. I needed a way to prove to people that I’m having sex safely and that it can be sexy. So I did it for this program that will be coming out in the next two years.

It’s an interesting idea, and of course, a totally unique reason for getting into porn. You’re using porn to springboard into a health education program.

Which seems so backwards.

Well Tyson Tyler told me he wants to work in HIV prevention, too. But you run the risk of people saying your opinion’s not valid because you’re a porn star.

Well I question why that opinion exists, because why does a porn star not have the right to talk about sex and sex education? Aren’t those the people who have it the most? Granted, they can pull the card out that says, “He’s a dumb porn star.” Because a lot of people assume that. But it’s funny to me, I look at porn stars, and rentboys and people of this nature and they go about it and do what they do and are successful about it, and I think they’re actually the smarter ones, because they are using what they naturally have been given to make money. Not to say that’s better or worse, but it’s all capitalism within itself. It’s either capitalism of something that you create with your fingertips or it’s something that nature created with its fingertips.

With all you’re doing, it seems like you’re somebody who is, as they say “actively cultivating a personal brand.”

Yes. Totally. After I started, I sat down with Jake Jaxson and he talked about creating something that was greater than what a porn star is in terms of scenes, because a lot of times you see people who come and go like that. It’s because the body, this part of you is totally limited. You can only see someone’s dick going inside of another person a certain amount of times before someone gets bored of it. So it’s really about cultivating other parts of you to keep you interested. Which is great. I’m down for that. I like doing a lot of things. On my website, TayteHanson.com, there’s three sections now. There’s a link to my webcam portal, and it’s a live show, being that I just move, I set up the new cam, twelve cams, so you can watch whatever you want. Another section is my Tatye TV, which is actually a platform that got picked up by a TV station, which is not able to be announced yet. But this is the springboard for that. It’s the YouTube channel, which is interviews and workouts and it’s all under PG-13, and then you go to the other section which is the XXX section, which has all my affiliate programs and sells all of my things. I have a shirt line and a bag line. So it’s becoming a thing where you’re like, what can I add on.

You came out of the gate with all these plans for tie-ins.

I’m a Virgo. It’s a big planning thing.

So you have this great background, and you’re a dancer and entrepreneurial, what do your parents say? Are they so liberal that none of the porn stuff matters?

It’s interesting because my father’s not the most liberal. He’s decently conservative. But if you’re in the inner circle, he’s very liberal. If you’re close to him, it’s like, do whatever the fuck you want. But if he was looking at this on someone else he’d be super judgmental about it. My dad didn’t like it as much as my mom. My mom loves the idea for it. She loves the idea of prostitution and all that because she’s a mental health worker in New Mexico, so she’s been working on establishing the legalization of brothels. She wants to be a madam for a house like this, because it is much safer, 90% of the time, keeps them off the streets, keeps them in an environment where they’re loved, allows them to make money, in a safe way. So she was totally cool with it. She was like “Do your thing.”

That’s amazing.

It’s awesome.

Then I assume you came out early?

I came out when I was 17.

So their liberalism didn’t necessarily make it easier for you?

Well, I like everything, boys and girls. It was never something like, I had to be out like that. I was sleeping with guys when I was 13 and I was sleeping with girls when I was younger than that.

Do you consider yourself actively bisexual?

I consider myself actively open. The reason I don’t say bisexual is because people confuse it, and think it’s a 50/50 line. I don’t consider the male sex and the female sex to be gender related. Sure one has a penis and one has a vagina, but there are so many other factors to a person that trigger attraction. I can meet someone with a vagina who acts more masculine, and that could attract me because of those factors. There’s a million reasons to be attracted to someone and the idea to say someone could only be attracted to someone because of what’s in their pants confuses me. I’m not attracted to the sex, I’m attracted to the person.

That makes sense.

A lot of times I will have women who are very good friends of mine, who I’m not necessarily interested in having sex with, not because they’re not attractive but because I’m not attracted to them. And I’ll cuddle with them and whatever. A lot of gay men are like that. So what’s the point that you are attracted to someone so much, and you’re like, “Oh they have a vagina, so what? They have another piece.” It’s just my opinion, I guess. I get a lot of flack for that one though.

Let’s talk about that. Our commenters are constantly hating on bi guys.

Yeah and it’s a funny reaction because within this gay community we are pursuing this equality thing constantly. We just got five new states for gay marriage added to the list and everyone’s so excited. Then when we look at equality and differences within our own community we get out pitchforks and fire and are like, “Fuck you!” It really confuses me, because it’s like if you really want equality then accept me for liking all these other things. It’s also a fear-based thing a lot of times. I love asking people what their fetishes are, do you have anything that you’re interested in, and people’s answer 99 percent of the time is, no I don’t have any fetishes, I’m into the ordinary whatever. I like vanilla sex. I always laugh and say, I’d love to go through your computer history and see, because a lot of people are just scared in the forefront of it, to even say. Who knows? Maybe there’s one woman out there that all gay men like.

So you said you slept with lots of porn stars. Can you name names?

Well some have been released. J.D. Phoenix, a picture of us got released and that was three and a half years ago. I can’t say the others, I know they would kill me.

Why would they kill you?

I’m not sure.

Were you the other man?

Yes. Most of the time, or it was like, after a nightclub, whatever. Yeah. There were only four of them total.

The commenters can try to figure that one out.

I’m sure I’ll release some one day. I have a backup drive on my computer and it’s got lots of photos.

So when you have sex you like to take photos?

Yeah, I like that. If it starts in text conversations, I’ll always ask, “Are you interested in getting the camera out?” It’s only hot if they want it. If they’re into it.

What kind of camera do you use?

I use a bunch of different cameras. Professional cameras, I use two Canon 7Ds. I’m about to upgrade to the Mark III. I want the C100 series. That’s beautiful. It’s above my price. Eventually I want the Redbox. One day.

Just keep eating at Chipotle.

Yes. I’ll have enough money soon.

When did you first get into dance?

I started dancing when I was 17. A month before I came out of the closet. Two months after I quit playing football. I played football for six years, baseball for eight.

That sounds hot.

It was. The first guy I ever slept with was the quarterback for the football team. It was amazing. I have a book coming out, it’s essentially a series of short erotic novels. You know Chelsea Handler? She has this book called My Horizontal Life, and this is basically that, but a little more descriptive. A lot dirtier.

True sex stories.

Obviously all the details are changed. I’ve had some exes hear about that it’s happen and be like, “Excuse me? What’s this?” Don’t worry though, everything has been changed.

Let’s go back to the quarterback of the football team? Give me more details.

He has two kids now and a wife who was one of my good friends in high school. He was just sexy. He had an eight and a half inch uncut dick. Gorgeous uncut dick. He came over to stay at my house. I had taken him on a trip with me when I was younger, over the summer. And he came over to stay at my house one night, and we were playing pool, at the house. We had the cue stick and we started doing that kind of youthful playing around where we were hitting each other with the cue sticks on the butt and it escalated and there you go. The rest is in the book.

So you have a book, photos, TV shows, porn, health campaigns, and you also dance.

Yes. I tour with an international dance company from Australia, and we only tour from February until October.

Oh, only 8 months of the year.

Yeah. The company only performs outdoors, so we can only perform when it’s not cold. It’s nice. But I just got a promotion to director on tour of that company. So it’s a lot, but it’s good.

It’s one thing after the next with you. It’s really something.

It’s funny because there’s so much every day for everything, but it’s all little things. It never feels like I do anything. At the end of the day I’m like, I wrote another chapter, and did this and this, but nothing is finished.

When I interviewed Ashley Ryder next week, he was saying how he was looking for a professional dancer to foot-fist him. In the interest of being a good matchmaker, is that something you’d be interested in?

That’s intense. He needs someone with really great feet. That’s so funny. I love that. I do a lot of crazy things. Have you seen that I do a lot of work with Fort Troff? I was just up there. They have everything up there. Cuffs and blindfolds and gags. We used all that stuff, and I loved it. I’m into it. I’m the kind of person who will just say yes until it doesn’t work for me, and then I’ll say no.

So what are you into specifically?

I like all kinds of things. It’s kind of ridiculous. The funny thing is I like all of these things but I won’t necessarily do all of them on camera. But I love uncut penis. That is one thing, lord. I am really into feet. I think that’s a dancer mindset, because I’ve never met a dancer who’s not into feet, and I think it’s because we obsess over them all day.

The foot is a holy object to dancers.

It’s funny if you watch a dance show with a dancer, and you see someone with hooked feet, that’s the only thing they’ll notice. “Oh my god, look at those feet.” I love outdoor sex, that’s one of the hardest things about Manhattan, you’re stuck inside all of the time. I love the idea of double-stuffing. I’ve done it to someone before and it was not as great as the ideas in the mind, but in terms of visually, that’s one of my favorite things to see. My favorite activity in the bedroom is rimming by far. If someone just wanted to sit on my face all day I would probably been okay with that. Which is wonderful. The scruff really helps with that. I’m really into bondage. I love tying someone to my bed and leaving them there for a while and getting around to them whenever the time is right. There’s something so fantastically erotic about not having control over anything. So having someone lie there while I have every ounce of control, it’s a very trusting thing. What else? I love dildos. Dildos are fantastic. In terms of topping and bottoming, I prefer to top, on the emotional side of things. I’m the kind of person who feels like, sometimes I’m less if I’m bottoming, which is why I don’t want to bottom for guys who are bigger than me. I don’t want to feel like I’m being dominated. I want to feel like I’m giving them a gift. If they’re smaller than me, I want to feel like, “Okay you can tap me now.”

So you’re in control and the energy is directed back at you.

I want to feel like even if they’re fucking me I could throw them off the bed and beat the shit out of them if I want to. You know what I mean? Feel free to quote that shit. But I love riding a dildo. Physically, bottoming feels amazing. I have learned something about myself in recent times. I don’t really feel pain like a lot of people do. I always thought it was strange that this first guy I was sleeping with, when I was thirteen years old, he had an eight-and-a-half-inch dick, he put it inside of me with just spit, it was no problem. I wondered why I wasn’t screaming. Then I look back at the exes I had, I realize, I would fuck them and once a month they would fuck me, and I would be fine, you know? I’m just lucky I guess.

You project an aura of ease and assuredness that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s not something I encounter a lot. Not with the people I interview, normally.

That’s interesting. I wonder what that is. Thank you though. I’ll take it as a compliment. Maybe it’s the understanding that everything is going to work out exactly as it is, and it doesn’t really matter. Really none of this matters. Does that make sense?

My cynical side will wonder if it’s connected to the ease with which you grew up. You were on the football team, the baseball team, your parents were upper-middle class. I’m sure you were Mr. Popularity. You got what you wanted. You didn’t have a struggle to go through, and so it seems like, there’s a confidence in that belief that everything’s just going to work out. Which isn’t a belief that people who grew up without had.

Well I guess my main struggle was when I had testicular cancer. That would be the main struggle that I ever had. But within itself it’s a bitch to go through, but it’s not the end of the world. That’s where the mindset changed.

You had a second chance.

If that hadn’t happened I’m sure I would be a stuck up rich snob. Which is also probably the reason I’m so interested in heatlh in all facets.

When was the cancer?

They chopped the testicle out when I was about three years old because it was un-descending and they said “There’s a chance it will develop into something greater, so we have to chop it out.” But they didn’t get all of the tissue out and that is what developed within my high school years as the cancerous cells. After they talked about it later on when I started going through chemo, we realized that had they not done anything about it when I was young, there was a 50/50 chance it wouldn’t develop into anything. By them fucking with it, it created this serious tissue that screwed me up. They didn’t do it correctly and there you go. So that’s that. Honestly though, I was a very fortunate sufferer. I had lots of willpower and many hours spent sitting in a stupid hospital chair.

Were you freaked out when you found out?

I never freaked out. It’s funny because I never freak out about the big things that are huge and life threatening. I always freak out about the small shit, like getting to Chipotle on time to meet you. Being diagnosed with cancer was not something I freaked out about. Because of the fact that I knew that there weren’t many options for it. You either got it taken care of or you didn’t. If I have too many options I freak out.

What was your most memorable fuck offscreen?

After my most serious relationship that I had — he broke up with me on my birthday a few years ago — after that I had had a trip planned to see him anyway, because we lived in separate cities. So after he broke it off, I was supposed to go there in two weeks. So I did the trip as planned. I wasn’t going to waste the money. I was a college student. So I went and I was there for two nights and on the second night we both knew that that would be the last time that we would ever fuck again and it was extraordinary. The sex with him was always perfect. But this night was extraordinary.

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

It’s 4PM on Hustlaball Sunday, and I’m at a crowded mid-town diner, sitting across from one of the evening’s big stars, Dirk Caber, and his partner Jesse Jackman. Though under normal circumstances these two gorgeous muscled porn papas might cause something of a stir amongst the other customers, the presence of dozens of costumed attendees en route to the nearby New York Comic Con allows Caber and Jackman to keep something of a low profile. Clearly, these are unusual circumstances. Caber, who, we recently noted, just filmed yet another installment of his Men.com hit series Stepfather’s Secret, and Jackman, a Titan Exclusive, are a sight to behold. Only a few hours later, Caber will be flogging a fellow star onstage at Hustlaball later and getting punished himself, while Jackman will be a proud observer. In the short period between rehearsal and costume fittings, I spoke with the pair about their worst on-set disasters, how they broke the porn news to their families, and why they think Men.com has so many gay-for-pay stars.

Adam: Dirk, how long have you been doing fetish and leather stuff?

Dirk: I came out of a relationship in spring of 2005, and just before that happened, my boyfriend discovered that I had a bit of a fascination with bondage. His opinion was that anybody who had any interest in the S&M world had to be certifiably mentally unsound. I knew three guys at the time who were in that world, and they were some of the most grounded, creative, intelligent people that I knew. I started talking to them and ended up making a beeline for that world. It’s been nine years now. In the course of that I’ve gone from being a complete neophyte with it to teaching classes, coaching couples in S&M techniques and safety. It’s ultimately what got me into porn.

From the fetish world to porn, that’s your path?

Jackman and Caber.

Dirk: Pretty much, yes. I had a reputation for knowing my stuff, and I brought my body back into line with itself. One particular director at Titan, Paul Wilde, befriended me online and said it was rare to find anybody who knows the shit and looks the role. He said, “If you’re ever interested, let me know.” My response was, “This? Are you kidding? Do you know how fat I am? You don’t want me on camera, trust me.” It took about two years of him reiterating the invitations for me to say, “Hmmm, maybe I should think about this.”

Jesse, you’re a Titan Exclusive right?

Jesse: Right. Third year running.

When did you guys start doing Hustlaball?

Dirk: This is my second Hustlaball. We did Hustlaball together in London a year ago. That was the first one I actually performed at. I’ve been in this venue, for the first Hustlaball, five or six years ago, when my ex performed. It was a really chaotic event. They were trying to figure out that unusual space. I’ve certainly attended before, but this is the first time I’ve been onstage in New York.

Jesse: I don’t do as many shows as Dirk does. I like being the plus-one. I like coming to observe and take it all in.

How long have you guys been together?

Dirk: Three years and how many weeks? Two weeks?

Jesse: One thousand, one hundred, and seventeen days.

How did you guys meet?

Dirk: I had been in porn about a year when we went to Folsom three years ago. He had just signed on as a Titan Exclusive. He was having a few misgivings about whether he’d done the right thing or not. We had a mutual friend in San Francisco that Jesse would stay with and he was talking to him about this and the friend said, “I’ve got somebody that you should talk to about this. He’s got his head pretty square on his shoulders and he might be able to help you figure out what you’re thinking.”

Jesse: At this point I’m rolling my eyes and thinking, “Oh great, here we go, another set-up.”

Dirk: My response to him was also, “I really don’t need you playing yenta. I don’t need a boyfriend right now. Stop it.” He’s a big old romantic who wants to see everybody happy, a sweetheart, but I was like no. No, no, no, no. But he snuck up on me with Jesse at Beatbox in San Francisco and said, “Dirk meet Jesse.” I said, “Okay, yeah, he’s hot.” We got to talking, not so much that evening, I guess, but in the course of the weekend we were both in the Titan booth at Folsom and hanging out at other venues and getting to know each other, I thought, Okay, good I’ve made a really good friend. He lives in Boston, I live in Chicago. At the end of the weekend, we all go home but we’re staying in touch. Our text messages back and forth were epic. We were on the phone a couple times, but two weekends later, he’s going to the gay flag football tournaments in Houston and Jesse stresses out a bit when he’s packing. We were on the phone until four in the morning while he was packing. He’s packed, exhausted. He really thinks, “he won’t say yes because it’s too close to the weekend already.” But he says —

Jesse: I don’t know what I was thinking but I just said, “You wanna come down to Houston with me?” It was 4AM Thursday morning, the tournament started Friday. It’s a big last minute drop-everything flight for a guy I knew a total of weeks. I just blurted it out, thinking he’d be polite in his response. He actually said, “Well actually, I don’t really have much going on this weekend. Let me think about this.”

Dirk: I looked up how expensive flights were and it was manageable. I arrived on Saturday to watch him play the last two plays of his last game. We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out, and with the team and getting to know each other very intimately. By the end of the weekend we figured out there’s actually something here.

Dirk: Next time was Halloween. Thanksgiving I met his family. He met my mom shortly after. His family invited me back for Christmas and by then we were pretty well-sealed.

What are you guys like in your families? Do they know what you do?

Dirk: Both of our families know.

Jesse with his mom.

Jesse: I’m an only child, me and my mom. She’s a professor and a power lifter so I sort of have the gym-workout mentality. She was competitive for a while, up until her sixties. We’re very close. She found out about the industry stuff because long story short, she saw a bank statement from a deposited check from Titan, but it was from Adult Resource Management which is their parent company. She saw it and was like, “What is this?” Being a professor, she looked it up and traced it back to the Titan homepage, which that week was featuring a video of Dirk and I right on the front page where I’m bound to a St. Andrews cross and he’s shocking me with a Violet wand.

Oh my god.

Jesse: I found out she knew in advance because I had gone over to her house during the day and I needed to look up something on her computer, and it was open to my Facebook page where I had just been talking about my activities, where I’d been and some events I’d been working. So I knew that she knew but she didn’t know that I knew that she knew. I freaked out and immediately called Dirk who was LA at the time and asked him to come to Boston now because I didn’t know what to do. Couple of days later we had dinner with her and after dinner I said, “I need to tell you something. I was over here and I had to use your computer for something and it was open to –“ and she filled in the sentence “your Facebook page.” The first thing she said was “I’m so glad we’re talking about this.” She had known for about a month. Originally, she freaked out. She said she thought a part of her had died when she saw me on this cross being tortured by my relatively new boyfriend.

Did she think Dirk talked you into all this? “Not my baby, he couldn’t do that.”

Jesse: Exactly. Only child of a Jewish mother.

Dirk: But Jesse was saying, “Okay I know she’s been looking at it for a while. I’ve seen her since then, she must still love me. It must be okay somehow.”

Jesse: Initially her reaction was full of the concern, “What has Dirk done to my baby?” But then she started reading my blog, and by reading some of the stories I’d written about with my interactions with fans and about my experiences, she saw that there were a lot of great things that had come about. She learned about how I met Dirk and how he changed my life. She loved him. She’d known him for about six months at that point. She was able to put it in perspective. She doesn’t quite understand it all. She’s of a generation that’s not quite as sexually liberal as we are these days. But she’s always supportive. She loves me no matter what. She follows the blog and will talk to me about the articles I’ve written. I’ll talk to her about them. I wrote a story about her on the Huffington Post on Mother’s Day.

Caber and Jackman in the scene Jackman’s mother found online, from TitanMen’s Loud & Nasty.

What about you, Dirk?

Dirk: My family I was keeping it on the down low for a while there. I’m definitely the black sheep of the family. I have two siblings, both with kids. I’m the oldest too. For a long time I was held up as the model of the bunch, but I’m also the one who’s completely uncontrollable, and off to do his own thing. But as Jesse was starting to become more and more known, I started to wonder if it was only a matter of time before somebody held up a picture of Jesse and me and said, “Is this your son?” I figured it would be best if they heard it from me. I sat them down before Christmas last year. I said “I need to tell you about this. First of all, these are the really wonderful things that have happened to my life because of this.”

The cart before the horse.

So I built it up and said, finally, “So what I’m telling you is, I’m in porn.” My mother’s first response was, “Oh god, I was so afraid you were gonna tell us you had cancer.” So I’m telling them about this. They’re far more fascinated with the whole thing than freaked out about it. My mother’s response was like Jesse’s, mostly about the health ramifications and safety and I told her about the studios we work with and how concerned they were with both of those things. My father gets on his computer and looks us up and finds us everywhere and goes, “My god you guys are famous.” He’s fascinated by the technical aspect of how you put together porn. His final word was that the only thing he doesn’t like is that he has absolutely nobody he can brag about this to.

Dirk, I feel like you’re becoming really well known for your Men.com daddy stuff. Stepfather’s Secret is a big hit and Son Swap — I can’t tell you what a huge load I shot to the second episode of that.

Awesome. Working with Luke Adams, wow, what a sweetheart.

What I think is so interesting in that scene is that I really felt like it was the first scene in a while where the acting was good, the writing, the build up to that story, it takes a good six-seven minutes before you get to the sex scenes. It feels really organic and believable. By the time the sex starts I’ve already shot my load.

Dirk: Awesome.

I’m curious what your experience is like working with Men.com? You’ve done some of your best work for them.

Dirk: They’ve been very generous with me. Possibly the ability to do the B-roll, all the things that lead into the sex and provide the sex with a story, that’s probably part of why they value me.

Jesse: You had a non-sexual role in one of their films too.

Right. With Rafael Alencar. For me though, you go back and look at porn 15-20 years ago or even further back then that, and go back to the days when porn was looking for creative ways to keep guys in the theater and look at the storylines they would create or the interesting ways they would have of presenting sex. The amount of creativity that went into everything around the sex, that was so much more a part of the filming. The actual sex used to be a relatively small part of the film. Nowadays its all very scene based. You go online and rent the one scene you want to watch. Nobody wants to spend huge amounts of time watching dialogue first, you want to get on with it.

Also back in the day they didn’t do twenty minutes from this angle, twenty from that. They cut it like real sex. It would take time for the sex to happen and then it would be quick.

It’s a lost art now. The reward was the sex not just the cumshot. It’s fun to have something like Men.com which does a little bit of scripting. We make it as brief as possible and of course with anything like Son Swap where there’s an older figure and a younger figure, you do need to set it up so that nobody’s looking at it and thinking it’s pederasty. That kid’s of age, he knows what he’s doing. In many cases, like the one with Luke Adams, it’s the kid who initiates. It becomes really important to establish certain things.

From TitanMen’s ‘Extra Firm‘

Lots of young guys have that fantasy.

How many of us at a young age wished we had somebody? My first sexual experience was with a guy my own age, and neither of us had a clue what we were doing. We were on a dock in the middle of a lake. We were trying to figure out — okay, we know this piece goes inside of that. Does it involve needing a foreskin? How does it work? It was probably on our third night — I don’t know how we didn’t injure each other trying, but we realized, um, maybe this is what KY is for? How many times I wished I had somebody who would say, this is how it’s done.

Jesse: I also think a lot of people share that experience of fantasizing about their gym teachers, other teachers and not being able to have that experience. Something like Stepfather’s Secret takes that fantasy and, I don’t want to say exploit it but –

It capitalizes on it.

A lot of us have this unfulfilled experience, and now watching as an adult can identify with it and appreciate it more.

Is Luke Adams your favorite co-star at Men.com?

Dirk: That’s a good question. Billy Santoro may be my favorite. Luke is way up there.

I was just watching the movie you did with Billy.

Dirk: Neighbors.

Jesse: You had great things to say about Scott Harbor too.

Dirk: Scott Harbor was great. He has a little trouble with his cumshots at the end of scenes, but other than that he’s sweet, sexy, friendly, straight but has no difficulty with the content he’s working with. He’s really awesome. He also has a very interestingly shaped ass.

I feel like some of what people rag on Men.com for is that there are a lot more gay-for-pay stars. Do you find that to be the case, and is it a problem?

I don’t find them a problem, usually. There’s certainly nothing that they’re doing that causes a problem. Most of them are very professional. It is a little daunting when, okay, I’m into my scene partner, and it’s hot. Part of porn is making a connection with the other person, because you’re about to stick your dick in them. You have to have some kind of friendliness. Part of that is knowing you turn them on as well. When you don’t have enough tits to turn on your scene partner, it can be a little frustrating, when you film for thirty minutes, he loses his hard-on because he’s not turned on, and he has to go take a shot or watch titty porn. In the meantime I lose my hard-on. I don’t understand why its necessary to hire straight boys to do this when there’s probably huge numbers of perfectly willing and capable gay men who can do the job.

Jesse, do you have the same problem?

Jesse: No. Titan has a policy of working with only gay performers. With the gay-for-pay people there’s levels and degrees. You’re taking a chance that there’s not going to be that connection. There are some people like Scott Harbor who are awesome and laidback.

Dirk: Yeah, there are guys out there who are just sexual beings. I didn’t get to do a scene with him but Paddy O’Brien was an absolute sweetheart. We were supposed to do a scene and circumstances intervened and we weren’t able. Ricky Sinz, I think if it had two legs and he could split them he could fuck it. That’s not a bad thing!

Jesse: I understand Titan’s desire to work with only gay performers because it takes that element of chance out of it. I don’t understand why other studios choose to work with gay-for-pay performers, but hey, sometimes the chance can pay off big.

Dirk: The only theory I have with Men.com is that they are part of a larger umbrella company that does mostly straight porn. Men.com is their one little gay red-headed stepchild. Because the straight side is not as constrained about safer sex rules as the gay side, but they are concerned about transmission of diseases. The straight side generally requires testing for diseases. And though Men.com is very strict on set, they don’t work with any HIV positive performers, so I just wonder if it’s simply easier to hire people who aren’t going to be quite as exposed. As a result there are a slew of really great performers that they can’t hire because they’re positive.

Jesse: It’s a shortsighted policy, though. Sex on a porn set is the safest sex you’ll ever have. You have multiple people looking at what you’re doing with a high definition video camera. If there were anything potentially risky they’re going to know about it right away and they’re going to be able to treat it, give you a fresh condom if you need it, etc. It seems like overkill to not allow HIV positive performers. I don’t know what status my scene partners are and honestly, I don’t care.

What is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you on set?

Jesse: I’ve got a good one. I was filming with Joe Gage. Caught in the Act. Jesse Ares was a special request of mine. I met him at Folsom and wanted to work with him. The schedule worked out. We’re doing the oral part of the scene and he’s a rather hung individual. At the end of the oral scene, I puked. In my mouth. A lot of it. I thought, shit I’m going to ruin this scene if anyone gets a hint that that happened. So I closed my mouth real tight, and swallowed it all. And no one knew, nobody was the wiser. That was pretty horrifying, like, for Joe Gage of all people.

Dirk: The closest to a disaster I’ve come, is that you get one cumshot and you have one chance to catch it. One of the companies I work has a lot of rules about where bodily fluids go. They don’t do facial cumshots. I was in a scene with Dario Beck for thrill ride. He’s lying flat on a picnic table. I’m jerking off over him. I know I’m aimed at one o’clock. His head’s at 12 o’clock. But it still comes out and I’m not usually a long distance shooter and it still went directly into his face. All I hear is the director from behind the monitor go, “Oh shit!” Dario just laid back like nothing happened. We had to look at the three cameras and found one that didn’t show you where it landed. So they couldn’t extend the cumshots like normal.

Jackman and Caber in Key West.

You also escort, right, Dirk? Is there a market for the daddy rentboy?

Oh absolutely. But it’s not often that I get a young guy hiring me looking for a daddy. Most of my clientele is people my age or older, who want somebody who has a little more culture and conversation. Often sex never enters into the occasion. They want you there on the bed curled up and talking.

Jesse: Half-escort, half-therapist. A lot of talking and listening, at least that’s how Dirk describes it.

How do you two keep your relationship afloat?

Jesse: When we were getting started, the director Paul Wilde, who was already a good friend of Dirk’s and had just met me, cautioned Dirk against a relationship.

Dirk: He had seen so many porn couples not survive because the relationship was based on what you did as a porn stars, and he said, “This never ends well.” It’s not even about personal jealousy, it’s about professional jealousy. At any given moment, one of you is gonna have a star on the ascendant and the other is going to be on the wane. And you’re going to be looking at the other, saying, “What’s wrong with me?” He says, “That really will tear people apart. And if the only thing you have in common is this industry, and this industry is not a long-term career for anybody. The average career is two years. When you don’t have something else to sustain it, what do you have?” Walking into this warned, we were able to think about this and say, you know, we have so much in common besides just porn. We have our family alliances. We have a mutual dorky nerdiness. An appreciation of music and arts. A whole slew of stuff. We said we would give it a try. As far as the professional jealousy thing goes, it just became a running joke between the two of us that at any given moment, one of will look at the other and say, “I’m feeling a little left out here.” Two weeks later, the other will be saying the same thing.

Jesse: The most difficult part of the relationship is really a normal thing for most couples. It’s the traveling. Dirk’s away a lot. He films a lot more than I do. I’m home alone. But that’s typical and what every couple goes through. I miss him terribly and am so happy when he comes back. He’s going to Berlin soon for a week and half and I’m going to miss him like crazy. But if that’s the worst problem then we’re doing pretty well.

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Jimmy Fanz gives me a big high-five and a smile when we meet, accidentally, on the corner of 6th Ave and 14th Street. Fanz and his best porn friends, Boomer Banks, Ryan Rose and Rentboy.com’s Sean Van Sant, have been shopping for the past few hours and are about to head into Urban Outfitters to check out men’s pants. Fanz is in town to shoot two scenes for Men.com, where he’s been an exclusive for the past year, following a fruitful, hole-stretching couple of years shooting for Raging Stallion and Falcon. Though he says he’s contractually unable  to tell me what he’d been shooting this past week, he mentions two upcoming scenes: a Daddy Hunt scene (for Men.com) with last week’s interviewee Dirk Caber and another with Conor Maguire featuring soccer players and shower play. We make plans to talk when he’s back in Florida a few days later, and on Saturday morning, I call him to talk about his career path, the label debate, and his on-set antics.

Adam: I’ve heard that you have a short attention span, Jimmy?

Jimmy: Ha. Like a jellyfish. Or a two-celled organism. No that’s horrible. Haha. I don’t have a short attention span, it’s just that I have so much on my mind that it’s really easy for me to move on to the next big shiny thing.

Take me into what’s going on in your mind. What are the many things running through your mind at any given moment?

Okay, well, I gotta go shopping, I’m thinking about that. I’ve gotta get a comforter. My friend is in the bank right now and I want to go back to my house. I’m wondering if I should take my car and put the top down, and I’m on the phone with you and I completely forgot about this, which is bad. I got a haircut so I have hair all over the back of my neck, which is a pain. That’s what’s going on in my mind this second, but I can probably think of other stuff.

Have you always been like that? You always had tons of stuff on your mind?

Yeah. I would say so. Usually the stuff on my mind doesn’t matter whatsoever. It’s only a problem when I’m on set, and if we’re in work mode and I’m having sex and I’m like, in it, you know? I like to say that when I’m having sex it’s very meditative for me. It’s relaxing and the only thing on my mind when I’m doing it. When I’m not having sex I’m eating this and running over there and singing in the hallway and dancing and going nuts. But when I have to go back to set I’m on top of my shit. Which is why I think I’ve been working as long as I have been so far, because I can work and have fun. Which isn’t always great — some people get annoyed when I’m having fun and they’re trying to work at that second.

Jimmy in Men.com’s Deep Release, opposite Colby Keller.

Have you ever had a co-star get mad at you?

Oh yes. The most upset was when I did my scene with Colby Keller. He was not having it. But I sent a nice apology letter to him, and he accepted it. We’ve been friends outside of work since. But during work, between him being such a work guy, and less on the fun happy side — although that’s not to say he isn’t fun or happy.

I know what you mean, Colby’s been in the business a long time and he treats it very professionally.

He’s very proper, articulate, and I’m just there fingering my butthole and giggling.

I think I’d rather be on set with you. I feel like a lot of times on porn sets its not as much fun as it should be. As a filmmaker, I understand how you just want to get the shot and get done as soon as possible, but I also really believe that filmmaking should be fun.

It’s a thin line between enjoying what you’re doing and getting the work done and being so lackadaisical that you completely neglect doing your job well.

What’s the most fun set you’ve ever been on?

They’re all fun. I’ve never had a bad experience or something just wasn’t fun. I’ve had scenes where I thought that wasn’t the best or I could have done that better, hope it turns out well. But I’m always having a good time no matter what.

You never seem uncomfortable in your scenes. I think the idea that sex on screen is meditative for you makes a lot of sense. I always think you seem like you really enjoy what you’re doing, as opposed to that you’re trying to be famous and make a jillion dollars.

Well, that too. But when I’m having sex that’s not even on my mind. There’s only work at that point. I’m thinking, I look beautiful in this position, hope they like it, that type of thing. Obviously the goal is to be famous and make a jillion dollars and make everyone happy, amongst other things. Get more jobs, win awards. It’s a package deal.

Do you want to be on top?

Do I want to be a top?

No, I mean, do you see yourself still in this business in eight years and you’re a legendary top porn star?

Yeah. That would be something, you know. It’s a tough thing, without sounding conceited or narcissistic when it comes to that question. Yeah I want to be the best, but I don’t want to sound cocky or cross that line.

I don’t think it sounds cocky. You’re being very honest. You were just in New York, right?

Yeah. I shot two scenes for Men.com, which I’m exclusive with for the past year. They’re great to work with. I love working with Mark and his crew. I love James and his crew. It’s fun.

You were with Raging Stallion and Falcon before, right? What prompted the decision to move?

It was a couple of things. They had a lot of content of me, so they both had a nice little reservoir of movies with me, and two years of content is about 24 scenes. I thought, hey let me move into internet, and maybe I can move back into DVDs after.

I was talking last week with Dirk Caber about Men.com last week and he had some interesting things to say. What seems to be the reigning controversy with them is the abundance of gay-for-pay models. I’m curious if you had any experience with that, or thoughts on that?

You know, I prefer that the models I work with are sexually active in a gay way or they like men interactions, or are at least capable of working with a man comfortably. There’s a heads-up with the people I work with and they know that I don’t want to work with people who can’t work with me.

Did you learn by experience?

Yeah. Because with my playful attitude it’s a lot harder for them to concentrate on being sexy and being able to be with a man when I’m being disgusting off-set.

Showing your rosebud off?

Yeah. It’s happened, and they complain and I’m like, whatever, I’m doing great, it’s not me it’s you.

So generally you want to work only with gay models.

Yeah. Or someone who’s able to work with other gay men comfortably.

Jimmy getting fucked by Jarec Wentworth in Men.com’s Men For Sale.

Do you consider yourself gay?

I’m homoflexible. That’s what I’m going with these days. Heteroflexible or homoflexible. It works. It makes sense. I also like that saying. I’m very attracted to women, but I’m very attracted to men as well. It’s a sore subject because a lot of people don’t understand and have their own issues with that concept. I obviously enjoy sex with men, and keeping company with men. But I also enjoy keeping company with women.

I debate it all the time in my interviews, and there’s a debate between whether labels are necessary or unnecessary. The fans seem to think that they have some right to have exclusively gay performers. But I would hold you up as evidence that I’ve never once watched one of your scenes and thought, this guy isn’t giving his all and hates what he’s doing. I mean come on, you have a fucking rosebud. How can you not enjoy what you’re doing if you have that?

Yeah. It’s kind of like a branding. I kind of get lumped in with the gay-for-pay people because I’m attracted to women also, but it’s more like, I just like sexual activities with everyone. It’s not just one sex that I feel comfortable with. I feel comfortable with both. But the gay-for-pay people just don’t like what they’re doing. Some people like that. Some people like looking at gay-for-pay people being uncomfortable and having sex despite their own desires. But I do get a lot of shit for it, and it is a bit of a sore subject. It kind of makes me feel uncomfortable a little bit, when it comes to people asking. If people have to only be one or the other how are they supposed to find out what they like in the first place. If it’s not okay for them to be in the middle at some point.

Agreed. I think people’s main objections stems from the view that they’re somehow being taken advantage of by performers who claim to be gay but just aren’t at all. And that they’re taking jobs away from hard-working gay porn actors.

Right. But that’s not necessarily true, there’s a spot for them. That’s how a lot of us become what we do. We do that straight-to-gay thing at the beginning. It’s a pretty common scene type where the gay guy is seducing a straight guy.

Right. You did some of those early on. So you’re saying there’s a path where models do those types of scenes and it gives them the confidence to say, wait, I’m actually gay or I do really like both.

Yeah. Actually. Some people are able to make that gap, but when it comes to the viewers who say, “You’re doing gay porn but you’re obviously straight and you don’t like men,” it puts in the performers heads, “hmmm, maybe I don’t like men, maybe it is for the money…” and they don’t really allow themselves to explore and be able to say, “Hey, I do like men,” because they’re being told they’re wrong.

Did you have a moment where you were like suddenly, okay I like guys too?

Well, I mean I fooled around with guys beforehand, but I would never say, I liked men. I just liked interactions and sex, but it just happened to be a guy that was there. And I would be like, I don’t like men, I just like to be touched and be touching other people. But when it came to be more often I was like, I do like men. It became less of an issue to say that. At the same time, I still like women.

Pre-porn, what was your interaction with guys? When was your first time?

I was young. 12, 13. Just a friend, we had a good time.

Let’s talk about your rosebud. How did that develop?

It’s not exactly a rosebud. There are worse. Is it?

I don’t know, all I’ve seen is that video on Randy Blue where you’re showing it off, but they don’t show it.

Haha. Yeah. That just shows how much I like to have fun on set and do my own thing.

Sure. But did you actively try to build up your hole and your resistance?

To what?

To huge dicks and other things.

Oh yeah. It took a long time. I’m still not able to fist myself. I can’t do that. I exercise my hole and stretch it out before scenes, especially when it’s very large cocks like Tommy Defendi’s or Dominic Santos. So I stretch it an hour before scene and I play with myself and make it comfortable so when it happens it doesn’t rip me or stuff like that.

Do you use a dildo?

I use my fingers. It’s more comfortable. And that way I can slowly stretch it out. Because if I overdo it at the beginning, it’s very uncomfortable. Especially with a rubber dildo or something like that. That tears my insides a little bit. So I use my fingers and stretch it slowly. So when we begin the scene its normal.

Do you use poppers?

No, I don’t.

Jimmy Fanz and Tommy Defendi in last year’s Hole, from Raging Stallion.

The other thing you’re known for is that you’re big into feet?

I like feet. They’re fun. I like giving foot massages. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite thing in the world, but I have an abundance of energy so I like to give foot massages or hand massages when I’m not doing anything. It kind of just developed into, “I’ll suck your feet while you’re jacking off.” It’s not my favorite, but I know it’s a fantasy for a lot of people, that I can embody for people. It’s fun to do.

Are there any kinks or fascinations that you’re starting to explore now?

No. I kind of like where I am and what I do. Everything else seems a little bit absurd. I don’t want to say it’s absurd to do those things, but it’s not anything I want to do right now. Maybe five years from now, I may be like, I really want to do sounding or whatever, but I like where I am now. I like anal and that does it for me. I still really like oral and that does it for me. I’m pretty vanilla.

When you’re with a girl does anal play come into the picture?

Sometimes. Not as much as with a man. I usually don’t fuck a girl anally. I’ll stick fingers in there, but that’s it.

Does she do anything to your hole?

Yeah. Sometimes. It’s been known to happen.

When I ran into you in the city and you were hanging out with Boomer Banks, Sean Van Sant, and Ryan Rose. Are they your porn friends?

Yeah. We’ve all met through porn and we just really get along. Ryan is just such a sweetheart and Boomer is such a sweetheart. We were shopping that day and we all love shopping. It’s something we can do together. We were having a great day.

But you don’t do rentboy stuff?

No.

Why not?

My friends do it. Seeing the money they make, it looks enticing, and that they’re having so much fun. A lot of them do enjoy it, but a lot of them don’t enjoy it at all. They just do it for the money or the connections or whatever, and that is obviously enticing and looks fabulous. But I’ve thought about it and with my personality, I’m the type of guy who’s naïve when it comes to a lot of things and I’m aware of that. So it’s not a place I want to be.

You don’t need to be talked into something or slipped something by some guy.

Yeah. I’m definitely the type of guy that that would happen to. I’d just rather not.

It’s good that you know that. Do you have a day job?

Yeah. I work at a doggie day care in my neighborhood.

That’s adorable.

Right? Pup leading the pups.

What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you on set, and what’s the best?

The worst was that I got yelled at. It wasn’t my fault. There was problems on set with the photographer losing equipment and stuff not working that day. It was a long day. Five hours later we’re getting stuff done that should have been done in the first thirty minutes. I immediately started to get yelled at by the cameraman-producer, and it’s like, dude, none of it is my fault. That was also a day I was supposed to be a top, and I like topping, but if I’m being yelled at it just makes it hard. He comes over and starts yelling at me. It’s just not how you treat a person let alone someone who’s about to top. The best thing that happened on set, is every time I get to make a friend. If I get to make friends with the crew, or make friends with the other performers. That’s the best thing that happened.

Are you satisfied with where your body is right now, or do you want to become like, muscles on muscles?

No. I’m satisfied. I don’t use any supplements other than protein and caffeine and calcium for my bones. I’m really proud of it. It’s been three years and I was very tiny and I was able to push myself to get where I’m at now. At 23 and looking where I am now, I’m very proud. I tripled up my cardio to get larger and all I do now is watch my calories so I don’t end up growing. I’m excelling in strength as I keep working out. But with strength comes larger muscles and I don’t want that.

Yeah it seems like you’re at the perfect physique and any farther is just going to look gross.

Exactly. There’s parts of me where I’m like, one section of my muscle could be more proportionate to my body, but that just comes with time. Other than that I feel like this is where my body should be. Andrew Christian wants me to have a perfect six pack and a proportionate body, not bodybuilder size – so that just lets me know I’m at the perfect size.

Do you have a favorite joke?

Yeah. My favorite joke is: Why did the bicycle fall over?

Okay, why?

It was two tired.

Ha!

That’s the perfect joke. It’s perfectly funny.

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Blue Bailey is basically done with porn. “I would still explore photography and other media stuff. But actually filming porn I’m kind of over with,” he tells me while getting ready for a Sunday fundraiser to benefit a group at the law school which has become, as expected, his main focus. Still, one can’t say he went out with a whimper. His gangbang film for Treasure Island Media, Viral Loads (titled after shooting was complete) featured him having a jar of cum (“They told me it was cum, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t.”) poured into his well-fucked hole. Highly controversial, even by TIM standards, the film resulted in mainstream media attention for Bailey, who has long been unusually open about his HIV-positive status and his motivations for appearing in both bareback and condom porn. Other successes this year included winning two titles at The Hookies — Mr. San Francisco and Best Boyfriend Fantasy 2014 and appearing on the poster for the Folsom Street Fair. I called Blue to talk about the end days, his favorite and least favorite studios to work for, and whether PrEP will diminish the allure of bareback porn.

Adam: Blue, you’ve just started law school right?

Blue: Yes. It’s my first semester.

Blue in NakedSword’s Boyfriends.

What’s it been like?

I went from bartending and doing videos to this. So it’s kind of nice having a set schedule where I know exactly what I’m doing every single day. But it also sucks because I have to be up at a certain time every day which I’m not necessarily used to. But it is definitely a transitionary semester.

What prompted the path to the law?

I did broadcast communications for my undergraduate, focusing on television production. I took a few law electives and really liked that aspect more than working in editing or producing.

What about it appealed to you?

It just seems, especially with media, so much is constantly changing. There’s so many new technologies and issues that arise from those technologies, that it makes it really interesting for me.

It must be such a detail-oriented program. Is that a challenge or is that something that comes naturally to you?

It’s where my personality’s at. I’ve always been a strong writer and a lot of this is just writing intensive — it’s just a different way of writing. So in that sense its fine for me.

Are you done with porn now, basically?

Um, yeah. I would still explore photography and other media stuff. But actually filming porn I’m kind of over with.

Have you faced any challenges around people knowing your porn past?

Not yet. It’s only been half a semester though, so I’m sure something will arise. I guess not even really with the porn stuff, but going out with friends to the Castro, I was on the Folsom poster this year. So that was a little odd sometimes. I’m sure they definitely noticed because it was plastered everywhere. Other than that it hasn’t been an issue so far.

I’ve interviewed so many porn stars for this column but I’ve not yet interviewed anyone more known for bareback porn than not.

Uh yeah. I guess that’s my claim to fame.

Given what you’re doing now are there any regrets?

Nope. Not at all. I guess it’s getting more common for people to go back and forth and do bareback and condom porn. But pretty much what I would do on camera I would do at home. So none of that feels uncomfortable for me in that regard.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is whether the rise of PrEP will diminish the allure of bareback porn.

I would say probably quite the opposite, because I think the more that people are becoming aware and getting on PrEP, you’ll see more mainstream models being comfortable about doing bareback, and being open about being on PrEP. I think it will reinvigorate the bareback side. Slowly, mainstream studios are distributing bareback porn or producing it themselves.

Blue working for Treasure Island Media.

Sure, but would something like Viral Loads be able to carry the same kind of charge if we just assume everyone’s on PrEP now?

Right. I guess in that aspect it could change things a bit. One of the recent videos from TIM’s London side was one that came out a month ago. It was a pre-release scene marketed as “Little Truvada Whore.” It was this twink getting bred by a couple of guys. I thought that was pretty interesting.

That’s true. That opens up a whole new other avenue. The fetishization of being on PrEP.

Right.

I don’t want to labor over the bareback thing mainly because you’ve talked about it at length in many other interviews, but when did you in your personal life, start barebacking?

Probably within a year of first having sex. Maybe two years. I was pretty good for the first year or two about always using a condom, and then that just stopped happening.

Why?

That was the time that I started doing crystal as well. I think barebacking happened a little bit before then. But the timeframe is pretty much the same. That was the catalyst.

They’re so connected. One of my friends was telling me about studios I’ve never even heard of that are super popular with the meth community. Like that’s almost how they’re geared because they know that’s the audience.

There are certain videos like that. Not to mention Treasure Island again but they did Slammed which was obviously going for a certain demographic.

Right, I know that one, but he was telling me about all sorts of others.

Yeah. I can see how that would be desirable for a porn studio to do. But the thing with bareback porn is that you have people who are positive and feel totally safe with barebacking and now people are on PrEP. I guess it still has a draw for everybody.

When did you decide to be visible and open about your HIV status?

I never really was doing porn for a career so I wasn’t going out and announcing it. But after a while people asked and I felt awkward not answering truthfully. So I preferred to be open and honest about it. It’s not something I thought would ever impact my career because I never really wanted to have one in porn.

It almost sounds like you were an accidental porn star.

I always had a day job and I did it as a fun way to have sex with hot guys and make money on the side. And I love traveling and that allowed me to travel more than usual.

Blue working for Lucas Entertainment.

Did you have models who wouldn’t work with you because of your status?

I have, yes.

People you know or people you didn’t know?

I’ve had people I know being uncomfortable, not with my status, but with how open I was about it. This was before PrEP got publicized, so if you’re having a bareback scene with another model it implies that the other model is positive. But other people who I didn’t know have sometimes cancelled on me because they didn’t feel comfortable working with me. My ex had that issue as well.

I know you said you’re done with porn, but can you take me through what differentiates each of the studios you’ve worked for?

Sure.

Dark Alley.

Dark Alley is my favorite studio to work with and that’s because I have a good rapport with all their production staff, and they’re really easy and fun to work for. Shooting takes no more than two or three hours, in and out. You’re usually paired up with somebody that you really want to work with and then the staff is nice.

Lucas.

Lucas was really shady the last time I worked with them, in the negotiation. Actually I was supposed to do my last scene with them and I ended up canceling that because we couldn’t come to an agreement on certain issues. They were kind of shady about it.

People have said to me about Lucas that the HIV-positive models go with the positive models and the negative with negative. There’s a way in which that feels to me like that perpetuates a negative stereotype of HIV. I know that it “protects” the models and that it’s trying to be positive, but in another way it’s also saying, like, if you’re negative and you’re negative you can bareback, but if you’re positive and negative you can’t-slash-shouldn’t, which, isn’t accurate. Prep + undetectable is not risky.

When I started working with them they were still kind of fleshing it out, and doing both. The scene I filmed with them was pretty early on. They requested testing and I think they try to pair you with your same status but they also ask you and if you’re comfortable playing with somebody that’s sero-discordant, as long as you’re comfortable with it, they’ll be okay. At least that’s my experience. Also, more and more models are being open about the PrEP thing. I didn’t really stick with them too much longer so I don’t know how they do it now.

NakedSword.

I love working with Mr. Pam and Naked Sword. She’s one of my favorite people here in the city. Her energy is always up and going, which I admire.

Treasure Island Media.

Treasure Island for the most part is fun to work for. I really click with their London wing of the studio. I always have a good time when I’m working with them.

Hot House.

Hot House looks really good and it’s fun but that is a long day.

Because you have to get all those well-lit angles.

Yeah. Very well-lit. That’s important to them.

Blue fucking Leo Forte in NakedSword’s The Pack.

When did you first start having sex?

Around 17. Don’t know the exact date.

With guys exclusively?

Yeah.

Wow. You’re probably the only model that I have interviewed that won’t stir up a controversy about whether you’re gay or gay-for-pay.

Ha ha! I’ve never had sex with a girl. No plans to.

Who was the first guy you hooked up with?

For oral sex, it was with a student in my high school. Actual sex with some dude I met off Manhunt. Real classy.

No different from anybody else. The student sounds hot.

It was okay up until a point. He started running his mouth after a certain point and then that wasn’t cute.

Where are you from originally?

Las Vegas, Nevada.

Did you enjoy living there?

I hated living there. If you’re underage there’s really nothing to do. Movie theaters are in casinos. Bowling alleys are in casinos. All those places have curfews so after 10PM if you’re going to be there you have to be with an adult which they didn’t enforce too heavily when I was growing up. But it still limited what you can do.

Is sex in the air there?

If you’re on the strip, yeah. I used to work on the strip but besides that I didn’t really go on the strip unless somebody was in town visiting.

So when you were early on figuring out yourself, and going on Manhunt and all that, it wasn’t like you had easy access to things. You couldn’t go to some sinful spot or hire a hooker.

No, not at all. My options were really limited. That’s why I looked at Manhunt.

Do you think that there’s a connection between lack of access to that stuff that’s connected to your impulse to pile it on to excess later?

I guess perhaps. There may have been a little catching up to do.

How much of your day is thinking about sex?

I am horny all the time so I would say a large portion of the day. But if I need to focus I will go jerk off once or twice so I can get centered and get back to work.

Take me through a typical day for you.

A typical day. I wake up, make a protein shake, coffee. Go to class. Go to the gym. Come home, do homework. If the boyfriend’s around, hang out and watch a movie and then either go out or watch TV and stay in.

Just an ordinary day.

Yeah. It’s been pretty boring lately.

What about the escorting? How much does that figure into your day?

Not much. I keep an ad up. If I get a notification I’ll check it out, but I don’t put too much time into actively seeking stuff out.

So, today, what are you doing right now? How are you spending your Sunday morning?

I’m making Jello shots.

Jello shots on Sunday morning?

Yes. I work with The Edge as a title holder, so I’m hosting a fundraiser with them today.

What’s the fundraiser for?

I get to choose what it benefits, so this time it’s going to the student law group at my school. The Outlaws. They do outreach for legal LGBT issues, provide interns for the transgender legal center and places like that.

What flavor Jello shots are you making?

It’s actually gummi bears and gummi worms soaked in vodka. I’ve made jello shots before and it’s too messy. This is a lot easier.

I hope it goes well!

Thanks! Talk to you later.

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

In 2001, only a year into his gay porn career, Chad Hunt sat down for a quickie interview with New York fag rag HX. Asked about long-term goals, Hunt replied, “I’d like to milk this porn thing while I am still considered good eye candy. I wouldn’t want to be a schmuck and keep doing this when no one wants to see me.” By that point Hunt had already appeared in 14 now-classic titles for industry titans like Chi Chi LaRue (Oral Exams, The Missing Link, The Back Row) Michael Lucas (Fire Island Cruising), and John Rutherford (The Other Side of Aspen 5). By the time he hung up his box of extra-large condoms, seven years later, few in the industry could call Hunt anything but what he was: a legendary gay porn superstar with scores of awards, heaps of money, and all the accolades he could hope for.

Hunt’s star rose in the pre-internet, pre-tube-site era of gay porn, a time when major studios still made big-budget films with storylines, condom use was mandatory, and huge group orgies were de rigeur. Despite his admittedly average looks, Hunt’s 11 x 7 inch cock made viewers clamor for both his DVDs and escorting services. He crossed over — appearing on the cover of The Big Penis Book, and in Timothy Greenfield-Sander’s Thinking XXX book and HBO documentary. It’s been another seven years since Hunt’s on-screen alter-ego died at the end of Jett Blakk’s Endgame, and in that period he’s been very much off-the-radar. But after several months of searching, I finally made contact with Hunt and before heading out to Disneyland with his partner of 10 years – he agreed to talk to me about his legendary career, overcoming his meth addiction, why he thinks there’s no such thing as a porn star anymore and the strange rumors about what he’s been doing these past few years.

Adam: So you’re heading to Disneyland with your partner, who I am assuming must have been with you throughout your porn career. How did you meet?

Chad Hunt: We met on Gay.com about ten years ago. We talked a little bit and on my profile at that time I didn’t list who I was. I just talked to him as a regular joe and initially I had been dating a few people at that time. I just kind of let it go. We didn’t meet. Several months later we started talking again. I decided to go on a date with him and we went to an Indian restaurant in New York City. It was a nice date and so I decided to date him.

Was it hard to maintain the relationship throughout your porn career?

Actually, no. When I started to date someone I would be very up front with them. I would say this is what I do. You’re going to have to endure guys throwing their panties on stage, and that kind of thing.

Was there any pressure from him ever to give up porn?

Absolutely not. He’s been, I would say, probably one of the most remarkable people I have met in that aspect. Most people in the porn industry, I’m sure you’re aware, cannot handle their boyfriends. You’ve got the porn, the club performances, the escorting. Most people aren’t capable of handling all of that and everything that comes with it.

I’m assuming you have an open relationship?

Absolutely not. We have a monogamous relationship, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do something together. But where porn is concerned, my work is work. He’s been to sets. He knows how un-sexual a porn set is. He knows what goes on. He understands that it’s a job. It’s not me having sex with a whole bunch of hot guys. You know? It’s absolutely 100 percent a job. He’s been very great about it.

It was sort of hard to find you and someone described you as kind of reclusive. Are you the Norma Desmond of gay porn?

[laughs] I would agree with that. I am. Outside of the world, I try to stay away from it. There has to be some place where you can be just you. I don’t have to be Chad Hunt, you know? I can just sort of be who I am, outside of that. I think that’s what gets a lot of the guys – I don’t want to say in trouble — but gets them in the wrong type of headspace because you have to have that normalcy in your life also. If you don’t have that, you kind of lose sense of who you are and you just sort of become the porn character.

Let’s talk about your beginnings. You’ve said that you when you were a kid you developed late, and you didn’t know you had a big dick. Right?

I was 17 before I really started growing.

What about your siblings or father? Did they have 11 x 7 inches too?

No. I can remember when I was younger traveling with my father and he wasn’t a big man, nor were — I have five older brothers and I’ve only seen two of them naked but I would say no. My understanding from family conversations and conversations with my sister-in-law, is that I do have one brother who is close to my size but he doesn’t quite get there. Of course all of them have looked me up on the Internet and everything. They all know. Apparently I’ve heard I get it from my mother’s side of the family. I’m also the one in the family who looks like my mother’s side of the family. My other siblings look like my father and his side of the family.

So some relative of yours on your mother’s side definitely had the big dicks.

Yes. I won the family lotto in that regard.

So you’re 17, you start to develop. You’re living in Ohio and you get married, right out of high school. Who was the girl?

She was my high school sweetheart. Her name was Elizabeth. We met in our teaching classes. We had both taken classes at the career center in school. It was for people interested in becoming a teacher. We met in that. Fell in love out of high school. We got married right out of high school and two years later we had a kid.

When your son is born are you happy or by that point do you already think “Maybe I made a mistake? I might not be able to continue this.”

To this day I am absolutely 100 percent bisexual. When we got married I had told her that I had sex with men. But my ex-wife is a very religious individual and she sort had the concept that we could pray the gay away. (laughs)

You went in the opposite direction.

At least for me I find the more you try to fight who you are, the more who you are comes out.

So you had hooked up with guys before you even got married?

Oh yes. Absolutely. She was well aware of that. The problem started because boy did I really want to sleep with one of her brothers.

Oh shit!

Her one brother who was younger than her was the male version of her, and she was the female version of him. So if I could have had both of them I would have been in heaven. [laughs] If we could have shared the house and I spent one day with her and then one day with him, I would have been happy.

Chad in Endgame from Dirty Bird Video (2008).

Like on Big Love.

There you go.

Who were the first guys you hooked up with? Was it people your own age? Or older guys?

I think I probably did what most young people do, you go to the mall and see all the writing on the wall in the bathroom and you show up at the time it says to show up at.

So there was a cruisey bathroom and it said, “I suck dick here at 430” and you went?

Absolutely. At the mall, and there was a park and a rest area I had heard about. I didn’t too it too often but when I had the opportunity, I would visit those places and see if anything was going on. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t. I grew up in very rural Ohio so there weren’t a lot of people for me to choose from, but every once in a while I would show up at the right time. I was 14 and so I hadn’t developed yet. I would get guys to suck me off.

How did the marriage break up?

Well, uh, I actually went to her and told her that something was going to happen with a guy and I didn’t want to be the guy who goes behind her back and does things I said I want to let you know that I have this need and unfortunately you can’t fill that. Of course being very Christian she wanted to have nothing to do with it. She decided she would rather have a divorce.

So what do you do after that? How soon does your friend come and take pictures of you for Inches?

It’s actually about a year after because what happened is, when I got the divorce I was living in Wooster, Ohio, and from Wooster I actually go to my first gay bar in Acron, and meet a couple guys there. I start dating a nice boy who ends up sort of breaking my heart and from there I meet a friend who lives in Columbus and I move down to Columbus and my friend that I meet is part of a gay dance troupe. I go down there, live with him, join the troupe, and from joining the troupe and stripping and living in Columbus, that’s when I meet the photographer.

Was the entrée into the adult world — was it more motivated by money and opportunity and making something of yourself or was like, I want to have sex with all these guys and this is a great way to do it?

Oh no, it was definitely money. When I was married to my wife I had a great job. I worked at Smucker’s Jelly Factory and they were paying like $15 an hour, which was really good back in 1993. But going through my divorce made me depressed about not seeing my son as often as I wanted. I sort of missed a lot of work and they laid me off. But I needed as much money as I could get so I could keep up with my child support so I could see my son. Any type of money I could get at that point was great to me because it meant being assured that I would still be able to see money.

But were you worried that doing gay porn could ultimately be used by your wife as a reason to not allow you to see your son. In the 1990s people were much less accepting than now.

It actually never even crossed my mind because it’s not illegal. Porn is not illegal. So she really had no legal basis to keep me away from him. It’s not like I was going to run and go tell her. I’ve never even told her to this day. She knows because once I started gaining popularity people from school who knew her and me would come up to her and tell her. To her credit she never actually tried to use that against me. Or she may have and the lawyer may have told her it wasn’t going to go anywhere. During the divorce she did try to bring up the “He wants to sleep with men thing” but the judge at that time said “That is not a concern for whether or not he is a good father.”

When you were doing the nude pictures for the first time, did you look at other people’s pictures? Were there other porn stars you looked up to — and what porn films were you consuming?

I actually never saw a gay porn or anything until I started dating a guy in Columbus. I was dating a bisexual girl in Columbus and started dating a guy at the same time. He’s the one who showed me my first gay porn film. I had seen magazines but I had never really seen a film. One of my favorites was Aiden Shaw, who’s actually now a close personal friend of mine. I like Matt Spencer and Logan Reed was one of my favorites. Logan became a very good friend of mine too.

When you were watching that stuff did you ever think — “I could do that?”

No. It never even crossed my mind, until I sort of went through my whore phase. I was sleeping with people left and right and every single guy or girl that I slept with would always say, “You should be in porn movies.” I would always laugh it off because first of all I never in a million years thought that I would have any type of body that the porn industry would be interested in. I also never considered myself a very good-looking person. I’m not stupid. I know I’m average. I don’t consider myself gorgeous. People can send me as many emails as they want telling me how gorgeous I am, and I love it and appreciate it, but there’s no shame in my game. I know how I look and I look average. I’m an attractive, average-looking man. Falcon had a model type of what men should look like. Most porn companies at that time did and it certainly was not a thin-tattooed guy. Tattoos used to be a huge no-no and now it’s sort of a requirement. I actually like to think that I am one of the people who broke that. Somebody can actually become very popular in the industry and have an arm full of tattoos now.

So you get your pictures taken and someone introduces you to Michael Lucas and he hires you on the spot?

I get my pictures taken in Ohio and the photographer there knew that I was moving to New York with another person that I started dating. He sent me to another photographer in New York who took pictures of me and when I was taking pictures for him he said “I know this great director who lives in the city if you would ever be interested in doing a porn movie.” He gave me Michael Lucas’ phone number. I wasn’t going to do it. It was the guy who I was dating at the time who sort of pushed it. “You should do it! How fun would that be?” Everybody’s concept of porn when you don’t do is, “you get there and you fuck and have great sex with all these hot people.” That’s certainly not how it goes. But I did it and met Michael Lucas. I pulled down my pants and he said, “I want you in my first movie.” At that time I was very white and pasty. I think I was actually at one of my thinnest weights. He put me in his next movie, and on that set I met Enrico Vega who became a very good friend of mine, and he said, “You shouldn’t waste your time and that thing between your legs working for Michael Lucas, you need to get in touch with Chi Chi LaRue.” He gave me her email and I bombarded her with emails until she agreed to hire me.

You said people had this concept of how much fun gay porn would be – but I can’t imagine that’s how it went on your first day.

My first movie was Fire Island Cruising. It’s my very first movie and I’m giving a guy a beer enema. It was something I was soooo not into. The set was like all porn sets: very boring. Lots of starting and stopping. A lot of waiting for people to get hard. It was a group scene. A lot of attitude from people who had done a few movies against the boys who were just starting like me. I sort of got to see the whole spectrum of porn that very first day.

So you do the beer enema and at any point do you think “I shouldn’t have done this. This was a mistake”?

I’m an Aquarius. Aquarian people are very into trying new things at least once. I was all about doing it. In any job that I’ve ever hard I always try to do what I’m doing to the best of my ability. Which serves me very well in any job I have. I usually get promoted very quickly. Porn was a new challenge for me to do that in.

Did you hit it off with Chi Chi LaRue instantly?

I’ve said this a million times in every interview and I will say it until the day I die because she’s actually one of my best friends. A person coming into the industry would never have a better friend than Chi Chi LaRue. She makes her models very comfortable. She greets all of you when you first come to set. She is very sweet. Throughout the day she checks on you and asks how you are doing, and if you’re okay. If I had not met her I might have not continued in porn because a Chi Chi LaRue set is very different from a Michael Lucas set.

Describe the difference.

Oh no. You’re not going to get me there. I love Michael in my own way and I will forever be grateful to him for putting me in my first video, which is why I stayed very loyal to him in the beginning of my career. Because again, I have a sense of loyalty to whoever has done something for me. I want to try to do something for them, whatever I can. I wanted to work to the best of my ability for him. But their sets are like night and day. To this day, I could say lots of things but I won’t say lots of things, because I’m nothing but appreciative to Michael for putting me in as many videos as he did.

There was tension towards the end with the whole Ben Andrews thing, right? It was rumored that you were steaming mad because Michael was saying Ben had the biggest cock in gay porn.

No. That was a concoction that Michael tried to make a brouhaha. There was never any tension between me and Ben. It was just Michael Lucas trying to do what Michael Lucas does best: create some kind of drama. There was never any tension between me and Ben. I couldn’t care less if people thought he had a bigger dick than I did, which by the way, is not true. I really didn’t care. Quite frankly, Ben is thicker than I am. 100 percent absolutely, he is, but I’m probably one or two centimeters longer than him. I guess if you go as far as total area, he might be bigger than me. Who knows? I never cared because I’ve seen some movies — especially some of these African-American boys and I’m looking at them going, “God they’ve gotta be bigger than me.”

And there are people who’ve come since and who came before who were bigger than you.

Absolutely. I was never the one who sort of set up the whole “Chad Hunt’s the biggest in the industry” thing. Those were things set up by magazines and companies. You would have never heard me say, “I’m the biggest in the industry, ha ha ha.”

There’s a great clip of you on YouTube throwing shade at one of Michael Lucas’ porn stars on Ricki Lake.

Billy Brandt. If there was ever somebody I did not like, it was Billy Brandt. I hate and cannot stand boys who think so highly of themselves. It wasn’t everyone in the porn industry calls diva syndrome. Brandt had it big time. The thing that pissed me off the most was when he was on that show, he said that he was the biggest gay porn star in the world. I was like, “Oh god, no.” Had he not said that, I probably would have not said a word. But when he said that, it just sort of clicked in my head. Somebody needs to be brought down a peg or two, and I’ll be the one to do it.

Was there a lot of shade between you and other porn stars and directors?

Absolutely not. I think you would find that most other porn stars and directors would say I was probably one of the best people that they ever worked with. I always tried to get along with everybody. I tried to become everybody’s friend and for the new boys in the industry I would always try to be big brother-esque and I did do that for a few people. Matt Summers was one of my sort-of protégés. I’d help him and others get set up in the industry.

You really did your best work for Chi Chi. Everybody I know remembers Detention where you’re the janitor who fucks all the big dicked students in detention. Those scenes were amazing.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Again, this is why I say, in the industry you couldn’t ask for a better friend. She has a way — don’t ask me how she does it but she does it — of sort of reaching into a model’s head and pulling out the best qualities and the best scenes from them. I think it comes from a model wanting to do the best that they can for her because of how great she is to the models. That’s how it always was for me. I loved working on her sets. They were always the most fun sets. The people who I would end up calling friends in the industry I always met on her sets. The relaxed, fun atmosphere allowed me to give my best performances instead of being stressed out because I had to make sure I do this right, and do that right, and they want me to do this and remember this… Chi Chi absolutely directs you in the scene but she seems to direct you into someplace that feels natural for you. At least for me. I can’t say that’s what happens with every model, but that’s what seemed to happen for me. Because she would do that with me, I was able to open my mouth and say, “Why don’t we do this? Or that?” She was always very accepting of my ideas and my thoughts and would actually allow me to do things that I thought of. On a lot of sets you aren’t allowed to do that. My sets with her were always different. I tried to do things that I thought would make the scene really hot. Or put myself in a weird position. Like in The Missing Link when I’m hanging from a pole while I’m fucking someone. That’s something I wanted to give back to her for all she had given back to me.

So as the years are going by and you’re a big gay porn star. What’s the life like? Copious drugs? Debauched parties? Are you a pig in shit? Or do you keep yourself level?

Here’s one of the main misconceptions about porn. Any set that I’ve ever been on, no director has ever offered me drugs. At least in my experience, it has never happened. When someone was found to have drugs, they were sent home. But as far as being out in the arena of porn, during club performances and things like that. Sure you get offered drugs by everybody. By the club owners, by the bartenders, by people in the clubs. Did I ever do them? Absolutely. I’ve never been shy with the fact that I have used drugs before. But I’m sort of a control freak in my head. I’ve never allowed drugs to take me to a place that I didn’t want them to take me. You have to maintain that. You can’t allow them to gain the upper hand. You also got to remember, in my era it was coke and ecstacy. It wasn’t crystal meth, which seems to be the big thing now. I think ecstacy and coke were probably, at least in my opinion, a lot more controllable and manageable than crystal meth is.

You’ve never done meth? I’ve heard rumors.

Have I? Absolutely. Did I for a very brief point sort of have a small problem with it? Absolutely. Won’t deny it. Would never deny it. Got over it. Done with it. Again I will explain my problem with it was, I wanted to control it. It was the first and only drug that I’ve ever taken that made me lose that control that I’ve always had. So I wanted to try to do it more so I could learn how to control it. I realized I couldn’t. That was the end.

When was that period? During porn or post?

The last year that I was in porn was the first time I started using it. But never on a set or anything like that. I should explain. The reason I stopped doing porn was that it had been ten years. I’d done it enough. And as much as you try to maintain who you are, outside of it, people don’t allow you to. Anytime I would go out to the clubs, nobody wanted to meet me or hang out with me. They all wanted to meet and hang out with Chad Hunt. When I would try to date anyone – because me and the boy that I’ve been with for ten years broke up once or twice – and nobody I dated wanted to have sex with me – they wanted to have sex with Chad Hunt. People coming to me on the street weren’t coming up to me, they were coming up to talk to the guy on HBO, and you lose who you are a little. Because people don’t let you be who you are. They want that other person. I’m sure it’s the same as what famous actors and actresses go through. People cannot seem to differentiate that she’s not that character, and for me, people could not differentiate that I am not Chad Hunt. Chad Hunt was a persona I created for the industry. He wasn’t who I was, and he’s certainly not who I am. In Endgame, my very last movie I made sure Chad Hunt was killed at the end.

You die at the end of the porn, but you’re still trying to get control over your meth problem. How long does that period of addiction last? When do you sober up?

About a year and a half to two years. One of the things about an addiction is there are always points when you sort of fall off the horse with anything. For the next couple of years, once or twice I would fall off the horse. It’s just something that comes with that, and it also came with the fact that I sort of had everything. Fame, money, a great place in LA, and when I quit all that, I sort of lost all of that.

Were you able to make money? Were you escorting? You escorted throughout your career, right?

Absolutely.

Were you still able to do that? Or were you cast adrift?

That was actually one of the things that would contribute to my use of that drug. That was the drug everyone wanted to use. They would call me for an appointment. I would go over and the first thing they would say would be “Do you party?” Many times I’d say yes and go ahead and do that stuff. Finally, one day I went to my partner and said, “I cannot do this job anymore because doing this job will end up killing me. I’ve lost all sense of who I am. I can’t be this person anymore. I don’t want to be Chad Hunt anymore. I want to be me.” To his credit, he’s never touched a drug a day in his life. Always a straight-laced, very good individual. He was supportive, of course. Once I quit escorting along with quitting porn, it became a lot easier for me.

Did people in the industry try to help you with your addiction? Chi Chi and other people? Or did people just abandon you?

I never told anybody. I’ve always been a very self-reliant, self-dependent type of person. I don’t like to involve other people in my problems. I feel like people have enough of their own problems, so why do I need to involve them in mine. The only person that I relied on was my partner, and he was great through all of it. We got through it.

Do you still keep up with the friends you made in the industry?

When I can find them. [laughs] I mean, a lot of the guys there were sort of like me. They quit the industry and sort of disappeared. I just recently got back in contact with Jackson Price. I didn’t always agree with his career choices. I had that discussion with Josh Weston and Carlos Morales. I had that discussion with lots of boys who went to what I consider the dark side.

You’re talking about barebacking.

Yes. Absolutely. I had that conversation with many boys in the industry and to this day I get phone calls from those companies and I always tell them where they can shove their job. I have to say, I have no qualms against people who bareback. My problem is with people who do it on film because it’s social media. It’s socially responsible. What you do in your own life is your choice, but quite frankly any porn star will tell you that you get letters all the time from young boys who look up to you. Plenty of them. I get emails from people saying, “I watched you since I was 12 years old.” Do I want to be the person who influenced a 12 year old to go out and have 20 loads dumped in his ass in a bareback video?” No, I want to be the person they saw in every one of their movies always wearing a condom. That’s my problem with barebacking. It’s not that people do it. Have 100 loads in your ass if you want. I don’t care. But if you portray that on video, you put it out there as something that everybody should do and is dying to do.

What did you think when Michael Lucas announced they were going bareback? Did you have a talk with him?

Again, I’m just gonna hold my tongue. I’m just gonna repeat what I said earlier. I love Michael and will always be loyal to him for putting me in my videos. There’s lots of things I could say, lots of things I won’t.

You said that bareback companies reach out to do porn, do you still get offers from condom porn companies?

I don’t and that’s probably because they can’t find me! I deleted all my old email addresses. It was well-known and I put out there that I was done. Really retired, for good. People were respectful of that. Every once in a while Chi Chi will joke I should do a comeback because daddy porn is big now.

Do you pay attention to porn now? What do you watch? I’m curious. Are there stars that you’re fans of? Directors? Studios?

I do. Now and then. Mainly it’s whatever my boyfriend has downloaded. That’s what I watch. Quite frankly, in my opinion, and this is probably the quote that’s gonna fry me in all the blogs, to me there’s no such thing as a porn star anymore. There really isn’t. I think they were a dying breed and I think I was probably one of the last of the dying breed. It seems like today, boys do one or two movies, call themselves a porn star and by the time they get to five they quit. Me, Lance Gear and Jackson Price sort of sat down one day, early in our career and said “When do you actually become a porn star?” We decided that the factor that makes you a porn star is when you do something as your character that’s away from anything else. For me it was when I did the HBO documentary — Thinking XXX — and when I did the artwork. Then its taking it out of the porn arena and placing it into another arena. When you reach the level where you’re doing something that puts you into the mainstream, that’s where I think you reach stardom. It’s not because you’ve done five movies. It’s because you’ve been taken to a different level. I find that it just doesn’t happen too much these days, where someone is actually taken to that level. Porn has become such a normal thing now that I don’t know if people can actually reach that.

Chad bottoming in Endgame (2008).

But is there anything you watch that impressed you? A performance or a film? Or is it all interchangeable?

Here’s the thing. All the tube sites, the free sites have killed the industry completely. They have made it so companies don’t want to do big budget productions any more.

Right. That’s a thing of the past — now everyone just does scenes.

Right. So for me, porn is kind of bland these days. One, two or three people on a bed. Doing this or that. It’s sort of lost for me, the luster of what porn was. There have been, certainly, boys in scenes that I have said, “They may be three guys on a bed, but those are three hot motherfuckers on that bed.” Absolutely. There are a couple of people I like. I don’t know if he’s still in the industry. I do like Girth Brooks. He’s sexy. I watch a lot of his scenes. There have been different boys who I sort of like but then again it seems like I look for them a week later and they’re gone. The industry is not the industry I was in. I don’t want to say it’s worse. It’s not better in my opinion, it’s just different. Quite frankly, I prefer my day of porn than today’s day of porn.

What do you for money? Do you have a day job?

I do have a job. I have a teaching degree. I won’t say whether or not I am using that because there are morality clauses to teaching contracts. So I really can’t be open like that. I’ll say this, I couldn’t be Chad Hunt and be a teacher. Not being Chad Hunt I can be a teacher. I just recently moved back to LA from Ohio. In Ohio I had a job that paid the bills.

Well I don’t want to get you in trouble or fired.

I enjoy seeing the old boys, and talking to them on Facebook and Twitter. I enjoy going to see the new boys at clubs, the rare occasion that clubs actually hire boys these days. I’m not in the industry but I feel connected in a way.

One of the things that is different now, is the internet wasn’t the huge thing it is now. And there’s so much internet controversy each week in our comments section about porn stars who are bi or gay-for-pay. You were openly bisexual but you were the most popular gay porn star for close to eight years. People don’t remember that in this past era, people didn’t know everybody’s true sexuality all the time.

Here’s what I have to say to that. I don’t know if you recall but not very long ago, I got in a Twitter battle with Spencer Reed. Spencer Reed is one of those boys who don’t remember where he came from. When he first got into the industry, he was a very skinny little twinky boy and not the muscled-out, steroided guy that he is today. For him to say, “What’s with all these twinky boys getting jobs?” It’s like, Spencer, not very long ago, that was you. Quite frankly, for a lot of these boys who say that, that was them. For instance, for me, the gay-for-pay boys, a lot of the times that is the way for a boy eventually come out. Let’s go with Brad Star. Brad Star was straight, and now he’s gay. Let’s go with Nash Lawler. Let’s go with Phenix Saint. Let’s go with Clay Maverick. The list goes on and on. Boys who I personally know were straight when they got into the industry but realized maybe they weren’t quite as straight as they thought they were. I was always one of the guys on sets that straight boys would gravitate to, I think partly because they knew that I was married and had a kid. So I could relate to them. There were plenty of so-called straight boys who off-camera would be in my room. I think these gay boys need to sit back and remember that it might have been five or ten years ago, but a lot of them were probably in that situation where they didn’t know and they found an outlet that brought them out. For a lot of people, gay porn is the outlet that brings them out. Are there boys who are — I would never call themselves straight, they can call themselves straight all they want. Quite frankly, they’re not straight, they’re bisexual, whether you want to admit that or not is completely up to you. But you are. If you can get it up and maintain it, you’re bisexual. I even hate using those terms because to me there’s no such thing as someone who’s straight, someone who’s gay, someone who’s bi. Given different circumstances, sexuality is fluid. You may be 65 percent straight but there’s 35 percent of you that’s gay. You may be 90 percent straight, but there’s that 10 percent that given the circumstances that’s gay.

People didn’t even use terms like straight or gay until the middle of the twentieth century.

Right. And I don’t think they should be terms that are used. Given a set of circumstances — jail is the perfect example. The straightest of straight men, who would never if they weren’t in jail, would suck a dick or let another guy suck their dick. But in jail they would. Are they straight? No. They’re not. Given the right circumstances, they became gay or whatever. For me sexuality is such a fluid thing that there’s no way to quantify it. My sexuality is not your sexuality. It’s not the next guy on the street’s sexuality. There’s no way to quantify that. I’m not you, you’re not me. I even hate using the gay and straight and bisexual and gay-for-pay. I put a label on it just for a general understanding. Quite frankly, I am obviously more gay than I am straight. I can have sex with both so I’m considered bi, but I’m still more on the gay side of that. 70/30.

How is your son doing? He must be almost twenty?

He has a girlfriend and he seems to want to make the same mistakes that dad made.

He wants to get married?

Yeah. He’s being a little smarter about it. They’re going to wait a couple of years. But my son is great. He is the best thing in the world to me. He is the best thing that came out of my marriage. He’s a very good boy.

Do you guys talk about your career and what you’ve done? He has to know at this point?

He knew probably since he was 12 or 13 what dad did. When he was younger he thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

Even though you were with guys?

He didn’t care. You have to remember, after I was married, my son saw that most of my relationships were with men.

He knew you were bi.

Absolutely. He’s seen me with men and women. This relationship has been for ten years and before that I had a relationship with a guy for five years. So most of his life, he’s seen me with guys. He learned very early on that it was okay. I’ve always told him no matter what he is — gay, straight, or bi — I actually know the answer to that but I won’t say. It’s my son’s business. But I taught him whatever he was it was okay. It was always important for him to know that whatever his sexuality was it was okay. As long as it wasn’t animals or something like that. It’s always been important for me to try to portray that for everybody in my family, nieces and nephews, too.

Okay, I heard a rumor about you, and you can respond however you want. I heard that for a time — this is so weird — that for a time you were in hiding because you had been in a cult?

[laughs] I don’t know where you heard that but no. [laughs]

No cults. No hiding?

I’m so interested in hearing about what you heard because that’s hysterical to me.

I also heard that it could have been just a meth delusion.

That is not true. I don’t know where they heard that, but no. Absolutely not.

I had to ask! It was so weird!

I’ve been in constant contact with Chi Chi from the moment I left porn. She knew where I was and what I was doing. We are the best of friends. It’s not that I was in hiding, it’s just that I wanted to be away from the porn world for a while. Just so I could remember who I was — aside from Chad Hunt.

Maybe porn was the cult you were in hiding from!

That could have been it! [laughs]

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Perusing my local indie comic shop a few weeks ago, I came across a strange comic called Ruff Haus which caught my eye. Its cover featured a strange cartoon cowboy holding a water ski handle and a martini and amusingly lurid headlines like, “Horny Hungarian Honchos,” “Body Dysmorphia on Vacation!”, and “Privileged Youth Driven to Gay Death!”

My interest piqued, I opened it up to find a bizarre mixture of content, from porn spreads illustrated with strange 90s-era computer generated figures instead of actual porn stars, hilariously overwritten sex stories (“My jocks were moistened by the telegenic dew broadcast from Jim’s glistening shoulders”), all surrounded by reproductions of 80s and 90s gay porn ads for now-defunct phone sex lines. I bought both issues of Ruff Haus and went home to read and laugh at the bizarre post-internet brilliance of this super weird creation and wonder who was behind it.

Turns out Ruff Haus is the brainchild of a very handsome 24-year-old named John Gutierrez, who grew up homeless in Florida before coming to New York to attend SVA. Though Gutierrez is gay, he’s part of a crew of outsider artists from Florida who recently have been getting attention for an even weirder book called Square Dance at Palms Promenade that features strange animation and bizarre comics that share an aesthetic with Adult Swim fare like Tim and Eric. In truth, I found myself completely confused throughout much of my interview with Gutierrez, and at times wondered if he was fucking with me, or if it was just a chance to say weird shit and goof on the serious interviewer’s questions and get a free fruit salad. But by the end I came to feel there was a hilariously deranged sincerity to what he was telling me, and even if it didn’t make any sense, I kind of appreciated the refreshing break from reality we made during the 40 minutes we spent together, discussing Nestle Quik hooker parties, hiring teenage street gangs to walk the streets, and Donald Trump’s bodyguards.

Issue 1 of Ruff Haus

Adam: Where are you from, John?

John Gutierrez: Del Rey Beach, Florida. It’s in between Lake Worth and Fort Lauderale. Forty minutes north of Miami.

Do you call Ruff Haus a zine or a comic?

It’s been lazy right now but we’re trying to turn it into the Village Voice for go-go boys. We know now. We just turned into an LLC so now we have two interns and they’re Asian so they work all the time even when I don’t tell them to. We get emails from go-go boys all the time, ’cause we have this guy who I barely know who prints them for us and he leaves them at The Cock and Chelsea Market. He leaves them on racks in front of gay murals in Brooklyn and stuff like that.

When you say you’re trying to turn it into the Village Voice for go-go boys, you’re talking about the back section where all the hooker and masseur ads are?

Yeah.

And you want those ads to be real instead of the vintage porno ads you have in there now?

Something like that. I want it to be somewhere that people can go to, a kind of loudspeaker for people to go to and say there is something that’s going on, that’s sexier than what New York City is providing, and it’s cheap or free and here’s how to do it. We want to get a younger, more underage crowd affiliated, so they know what they’re doing. We want to give it to 18 year old kids who can give it to their friends who are 16 or 17, so we can get them back into the city more.

So you’re trying to lure underage kids to the city more for sexual purposes?

I think New York City needs a muse and what’s really missing is the youth culture. It’s more about office culture in New York City, which is like, kinda tired. It’s been going on since Sex in the City, this whole office culture. I don’t see it going anywhere.

Let’s just talk about Ruff Haus itself. The format of it seems like it’s an art zine. What did you want to make when you started to make it?

When we started it was that Village Voice thing, something to see on the floor of the subway. Just something that could become part of the city. All the artists are straight besides myself and my other editor who’s Brandon Moore. They do their depictions of gay life and the gay fantasies because they live in the city. I think they’re a little more provocative than what a gay person would say right now. I think gay people are trying to come off as coy, now. They have a fake shyness and fake reserved-ness that really should be unveiled. No more airbrushing stuff. So that’s what I like about having all straight artists do it. They do it fast because they’re not — wait what was the question?

What did you originally want to create when you created it? Because I understand the Village Voice thing, every page is littered with vintage porno ads on the sides, but the interior is art pieces, spoofs of old gay porn, and spoofs of the kind of gay magazines that exist today. Mock porno stories filled with wonderfully crazy dialogue. It’s deranged.

I mean I never really read the Village Voice. It’s just something that you see on the ground, and you’re like, oh, the Village Voice. Trash on the street. That’s what I wanted Ruff Haus to be. I have seen it on the street as trash. A couple blocks away from my house. I was like, I guess I’m done, that’s why I’ve been really slow with the work. Then I did a Fire Island issue, the second issue, so I could try to say that I worked for Fire Island and get some interviews and get free drinks and get into parties and stuff like that. Which I did. The sex party scene was really tired and it wasn’t true. None of that was true.

Issue #2, the Fire Island Issue

Hmmmm. But I mean, is there an artistic conceit behind it?

I don’t know what that means. Are you asking if it’s artistic? Is it fine art?

Not fine art, but is it like other zines. To me it’s very satirical, very funny, very witty, and the art is appealingly weird. It revels in this kind of bizarre aesthetic that’s very post-internet.

It’s not trying to be artistic. What it is trying to do is be as sincere as it can be. Sincerity has a lot of poetry in it, because you’re really trying to get someone to understand something that you completely feel and you’re kind of enveloped in that world. It just comes off as like, someone’s just pissed all over your page. It’s gonna look weird. Yellow stains. It’s not gonna look like shit in Chelsea galleries right now. I guess that’s why someone would think it was art, but I’ve never really had anybody say it looks like art. People just say it’s hot. There’s cops in it, and stuff like that. The next issue’s going to be The White Issue, all white, like the White Party. There’s gonna be lots of frills and blowing white curtains.

That seems funny and smart to me. An opportunity to spoof White Party culture.

These are just things that are in the gay world, these are gay men’s dreams. A straight guy wants a wife and a girlfriend and a car and he wants to jump people, gay men want white curtains and white sheets and a beach apartment. A vacation home on the beach. They want to be Andy Cohen. Stuff like that. I took molly on the beach in Fire Island. It was the most beautiful day ever. This is going to be in the next issue. There’s going to be a lot about issue 2 in the third one. I was doing molly and there were no clouds in the sky. I was with all these muscle boys and my boyfriend. Then Sarah Jessica Parker starts walking down the beach with flowing clothes, looking like Aphrodite or some shit like that. I kept saying the day was God’s gift to gays.

Was she really there?

Yeah. She was there with Andy Cohen. She was there for five days. The whole time I was there. She went to the tea dances too, the late-night ones.

Did you interact with her?

I was gonna say to her, “Thank you for making New York City such a great office environment.” All I said was “Thank you.” She said “You’re welcome,” really nicely. But she couldn’t see my face, she was looking for me. I thought it was really nice.

I bought your other book, Square Dance at Palms Promenade. The whole aesthetic you guys have is totally new to me. It feels like stuff that references mid-90’s computer generated art and animation. How did you get involved with that type of stuff?

That book’s made by high school friends from Florida, who are all straight. That’s more on their level. I can only kind of grasp it as much as you can. It’s like the internet’s brain has misfired. But that’s not what that is, its just a means of making imagery and it’s just like sincere and it comes out weird. That’s like the same thing. Sincerity just comes out looking new and different. But it also like ricochets off other things. That book’s like six artists and we each had to pair up so no one did their own work, it was half and half with everybody. What came out was even more of a hodgepodge of that sincerity kind of thing.

And Ruff Haus has the same aesthetic.

Yeah. I can’t remember all the guys names.

Your friends?

Yeah. They’re always changing their names. One of them’s a B and one of them’s a C. There’s this guy Mark. One of them is Mark. He writes the poetry and stuff like that.

Where are you from John? And how did you get to this world?

The gay world?

Yeah, I mean, I’m totally confused by nearly everything you’ve said. I don’t know that I understand much of what you’re saying. I’m really trying to follow you. For instance, did you go to art school? What do you do? Where did you come from?

Oh. I was raised in Florida. My dad owned a framing store that frames pictures and we were homeless so we lived in the back of it. We had inflatable beds that we had to put on the tables. It was really dusty so I grew up malnourished and ugly. I was a really angry kid. I didn’t know I was gay. I had to sleep in the same bed as my mom. I was hanging out with the homeless people in the back. I was going around and skateboarding and meeting strange people. I was never afraid to get into a spot or anything like that, you know? I came to New York because I went to art school for high school and middle school. I got kicked out of the high school one. I didn’t pay attention except in my art classes, but they still kicked me out because my parents didn’t donate money to the school. Then I went to online school and got my GED. I wanted to go to SVA because I thought it was a fun party art school. I didn’t know anything about New York and Manhattan. When I came here I saw what it looked like. For two years I was working on stuff and I was really angry. This was in 2009. I was going out with my friends and we would drink and break stuff. One night I was so angry I was trying to get in fights with cab drivers, and I ended up hooking up with one. That was my first gay experience. Then I would keep going out and breaking things and doing bad stuff, and I would go to places, gay bars after we got done, and I would hook up with guys. I realized I didn’t have to talk to girls anymore which was a godsend. So I just started coming out as gay to everybody. Chelsea and The Eagle and The Cock kind of broke me in. I started going out and playing pool at Nowhere Bar.

So the porn magazine aesthetic was not something as a kid that you were fascinated by? For me when I look at Ruff Haus I’m seeing all the 90’s porn ads that I used to love. I have a huge collection of vintage gay porn in my room.

I’m trying to propel that and use it as fuel to make a new thing for people to look like.

That’s what it feels like. I’m glad we’re finally on the same page.

But that’s not the mindset for why I’m doing it.

Oh. There’s not really a driving force? You’d rather create something weird and ephemeral that gets thrown out in the trash.

No. I just want something substantial enough that it would be in the trash, regardless of whether it’s good or not. But like, I guess the goal is just to get into parties and interviews with people and get free things like food and alcohol and stuff like that.

Is it a scam or a hustle?

Meeting gay men at gay bars, it only gets you to a certain level. Going through art tunnels you meet sexier men, because it’s the new aristocratic thing to be worked out and have perfect teeth. Instead of white hair and wigs you get fillers so you look perfect. Those men are a lot more attractive to me than someone who’s at a gay bar.

You just want a better class of guy.

It’s just a means of networking, is the thing.

Is there an end goal?

There was one but I forgot what it was. Probably the end goal would be to have it mandatory to have it be read by go-go boys. Like how everyone in Brooklyn is reading Eat Pray Love. The go-go boys will read Ruff Haus and be better for it.

When you say “interviews and parties” are you talking about this kind of interview we’re doing? You want to get press?

Yeah. Interviews with porn companies would be the best.

What do you mean?

I don’t want to be interviewed by…I don’t know. Interviews as in getting in the reason for the interviews is just to be able to get invited to the Coca Cola industry parties and stuff like that. I don’t know. Like a Nestle Quik party. A big party with escorts and underage people. Stuff like that.

You know, I’m not trying to belittle anything you’re saying, but are you talking about Coca Cola or Nestle Quik throwing a gay party with escorts?

Once it gets to that level it’s not gay or straight anymore. It’s like, uh –

It sounds like all the stuff you’re saying should just go in your next issue. That should be a story for Ruff Haus 3 – about Nestle throwing a gay party with escorts.

Nah. That’s the kind of stuff where you’ll find a person checking your mail and stuff like that. I know somebody who was doing big ad campaigns. He was a big art director, doing some kind of big Mountain Dew campaign. Some kind of sports soda. He said they would have people deliver them cheese platters and stuff like that, but they’d also ask to be invited inside because they had to check stock of your fridge. They bring so much stuff to your house, they’re like a new little paid for maid for you. He found them going through his computer and stuff like that. That’s like, real. I would only want to be, not affiliated, but a friend who people who work there so I could be invited, not have to worry about my reputation. That’s the goal of Ruff Haus. And to be known for Ruff Haus. The big brand thing, those guys will break you in even more. It’s not just New York City anymore. New York City is like the truck stop of the world. I forgot what the question was.

I’m not sure it would help to reiterate it. I’m still confused about what the parties and things that you want to get into are. By the way, I don’t think it’s bad that you want to use Ruff Haus to get into parties, because everybody does their work and wants to be recognized and acknowledged. I’m just interested in where you developed these concepts of parties and other things you want to get into. It’s so far removed from anything I desire.

You can go to an art auction, you fill up on hors d’oeuvres or champagne. You can get a membership to a gym and get a shower every once in a while. I don’t know you can meet people on Grindr to have a place to sleep. You meet people on Scruff to get coffee for free. You can do interviews and get a free fruit bowl. Glass of water. That’s what New York City is really about. I think the office culture is making it so much like it’s a tax write off. So people don’t really feel like they earned it or deserved it. But saying Ruff Haus has brought me somewhere, kind of lets me go to sleep at night, rather than me saying I’m working these people who are working me for something else.

Um…

Not that any of that is so planned out. I’m just saying that as you’re asking me I’m thinking about it. It just comes naturally to do these things.

I don’t want you to come off as really shallow in this interview.

I don’t care because it’s like, Chelsea and it’s New York City and it’s gay people and it’s now. I don’t care. I grew up ugly. I’m blossoming now into a little man. Hopefully I’ll be Mr. Eagle before 2020.

Is that your goal?

That’s the goal. To be Mr. Eagle. But I don’t know how much I have to socialize.

I would assume that the leather scene is a lot about socialization, being in that world. What do you do for work?

I work at a silkscreen factory. Making artist editions and stuff. It’s a big name artist but I can’t say who it is. It’s nice cause I’m learning a lot about color separating and inks and chemicals and stuff like that. I’ve been doing that for two months. Before that I worked at The Standard Hotel restaurant.

And you have a boyfriend?

Yes. It’s monogamous.

So when you were talking about liking these certain types of guys and wanting to get into parties to meet wealthy muscle guys who you’re attracted to, that’s not really the case?

No it’s more about wanting to start a crew. A gay Ruff Haus crew. Oh! This is it, this is the actual goal. So if I became very wealthy and I became a king and had lots of money, I would pay kids – the most good-looking kids from high schools. Suit them up in really nice clothes, so they’ll be the coolest kids in schools. I would just have them hang out in front of local places and say they have to be outside 24 hours. Or they have to be on the strip, and they have to have a name on the back of their jackets. Something like that.

So you would finance faux street gangs of underage kids?

Something like that.

Or you would be their pimp and make them hustle?

I don’t know where it would go. I just know that’s the shell of what the egg would look like. Then whatever they’d do, I know I’ll be a lot more mature so I’ll have the answers of what they’ll do. But right now, they’d just be hanging out and they’d have to jump straight people and stuff like that. Maybe I’d teach them how to vogue. Get them into Muay-Thai, so if they ever get fucked with so they could protect themselves. I could sell them to the Guardians on Christopher Street. The volunteer police force.

The Guardian Angels? I’m not sure they still exist.

I could sell them to the Guardian Angels when I’m done with them.

Do you watch porn now?

I like David Anthony. Have you heard of him?

From Titan.

I also like Brandon Moore’s work. He’s assistant editor for Ruff Haus. He’s the one who does all the trend-setting and the do’s and don’ts.

Who does the amazing faux-porn stories? It’s some of the most brilliantly funny stuff I’ve ever read.

Chris Affection. He lives in Providence now. He was here yesterday to do a book signing. See that’s the thing yesterday, we did the book signing and I got a bunch of free coffee and t-shirts.

But isn’t it more important to move product, sell your zine, make something that people want to read? Why is it so exciting to get free coffee?

It’s more just like, real estate – you buy a shell of a building. Like a dilapidated building in Detroit and you let it sit there. Whether you work on it or you don’t, maybe one day it’ll be worth something. That’s what Ruff Haus is. But it’s also got a lot of heart in it. It’s gonna grow and get a lot bigger.

Does that mentality of hustling and using Ruff Haus to get into parties and get free shit stem from your childhood?

The thing that made me such a hustler was my dad. I would draw all these pictures and show it to him and be like “Isn’t this great, Dad?” and he would be like, “Yeah but you can’t sell that shit. They’re not going to put you on Oprah.”

What are you going to do for the rest of the day?

The rest of the day? I’m going to draw this comic. I have to feed my interns. I’m going to go get fucked upside down by one of Donald Trump’s bodyguards at Trump Towers. One of his hot bodyguards. I’m gonna get face exercises from this Armani Exchange model. He’s gonna teach me how to look like my face is relaxed.

You said you and your boyfriend were monogamous.

Yeah but we have this like, leave a penny, take a penny kind of thing. Like – “You earned this one.”

What did you do to earn sex with one of Donald Trump’s bodyguards?

I was just looking really good one day. He said “You look really good today.” I said, “Yeah this guy gave me his number.” He said, “Do it.” I said, “Awesome.

To order Ruff Haus Issues 1 & 2, visit SkunkTrunk.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Max Cameron had only been dating his porn star boyfriend for about five months when he was brought to the set of Treasure Island Media. “One day he was like, ‘Hey, I have a shoot and I talked to the director and he said if you want to be in it, they’ll pay you and you can be in it.’ In my mind, I’m thinking I’m going to go and check it out and decide when I get there.” But once on set, the director quickly arranged the scene, and Max found himself falling into place. It wasn’t an easy shoot but Max got through it, and got better. Less than a year later, he’s become one of the industry’s most promising up-and-cummers, shooting for studios like TIM, Raging Stallion, NakedSword and, in a few weeks, Lucas Entertainment. Max caught most people’s attention when a video he made featuring him and his ex Drew Sebastian discussing Max’s use of PrEP to maintain his health and safety on bareback sets went viral. I called him up in San Francisco after a night of “debaucherous fun” to discuss barebacking on PrEP, high school romances, piss play and who he would put to death in a dystopian future.

Adam: Hi Max, are you ready to chat?

Max Cameron: Yes! I just finished getting ready!

Where you going tonight?

I’m going to meet my friends for a drink, then hitting The Eagle for beer bust. Sunday fun day.

Do you usually take only a day to unwind during the week? Are you really busy?

It depends. Friday is usually my big day out. But last night my soccer team had a little team bonding, I guess you could call it, at the Nob Hill Theater. Billy Santoro was performing, and it was a lot of fun. A lot of debaucherous fun.

Wait, this sounds like a porno set up! The gay soccer team — although in the porno they would be straight guys — decide to head to the Nob Hill to watch Billy Santoro perform and you all end up hooking up with each other or what?

(laughs) Well, I vaguely remember getting pulled up onstage and some soccer friends may or may not have been involved. There was a lot of drinking.

You get pulled up onstage by Billy and you join in, and your soccer buddies join in and the others are sitting, jerking off and watching y’all.

Yeah, maybe.

You could sell that as a script.

Totally! It was a lot of fun. This is the second time we’ve actually done it. Larry at the Nob Hill loves us.

Who wouldn’t? You bring a whole horny soccer team to party there!

Yeah. Anyway, I’m just finally getting my ass in gear.

And going right back to the bar.

Exactly. Hair of the dog.

Of course. It makes perfect sense. You’ll wind up back at the Nob Hill tonight, I’m sure.

If we’re lucky.

One of my friends told me that he likes my interviews with dumb porn stars better than my interviews with smart porn stars. I’m curious which you think you are?

I feel like I’m pretty smart.

You seem smart. I’m getting that vibe. You’re gonna have to try extra hard to make this a good interview.

I’ll try to dumb it down a little bit!

Okay, first real question. It’s 2072 and our government has collapsed, and the way the leader of Earth is elected is by lottery and you get chosen and you have to go make your laws. Name three insignificant things that would be punishable by death under your rule. For instance, mine would be sharing Disney Princess memes.

Slut-shaming. Anything Kardashian related, period. The word Kardashian is outlawed.

What did you think of all that stuff last week?

Well, I think she’s a dumb ho. Let’s be honest. She’s gotta have her face time.

It was weird. People were going, “She’s not a good role model anymore.” I was like, “When was she?” There was a bit of misogyny in people’s reactions to her, and so on one hand, you gotta be careful because if you say she’s a dumb whore, the whore part is not the reason she sucks. It’s the dumb part, it’s the shallow part, and the fact that she acts like she’s above all that, and that that isn’t really a part of her, the sexuality. After the W magazine shoot she was weeping saying she’d never do nudes again for a magazine except Vogue — and then she does something for Paper? I mean, that’s dumb!

Oh! Third thing – dirty bottoms.

How often do you encounter that?

Not very often. But escorting you do encounter it, and you have to stop and say, “Uh-uh, go fix that.”

Do you top exclusively?

No. I do everything. But most people are looking for that.

The majority of people want tops?

About 85 to 90 percent of the time.

Do you take your act on the road?

Yeah. For instance, I’m going to be shooting in New York for Lucas in December, and I’ll definitely throw an ad up. But I have regulars in New York too, and I’ll probably contact them and see where that goes. But if I’m traveling I’ll usually do some work too.

This is your first time with Lucas, right?

Yeah. I’m super psyched. They’re one of the ones I’ve been really wanting to shoot with for a long time. I was supposed to shoot with them in May, but I had already booked a ticket to go to my young nephews’ birthday parties and I forgot. So I had to cancel right away because I realized blood is thicker than water.

Or cum.

Right! Plus my nephews are fucking adorable.

How old are they?

They are four and six.

Awww. That’s sweet. One day you’ll be able to tell them about the big sacrifices you made so you could watch them grow up. “I didn’t go to New York to appear in those bareback pornos and escort, I was there at your party.”

Ha! “You matter!” Oh, I thought of another thing I would put people to death for. Big, bro-y, douchey, small-penis trucks. Those would be punishable by death.

Were you a nerd in high school? Is the Max Cameron we see today, a swan that used to be an ugly duckling?

No, it was weird. The high school I was in, all the nerdy smart people were also the cool kids and the partiers. All the kids in AP and honors classes were also the ones having house parties every weekend. It was this weird, bizarre high school situation. That being said, I guess I was kind of nerdy. I was in all the AP and honors classes. But I was also a jock and — this is going to sound really horrible and narcissistic — but I was popular, I guess.

Well, I mean, if you were popular, you were popular. It’s not narcissistic.

But really, everyone was friends with everyone.

What magical utopian high school was this where everyone was friends and the nerds were popular?

Huntington Beach High School. Obviously everyone had their own close-knit circles of friends. But everyone was friends with everyone.

It’s kind of like the end of the old Batman ‘66 movie where Joker and all the other villains have vaporized all the world leaders at the UN down into molecular powder, and Batman comes up with a way to restore them, but the powders mix and the Iranian sheik is suddenly speaking German and the German leader is suddenly speaking African dialects. And Batman remarks that now, world peace could really be possible.

Hahaha.

Is this experience with going to the Nob Hill Theatre with your soccer team and everyone pulling a train on each other – which I just decided happened – was that something that happened in high school in the locker room?

If only. That was the only bit of magic that didn’t happen at my high school. There was a football player that I messed around with, but that was it, Unfortunately.

Was he your first?

Yeah. I guess he was. We didn’t ever really fuck, but we did a lot of exploring and playing around, for sure.

How did you guys discover each other?

I remember the specific moment where I was like, “Oh this is on.” We were sitting next to each other in biology class, and we had this fucking newspaper, and we were both goofing around, shoving it onto the other’s desk. He would shove it on mine and I would shove it back. At one point he shoved it into my crotch and grabbed and squeezed. I was like, “Ohhhh.” He came over that weekend and we had a lot of fun. I was surprised, with him, being the “straight” one. He initiated it. I never approached guys. Things were different in the 90s, growing up in Orange County.

Take me on your journey to porn.

Well, my ex, Lord Voldemort, is what I call him, he introduced me to it. He was a Treasure Island exclusive, and one day he was like, “Hey, I have a shoot and I talked to the director and he said if you want to be in it, they’ll pay you and you can be in it.” In my mind, I’m thinking I’m going to go and check it out and decide when I get there. So we go, and get to the location, and the director comes over and starts talking to my ex, and he’s like, “Okay, you’re going to do this, this, and this, and then Max, you’re going to come on and do this and this and this.” I’m just like, “Uh, okay. I guess I’m fucking doing it.” I was just doing stuff for Treasure Island, because I was only doing stuff for the fun and shits and giggles and a little extra cash on the side. Then I was like, well, if I’m gonna be doing it, I might as well be doing it big. I started applying to studios. I decided to go for it.

That’s such a bizarre story. Like a Linda Lovelace type story — being coerced into it by your lover and the director. Very Rosemary’s Baby! Had you been dating him for a long time?

No. Not very long. It might have been about five months. Porn had always been something that I thought about. It was in the back of my mind but I didn’t think I had the body for it. At that point I was like, fuck it, if I’m not going to do it now, I’m never going to do it.

Obviously you were comfortable with him doing porn. Did that make it easier?

To be honest, my first shoot I was kind of terrified. I had total performance anxiety and I was like “Oh my god, oh my god.” I couldn’t get hard and was freaking out. But I made it work.

This is Drew Sebastian, who you were in a sero-discordant relationship with?

Yeah.

When I Google you, that’s the biggest thing that comes up.

The PrEP stuff.

Yeah. You made that video.

Yeah. I’m not much of a public figure, but I figure that if i have any sort of notoriety or name, I kind of want to do good with it. It’s really ironic that I’m doing porn and want to be a do-gooder, but still, it’s very topical. It speaks to the audience that I’m basically performing for. It’s something that people in our community should know about, whether or not its right for them. They should know it’s there and that it exists. Now people are talking about it and that’s kind of what my whole motive was.

How did you come to go on PrEP? I know you’ve talked about it before, but for our readers’ sake. You’ve taken the journey I assume a lot more bareback performers are going to take.

That’s the whole part of it. I wouldn’t have been comfortable, especially for Treasure Island, doing porn if I wasn’t on PrEP. Granted, most people who are positive are undetectable and healthy, so the risk is slim and none. But it was extra insurance, so to speak. Extra boost of confidence.

But how did you wind up going on it?

We played with this guy who was on it. I had heard about it, but didn’t really know much, so I picked his brain and asked him about side effects and the co-pay program. He walked me through the steps. I was really forthright with my doctor, although I left out the porn aspect. I told him I was in a sero-discordant relationship and was sexually active. He said, “Well, it sounds like you’re the type of person that PrEP is ideal for.” He didn’t have any problems at all. But being in San Francisco and seeing a gay doctor helped. He was more than happy to prescribe it to me.

Did you experience any side effects?

The first two weeks I was a little bit bloated and kind of gassy, although it was negligible. It went away.

At first did you only want to do scenes with him?

That was part of it. I don’t know if I would have had the balls to go out and do it on my own, so the fact that he was there and we were doing it together made me a lot more comfortable, but after I had been introduced and had done a few scenes, I was a lot more comfortable in the industry. That’s when I was like, I’m gonna start applying to studios on my own.

What’s been your favorite studio to work for?

I love, love, love NakedSword. Mr. Pam and everyone over there is just amazing. You walk on set and you’re having a good time, laughing. Everyone’s making jokes. It’s just a really comfortable environment. I love working for them. Raw Fuck Club is really fun. Nick Moretti is another amazing person to work with. I just recently started working with Dirty Tony. They’re also a great bunch of guys. Those are three of my favorites. I haven’t done much with Raging Stallion but the scene or two that I did with them was great. They have higher production values and the finished product is more slick but bareback scenes are quicker.

Obviously. Now I’m on PrEP but I haven’t done anything without a condom mainly because I’m afraid of other STDs. Do you worry about that at all with the bareback stuff?

Yes and no. I preferred bareback sex to begin with, and now that I have this pill that’s able to protect me I have this peace of mind. As far as STD’s go, you can get gonorrhea and chlamydia from sucking dick. I don’t feel it’s a higher risk per se.

I just worry about stuff you can’t cure so easily.

That’s true, but you still talk about that kind of thing with the partner that you’re hooking up with. I still ask, and I think that’s still important. But like I said, the pill’s an added layer of protection.

Max with Blake Daniels in NakedSword’s Summer of Fuckin’.

You were barebacking before you were on PrEP, though?

Yes.

I’ve talked about this with some people, but it feels like for a lot of people, the thrill of barebacking is the risk. Does the PrEP wilt that part?

No. For me it’s just the sensation. Let’s be honest, it feels way better and I love cum. You add a condom and you don’t get that. I don’t know if it’s a fetish per se, but I love cum and taking a load and breeding someone. God, that sounds so whorey.

Dumb whore! No, but see that’s the thing, how are you breeding someone if you’re on PrEP? I get that it can refer to sperm, but it mostly means putting a poz load into someone.

Yeah. I mean, escorting I get that a lot. Guys go “Come on, give me that poz load.” And I’m like laughing in my head. “If you only knew.” That’s also the assumption with bareback porn, too. Everyone assumes that the models are all positive. From my perspective, I always assumed that, and there is that aspect of it, but more than that, it’s just cum. People love cum.

Cum will never go out of style.

Hells no.

What’s the best experience you’ve had on set?

Rocco Steele. I met him back in September and we met and had a scene together. It was kind of one of those weird and awesome experiences, where, speaking for the both of us, we forgot the camera was there. We forgot anyone was there. We just had our own little moment, you know? It was totally natural. Fucking hot. By far my favorite scene so far.

What’s the dirtiest sex you’ve ever had?

Well, this guy that I’m currently seeing, he’s a lot younger. He’s 24. We met through Scruff and one morning I woke up and I was really horny. I saw that he was on. I hit him up, and was like, “Come over, we’ll fuck and cuddle and nap.” He came over, we fucked, and then we tried to nap and that wasn’t very successful so we started fucking again. Basically we fucked from about eight-thirty in the morning until about three in the afternoon. Collectively we shot 11 loads. It was fucking amazing. It was the best sex I’ve had in years. Plus because he’s younger he hasn’t really experienced much, so he drank my piss for the first time. I pissed in his ass. It was a hot, dirty, dirty fun day.

Very hot. When did you become a piss freak?

Probably with my ex. I had never really played around with piss before, and then my ex being who he is, he’s a lot more experienced in that sort of thing. He was like, have you ever pissed in someone’s ass? I said no. He said, “Do it.” I did it and it was super fucking hot, and then he did it to me and I thought it was super fucking hot. So he was kind of the one who introduced me to that whole area.

Do you drink it?

I don’t. I’m more of a top. But someone can piss fuck me for days if they want. Piss on me.

You’re a messy queen.

Ha!

Max with Trenton Ducati in NakedSword’s Addict.

Do you have other fetishes?

No, not really. The same boy and I had some drinks and came back to my place and started playing around. He was super drunk and puked, and he came out and was like, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I was like, “Fucking stop saying ‘I’m sorry’.” He was like, “I’m sorry.” I said the next time he said that I would fucking slap him. He said, “I’m sorry.” So I gave him a little gentle slap on the face. Then he said, “I’m sorry.” He kept saying it and so I kept hitting harder and harder. It was really fucking hot. I slapped the shit out of him, and then choked him a bit and he was loving it. So I guess exploring that area a little bit is something I’m into.

Tips of the trade for dick sucking?

Practice makes perfect.

Obviously, but I want something more specific.

Just loosen up, make sure you’re nice and wet and go with it.

What do you do to your throat? Do you spray it or treat it in any way?

No. Well, I am really big into kissing, so making out for a little while before hand helps it and gets the juices flowing so to speak. Going in nice and sloppy and wet is for sure one of the top tips.

What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened on set?

Well there was a guy who totally forced me on his giant dick. It wasn’t a spit-up thing, I totally puked everywhere. That was really it. Also I was on a NakedSword shoot with Trenton Ducati, and I was so used to doing these bareback scenes, and we finally got to the fucking, and he’s sitting in this chair and I just go over and plop down onto his dick. Everyone was like, “Ummmmmm” I was like, “Oh shit! Sorry!!!” That was embarrassing. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was funny.

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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Mike De Marko isn’t interested in becoming a big porn star, despite being one of the industry’s hardest working young performers for the past two years. De Marko, who’s eagerly taken on the dicks of Boomer Banks, Trenton Ducati, Shawn Wolfe, and at last month’s Hustlaball, Aleks Buldocek, is content where he is, balancing his porn and escorting work with his legit gig as a Beverly Hills real estate agent. In person he’s well-spoken and confident, and though he seems eager to evade questions which would force him to play favorites amongst his scene partners, he’s open about the positive effects doing porn and sex work have had on his life in general. A few days after he finished shooting some scenes for Men.com, one of his favorite places to work, I sat down with De Marko over pumpkin pie and coffee to discuss real estate, fraternity life, and of course, what he’s thankful for this Thanksgiving.

You’re in New York, what brings you to town?

A combination of things. I was here filming early last week with Men.com. I did two scenes with them. I’ve also been seeing clients. It’s a work trip, all around.

You haven’t been in New York other than Hustlaball, for a really long time?

Yeah. Prior to that I hadn’t been in New York for about ten years.

What was the last time you were here?

It was in high school. I was looking at colleges. The last time I was really here I was looking at schools on the east coast. I toured NYU, Columbia, and then we went up and toured all the east coast Ivys.

Where did you end up going?

I ended up going to USC. I was very happy there. I toured all the schools on the east coast the summer after my sophomore year in high school. Then the summer after my junior year I did a summer program at USC, and I fell in love with it.

What did you major in?

Business administration. I minored in architecture, and did a second minor in international urban planning, which segued into my other career, which is real estate. I work as a real estate broker in Los Angeles.

How much time do you devote to each? Do people know about what you do?

Some people do. It’s hard to hide, especially in Los Angeles. West Hollywood in particular. I work for a brokerage based in Beverly Hills. A small firm, and I won’t say who they are. It’s interesting and it’s something that’s taken me a long time to come to terms with, or in another sense, to learn to balance. When I first started filming I didn’t want anybody to know. But that’s unrealistic in this day and age. Within six months of beginning to film, I left Los Angeles and took myself out of my social circle that I was used to. I went to Phoenix and spent six months there just removing myself from everything. After six months I was like, okay I’m bored, everybody already knows, it’s time to go home. I came back to LA about a year and a half ago, and moved right back into the thick of things in West Hollywood and got over everything. Everybody knew and I started telling everybody. I was filming and escorting. I went back to the brokerage. It’s a matter of taking it a day at a time. I have some days that are porn days and some days that are real estate days and some days that are in-between. I try not to let them overlap but it’s impossible.

So there might be a day where you’re seeing a client and then you have to go show a house?

Or vice versa. Absolutely. There are days when I sit in an open house for three hours and then I go home and get cleaned up and go see a client for an hour or two or a night. There are days when I show a house and then fly to New York and film scenes for two or three days. That’s just part of the combo. It’s interesting and it makes it fun.

Do you ever feel the temptation to steer clients to a house?

Constantly. But I think that’s the nature of a real estate broker in general. When you’re having a conversation with someone, no matter what, if they say anything about real estate — “I’m thinking about moving,” — the reality is that over the long term, my bread and butter is real estate. I have really good months from filming, really good months from escorting, but I hate to break it to people, neither one of those things is a long-term career. You might do it for a few years, you might get lucky and do it for a decade. If you have great success with it you might last for 20 years. But most people last about two years and then they find something else to do. I’m fortunate in the sense that I already know what I want to do for the rest of my life which is real estate. It’s fun for me to kind of bounce back from porn to real estate and do both.

You would be a good character for a reality show. Have you ever been approached?

Until recently I haven’t really advertised my involvement in porn and escorting. Lately I don’t care as much. It’s more of a package deal these days. I would love to do something like that. I did appear on an episode of Millionaire Matchmaker, which I don’t think has aired yet.

With that awful woman?

I love Patti.

She’s horrible!

But that’s what makes her so wonderful! She’s hilarious. A friend recommended me for that show and they cast me and initially I didn’t disclose anything about the work I do in the adult industry. I just said “I’m a real estate broker.” Then I got to set and I started freaking out. I was like, hmmm there’s a digital footprint. They’re gonna do a photo search, they’re going to Google my name and find all my porn photos. Facebook and Twitter are cross referenced in this crazy way. A lot of the Google indexed photos are matched and come from facial recognition, not just the text. So I’ve had personal Facebook photos show up on a Mike De Marko photo search before. So I got really nervous, and I told one of the girls who cast me that I didn’t write it on the paper but I do porn. She was like, “Has that affected your dating life?” I was like, in West Hollywood, not so much. Of course there are people who you meet and they don’t want to date you because you do porn. But by and large it’s not really a big deal, at least that’s my impression. She was like, “If you write it down Patti will ask you about it. So if you’re not comfortable talking about it, don’t write it down.” I knew it would make such good reality TV, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about it on national broadcast. In the end I wasn’t chosen for one of the final dates, but it was still very entertaining.

If you were so uncomfortable about being so out and open initially, what made you get into porn in the first place?

I’ve worked in real estate for years and years. My first job was in real estate finance. I loved the job but I hated where I was working. I had taken a job in San Diego and I didn’t like it there. So I moved back to Los Angeles and took a pay cut. I got into property management and worked in that for about two years. But it’s one of those jobs where it’s fairly thankless. Everybody’s always mad at you about something but nothing’s really you’re fault because you’re the middleman. You field complaints from the owners and the tenants. I worked for a big company for about a year and a half and I wasn’t having a good time. I went and worked for a friend of mine, and I thought this would be better. I got to his firm and I worked for him for about six months but it still wasn’t fun. I was like, you know, there’s gotta be something else. At the time I had a roommate who was filming porn. He was like, “You should do it.” It was something I had thought about. When I was 18 years old I applied for Sean Cody, but I never heard anything back because I was this little twink from Utah.

So you always wanted to do porn?

It was always in the back of my mind. Within the first six months of working in property management, Randy Blue contacted me. I went in there and met Randy and they were like, “You’re great, fantastic, you have the body, but we just need you to have a better six pack.” I was like, “You have to understand I work 60-80 hours a week, so it’s going to be 2-3 months before I have the ripped gym body that you want.” So that didn’t work out. When I finally left property management, I had time on my hands, and everything fell into place. I met other people in the industry, and my first scene was with Cocksure Men. I had friends who worked for Men.com so I really pushed for that. Quickly I got a scene with Men.com and soon after they signed me as an exclusive. So I was with Men the whole time. I think because I was an exclusive and I had a set income structure, it was easy for me to kind of hide. That’s why I went to Phoenix. But as my contract was ending, I moved back to LA because I wanted to be in Los Angeles. I think I just realized that if I was going to do this, I had to go all in. It wasn’t something I could half-ass.

This was not half-assed. Here’s Mike getting rimmed by Shawn Wolfe in Raging Stallion’s Filthy Fucks.

You had to own it.

For the last 18 months, that’s what I’ve tried to do.

But I don’t get the sense that you’re trying to be a big star.

I’m not. That’s not the goal because porn isn’t the long-term goal in general.

Is it money? Or is there is something you find fulfilling about it?

I enjoy it. I’ve said this from the very beginning and if you talk to anybody who knows me they’ll reiterate this, but I don’t do anything I don’t like. That’s why I don’t last long in a lot of jobs. I’ve been in porn for over two years now, so there has to be something I find fulfilling and enjoyable. Like anything you might enjoy it and have bad days and good days. As long as I have more good days than bad days, I’m fine with it. I definitely enjoy it.

What do you enjoy about it the most? Sex? Being adored? Being in people’s minds?

The sex is definitely enjoyable, but it’s funny you said being adored because I’m an exhibitionist and I’ve always been one. But I also get really uncomfortable at the point when people start to recognize me. I get a little awkward. It’s ironic, because as much as I like attention, I’m not good with compliments. Even in a casual settings with friends. If someone comes up and says, “Oh you’re so cute,” I’m like, “Uhhh, thanks.”

I’m the same way.

That part of it is interesting. The sex is fun. It’s definitely a big part of it. But I think the reason I’ve been able to meld the two industries – sex work and real estate – is that they both give me a lot of freedom with respect to my schedule. I get to decide where I work, who I work with, what I do. At the end of the day, I think the biggest factor is that I’m a control freak. I like to be in control of what I’m doing. Office jobs were not designed for me.

Growing up, were you looking at a lot of porn on the internet?

I don’t know if it was really a blog or a landing page, but when I was a teenager in high school, in the early 2000’s, there was a website, “I-Will-JO.com” and it was literally an affiliate paradise. You went on and it linked to every website in the world. I stumbled on Sean Cody and Randy Blue and all of these hunky athletic guys going at it. That was it.

The guys were hunky, jocky, but can you remember a moment when you thought, “I can do that?” Or, “I want to do that”?

Obviously I wanted to do it back then, but I feel like it was definitely reaching. As I got older and graduated from school and had been working for a while, I think it really was when I stopped working full time. I said “I’m going to go for this. I’m gonna do it. I don’t care if it’s with Sean Cody or Randy Blue. I know I can do it and I have the look for somebody at least.”

When Mike met Boomer. (From Raging Stallion’s Balls Deep.)

When you applied at 18 to be a Sean Cody model, were you out?

I was not out. I had a girlfriend. She found my Sean Cody subscription in my email inbox. I convinced her that I was just curious. We dated for another year and a half. When I joined the fraternity at USC I was still dating the same girl. We did the long distance thing for a year, which was funny because I cheated on her with half a dozen different girls at USC. By my sophomore year I was cheating with half a dozen different guys. Not necessarily a proud moment but somewhat comical.

What was it like being in a frat?

I was not out. Everybody knew that I was gay and didn’t have a problem with it, but I just didn’t want to admit it. After I had graduated and it had been a year or so, I called a few friends of mine in the fraternity and individually had the talk with them. I was like, “Look I’m gay.” Everybody said something along the lines of “I already knew.” Or “Cool. Are you dating anyone?” It was so not a big deal by the time I decided to come out in 2006. I kind of felt stupid, like, why did I make this into such a big thing when it really wasn’t. There weren’t any openly gay guys in my frat, but there were openly gay guys at other frats at USC in the mid-2000’s. On the one hand it was kind of fun being in the closet in college, the suspicion and sneaking, but on the other hand I look back and wonder if I had been out would I have had more fun.

Thanksgiving is coming up. What are you thankful for?

I’m thankful for a lot of things. Definitely thankful that I’m still doing this. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s gotten me through a really interesting transition in my life. I keep talking about real estate, but like I said it’s my long-term career. I’ve always wanted to be a broker and work on the agency side of things and for a long time I didn’t really had the confidence. I didn’t think I had the experience or the network, all of those kind of doubts go through your mind in any industry. I’m really thankful that I – in a sense, stepped out of my comfort zone – because as much as I wanted to do porn, I never really thought I’d be doing it for a long time, or that I’d build success in. Over the last two years I really built up my confidence and I realized that there are certain industries, anything in sales, in self-promotion, where you build yourself up, that’s where the crossover is really great for me. So porn has given me back the confidence to go out and start prospecting and build client relationships and tell people “I can do this. You don’t need somebody with thirty years’ experience. All you need is somebody who’s hungry and wants to do this.” That’s definitely a big thing I’m thankful for.

So porn is the big thing. It has helped you in a lot of ways.

Yes. The experience that it’s given me. The takeaway is the confidence-building. I’m also thankful for the freedom I have in my life to be able to film and do real estate, and not be tied to a desk. Of course I’m thankful for my family, those that know what I’m doing, especially. But even those that don’t.

Who knows what you’re doing?

My parents know. A couple of my cousins. I’m also very thankful for the network of friends in Los Angeles who have stood by me through all the different transitions. My friends from USC. My fraternity brothers. Ex-girlfriends. Other miscellaneous friends from school. I have a very eclectic group of people who stand by me. I’m thankful for all of them.

If you had to throw an orphan Thanksgiving for porn stars, who would you invite?

Questions like that are weird, it’s sort of like, “Who’s your favorite scene partner?”

I’m not asking you that.

I know. But outside of people that I know or that I’ve worked with, I don’t really follow who else is in the industry.

So you stay in a bubble?

I kind of do. That just goes back to that I don’t really advertise that this is what I do, neccessarily. Like I said, I’m not trying to be a star.

You’re not studying other porn stars.

I’m not looking and saying, “How did so-and-so become the biggest gay porn star? I want to follow his path.” I obviously want to do well in the industry because there’s a financial aspect and I want to be well-liked. But it’s not my goal to be the biggest gay porn star. My goal is for the people I work with to walk away from a scene saying, “That Mike De Marco was really great to work with.”

When you get off work, are you even sexually inclined? Or is it the last thing you want to thing about?

Yes and no. Some days I’m drained and I don’t want to. I had certain relationships that were non-sexual and I thought “Thank god you’re not horny all the time, because I just don’t have it in me right now.” But others I was like “I wanna fuck right now, all the time” and they were like, “Aren’t you tired of having sex? How do I know you really want to have sex with me? Other people pay you pretend to have sex.” I was like, “Here’s the thing, you’re not paying me. So if I’m having sex with you, I want to be doing it.” But I ask myself these questions all the time. Do I want to go out? Do I want to go to the bars? Get on Grindr? Go meet friends and maybe meet somebody? It changes and it varies with the person more than anything. I can think of the examples I was making – the people who didn’t want to have that much sex – I was actually not that into them but happy to have someone to spend time with. But the people that I really wanted to have sex with, I was really them.

So I won’t ask ask you to say who is your favorite scene partner, but whose dick feels the best? And be specific!

Some of the best, and I’m sure I’m going to leave someone out, but I have to give a shout-out to Trent Ducati. He’s big, he has a little bit of a curve and it’s really thick. One of the best was Boomer Banks.

Mike with Aleks Buldocek at Hustlaball NY in 2014.

What does that feel like? Do you lose feeling?

No. It was really great actually. I don’t think he came out of me more than twice during the entire filming. I just kind of sat on it the entire day. I felt really great.

A lot of our commenters give him shade because they say he can’t keep it hard. Did you experience that problem?

I didn’t have that problem with him. No.

Good to hear.

He’s a very nice guy. We did a very good scene. Trent also. Always great to work with. Adam Russo is always one of my favorites. I’ve done a few scenes with him. I don’t think he’d be upset to hear me say he’s not the biggest in the business. But he’s amazing to work with. Always hard. Knows what he’s doing with his penis. Always makes it enjoyable.

Last month you got fucked onstage by Aleks Buldocek. What was that like?

It was my first time performing at Hustlaball and it was exhilarating. The feeling of being onstage with everybody watching, having sex live like that, it was kind of indescribable. But what’s funny is that going into that experience, I wasn’t that nervous. I filmed so much and for so many different studios that when Boomer first approached me, and we talked about it, I was like, “Okay, where are we having sex? What does it need to be?” “He was like, “You’ve got the stage for 15 minutes. You can go softcore, hardcore, you don’t have to cum or you can if you want. It’s really up to you.” To be the first people onstage was really great, especially it being the first time that I had done something like that. We went up and went into it and kind of let it happen naturally. For the most part I tuned out the fact that the audience was there, but in the back of my head the whole time I was thinking “How does this look?” I felt like I was on set filming a scene. When I came down off of the stage, I panicked and started asking everyone “How did it look? Was it any good?” Everybody said it was great, fantastic, but I was like, “Could you see anything? How was the angle? Could you see the penetration? Did it look like a scene?” That was interesting. I was so excited going in, I wasn’t nervous, but right after I got offstage I was terrified that it hadn’t gone well. But thankfully it got good feedback. I may perform at Hustaball Vegas. I was there last year but didn’t perform.

Do you have a routine when you’re having sex off-camera? Things you like to do and don’t. When no one’s paying you?

I’m a cuddler. I’m all about good old fashioned missionary. I like to look at somebody. If I’m dating someone and seeing them, and there’s a romantic interest there, I want to feel that connection and see it and look at you while we’re having sex. Not to say that doggy is bad, but I’m very vanilla when it comes to sex off camera. I just like to keep it simple. It’s easier to ensure that things feel good when its simple.

Do you think you’ll keep doing porn for a long time?

It’s not a forever thing, but I do enjoy it. I think as long as I enjoy it I’ll be involved in the industry in some way. Whether it’s filming ocassionaly, or escorting, or doing Hustlaball, or doing things through Hook U or Rentboy. It’s not something I’m going to write off. I can’t put a deadline on it. I can in my head but my mother told me as a kid, “Never say never,” and I didn’t listen for the longest time. But after the last two years of filming porn and escorting and putting things together, never say never seems appropriate. You never know what’s around the bend.

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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Randy Blue is working from home today after an arduous journey back to Los Angeles from New Orleans, where he and a friend spent Thanksgiving weekend. “I spend a lot of time working from home because the staff is shooting,” Randy (his real first name) says, “Sometimes as much as you hate to admit it, you can be a distraction. It’s easier for me to get stuff done from home.” Being at a remove from the shooting also allows him the pleasure to experience his company’s porn output with a fresh eye, and surprisingly, he’s not desensitized to it. He still jerks off to his company’s scenes, though RB’s cam shows have become some of his favorite ways to “let off steam” as he describes it. After over 12 years running Randy Blue, and several years before that producing porn for early internet porn pass sites, it’s amazing that Randy still exhibits the same drive and energy over “Blue movies” that he did in the early days. But it’s the business side that is his main concern. So while his staff is off shooting porn, Randy’s dealing with 101 different things to make his business better, from scheduling to financial issues to technological improvements like the specialized camming system that he spent months developing. I spoke with him in the midst of all this, to talk about how he built Randy Blue, his company’s special waiting period for new porn stars, and what he considers the biggest threat to his business — sorry guys, it’s not gay-for-pay.

Adam: When you go on a vacation like the one you went on this weekend, do you turn off from work, or everywhere you go you’re scouting and looking at the boys?

One of RB’s latest scenes, with Kurtis Wolfe and Austin Wolf flip-fucking.

You don’t do many interviews. Is that by choice?

I don’t do many. I used to do quite a bit, but it’s a different world than it used to be in that regard. The way that you promote and what gets people to you is not like it used to be. You used to do an interview for a magazine. Well, magazines don’t really exist anymore. Blogs have really whittled down the kind of content they’re looking for to get viewers to their site. I’m not a super private person but the opportunity just hasn’t arisen and I don’t really insert myself into a lot of different things, I guess.

So it’s not a reclusive thing, it’s just not necessary for you to be the public face of Randy Blue in the way Michael Lucas or Chi Chi LaRue is?

I never wanted to be a public face. When I created Randy Blue, the name was my alter ego, but as you grow and your staff is also along with you greeting the models, shooting the content, you know, Randy Blue is more than one person now. It’s who we all are. We all have our vision of what that is. But I never wanted to be an aging pornographer that puts himself in every shot or every thing. I don’t think that’s what consumers — and this is just my opinion and it could be totally wrong — but I don’t think consumers want to see me in everything. They come to Randy Blue because it’s an experience they want, and not a person.

That seems like a shift that’s taken place. Individual figures, even the porn stars, are less important than what the porn experience that each company depicts and offers is.

I agree. I don’t think there’s going to be, for lack of a better analogy, another Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt or Chi Chi LaRue. Chi Chi is absolutely, if you talk about gay porn and the history, there’s probably no one who stands out as a figure more than Chi Chi LaRue. I don’t necessarily think that that is the time and place that we are in right now. I don’t think people really want to hear my political beliefs. They want to see a great product. That’s more important to them.

Take me back to the beginning. For people who don’t know, because it’s been a while since you’ve done an interview, what got you into the industry? How did Randy Blue start?

I was a west coast sales manager for a company, and I was traveling all the time. When I would have free time, different friends of mine and I would talk about looking online at porn. It was such a new thing. I had started this company where I would shoot content for, at the time, all of these bigger sites. Companies that were the grandfathers of internet porn at the time, and they all needed content. Back then it wasn’t like a boutique shopping experience. You’d buy a pass and it would give you “access” to thousands of sites and most of those sites were just horrible. But they needed content. I would look and say, “None of this is turning me on. The guys are not attractive. It’s amateur. The lighting’s bad. It’s blurry. It’s bad.” Our company would supply content to all of these different websites. We found out that our stuff was better. So I’m like, “Why are we being the middle man when they all just want the cheapest possible, and are mostly owned by straight men, and have no idea what a gay customer wants to see. Why are we being the middle men when we can develop our own site?” That’s what happened. I wasn’t seeing the kind of porn that I wanted to see. I wanted to have something with really good looking guys in it that I would spend money on. That’s really how it happened.

When you were watching porn, prior to the internet, what was the first stuff that really excited you?

I was like every other college student in the 80s. I remember all the big Catalina and Falcon movies. The stars back then. The ones that really made you look. It was no different than that. The movie that sticks out the most in my mind, is Big Guns. I think most people remember that one because there were so many hot guys in that and the plot was just amazing. That one that has always stayed with me. At the time of VHS, Catalina and Falcon were basically the only names you knew. They had great plots. The guys would be “Oh my gosh I can’t believe this guy is doing porn.” That was always the most exciting thing about it, was seeing someone you couldn’t believe would be doing porn because they were so gorgeous. When we started Randy Blue, I wanted the experience of finding guys that you would never think could be in porn. I always said Chris Rockaway looked more like a movie star than a porn star. He didn’t look like somebody who would be doing porn. But I wanted there to be more updates and bring a lot more product to the site.

So you start your company. Do you call it Randy Blue from the start?

Yes. Well, we started a company called Max Pixels, and that’s the one where we should shoot for other companies. One night I was trying to think of a name for the site, and at the time, you would go online and all the websites would be like “Twink Boys Fucking”, “Fuck Buddies”, or something like that. I thought that wasn’t really something you could market. I wanted something where if somebody wore a t-shirt or something, someone would say, “Ohhh, Randy Blue,” but it wouldn’t be so obvious to other people what it is. A lot of people think it’s Randy Blue because my name is Randy — which it is — but I started thinking of how the word randy used to mean horny. Blue was a reference to pornography. In the fifties and sixties they used to call them blue movies. So I liked that. Randy Blue sounded like it could be a real person’s name. It just kind of worked.

At what point did you feel like things just clicked. Was there a moment of success or triumph, or a star that you found, where you thought, “Okay, now we’re on the map!” ?

I think when we saw that guys wanted to start working with us exclusively. This was a long time ago. This was Jay Lopez, Kody Henshaw, Sebastian Rivers. When you looked at those three guys, they were kind of the first that wanted to work with us. You know, gay, bisexual, I was like, “Wow people want to work with us because they like my company. They like the porn we put out.” I was kind of flabbergasted. From that, we kept going, and realized we could have exclusives on our site. Then comes Reese Rideout and Chris Rockway and Xander Scott and Leo Giamani, and others. That was when I started realizing, we had the customers but also the models wanted to stay put and work here. That was when I thought, “You know this can work, and I think we can build a brand name unlike any other.”

Early Randy Blue star Sebastian Rivers.

Knowing how to form this company. Everybody has this idea of what they think it would be like to work in porn. Usually those ideas are completely wrong. You have to find good people who want to give up their jobs to work in porn, but also bring something to the table, talent-wise. Creativity. But also good people that you can trust. There’s a lot of people who have this idea that porn is nothing but a non-stop party. I know you know differently by now. But it’s really a business and like any business you have to have people you can put your trust into who are good for your company and will help it grow. You have to have that to lay the foundation for something that’s gonna grow.

Did you have disasters on set? Was there a learning curve? What did you have to tame in those early days?

There’s always something. I would say, though, that a lot of situations are no different today than they were in the early days. You have people who can’t do the scene. Or you have people that come into town and they have their ulterior motives for coming into town. In other words, they didn’t really come into town to work with you, they came into town for a free ticket so they could meet somebody they’ve been talking to online. Or they think it’s going to be a drug party which it’s not. I’ve talked to some of my competitors, and they have some stories that have literally made my toes curl. But I’ll tell you, one of the things I’ve always held really strongly to, and it’s always seemed to work for us, I don’t know for how much longer, but it’s always worked — when I would talk to other models and other people in the industry, I was amazed that they would talk to a model and within two days fly that person out to do a scene. Whereas because of our schedule, editing and shooting, and because I truly believe that you’re going to be much more successful if you have somebody who wants to work for your company, not just any company. Our guys have to wait four to eight weeks to work with us and they wait patiently to do so because we have a great reputation. Building that reputation came from making guys wait. Because there is something that intrinsically sets a tone with a model. If you’re trying so hard to get them in before they can really think about doing porn, to get them in before they can change their minds, you might get a great looking guy but you’re going to lose guys and you’re not going to be able to get them back, because once they make a snap decision and once they go back home and deal with the repercussions of it, you’re not going to have nearly as a good a person working for you. If they’re able to think about it, think about the good and bad scenarios, and they come back and say, “I still want to do this work,” then you’ve given them a chance to think about it, and the relationship going forward is much, much better.

That’s really interesting. How does that work with the gay-for-pay models?

I’m glad you asked that, and I will tell you how I feel. I know that on comment sections people are going to go nuts. I have had gay-for-pay models who have done fantastic in their scenes. I have brought in gay performers who are rotten. Horrible, can’t get it up. It makes no difference. When people say, “Oh they’re gay, they’re going to be better.” Well, there is a good chance, yes, some of them are going to be much better. But it really gets down to how good of a performer that person is, and how committed they are to coming in and doing the scene. We’ve had gay performers that just cannot do it at all. We’ve had straight performers who are legendary. They do a great job in the scene, promote themselves well, and are easy to work with. Just because someone’s gay doesn’t mean they are going to have a hard-on the entire shoot, are going to do a good job, and aren’t going to stare blankly into the camera. It makes no difference. You bring people in and you pick the ones that are the best to work. Sometimes a customer only cares about the person’s looks. As long as they like what that person looks like, they don’t care how bad they are. Other times they’re not as giving. It really is a case by case thing and I don’t think you can have a gay porn company with just 100% gay models. A lot of guys are bisexual. A lot of guys are doing this because they want to test the waters. They are curious. We’re human beings and we’re supposed to be curious. I always find it odd that society tells people, “You need to experiment and explore,” and the moment they do, we’re like, “You’re gay.” Well, they may not be gay, maybe they just want to explore and figure things out for themselves. It’s really not my place to tell them who or what they are.

As long as they do a good job.

Right. And they’re great with their customers. It is what it is in that regard.

Do you ever retire stars? Do you ever hit a point with stars where you say, you know, “We’ve used you plenty. You should move on.”?

Very rarely. That’s their decision to make. Some of them have saved their money and decide to go to school. Some of them decide, “You know what? I’ve done it. I’m going to do something else.” Sometimes we say, “You know we’ve got a lot of videos of you.” Realistically, porn is based on new faces, not always, but there’s always going to be people who come in who are new and you have to give them a shot.

So are you in your day to day, mostly dealing with logistics and Evil Jeff and the other folks are doing the creative?

You know, I turned 50 this year, and that doesn’t mean at 50 you’re tapped out, but I think every ten years there’s a new generation or so looking at what you’re doing and I think anybody has to be able to step back and say, “I’m not a Svengali here. I have to rely on people who have fresher ideas and who look at things differently than how I looked at it.” It’s a different generation. My time is spent dealing with a myriad of different issues. Financial, technology, the cam side of our business. There’s plenty to keep me busy. But I’ve been very, very happy with the creative side of our business. I think Evil Jeff does a fantastic job, along with Jeremy and Brian Wow. They do an incredibly good job. I may offer suggestions or in meetings I’ll say, “I feel like this worked and this didn’t.” But I have to allow them to have the creative freedom to try new things and do them and convince me of it. I think that’s how you move forward as a company.

Longtime RB mainstay Chris Rockway.

I don’t think there are new things that people are looking for. That is such a broad question, because every human being has things that emotionally get them to pull out their credit card or emotionally get them to spend money or to become a fan of a certain person or a certain thing. I think we’ve seen hipster porn, fetish porn, all different kinds of porn. All of those have their fans. But in all honesty, it really is about providing a very good product. The filming has to be great, the lighting has to be great, the model has to be good-looking and needs to perform. Let’s cut to the real heart of the matter here. While porn will change, and it’s always going to evolve and change, it’s not that people’s tastes have changed. I go online and I’m sure every one of my competitors do too. I’m not competing against people because of an idea or a change. I’m competing against myself over free porn. That’s what it is. It makes no difference because no matter what change or anything I would do aesthetically, it would still be up for free somewhere else very quickly. So you’re constantly competing against your own product that you created against people who are putting it up for free. I think we get sidetracked by, well, I’m missing this or that. But it’s really about the fact that you’re constantly fighting against free.

I’ve wondered about that. Do you think porn companies would be smart to de-tech themselves and make things more low-fi the way free porn is on X-Tube – or should the porn industry step it up and make better production values, scripts, and quality so it does stand out?

Our biggest problem is not because we haven’t upped our production values. You’re seeing really good production values from several studios. Our biggest problem is if our industry had come together to fight piracy, the way that a lot of them have come together to fight condom porn, then I think we would have done much better. It’s nothing to do with what’s out there and what people can get. It’s that we as an industry were horrible at coming together and fighting against the thing that has taken us to the woodshed and given us a beating. Hollywood didn’t just lie back. They worked together and prevented a lot of different situations in their own industry. While I’m not comparing ourselves to Hollywood, we could have been much more aggressive at working with each other. But it’s a small industry and people are very wary of working with each other. So it is what it is in that regard.

Do you have other studios that you admire?

Of course I do. I admire Sean Cody. I think they do a fantastic job and have always done a fantastic job. They’ve never strayed from what they do or what they have been. I think that’s very commendable and I think they do a fantastic, fantastic job. I think on production values Cockyboys does a great job. There’s some really good studios out there. Of course there’s people that I admire but those two stand out more than others. But I see things every week that I think are good.

Do you have close industry friends? Directors or studio owners?

I’m not really close to a lot of different people in the industry and that’s not because I feel like I’ve been wronged by anyone or I need to be reclusive. It’s just that I work a lot. When I have free time, I tend to want to be with my family and friends. I also kind of started eschewing a lot of the different events. The big weeklong events, because it really became more about drinking and partying than it was about any solid, good business networking. That’s fine though. I have no problem with people getting together to blow off some steam, but that just wasn’t my idea of what I wanted to do. I probably sound like a snob.

Nah. I get it, I wouldn’t want to go to a lot of that stuff either.

I’d rather refresh and do some different things.

Now, doing what you do, are you completely desensitized to porn?

Not at all.

So if you want to get off, are you going to put on your own scenes?

I do love to watch our scenes. Since I’m not shooting them like I used to, it makes it fresh for me. I love to watch what other people do too. I don’t think it has anything to do with me being desensitized because of what I do for a living. I think a lot of it now is just timewise. I don’t have as much time as I used to. Now I have other hobbies and things I like to do. Those things kind of tend to be my outlet for letting off a little steam.

So what was the last scene that you jerked off to?

Probably not one of our scenes but our cam shows. I really like camming. It’s raw, unscripted, it’s what those guys want to do. If they get a partner in there that they really like, it’s really hot and sexy. For me that works. But it’s weird, when you know all the models, it’s kind of weird to be jerking off to your employees.

I guess it’s the only business where you’re supposed to be doing that. How does the live cam thing work for you guys? You guys have your own system for camming right? It’s not like Live Jasmin or Flirt 4 Free, right?

Right. We wanted to develop our own system because we wanted to be able to do this and bring it to our viewers. We did a lot of trial-and-error testing to figure out what our customers would like in order to bring it to them. In the end, it’s because I believe this is the most amateur thing you can get. It’s live, in your face, real time, no editing or changes. Nothing.

Obviously the big thing that’s changed over the years is the rise of bareback. Have you ever wanted to go bareback?

Sometimes I go on blogs and read people saying I’m a big condom advocate. I’m not really a condom advocate. I believe that consenting adults should do whatever they want to do in their home. It’s not for me to sit there and tell people what they should do. It’s not for me to judge or comment on in that way. But that being said, I live in a city that has a condom law, and whether or not I agree with that condom law, I have to abide by what that law is in this city. Right now, to move to another state is not something I want to do. I live in Los Angeles because I love living in Los Angeles. My employees love living in Los Angeles. So to move and set up a new site with a certain amount of difficulty, is not what I want to do. But I will say this. I knew when bareback started people would jump on it and they would be like, “Yeah, I’m into this.” I don’t think most consumers have any idea. Maybe in the beginning, a lot of companies got a bump, people came running. But within a few months, every bareback video can be found just as easily as any condom video, for free on the internet. So while it gave them a boost, it’s not as big a boost as people thought I could be. Also you have to take some commenters with a grain of salt. I don’t think they have any idea that there is not a standardized HIV test for the industry. One studio did at home over the counter HIV tests to use, while some have used pretty standard tests and sent their models to a clinic to be tested. There’s not some standard. Models usually do porn, not all the time, but some do it out of desperation, and they have made the decision they have made based on the fact that they have to pay rent next week. They’re not feeling great about their decision and a lot of the studios have not put in the time to ensure that safety rules on their sets. Let’s be honest there are a lot of STDs out there that are not HIV. There’s still syphilis and gonorrhea. And a lot of times people don’t get a full test. When I see viewers screaming for bareback, they have no guarantee that the guys they’re watching have been filmed in the safest possible way for them to enjoy their porn.

But for some people that’s part of the thrill — the risk and the chance of infection…

That is part of the thrill for some people, yes. But we’re all still businesses that are regulated by the United States of America. So it’s not going to be this nasty free-for-all that some people want it to be. When all’s said and done it’s a business. You don’t want to kill that, and I understand it’s a fantasy. We all have fantasies and that’s what keeps us going. But at the same time, you have to make sure that everybody that comes into this arena, that comes into this industry to work, that they can work in the safest possible environment.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

It begins like the plot of a porno. The head of the frat devises a humiliating set of things his pledges must bring back to the frat house if they want to get in. Item number 5: “Go to the store and buy all the gay porn magazines they have.” The pledges oblige, of course, and return home with a big stash of Honchos and Mandates. The other frat brothers snicker and mock the pledges, and the pledgemaster commends their loyalty. When everyone’s back is turned, he slips one of the magazines down his pants, brings it back to his room and has his gleeful way with it and a jar of vaseline. Cut to some twenty-odd years later, that frat boy and I are sitting across from each other at a diner on the Upper West Side. He goes by the name Rocco Steele and for the past seven months he has gone from jerking off to porn to being the same kind of object of lust his younger self desired. If it seems like a simple story — “one day I was watching movies, the next day I was in em” — it’s anything but. Along the way there was coming out, 14 years working in corporate America, years of drug and alcohol abuse, and another 16 years of sobriety. After two years of escorting Steele entered the porn world where he’s used his enormous dick to fuck bottoms like Armond Rizzo and Allen King for both bareback and condom-porn companies. He is also, surprisingly, one of the new breed of porn stars who bareback — along with Blue Bailey and others — who are open and honest about their HIV status, and willing to talk about all the moral complexities that come along with that, which we do at length in the following interview.

Adam: You’ve been in the industry for seven months, and you were escorting for two years prior?

Rocco Steele: I started escorting in the summer of 2012. I had been in corporate America for a lifetime. I started out working in the legal profession. Graduated from law school. Worked at law firms as a research assistant for many years because I never passed the bar exam. I took it twice and on the third try I decided, fuck it. I wasn’t really interested in it any more. Then I went into the fashion and beauty world. I did that for about 14 years. I got a lot of great experience but I just got tired of -

Not having sex with everybody.

Ha. No! I didn’t mind the work but I was sick of paying the dues and not getting to where I wanted to be. I knew I was a very creative person and was contributing a lot to the organizations, but I wasn’t getting the promotions. As I got older I was becoming the oldest person in any office by like twenty years. I was in my forties. I thought, this really isn’t going to happen for me. For the last several years there was a lot of resentment on my part and I also wasn’t performing at a level anymore that I could ever really succeed with. I decided it was best for me to leave. So I left my job and I started escorting just to kind of make ends meet.

When did you think, “Escorting is something I can do”?

When I left my job in May of 2012, I thought I would do all the right things. I was freelancing and doing some set design work on photo shoots, fashion things. I loved it but the jobs just were few and far between. $250 bucks a day, only three days a month. I was dating somebody who was from L.A. and had been in the escorting world. He was like, “You should just try it. I’ll write the ad for you.” I didn’t think I would get hired. I put the ad up and I got three jobs and made a thousand bucks that day. Which was almost my rent. I was living out in Brooklyn so my rent was really cheap at the time.

Cut to this weekend when you were busy with guys all Saturday and Sunday right?

No, no, no. First of all, I try not to take more than a client a day. It’s too exhausting and it’s not fair to the client to not be fresh.

So when you were saying this weekend that your days were filling up and we couldn’t meet?

I just have a lot of other things going on. This weekend was also my first real weekend back after Spain. I was in London two weeks prior to Spain. It was poorly planned on my part. But I had made commitments to studios over there and I had to keep them. Anyway, by the time I got back from Spain, I was exhausted. There was a lot of catching up to do. But with regards to my weekend clients, I will allow myself to see three on Sunday. I don’t know why, maybe everybody wants to get laid before they go back to work, but my phone blows up all day Sunday. So that day only I leave my day open for those appointments. Saturday usually is one, two max.

I got the impression you were just fucking every hour. 

No, no, no. I could never. That just makes me cringe at the thought of it. Just because I don’t think it’s very healthy for anybody to expose yourself that many times a day. Whatever.

I was impressed at your presumed stamina. 

No, no, no. I mean, three is really the max. The reason why is, a lot of times it’s not just the sex, it’s that you’re the therapist for these guys. You walk in the door and your job is to make your client feel like they’re the most important thing in the world. I get a lot of repeat clients and I get good feedback. I hear from the clients that there are escorts out there and walk in the door and expect the client to worship them, and act like the client is lucky that they even showed up. I just don’t come from that mentality. I really believe that is what I’m there for, to enjoy it. I also pick and choose and vet my clients, so by the time I get there I really know what I’m walking into and I’m looking forward to it.

How long do most of your sessions last?

I often talk my clients out of anything more than an hour especially for first-time clients. If you’re committing yourself for that hour, and really committing yourself, you’re really checked-in for that hour. It’s not just the physical, it’s that you are there and engaged holistically. I know a lot of people in the industry who do the same thing. I also hear about people who don’t do that, and they’re the ones who don’t get called back. That’s why I say I can only take one a day.

When you were growing up did you look at gay porn?

You know the funny thing is, I thought I was straight pretty much through college. I mean, I had feelings in high school, in the locker room and stuff like that. In college I was the president of my fraternity, so I kind of had to keep those feelings under wraps. My first experience with gay porn, that I remember, is when I was in the fraternity. Part of our hazing ritual was that we would send our pledges out to buy gay porn magazines and bring them back to the frat house. Looking back it was super bi-curious -

It’s also super Fraternity X — homoerotic initiation that betrays the homosexuality of the leaders.

Nothing physical took place. We also had them go to a gay bar and get the autograph of the bartender on a bar napkin. We seemed to be so fascinated with things like that. But when the magazines came back to the house, I always was like, I’ve got to get my hands on one of those. One time I was able to do that, and that was my first experience. I was like, “Wow.”

Was that an awakening for you?

In college, even though I dated a couple of girls, it became clearer and clearer that I was gay. It was in college that I came out to my best friend who was a girl. I didn’t come out-out until I was 25 and had just started law school. But in college I came out only to two or three of my close friends and left it at that. It was a relief to be able to tell a few people. At that point I had accepted it. It was the eighties and everybody was very androgynous. Guys weren’t afraid to be a little bit more flamboyant because a lot of our music idols were, like Adam Ant. I was more conservative because I was in a very preppy 80’s fraternity and I would be fascinated with guys who were very comfortable with their sexuality or their appearance, whether it was a sexuality thing or not. There was this one kid who I was just obsessed with in college and I would see him in the student center and I’d be sitting at my fraternity table and I’d just be trying to be cool with my fraternity brothers while also salivating over this guy. My best girl friend in college and I were inseparable and did everything together. She knew that I had this mad crush on him, and then we started going to gay bars. But I went as this voyeuristic, curious person who wasn’t 100% out yet. He would take us and he would be so comfortable in his skin and I was so envious. I maintained that kind of gay-from-a-distance thing throughout college, but the first month after I graduated, I got a job as a waiter in my hometown and I befriended this other guy, Steve, and we became inseparable throughout the summer. Late in the summer, we took a trip to New York City. My sister was living here at the time and we stayed with her. We were hanging out one night, and after the summer of hanging out nonstop, we got really drunk and before I knew it we were making out in the doorway of a building. We became boyfriends for the next couple of months. It was very clear at that point that that was who I was and what I wanted and that’s where I felt comfortable. A couple months later I moved in with my sister and her husband and at that point I was out, I was in New York City, it was 1988 and I was free to be me.

I thought you said, “Free to BB” at first.

Ha. No. I was from a small town and it was a kid in a candy store situation, but not in a crazy slutty promiscuous way. It was the era of AIDS and I was really scared. I remember I went to a gay party in Chelsea as soon as I moved here. It was still a rough area then. At this party the host took me into his bedroom. He fucked me raw and that was one of my first experiences ever being fucked and I freaked out. It was 1988 and it was New York City and a guy in Chelsea just fucked me up the ass raw. It took me a while to get tested, but luckily when I did everything was fine. Anyway my point was, now I was in New York City and that’s when I was really 100% out.

Does that unsafe sex put you on guard or does it lead to a downward spiral?

It was definitely like “That’s not what I want to do.” Because it was such terrifying thing at the moment it happened. For many years after I was very careful, and then I came back to my hometown for law school, after living in New York. I met this guy and because we were in a relationship for a couple of years we started having unprotected sex. We were tested together and did that whole thing. But after having that it kind of opened up this thing, like, “Oh my god, I don’t want to go back.” For the rest of my life I just kind of experienced both, because up until last year and the onset of Truvada being so readily available to people, my life was 50% bareback, 50% safe. I only topped ever, so in my mind, ignorantly, I thought I was always okay. Life progressed and I got older and stayed negative, which just reaffirmed that I was okay, and was never going to become positive because I was a top. I can count on six fingers the amount of times I’ve bottomed in my entire life, and it’s only when I’ve been in a relationship and my partner wanted me to bottom. So for the longest time it was true. Being a top you’re obviously less at risk, but I really believed I wasn’t at risk at all. Two years ago, my number was up.

There’s a growing trend of guys who seroconvert later in life in their forties and fifties. 

Yeah. I read an article, as soon as I became positive, one of the gay magazines did an article about the stigma attached to older gays becoming positive because “we should know better.” and we lived through it and now we’ve let our guard down and shame on us. It wasn’t saying that, it was just saying that those are the views that out there.

But at the same time it’s so human and understandable. People spend their whole lives being good and safe and that’s a hard thing to hold up your entire life. Sometimes you want to see what you’ve been missing. 

For me it wasn’t that view. It wasn’t like, “I’ve been a good boy and now I want to be a bad boy,” it was truly that my whole life it was a 50/50 thing. When I was with the guys I wanted to be safe I was happily safe, and when I was with guys who were willing to bareback, I would bareback. It’s just funny that literally the year before Truvada came out – well it’s been out, but the whole PrEP thing, literally a year before it became available and people discovered it was a means to prevent, was when I became positive. But then again I don’t know if I would have taken it because my mindset was that I was not at risk.

Are you bitter about that?

God no. I knew the game I was playing the whole time, so there was no bitterness. Also because of my being in recovery, it was a “life on life’s terms” type of thing. There was nothing I could do about it. So now you just be responsible about it. I think I’m healthier now, not just physically now, but internally my numbers are better than a lot of negative people because I’m very aware. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs. I get lots of sleep. I exercise. I do so many things that are right for me. It’s not saying that something can’t come and take me out anyway. I’m not invincible, but it’s made me more aware of my own health and taking care of myself, which I always did anyway because I’ve been sober for 16 years this week. So when it happened it was just like, let’s get on with it. What do we have to do? The difference between me and people who are negative on Truvada is just the status. We’re both taking the same exact pills, and doing the same exact thing. We’re equally healthy, but I’m undetectable and they’re negative. It’s just funny in this day and age, that I can live. My doctor said something else will take me out, unless I become irresponsible and go off my meds, or by some freak of nature my meds stop working.

Knock on wood that won’t happen. How did you reconcile that with doing bareback porn? I know you didn’t do that by design. You’ve said they were the first people to contact you. A lot of people hold the view that bareback did a lot of damage for the gay community. But I’ve talked to a lot of porn stars over the past year and it seems like many of bareback porn stars I talk to are in the same scenario as you. They’re positive, they’re undetectable and they know that they are not transmitting anything to people. But that information doesn’t necessarily get included on the DVD boxes.

Right. This is my bottom line. I’m pro-safe sex. I believe negative should stay negative. I’m positive, there’s nothing I can do about that. What I can do about it is be responsible. When I’m barebacking in real life or in porn, I bareback with other undetectable people, not just positive but undetectable people, because I can still catch another strain of the virus. It doesn’t mean I’m 100% risk free, but those are ways I can minimize transmission of my strain or somebody else transmitting their strain to me. If I’m having bareback sex with a negative person, its their decision, and I’ve had several negative actors that I’ve been wanting to be able to do scenes with, and they’re bareback negative actors, but they only bareback with negative tops. That’s fine, I respect it. It’s their decision and it’s fine, I wouldn’t want them to put themselves at risk. Because even though I’m undetectable there’s still a slight risk.

I thought the recent study showed that undetectable couldn’t transmit at all. 

I don’t know. I keep hearing 1-2% risk. Even though that’s small. There has to be so many variables lining up for that to happen. I don’t want to be the person to say there’s no risk at all. I was that person who used to say there’s no risk at all, and look what happened. I became positive. I don’t ever want to be that person again. I just want to stay respectful of other’s people’s views and sensitive to other’s peoples habits. I’ve also told studios that I will not be part of videos that outright promote the transmission of HIV.

Viral Loads.

Yeah. I mean I’ve done scenes for certain studios that do stuff like that, and I’ve made it very clear that my scenes cannot be part of anything that promotes the transmission of HIV or promotes drugs, partying, chems, whatever you call it. I won’t even allow poppers to be seen in my scenes. I don’t do poppers. But some bottoms do, but I refuse to allow them to show it on camera.

I’m sure your bottoms need them in deluxe Costco size.

Ha! I don’t know if that answers it clearly.

Well let’s play devil’s advocate. Some people would counter that, which it’s admirable that you’re conscious who you do scenes with and you tell the companies how you want the scenes to go and what they can’t do, which is more than I hear from most people, some people would say, “Okay, if you’re so committed why don’t you ask the companies to put something at the top of the videos to just say, ‘This is what this is,” or  or at least clarify the nature of the risks involved. So that people watching at home – kids or other men your age, whatever, don’t watch it and say, I want to go out and do that. I think in all honesty, people do pick up their cues from porn.

I was educated by society. It was the eighties. I knew what you were and weren’t supposed to do, so to put it on gay  porn actors, to say, it’s their responsibility to educate the young is a lot, I’m not saying it’s not our responsibility at all, but I think that I learned in the eighties what you weren’t and were supposed to do. When the nation didn’t want to talk about it. But if I was able to get that from society, what risky behavior is. Everybody in and out of the gay community has a responsibility to educate but are we doing it perfectly? NO. There are so many ways to educate and thus learn what is risky and safe behavior. But the messages are out there. I think by the time you turn on MachoMoe.com, or whatever free porn site – and by the way Macho Moe does have a disclaimer “Bareback sex is risky behavior. Always practice safe sex.”- but I think by the time you get to watching the porn actor put his raw penis in the hole, you’ve been bombarded with enough messages at that point to make up your own mind.

It’s that old thing about glorifying something. 

And I understand that because I have young followers, and I block everyday people that I perceive to be younger than 18. I’ll block them. No questions asked. It’s not worth it for the extra followers. But I want to go back to that because I don’t want to be glib about it in my response. You’re digging deep which is good. I don’t want to just brush it off and say it’s not our responsibility.

Like some kid sitting in the midwest where they can’t by law teach about condoms. If he watches a video he may – not always – but he may be inspired to go out and do it, no?

Where is it against the law to educate about safe sex? Maybe I’m naive but they do teach about condoms everywhere now. I went to a Catholic school in the midwest in the early eighties and we talked about penis and vagina and STDs back then. I mean maybe the nuns told us that abstinence was the way to avoid it but the dialogue was happening.

Not in the deep South. 

Come on this is 2015, in the age of the internet and social media.. I think everywhere they do. I don’t think in the US nowadays anybody doesn’t know. The message is out there. Definitely in the US.

I think it’s not what it was. 

Meaning.

In the 1990’s. 

It’s not bombarding us as much?

I used to turn on every talk show and even if the topic was “My Slutty Daughter” somebody would stand up and say “Don’t you worry about AIDS?” And demonstrations of condom use were on MTV and stuff like that.

Look, we may not have Jerry Springer sensatiionalism anymore but the messages are out there. Look, at the end of the day I don’t want to say I don’t have any responsibility because I do. Am I doing this perfectly? No. I’m okay saying that. I’m okay with that being on record. If I continue in this industry, then I can hopefully be in more of a position to negotiate and try to influence things. In terms of glorification, I mean, it’s true. There’s a celebrity quality to this. I don’t think I’m a celebrity, and I don’t even use the word star, but there are people out there who feel that way. I don’t feel that way about myself. So because of that, people are out there, like, “I wanna be like Rocco Steele.” But this is the reality. I do bareback porn and condom porn. I don’t promote bareback over safe sex. I want negative to stay negative. Do I have a responsibility and could I do more to send a better message out there? Yes.

There’s moral complexities throughout the whole thing. You do a Treasure Island Media video and you say “I’m not gonna do anything with drugs or poppers and it can’t promote HIV transmission,” but someone could turn around and say -

“Why have you aligned yourself with a studio that does that in other videos?”

Right. I mean, even with me, Naked Sword has bareback videos on their site, and a few years ago I wouldn’t have worked for them either. But now it’s different, I’m on the payroll. Bareback means something different now than it did then. But I’m complicit too. I’m not trying to put the weight of this all on you, but I am interested in playing devil’s advocate with a purpose.

No, it get it. It’s good what you’re asking. But my message to fans and followers from the beginning has always been “Rocco is sober and doesnt drink or do drugs” and “Rocco does not promote bareback sex over condom sex.” In fact many more of my condom scenes are now coming out. Sometimes we work with institutions who do not share our same views… it happens all the time in the world. All I can do is to keep promoting the Rocco message.

Let’s talk about more pleasant things, like your drug and alcohol addiction.

Ha. Which is really relevant because I’m sober 16 years this week.

It’s kind of unbelievable, because I never thought I could live a life without alcohol and drugs. My life was so intertwined with it.

You were a frat boy — so was there binge drinking every night?

Yeah. There was a keg on tap all the time. It was classic cliche frat life.

Was that your first taste of it?

No. I went to a private high school and there was a lot of partying there.  A lot of drinking in my junior and senior year. I was from the other side of the tracks, but the other kids in the school were rich. I would be invited to their houses and sometimes their parents were throwing the party, and sometimes the parents weren’t home. My story involves me feeling “less than” back then and not feeling good enough. So I leveled the playing field with alcohol.

You could meet them on their level by being a bigger partier than they were.

I was funny and charming and I was the center of the party. Then I would get in my rusty old car and drive a half an hour home, but while I was there, it was like I was one of them. That kind of was like conditioning, early on, and then when I went on to college and joined the fraternity, that’s how I knew I was accepted. Getting drunk and being the life of the party. Then, in law school, drugs were introduced, because that’s when I was really out.

Were you going to circuit parties?

No. I was going to clubs on the weekend in town. There was a bigger city close by  that had clubs. So I was doing cocaine and ecstasy and still drinking a lot. My law school career suffered a lot because of my partying. I got out of law school a C student which doesn’t get you anywhere. Then after law school I came back to New York and it was now the early 90’s and I was still doing lots of coke so my bar studies suffered. Once I decided to not take the bar exam anymore – which was about a year or so after I got back to New York, my focus was all about partying and drugs. I still didn’t do the circuit party thing. I was never really one of those types. But I was going to Roxy every Saturday night, the bars every Thursday night, Friday night, and then Monday night. I lived in the West Village so I lived a block away from the Christopher Street bars. It was just really easy to walk up there on a weeknight.

Is that why you like living up here on the Upper West Side?

No. It’s not even an issue anymore. I don’t think about drugs all these years later. I live up here for the serenity, except for the baby strollers.

Sorry to get you off track. 

No it’s fine. I couldn’t imagine my life without it because back then that was my focus. I was working at law firms but I knew I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore. I had given up early on taking the bar. I was just a researcher at law firms and going out late at night and looking for the party. I wasn’t really a very social being. I had a couple of friends, but I didn’t do the Fire Island or circuit party scene. I didn’t have that circle around me. Then towards the end of my drinking and drugging life just became really lonely. I said this before in another interview, it just stopped working because my circle had become so small.

How does that feel?

It’s kind of unbelievable, because I never thought I could live a life without alcohol and drugs. My life was so intertwined with it.

So you don’t have a rock bottom moment?

Yeah. I did. I was missing work, a job that I hated, but I was going out at night and staying out all night and going to after hours clubs until nine in the morning and dragging my ass to the law firm by nine-thirty or ten in the morning. A couple of times I said fuck it and just stayed home and slept all day and not even called in. Then the last time that happened I was up all night and went to an after hours club in the west village. Stayed up until nine in the morning. It was a Monday night going into a Tuesday morning.

Monday nights are fun!

Yeah. I remember going home, taking a shower getting ready for work. I was like I’m just gonna lay down for a minute and rest my eyes. I passed out and woke up at 4:30 in the afternoon. I remember having something going on at work that day, and I was like “Oh fuck.” At that point I couldn’t call in because I was terrified. I decided to go in the next day and I did. Luckily I worked on a floor of the law firm where there were less attorneys and research assistants, and the planets had aligned perfectly and nobody was looking for me the day before. But I knew that it was a problem, so I remember going into my office and closing the door and calling my friend who had gotten sober two years earlier. He was a buddy who used to go out and run around the bars with me. I called him up and said, “I’m ready can you take me to a meeting?” He was like, “Tonight?” I said, “No, not tonight, I’m so exhausted, but I promise I’ll go with you tomorrow night.” That was Wednesday. I went to the meeting and after the meeting we went to a diner. He called a guy who became my sponsor and that was it. That was 1998. 16 years ago. Never picked up anything since. When I think about it, it’s such a miracle that I’ve been so long in recovery, because I could not function without alcohol daily and drugs several times a week as a means to soften the blow of life. I mean, I was escaping from a humdrum life.

Escaping from feelings of inadequacy.

Yeah. Not having a real career. All this stuff. It was just a way of not having to deal with that. Getting sober was like, having to face all that. Having to clean up my life and do all the right things to stay sober and then eventually through a twelve-step program face all of that stuff in order to recover and have a healthier life.

How do you deal with it when – number one, was there any trepidation about going into porn or escorting because of the drug association? I’m sure you must get clients who are partying. 

Yeah. So here’s the thing. Thankfully, the desire to drink and do drugs for me was lifted, probably six months into my recovery. That compulsion is gone. For the first few months your body goes through withdrawal.

When you kicked, you kicked. 

Yeah. You have to do the work to get there. You have to fill that need with other things. I dove into recovery 100% percent. I just did whatever my sponsor told me to do and whatever the other people in recovery told me to do. There’s a saying, “Stick with the winners.” I looked up to people I considered to be the winners in recovery. It was really people who had a happy serene life. It wasn’t so much material things, but that I just looked at these people and saw how happy and at peace that they looked. I have so much noise in my head, I wanted that.

Did you have a sense where you felt like, now I’ve actually found a place where I fit in?

Totally. In fact that’s why it was so easy for me.

You didn’t have to prove anything.

Right. There’s also a saying in recovery, and I’m not outing any recovery group but it’s like, “Let us love you until  you can love yourself.” It’s getting me kind of choked up because that’s what happened. All these people whether they were newcomers like me in recovery, or people who had been in it for a long time, they just wrapped their arms around me and took me along and made sure you know, you can’t prevent somebody from picking up if they want to pick up, but you can extend your hand and guide them and that’s what I did. I took that extended hand and it really felt like home. Sitting in recovery meetings just felt so warm and safe and I did feel accepted from the very beginning. I dove into the gay recovery scene, so yeah, this group that I longed for of gay men around me, the social part of recovery is secondary – it’s not why you’re there, but it is there if you want it and I latched onto it because it was something I’d been longing for my whole life. They say whatever gets you to meetings is fine and that’s what got me, the social aspect. And I stayed. To this day, my social scene is only recovery people.

Not even people who just don’t use?

For me it’s important to be around people who’ve been in recovery because you get each other. We’re all still in recovery. It’s a lifetime process. Like tonight I’m going to a Christmas party, with all recovery buddies.

Because it’s hard at Christmas?

No. No. There could be twenty bottles on this table and it wouldn’t do a thing for me because I am a person who doesn’t drink alcohol. It’s just matter of fact. So being an escort and doing porn, I knew that even though I don’t have that compulsion anymore, I still have to be aware of, that it’s around me. So for example I do not see clients that are partying. I do not make myself available to clients after 9PM at night. It doesn’t mean that my daytime clients aren’t partying, but most all guys at 2 or 3 in the morning are. There’s enough daytime business for me that keeps me in a healthier environment, whether I want to use or not. We also have a saying “Spend enough time in a barbershop you’re going to get a haircut.” So if I were to constantly be putting myself in those situations, I would probably, eventually pick up again because the addiction never really goes away. It’s complicated. I can’t say what would or wouldn’t happen because you’re an addict, your addiction is there, it never goes away. You always have to be on top of it. I don’t put myself in those situations. As far as porn goes, I told you, I won’t do scenes with any suggestion of popper use or anything like that. Even appearances and things, I just have to be careful with. For example, a Hustlaball situation. I’m in the industry so these are things I have to do.

You didn’t perform. When I saw you I asked you and you were like, “Nooooo.”

Right. That night I did not perform, but I am performing at Vegas Hustlaball. That night I was just there to watch and observe. But this time I’m performing and I just have to set up safety nets when I’m in situations like that because I haven’t been in a bar or club for years. That night you saw me at Hustlaball was the first time in 16 years I’d been in a bar or club.

Wow, no wonder you were so tense.

Yeah. I had a nice time but it was challenging for me, not because I wanted to drink or do drugs, it was just an assault on the senses of people, industry people I was meeting for the first time, loud music and things going on. It’s just a lot to process. So it’s fine I have sober people in the industry that I latched onto that night, and that got me through it. But those are the things I do in escorting and in porn to protect myself. Because although I don’t have the compulsion today, I may tomorrow because it’s always there.

We’ve been to dark places, but let’s give our readers a boner. Tell me one of your hottest true sex stories. 

Wow, damn. Let me think. For me, recently, I have two friends and we rented the Kardashian apartment in Miami for a weekend, where they filmed the show. We just spent the entire weekend naked and fucking in every room and outside on all the terraces, deck, pool and hot tub. Like wee never put clothes on, and we just fucked everywhere. Oh…and I fisted my friend poolside. I’ve never done anything like that before. There was something that was almost like, fuck you Kardashians!!!! I mean it probably wasnt anything they hadnt already done, but it was hot.

Ha. They would probably be into it. Have you become desensitized to sex since starting porn and escorting?

No. What it has done is it has made it so in my personal sex life it’s more important to have a connection. There’s more passion now in my personal sex life. Touching and kissing and holding and really intense eye-to-eye connections, because you don’t get that in porn. I don’t know if I want to say this but porn is all about really uncomfortable positions so the camera can get the angles. Put your leg up here, stuff like that. Nothing you would ever do in your real life. I’ve held these positions for so long sometimes your body just aches. So I find myself needing the connection so much more now. Which I think is good. I was always worried before that I wasn’t going to appreciate sex any more. But it’s actually done the opposite.

 Photos by Isauro Cairo.

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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

It’s 7:30 PM, Friday night, in SoHo, and I’m at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay Art for the opening night of “Boys of El Barrio”, the first ever retrospective of the work of Dana Bryan, who under the nom de porn Brian Brennan created the celebrated porn brand Latino Fan Club. Since 1985, Bryan has been creating work that celebrates the sexiness of Puerto Rican and Dominican men, first in photographs for Blueboy magazine, and then in videos with wonderfully funny titles like Hooked on Hispanics, Attack of the Amazing Colossal Latino, and Cuckoo for Cocoa Cocks. Around the room, fans and gay erotica enthusiasts stare at blown up covers from these film’s VHS and DVD boxes, which have been framed and hung alongside vintage photos of the LFC models. Though the internet has crippled Bryan’s business, he keeps pushing on, making new films, and now, thanks to SAGE, a New York-based organization that helps support older gay men, he’s been studying documentary filmmaking, which is why he keeps moving about the gallery with a video camera, capturing the entire experience for use in a later project. The evening before the show, I sat down with Bryan to discuss his long, long life in porn, working with hustlers and other non-professional performers, and how he broke down barriers in porn by celebrating guys who didn’t fit the industry standard.

Adam: We’re sitting here in the project space at Leslie-Lohman, and this weekend is the opening of your retrospective, Boys of El Barrio. Can you tell me what the show is and how it came together?

Brian: Actually the show was a surprise to me. The guy over there is Tony Zanetta, he and I went to school together in Buffalo, and he got this idea and emailed me because he didn’t have my phone number. I’d been doing photography for gay magazines for the past thirty years and videos for Latino Fan Club, and Tony’s idea was that we would exhibit the DVD covers and that they would really look great if we blew them up and took some of the text away and made them into posters.

It’s been nearly thirty years since you started Latino Fan Club. Do you have a sense of accomplishment with this show happening? Or does this fulfill a long-standing desire for recognition?

No, not really. Let me preface that by saying, in the past few years, I’m sure you know, the sale of X-rated DVDs that you buy at the porn stores or online has gone way down. The whole industry is practically in the toilet because of all the free porn on the internet. But after 30 years,  I can now look back and see that there were three or four years that were the golden age of Latino Fan Club. I think I’m a realist. I had a lot of satisfaction and now I’m looking back and thinking about what I got out of it. I was in my element the whole time. It was wonderful. The parties we had at our building on First Avenue and 117th Street were legendary. The younger generation doesn’t know about that. That’s why I’m glad we’re doing this show. Even on 42nd street in 1980, that’s a period in New York City and in gay history that most people don’t know about. Outside of New York, people talked about how dangerous it was, and that you were going to get mugged, and the hookers and all that, before it was cleaned up. It’s an era that’s come and gone. It has a sociological and historical importance, and again, this show relates to that.

A lot of the oral and written histories of 42nd Street sex culture don’t emphasize the presence of Latino hustlers. Yet, I just read a wonderful book called NYC Hustlers by Barry Reay, and it talks about how the history of New York hustling is so related to the history of Puerto Rican men and the open sexuality of Puerto Rican gangs. This guy Thomas Painter, was documenting them in writing and photography from the early 20th century on and Kinsey ended up studying  all this material. 

Yeah. Growing up near Buffalo, I’d never seen a Puerto Rican man in my life. I moved to New York with my lover, and after three years we broke up, and all of a sudden I realized, wow, Puerto Rican guys are gorgeous. It was a big discovery on my part.

There weren’t any Latino guys in Buffalo?

No. The closest would have been the migrant workers who were mainly Mexican. But we didn’t even see that much of them because the farmers would have barracks way off the road and even when the Mexican people came into town nobody socialized with them. As a kid I never saw a guy that appealed to me.

I feel like, in a way, Latino Fan Club, along with things like Old Reliable, could be kind of considered the godfather of this internet, homemade porn thing. Self-made solo videos, porn with a low-fi aesthetic that’s very prevalent now online. There are many sites now devoted to black and latino guys. Do you feel like you’ve done the world a service?

Oh yeah, the reason I decided to start doing video porn was because around ’83 or ’84, I would rent VHS tapes, looking for gay porn that would feature Latin guys, and it was virtually impossible to find them. It was a few years later that Kristen Bjorn would do his stuff, but he would have Brazilians, and I was specifically turned on by Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. There’s a certain look, and differences. I was the first person who basically started a line, and of course, in that period all the gay porn was being made in the West Coast. When my stuff started coming out it was labeled amateur right away.

But you kept going, despite that criticism. 

In those days, if you were going to go into business making porn, what you did was you got the best equipment, a three-quarter-inch tape camera. I didn’t have the money to do it. I just used consumer VHS, but it worked because I was tapping into a market that had never been served and because I was working at Blueboy magazine, I took my first photoshoot there, and when I gave them the photos I said, “Instead of being paid extra for the photos, how about giving me an ad space?” That’s how I started Latino Fan Club – by mail order, which was terrific because I had advertising that didn’t cost anything, and it’s great to find money in your mailbox. My customers were so happy to see the type of guys who turned them on, they forgave that it wasn’t so polished. Maybe the image wasn’t so sharp, but they didn’t care.

When you came to New York, did you just jump right into working in porn?

No. When I moved here I started a company called Sky Walls, because I had seen a painting by Magritte which showed a bedroom with a mirror and closet and a shaving brush, and the walls are painted as though they’re transparent and it’s all sky. I thought that would be a beautiful room. So when I started Sky Walls I would paint a room with the clouds as realistically as possible so they would sweep around the corner and it felt more rounded than square.

So it was kind of decorative trompe l’oeil, you were making people’s rooms look like they were in that painting, floating in sky.

Yeah. People would have different ideas of how they wanted the clouds to be. Some wanted to see a layer of clouds and then blue sky above it. As if they were on a plane. I did that for a number of years.

Do you remember who was the first Puerto Rican guy you became fixated on?

Yes. The first Puerto Rican guy I met, I went into a peep show, and I picked him up and got to know him. This was in the early eighties. We became friends. What was interesting was that he said that he and his five or six buddies, what they would do, was come down together on the subway. They had no money and they wanted to see some movies, because 42nd street was where all the cheap movies were. They would come down, split up and go to different peep shows and go in the back and go in the booth and entice the gay guys into the booth with them, and they would agree to meet later at a certain time and they would all have some spending money and they could go to KFC or the movies. And it was was no big thing to them. They were so open about sex.

It didn’t affect their masculinity or their sexual identity to go fuck a guy or get sucked by a guy.

Not at all. But other cultures, forget it. The religious influence, the family influence, forget it. They were really uptight.

So the first guy was someone you picked up?

Yeah, he was the first guy I photographed. Then just about that time I got the job as art director for Blueboy magazine.

Tell me about working at Blueboy. I find that so fascinating that it’s part of your story. I have very fond memories of sneaking peeks at Blueboy in the stores. 

Blueboy at the very beginning was owned by Donald N. Embinder. When it first began it was really classy, beautifully designed, graphically and everything. By the time it was sold and resold and I got it, our budget was so low it wasn’t the same. When I first got the job, before our budget was slashed, there was an art director, and I was basically the draftsman doing the boards and there was an editor. They would buy a lot of photosets. At that time in New York, there was probably four or five photographers who did strictly gay photosets. The second year, the art director was dying of AIDS. Halfway through the year, they just cut our budget so much. I said, I’d love to start doing photography myself. That helped them financially. They gave me the ad space and all that. I think it was in the third year, I said, I’ll do the whole thing, for less money. But of course, I was basically scheming because I knew most of the guys I was going to be photographing, were going to be guys who turned me on. They didn’t object but Blueboy wasn’t what it started out as. We didn’t have a lot of fiction or articles. When porn was made legal, they really stressed that it had to have some socially redeeming values.

So you start to take over Blueboy, and you start to put your own type of guys in there. Is that at the same time that you’re doing Latino Fan Club, or is it prior?

I started Latino Fan Club May of 1985. That’s when I put my first ad in. So I was starting to shoot videos at the same time I was working at Blueboy.

In the eighties in porn, foreskin wasn’t celebrated, right?

Yeah. It was a fringe thing. Even now, there’s a big debate still. You’re either for it or against it.

Did you have an office for Latino Fan Club?

To begin with, no. I worked out of my home and when I started originally, I was renting a small house in Astoria, and then a friend of mine who was a fan, he and his partner were buying this former elementary school on 1st and 117th street and that was a dream come true. High ceilings, huge rooms, oh it was fantastic. We could build sets, and there was sunlight and everything. He was on the third floor, I was on the second. He had a deck with a pool and the boys used to love to hang out there. It was great. And then he and his partner sold the building to some big corporation and they were trying to get everybody out of the building so they could turn it into luxury condos and stuff. They were trying to kick me out because they said in my lease I couldn’t have a business going on, and I said I don’t have a business going on here, I have an office in the Film Center Building. So I got an office there right away. They finally bought everybody out but we waited and waited.

I know you’re making a documentary about it, but let’s talk about how you found the guys to be in your films.

Well before I had any thoughts about doing photography or video or anything, between relationships, I was out there running around and one of the hot spots was Port Authority on 42nd Street. Before the Port Authority, in the sixties, before I moved to New York, maybe the early 70s, male hustlers would be hanging out on 42nd Street itself which is shown in Midnight Cowboy. I don’t know why they ended up hanging out in Port Authority but they did. I enjoyed coming up and seeing the hustlers and you could play with a hustler in a peep show or if you didn’t want to take him home and take a chance that he’d rob you, you could take him to a porno movie theater, up in the balcony or something. There was also a kind of club on 8th Avenue, it had three or four levels, and now it’s one of those tour bus headquarters. But they used to have an elevator and each floor had themes. It was mostly hopping at night. There would be one floor that would be like Central Park at night and it had plastic bushes and trees and park benches and stuff, and another room that would have a cowboy bunkhouse. It was fun and a lot of guys used to go there.

The scene at Dana Bryan’s gallery retrospective opening at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay Art.

So you would find the guys just out and you would say, do you want to come take some pictures?

Yeah. Before the internet you went cruising.

But when you would approach the guys how would you do it?

Well, if they’re a hustler they are trying to make eye contact with you so you didn’t have to search them out. If you weren’t interested you’d just look the other way. Friends of mine were very good, they wouldn’t know the sexuality of a guy, but if he looked great and was macho they would hit him up, because I always tried to find the most masculine guys. A lot of times those guys were straight, but my friends would just strike up conversations with the guys they saw and say “Are you interested in making some extra money?” I also found them at the Phoenix, which was a hustler bar on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th. During the day they would have the girlfriends hanging out with them, and they had oil wrestling there which was terrific. They would wear little bikini briefs while wrestling. A couple older guys owned the bar and they announced one night “If you want to bring your camera and videotape the boys go right ahead.” It was like, “Wow, really?” That’s how I found the first guys who did some solos for me, at the Phoenix.

These guys were not porn professionals or even people who wanted to be in porn all their life and were looking to be discovered. Were they hard to work with?

No. At first I was nervous because they would come in like machismo tough guys. I would have a helper in the next room, who was this obsessed fan who came to our parties and said “You don’t have to pay me, I just want to work for you.” I said, “Okay, fine.” I let him work for me, which was good because then you’ve got some security. I could be in one room and he’s in the other and I don’t have to worry about the model. After a couple of months I said “I can’t not pay you.” So I started paying him. But the best part was working with the model and what surprised me was when the guy comes, he might be a little bit nervous, but they would usually just start stripping down without me asking them to take their clothes off. That was fun. Then of course, once they’re naked, they do feel vulnerable and so I would try to get them to talk and tell me about their life and their girlfriends and all that. That’s really important. Even now if I just meet new people for the first time I try to get them to tell me about themselves. I love to hear about people’s lives. I’m all ears. It sounds funny because here I am talking all about myself.

No, it’s great.

You find out so much from that. The toughest, scariest guy, which of course, that was the thing that would turn me on, that he was so hot —

“He could beat me up.”

Yeah! I didn’t really feel that way, but then they would turn out to be like little puppy dogs. They were so sweet. It’s a cliché, not always true, but two-thirds of the young guys I photographed, and they were all between 18 and 23 at the most, two-thirds of them, probably were ignored by their fathers if their father was even there. You could see also, in this culture, women are the sex objects, they’re the little princess, they get treated, complimented, and boys just act tough — “Be a man, grow up.” But where’s the affection? I think a lot of times I enjoyed it, especially as they got older and older, I became more like a father figure to them. That was the best part. When I’d have a one-on-one with the guys. Always at the end of the session, they were always really relaxed, because for the still photos they don’t have to have an orgasm. Some of them because they got so heated up, they would ask if it was okay if they jerked off. And of course they could, they needed that release. But at the end they would always say, “Wow, that was amazing. That was fun.”

There were some guys who were actually gay right?

Oh yeah.

Would that interaction be the same?

Sometimes. I took stills for the magazines of a lot of gay guys. Videos I tried to find and focus on the masculinity element because I was so tired of seeing L.A. videos where if they’re trying to get the guys to act tough and macho, it just didn’t look authentic. Half the time they looked like they had costumes on. They weren’t being themselves. I don’t know. You could just tell. Of course, people say, “Well, if they say they’re straight, but they have sex with guys, they’re not straight.” But it’s really how you define it. There’s homosexual behavior, but what’s in their hearts of hearts, what are they looking at when nobody’s judging them? They know what they are.

One of the things you did that was different was that you would show guys who were soft, rather than instantly hard.

Yeah. I would like to see the transformation. I mean sex is subjective, it’s different for everybody, but they say, whatever your career is, try to do something that makes you happy. We don’t know why certain things turn us on. I think it’s built in.

Did you jerk off to your own videos?

No! That’s the funniest thing! Actually, in the last few years I tried an experiment. I would find a scene that I did in 1989 to look at, and in a way I do see it more objectively because there’s all that difference. Now I find scenes that I don’t remember photographing. I don’t remember the boys, but now I find certain scenes on the internet that turn me on, from other sites. For some reason none of my stuff turns me on.

You’re probably critical of things.

And I’m remembering too much. The trouble we went through shooting the scene. What was going on that day. But I will admit because I was shooting so much, every couple of days, I was shooting something new, and once in a while a guy would come along, and they were all the type I liked, but not necessarily, sparks or something. But every once in a while the seventh or eighth guy, and I would be like wow. At the end of the session I would pay him, have him sign the release, and then ask, hey do you want to make 20 or 30 more? He’d say, why not?

So you would partake of your own pool?

Yes.

That’s good. A lot of people say they don’t do that, but I’m glad you got to. 

I’m very professional at first. But two hours later, when I’ve seen everything… It depends. If I see the guy has some kind of attitude, I don’t even ask him.

What are your favorite titles of your films? 

Cuckoo for Cocoa Cocks. Even Lisa Lampanelli mentioned it in her standup. I don’t think she saw it but she noticed it.

It is a great, great title.

I love Roger Corman and the way he did everything. I always respected and admired him. I’m good at doing what he does. I don’t have to spend money to create something. I have Yankee ingenuity. I can take materials, make something out of it, which I think is great. Corman did this too, but all of a sudden I would go, “That would make such a great title” and I would say, “That’s the next thing I”m doing.” And then make the story to go with it.

I like Attack of the -

— Amazing Colossal Latino. Have you seen that one?

Yeah!

Through the years, each one I would do, it’d be like, okay I did that, now I want to do something different.

Some of your films would have sci-fi elements, comedy bits. 

Yeah, like Super Barrio Brothers. A recent title like I like is Unlawful Sexual Conduct.  But after a while you run out of titles.

What are your favorite of your own films? Do you have one or two that you feel like were the best?

Early on I decided I wanted to make the first double VHS cassette four hour movie. It was called Spanish Harlem Knights. A gay reviewer at the time who wrote for magazines, his name was John Rowberry, I don’t know if you ever heard of him, he died of AIDS, I think he wrote for Mandate. He wrote a review that was like a college thesis. He went into all the sociological what this meant and what that meant. It was some review. It went on for like ten pages.

Jerry Douglas told me a similar stories of reading someone’s college thesis about their work.

Isn’t that great? Who doesn’t like fans?

How many videos did you release a year?

When I hooked up with Paladin as a distributor in 2005, I was doing ten to twelve a year. That was kind of hard to keep up with. But then everything went to hell because of the internet. So this year I’m trying to put my third one together and we’re not going to make it by the end of the year. Last year I think I only did four titles.

Did you leave and stop doing porn for a period?

No. I just slowed down.

Okay. I had this sense that you put it on hold for a period. 

No, well, I slowed down suddenly when I met and got involved with Freeman, who starred in Cuckoo For Cocoa Cocks, who’s straight.

You got involved with him sexually?

Yeah. Which was weird. I spent the previous five years adjusting to the fact that I was not going to have sex with another human being for the rest of my life, and it was like, “What’s going on here?” And I of course, didn’t trust it. I thought it was a big act. But it was hot and sexual. It baffled me. If I was him, I could never do it. I couldn’t have sex with some old guy. I mean thank you Jesus. But it happened over six months, and he was engaged at the time, I met his girlfriend, and I didn’t know if she knew or not. It evolved, though. I mean, I would talk to my friends and said “He’s probably just hustling me.” I’m so used to hustlers all of these years. And they said, “Yeah but you’re enjoying it. Go with it. Dana, you’ve never gone beyond what you could afford.” If somebody needed some help financially, at the end of the photo session they would say “Do you have any work for me?” And I would say “I’m going to shoot a scene in a couple of weeks.” And they’d say “Can I have an advance?” And I’d give them 20 bucks, and my friends would yell at me but I’d say “It’s an investment. I know they’re going to come back.” As a teenager Freeman really was a bad boy, but over the next three or four years I just saw him evolve and our relationship evolved. But it always stayed affectionate and caring and he would do stuff for me. It’s still like that. He and his wife and his kids, I’m a part of the family. I have a brother who’s gay in Tennessee, I have two sisters in California, but I don’t get to see them much. I’m really close to Freeman’s family. The kids call me Grandpa.

And there’s no weirdness between you and the wife that you have this ongoing thing with him?

He thinks she never figured out that we had something sexual at the beginning. We don’t do anything sexual now. But he’s always grabbing me and he kisses me in front of her, and we always say “I love you” to each other all the time. She’s cool. Women are different. She goes nuts if she thinks he’s cheating with a woman. But I think she thinks, “I don’t know what those two men do, but you know, men are pigs.”

So how did things slow down because of your relationship with Freeman? 

There was kind of a hiccup when after knowing him for four or five years, he married his girlfriend. They both grew up in East Harlem, and she had a little girl from a previous marriage, and he had a girlfriend that he got pregnant and she was a mess so he went to court and got custody for his little girl. So they had two little girls, and he was dying to have a baby boy. She got pregnant. Low and behold it’s gonna be a boy. We all moved in together in this apartment on 116th street. What I loved about him by that time, was I was really like his father. I loved the guy so much, just seeing how he had progressed and gotten better and straightened up his life and stuff. Their dream was to move to the country and have the kids grow up in that environment. So his wife and I said, if we’re going to move to the country, we both have to learn how to drive. So we went to driving school and got our licenses. We found a beautiful house up near Saugerties, New York, up on the side of a mountain. It was 200 bucks cheaper than the apartment we were renting in East Harlem. Now after a year of living up there, the extra expenses we didn’t figure on, like 700 bucks for heat, oil, oh my god.

That’s why it was so cheap.

They how are you going to make movies if you’re up there? I said, well, we gotta do the dream. I’ll figure out how to keep making movies, but it did prove to be almost impossible because I would try to get in contact with the boys who were still around and didn’t change their cell phone numbers. I’d try to arrange when we would drive down for the shoot, and half of them didn’t show up for the shoot. Finally after living upstate for two years, we said, okay we have to find a cheaper rent. They wanted to find another house so they could stay up there. I said I have to come back to New York. It’s the only place things can happen for me. I have to work, I can’t live on Social Security. I didn’t save my money, so…

It went in all the hustlers’ pockets.

Yeah. Ha ha.

Is he the only model that you keep in contact with or do you still talk to some of the guys?

I run into others here and there, but realistically with most of the guys, they really needed money desperately. If they weren’t hustling, they were looking for work, and with the whole cell phone situation and being young, after two or three months, they’d have a new number, and wouldn’t bother to tell me. So we lost touch. A couple of the models died of AIDS way back when.

What was your most successful video?

They all sold just about the same. There was never much difference. In general, if the emphasis is on a big cock like Super Sized or something like that they sell well.

How is Latino Fan Club different now than in its heyday?

Well because financially everything is so different, I don’t have the budgets. The glory days were when I could have seven, eight, nine scenes, and some of them would have four or five guys in a scene. I can’t have that anymore.

Most people can’t do orgy scenes anymore.

That’s the only real difference. Otherwise I would love to.

Do you ever think about bringing in other directors or finding new blood to reinvent the brand?

I did work with some other people. A friend of mine, he wanted to direct one, and he had an idea for one. It was called Hip Hop Body Shop. I was the cameraman and he directed it. Then I worked with another friend who directed and wrote one called Spanish Lessons. He did two sequels, More Spanish Lessons and More Spanish Lessons 2. I think those are better than a lot of the ones I’ve done myself. I have a lot of respect for him. J. Colina.

Is there anyone in porn now that you admire or feel like is doing your kind of work?

I don’t pay too much attention to what else is going on. I think a lot of interesting stuff is out on the web now.

What kind of stuff do you look at?

Personally, I like hidden camera stuff. I like amateur stuff. Anything that seems real and not staged. At the beginning I thought I had to think commercially and get the polish if I wanted to be successful, which was in conflict with the fact that I liked cinema vérité and things like that.

Like you said, most people didn’t care about the quality of what you were making. They wanted to see those guys.

That’s really the only thing that sells, at least, well, you can go online and see photographs of guys. But a guy buys a video based on the guy they’re looking at. Is this the guy I want to see?

Did you have any rivals?

Well what’s funny is when I started, I was the only kid on the block. Two years later, I see an ad in some publication, looking for latin models. I went “Aha, what’s going on here?” So I contacted him. We got together and were friendly. He wanted to work for me, and I said, “There’s no money. I do everything myself.” I had to have complete control. He was my competition. His company was Latin Connection. We would make digs at each other in our newsletters. I would refer to him as the “Latin Concoction”. All this silly stuff. We were really competing. Well, three months ago, I went over to SAGE, and who in the hallway do I see? My nemesis, Richard. Lamont is his stage name. He said, “Can we talk? Has enough time gone by?” I said yeah. Now we’re best friends. We both took the same class at the New School in documentary filmmaking. He has decided that he wants to do a book about our rivalry and I think it’s a long shot because there wasn’t really a rivalry. I said, “We’re going to have to make stuff up!” He said, “That’s okay.” It’s mainly his project.

What’s your day to day like now? You said you’re involved with SAGE, which is an important group in New York that helps connect older gay men. Do you live comfortably?

No. But that’s funny, both Richard, my former rival and I, we’re both at this age, we were talking about the fact that when we were young and had no money it was so depressing. Now over life you go up and down, and I’ve made lots of money. I was never foolish with it, but I never thought it would end, that the internet would come along and mess everything up. Now, a friend of mine has been renting me a room, and I’m looking for work. It’s really hard to live on Social Security. But I’m happy. It’s an experiment to see, how can one live on a couple of dollars a day. I look on it as a challenge. It doesn’t upset me. I’m glad I can figure things out. And look at this show.

It’s wonderful.

I also spent a lot of time editing my website. I love the fact that if I want to change something I can easily. My roommate is a genius, he said, I have a two-year plan for you. “With everything I know about you you ought to be a teacher or an assistant to a professor and making good money.” He said I need a graduate degree, and he took me and applied to colleges with me. Now I’m going to SUNY Empire State for the spring semester. I love going to classes. Even taking that documentary class once a week at the New School, it was so great. I’ve been really lucky. The thing I love the most is designing the covers. The movie I’m finishing now is On the Down Low Part Two. I’m always busy. There’s always a little project going on.

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Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.