But he’s scared of what will happen when his kids find out about his career and have to live with that knowledge. “It scares the shit out of me. Whatever vindictive bullshit they might get from people, it would kind of be my fault. And that hurts me. Kids are fuckin’ mean. It doesn’t matter if I still had my union job and I dealt with trash for a living, I’m sure somebody would still talk shit.”
"If you want to know what the American psyche is about, look at the porn that’s selling," Derrick Pierce says. "It’s all incest. Stepmom, stepdad, stepbrother, stepsister. People of authority. The level of darkness to the stuff we’re shooting... We made a movie this year called Anne, and I play Daddy Warbucks."
Vegas comes out of the bathroom and photographs Siouxsie Q for some promotional work they’re doing. Codi Vore, a self-identified prepper who drives a diesel truck and is hoping to start a sex-worker commune in the desert, arrives. She and Vegas sign paperwork on his tablet: a 2257 age-verification form, and then a model release form. They provide each other with the clean results of an STD test that’s less than two weeks old. More dabs are taken. Weed gummies are ingested. And then they discuss the two scenes they’ll be shooting.
To that end—getting famous on a sex-positive Internet—Stone is also developing non-nude content. He’s got a Twitch account. He’s got a YouTube channel and a paid Snapchat account, too, but he hasn’t fully launched on those platforms yet. Stone, in other words, is like any ambitious young person trying to make it in the brave new ecosystem of personal branding and self-production. The only difference is he’s willing to bring the viewer all the way into his bedroom. Which, to him, doesn’t seem like that big a deal.
Ryan Driller: "I started trying to get into the industry through Craigslist. There really weren’t too many auditions. The closest thing to an audition is they throw you in a giant group scene. So that way, if you fail, there’s a couple other guys there to pick up. It’s kind of throwing you to the wolves. My big motivations were, first and foremost, I want to get laid every day. But I had to think it over: Am I going to be okay with everybody finding it? I work a lot in virtual reality now. You don’t see my face at all. I’m one of the few guys that can do it. You can’t make any noise, even breathing."
It’s not that male porn stars have never breached the mainstream consciousness. James Deen was profiled in the pages of this magazine, and a few years after that, Paul Schrader gave him the lead opposite Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons. At the time, the world of pop culture seemed eager to view him as a Normal Star, and then allegations of sexual abuse made by his colleagues began to surface, most notably from his former girlfriend Stoya. When they did, we got a glimpse into porn’s dark side, at how alleged predatory behavior can be covered up and enabled if the individual in question is powerful enough. As of today, Deen is still working.
In the porn industry, unlike in the rest of the American economy, male workers are typically paid less. (At least, that’s the case in cis hetero porn, which I’ll focus on in this piece because that’s the kind of porn I usually watch.) Traditionally, as many of the older generation of male performers in their late 30s and 40s will tell me, a porno film is not about the guy. He’s secondary to the female performer. Derrick Pierce, who’s been in porn for more than a decade, put it this way: The women are the quarterbacks and running backs of porn, and the men are the offensive linemen. In most cases, she’s the one the audience came to see.
This is something male porn stars kept bringing up: how the most difficult part of their job isn’t physical, it's mental. If a woman doesn’t have an orgasm, she can fake it and the scene will still work. Guys can't, and that’s a lot of pressure. Some of these guys are shooting three or four cum-shot scenes a day. There are times when a performer, of any gender, isn’t attracted to the person they’re shooting with. There is friction. The lights get hot after a while. There are usually at least a few other people on set, in addition to the director. And failure—the inability to reach orgasm—can affect your ability to find work in the future. Directors talk. If you’re new, even just a couple bad days could mean the end of your career.
The orgy begins with a conversation that will never make it onto the Internet. Tim goes around the room filming the faces of the performers as they discuss their own personal-consent boundaries.
In a hotel room in Las Vegas, a barefoot man in a red tracksuit is frantically searching through his luggage. He checks the closets and drawers without success. He disappears into the bathroom. When he comes back a few seconds later, he tells me that we have a problem. The enema is missing.
Stone’s approach to the adult industry is unlike everyone else’s I meet over the weekend. I find him at the Chaturbate booth on the Expo floor. Chaturbate, for the unfamiliar, is a webcam site where fans can interact in real time with their favorite performers and compensate them as things heat up. Stone applies the antics of the goofy YouTube prankster—jumping on tables in crowded areas and dancing “real sexy”—to a platform that is otherwise mostly limited to performers masturbating on camera.
Ricky Johnson: "Porn is 90 percent mental. Cuz everybody can have sex. There’s not that many male talent. [Every director] has their favorites. So you want to join that rotation. They’re like, 'Who are you? This production costs thousands of dollars, and if you fail you’ll cost us money. So why would we risk it if we have a good core four or five guys who are solid performers?’ ”
One of the guys I meet is Tommy Pistol. He has kids, two boys. He’s been starring in porno films for fourteen years and is known for his parodies, like Pee-Wee’s XXX Adventure. He’s 42, and his kids are still young, not quite at the age where he’s ready to tell them what he does for a living.
"Guys in porn don’t just end up here," Michael Vegas says. "It’s really hard to get here. It’s a group of dudes that run porn that are judging on whether or not you can come have sex with their friends and colleagues. Because they’re also betting their money on your ability to do it. So if you can get somebody to give you a chance to prove you can do it, that’s how you break the barrier."
