“Did you come out to see the porn stars?” I ask a friend at Woody’s a couple of weeks ago.
“Oh no, just meeting up with some friends,” he replies. Oh, that’s why there’s a lineup down the block — a lot of people just took a notion to have a drink with their friends on this particular Thursday night. It couldn’t possibly be live flesh appearances by porn stars Benjamin Bradley, Josh Vaughn and Tyler Riggz that lured gay men away from their on-line chat sessions.
The fact that the celebration of on-line porn provider Maleflixxx’s fifth anniversary got so gay men to experience the nonvirtual world for a night was particularly ironic. Soon enough the audience was critiquing the legs and dancing styles of these icons — even star power can’t quelch the bitch reflex.
An hour earlier, I had been squeezed onto a couch at Sutton Place with Bradley, Vaughn and Riggz. All single, by the way. Though not as titillating as one would hope — they put their shirts back on after the Naked News interview — it was not uncomfortable nor boring.
Vaughn, discovered on MySpace by porn maven Chi Chi LaRue, still lives in the small town in Texas where he grew up — it’s a dry county where alcohol and porn, never mind homosexuality, are off-limits. Every once in a while, he simply jets off to LA to be filmed getting his 20-year-old ass ploughed and then returns to study nursing. Nobody in his town is much the wiser.
Bradley, who works as a graphic designer when he’s not on the set or at the gym, got into the industry after he started dating porn star Eddie Stone. Bradley now lives in Las Vegas.
“I live off the buffet breakfasts,” says Bradley, 24. “There’s this $2.99 steak and eggs plate. I get, like, three of them at a time.”
Riggz, whose on-screen persona is straight enough to earn him love-messages from straight women, lives in San Diego. He used to study law.
“I had a full-time career before this and decided I was going to take some time off and do this for a while,” says Riggz, 31. “Chi Chi told me about the doors I’d be closing, but I decided to try. [Fellow porn star] Johnny Hazzard has two houses. If you’re reliable and professional, you can make good money.”
Ask them the worst part of doing porn and you don’t get any Boogie Nights tales of drug abuse or soul-crushing emptiness. “Flight delays” is the number one complaint. Bradley does worry about having relationships with nonindustry guys.
“My biggest fear is meeting someone I fall madly in love with and they’re like, ‘I won’t date you because you do porn,'” he says. (“But Madonna is never going to fall in love with you so it doesn’t really matter,” teases Riggz.)
“I would only be in a relationship that’s monogamous,” says Bradley. “That’s hard to understand with porn, but I say porn is work and everything outside porn would be considered cheating.”
“It’s difficult to date someone outside the industry,” says Riggz. “The sex inside the industry is not something….”
“…that’s intimate. It’s all staged,” fills in Bradley. “There are moments when it’s hot and you do enjoy it.”
“You do have a drag queen [LaRue doesn’t wear drag on shoots, but it’s part of her public image] standing right over your shoulder yelling, ‘Spit on it!’ ‘Slap it!'” laughs Riggz. “I actually can’t have sex at home in private without her soundtrack in the background.”
It can take as much as three hours to get ready for a scene — douching, grooming and makeup. Bradley says it’s all about exfoliating and moisturizing. But he won’t name any products. There are some trade secrets they keep to themselves.
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