The Top 5 Quotes From ‘GQ’ Article On Today’s Top Male Porn Stars

Media of all genres descended on the AVN Expo in Las Vegas in January, but GQ Magazine sent a reporter with a specific and often under-reported industry story on the agenda: “a glimpse inside the professional world of male porn stars—and it turns out they have a lot they can teach us.” Here are some of the most intriguing quotes from the male stars interviewed in the article by reporter Benjy Hansen-Bundy. The full story, “What It’s Like to Be a Male Porn Star in 2019,” can be read online at this link.    MICHAEL VEGAS Hansen-Bundy caught up to Vegas as he was preparing to shoot a scene for his own performer-run site PegHim.com, which specializes in the exact type of scenes that the domain name would imply. The performer, whose previous career was as a firefighter until a severe motorcycle accident left him “broken,” explained his passion for PegHim. “So many buttholes are oppressed,” Vegas told GQ. “There’s so much shame surrounding all of it. I’m trying to normalize dudes taking it in the butt so people can actually talk about it. There are so many guys that want their buttholes touched or any amount of attention towards their butts. It’s their body part, they love it, and they want other people to love it, too.”   TOMMY PISTOL An industry veteran, Pistol is 42 years old and the father of two—but has yet to discuss his career with his children. “I know I’m gonna have to have this conversation,” Pistol said in the GQ article. “I know it’s coming up. The best advice I got from people who have kids in this industry is to let them know before somebody tells them at school. Let them have the ammunition to deal with it. I’m gonna be honest with them: ‘This is what I do. This is what provides. It’s also kind of our secret right now. You don’t need to tell anybody, because other people don’t understand. Other parents might freak out. And that sucks, but that’s just how people are.’ ”   JOHNNY STONE A newcomer to the adult industry who is literally half Pistol’s age, Stone told Hansen-Bundy that he believes the porn industry will become mainstream over the next decade, allowing more and better opportunities to cross over into other areas of entertainment. “I want to see the industry given the respect and the credit that it deserves,” Stone  said. “It’s an entertainment industry and a really big one at that. And everybody tucks it under the rug. I think we do deserve our spotlight and our recognition. It could go a long way in proving to people that sex work is a real career, a real job. It’s a real demand that people need to supply.”   RICKY JOHNSON The one African-American performer interviewed by Hansen-Bundy, Johnson discussed the role of black male performers, and his own unique position, as he sees it, due to his individual skin tone. “There’s an interesting dynamic of interracial porn where the majority of consumers like to see darker melanin: dark-skin black guys with pale white girls,” Johnson said. “I’m in the weird dynamic of being light-skinned. Sometimes I get flak from the fans because I’m not black enough. There’s some companies I haven’t worked for purely because of my skin tone. It makes me feel like shit. But it also makes me want to work harder, because it’s nothing against my performance. It’s something I can’t do anything about."    EDDIE WOOD A former UCLA political science Ph.D. candidate, Wood falls into the still relatively narrow group of female-to-male trans performers. He explained to GQ that for him, working in porn provides a kind of safe space to work through  “childhood trauma,” by placing “boundaries’ around sexual experiences that often do not exist outside of porn. “With porn I’m able to put in boundaries around sex that I never really got to experience growing up,” Wood explained. “Through childhood violence, childhood trauma in the home. What we get to do is re-create it with boundaries in place. ... On a porn set, you can rewrite the script. Everyone’s consenting along the way. There’s a lot of checking in. And it sounds weird, but I like how there’s no emotional component to it. We’re here to have sex. We’re showing our IDs, signing our forms, getting paid.” The piece is broad in its scope. In addition to profiling a MTF performer, the reporter talked to top porn stars Ryan Driller, Derrick Pierce and Small Hands, and 2019 AVN Niche Performer of the Year nominee Lance Hart, who does gay, straight and trans scenes. “It was amazing to sit down with a mainstream men’s magazine and really let them know what it’s like to be an adult star,” said Hart. “There are a lot of misconceptions about our industry and the people in it and I how this article clears some of that up.” Said Driller, “It was one of my favorite interviews of my career—I mean, it’s GQ and all. The photo shoot was my best part—[photographer] Roger Kisby said it was the most ‘GQ’ shoot he’s ever done, which is pretty amazing.” Photo by Condé Nast / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain  Pictured below, top from left: Johnny Stone, Michael Vegas, Derrick Pierce, Ryan Driller, Lance Hart; bottom from left, Tommy Pistol, Eddie Wood, Small Hands, Ricky Johnson and Will Pounder.