Quick question: how many male porn stars can you name off the top of your head? Don’t say John Holmes. He’s dead—doesn’t count. Don’t say Ron Jeremy, either. He’s a fat, hairy, old guy with a mustache. He’s still a ‘star’ the same way Chaz Bono is still a women. Take away those two, and who ya got? Nobody? Nothing?

Well, don’t feel bad, because you’re not the only one. The term “male porn star” is kind of an oxymoron anymore, anyway. This is because being a guy in the porn business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That’s right, we said it—getting paid to have sex on camera with countless hot girls is overrated, and we’ll tell you five reasons why.

Caverject Injections

When your job depends on how often you can get it up, keep it up, and get it out in the span of about five minutes, it’s only natural to start looking for enhancements to boost your performance. There’s no shame in it—it’s porn, not baseball. The penis, despite our best wishes, is not a machine. Science hasn’t gotten that far…yet (cue the diabolical laughing).

Unfortunately for a lot of porn actors, Viagra and Cialis are only the beginning. Just like anything, it’s possible for your body to eventually build up a tolerance for magic boner pills. First, taking just one pill doesn’t work, so you take two. Then double-popping stops working, so you start taking three…and so on and so on until you’re legitimately afraid that you’re ingesting enough artificial enzyme suppressants to detonate a blood vessel.

It’s at this point where Caverject injections come into play. As in, the next logical step to being able to perform your duties as a male porn actor is to stick a needle into your wang on a regular basis and pumping it with chemicals so it can keep smiling for the camera. Ever seen the inside of a heroin addict’s elbow? It’s pock-marked with holes and dotted in little red welts from repeated needle injections. Now, we’re not saying that the same thing happens in this case with your dick, but for the sake of you’re sticking a freaking needle into your wiener, that’s exactly what we’re saying.

STDs

Obvious one, here. Although the adult film industry isn’t as unclean as you might assume, you’re still gambling against the house with the health & vitality of your cock every time you decide not to use protection—just like in real life, except with way worse odds.

For instance, a whopping 66% of all performers are believed to have herpes, alone. It’s not AIDS, but you still don’t want that shit.

So the simple solution would be to just make sure you wrap it whenever the camera starts rolling, right? Well no, actually. Even if you do want to be safe and use protection, odds are you’ll be persuaded not to, because sex with condoms doesn’t sell as well as sex without condoms. Condoms, as it turns out, put a real damper on the whole fantasy shtick.

So even though it’s admirable of you to insist on keeping yourself and the people you’re working with safe, you’ll have a heck of a time getting as much work as the guy who will work without condoms. And it’s not like you can afford to sit back on your morals and let that other guy who’s willing to bareback it take all your gigs, because…

The Money is Shit

On average, a male porn actor gets paid roughly half to a third of what a female actress gets. One thing about being a guy in the porn business—the director doesn’t really care about you that much. Now, if we’re talking about gay porn, the dynamic obviously changes, but we’re not. We’re talking about most of the porn that’s out there—the kind that caters to heterosexual men. This demographic tunes in for the naked girl, not the naked guy.

The director knows this, too, which makes you only a half-notch above the guy holding the boom mike in terms of set hierarchy. Complicating matters further, there are actually more male porn actors in the business than female ones, which means you can be replaced pretty easily the second you start griping about institutional sexism, or preferential treatment, or the fact that cameras are ready to roll and now there’s a crudely carved Halloween pumpkin in the scene that wasn’t there a second ago, and it’s the middle of April.

It Takes the Fun Out of Sex

Not to go all Father Flannigan on you, but how long can you have sex for a living before having sex is no longer sexy? But seriously, this is more of a common sense thing than a morals thing—how many random, strictly-business, orgasm-faking, may-or-may-not-but-probably-does-contain-herpes vaginas do you have to be in before your libido is totally desensitized?

Sex works on your brain the same way any stimuli does—whatever you associate it with becomes what turns you on, and it’s safe to assume that being a porn actor generally means you get to be associated with some pretty perverted stuff. Your “tolerance”, so to speak, for erotica gets cranked up to the point where you need foreign objects and at least one gimp before you even start to feel a tingle in your pants.

Then again, maybe we’re just being naïve assuming all guys who got into the business of being paid to have sex with many different women also intend to keep a girlfriend/wife on the side specifically so they could deal with that conundrum.

There is No Retirement Plan

Adult film actors are sort of like professional wrestlers—the Vince McMahonian kind. Most basically drift from gig to gig and live shitty paycheck to shitty paycheck in a world where very little is guaranteed in terms of job security. And the job itself isn’t really conducive to long-term careers.

Actors get paid by the scene, and that’s pretty much it. No long-term contracts, no royalties, no pension, and damn sure no 401(k). And good luck trying to lobby for any of those benefits, seeing as how no union currently exists for porn actors.

Being a porn actor is about as marketable a skill as being a bank robber if you’re looking to transition into another career, and they’re asking you what you’ve been doing for money the past five years of your life. Umm…I can lift a dumbbell with a string attached to my penis and swing it around like a pendulum while getting spanked with a bullwhip. Does that count as multitasking?