No man or woman on earth has watched a porn without asking the following question: is that actually real? One question that comes up time and time again? How male performers stay hard for what seems like hours at a time.
That’s why we went to the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) in Las Vegas to talk to some porn stars to find out what really happens to dicks on camera.
Veteran porn star Peter North says staying hard is a challenge that most male porn stars will confront at some point in their career. “Everyone thinks it would be so easy to stay hard on set and it’s not easy at all,” he says.
While we’d all like to believe that the ability to stay erect for hours at a time, that’s not always the case, says porn star Kayden Kross. Most of our male talent uses some form of medical aid to stay hard, says Kayden Kross. That can be anything from Viagra and Cialis to injections that will keep erections going without arousal. I know others have had surgeries to implant penis pumps.
Kross says that often, her coworkers will pop a pill before any scene they shoot to achieve an erection and go on their merry way. But it’s usually obvious when this is the case.
Sometimes with the pills, they’ll look a little flushed, but sometimes you’re just flushed because sex is an aerobic activity, says Kross.
With the more hardcore methods (injections, pumps), you can tell because the dick doesn’t respond to situations where arousal would naturally dip. For example, one guy once fell through a glass wall on a shower in the middle of a scene.
He stood up with shards of glass sticking out of him and his dick was still hard. Viagra is strong, but it’s not that strong.
How safe is it to be popping pills and shooting your penis full of drugs? We asked Michael Krychman, MD, director of the Southern California Center for Sexual Health and Survivorship Medicine, for some clarity.
Taking Cialis or Viagra at the correct doses are appropriate in some medical conditions, says Dr. Krychman, But long-term studies are certainly lacking. Documented adverse effects of certain medications include changes in vision or sudden vision loss, ringing in your ears, or sudden hearing loss, chest pain or heavy feeling, pain spreading to the arm or shoulder, nausea, sweating, general ill feeling, and irregular heartbeat.
One former porn star, Christopher Zeischegg (a.k.a. Danny Wylde), went through a particularly terrible experience from taking too much of the drug Cialis.
Throughout my career as a porn performer, I used erectile dysfunction medication as a performance enhancer, says Zeischegg, My drug of choice was Cialis, though I dabbled in other medications.
Over the course of eight years, I ended up in the emergency room three times for priapism [a condition in which the penis is erect for hours after stimulation has ended]. During my last ER visit, a doctor told me that if I didn’t quit taking the drugs, I risked the likelihood of long-term damage that would affect my ability to achieve natural erections. So I quit using the drugs and quit performing in porn. Zeischegg suffered from an erection that raged for more than 12 hours, which ultimately ended his affair with ED drugs.
Most men aren’t used to the pressures of an on-set set, continues Zeischegg. There’s the lack of intimacy or chemistry with a partner, the film crew, the pressure to achieve an erection on cue, maintaining an erection during still photographs, etc…
So most male performers experience a ‘failed’ scene early on in their career/ Too many failed scenes will ruin a performer’s reputation. Most guys end up taking ED drugs to allow themselves a certain level of consistency.
But short of putting a shot directly into their dicks, what do porn stars do to maintain an erection on set?
Aaron Thompson, better known by his pseudonym, Small Hands, says that every porn star is different, but his own secret comes down to fitness.
I can’t stress this enough, as I came from a hard-partying touring band background before porn, and saw the positive changes in my libido as I made healthier choices in my lifestyle, says Thompson. I’m on the Paleo Diet, I work out every single day, and I don’t party nearly as hard as I used to. I drink a ton of water. And I go to bed early the night before I have to perform. Real wild rock and roll stuff.
During the sex scene itself, Thompson says, “everything goes out the window except the female as far as where my mind is. I’m hyper-focusing on absolutely nothing but my partner, the sex about to happen and the beauty of the person in front of me, and the fact that I am one lucky motherfucker who gets to do this.
Thompson says he tries as hard as he can to block out every kind of external stimuli possible.
Nothing else matters in that moment: not rent, not traffic, not the dog pee on the carpet that you’re gonna have to clean when you get home, not how many followers on IG you have, nada,” he says. “By becoming truly obsessed and immersed with what’s happening in front of me, I become truly obsessed and immersed with my partner for the scene. That works 95% of the time.
Now that he’s taken a more behind-the-scenes role as a producer, North regularly offers advice to the male talent on his porn sets about how to get it up. “Guys feel like they have a time limit on getting it up,” he says. “But guys have been masturbating themselves since they were kids 14, 15, whatever.
So if you can control when masturbating yourself and getting yourself hard, that should give you confidence. It’s like snowboarding: if you know how to break with the edges of a snowboard, if you know how to stop, then that gives you a lot more confidence to go ahead and try to do your thing.”
Of course, with the average porn shoot taking up to 12 hours to film, according to Thompson, it’s no wonder that men would go the synthetic route and opt for Viagra or Cialis. In fact, taking these drugs is so common in the porn world that porn starlet Joanna Angel, who is married to Thompson, started her own boner pill company.
But when it comes down it, Krychman says, for most men, diet and focus should be enough to achieve optimal penis health.
Healthy living leads to a healthy penis, says Dr. Krychman. Diet, exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight. Also, it is important to masturbate and have sex to help maintain good penile blood flow.
Hear that, guys? Masturbating is good for you! So, get to it.
