Lexington Steele
Podcast Transcript Season 1 Episode 6
Interviewer: Liz Goldwyn
Liz Goldwyn: Hello. Welcome to The Sex Ed. I'm your host, Liz Goldwyn, founder of thesexed.com, your number one source for sex, health, and consciousness education. My guest today is Lexington Steele, one of the most well known male adult film stars in the world. Lex is a Hall of Fame pornstar with three AVN Performer of the Year awards, basically the Best Actor Oscar for porn, and he's still going strong today, two decades into his career. He recently started working behind the camera as an award-winning producer/director for his own company, Mercenary Motion Pictures. Lex and I talked about his transition from stockbroker to pornstar and how race and gender affect the different career paths of adult performers.
Heads up before we start. During our interview, Lexington tells a story about getting into the porn industry that includes an off-camera group sex scenario that some people may find triggering or problematic. If this makes you uncomfortable, you might want to skip this episode.
Liz Goldwyn: Welcome to the show. I'm here with Lexington Steele, adult film performer, director, producer, man of many talents. Thank you for-
Lexington Steele: Hello, hello.
Liz Goldwyn: You have a really interesting career background. You were a stockbroker, and then you went to adult film. How does one make that career trajectory?
Lexington Steele: Yeah, I was a broker for six years, had a license for eight. The transition to porno essentially came out of nowhere. It was a realization of a dream or a fantasy-- more so a fantasy. It wasn't my dream, but more of a realization of a fantasy. Made a big difference, though, because if I would have stayed in finance, I might not have been around to speak on it some years later because I was in Tower Two.
Originally, I was going to go to law school. But where I grew up, I had a guy, a pretty successful broker. He lived a very nice life, so I was aware of Wall Street and what it is to be a broker. So when I got into my senior year, I went in that direction in September of '93.
Liz Goldwyn: So you were actually a stockbroker for a number of years. Why and how did you make the transition into adult film?
Lexington Steele: So what happens is this: If you're a broker trainee, you're proletariat class, if you will. So once you become a licensed broker, no longer a trainee, then you are thrust into a world where, like, money's thrown around because money is made fast. The day that I passed my test, they invited me to come out with them --the group of guys-- and what they do on the weekends, how they blow their money, what have you, recreationally, mid-20, 25-year-old, 35-year-olds that are making seven-figure incomes, some monthly, and-
Liz Goldwyn: Lots of sex and drugs?
Lexington Steele: The sex, yes. The drugs I was not aware of. It was an 18-man gang bang and I was the 19th guy.
Liz Goldwyn: Wow.
Lexington Steele: So I got to the gang bang and I'm like-
Liz Goldwyn: She was a paid professional for the gang bang?
Lexington Steele: I sincerely doubt she was paid. It was purely recreational, you know. And everyone’s having a good time, nobody's eyes dropped below the chin of everybody else's because everybody was jerking off in preparation for their turn to... I was definitely surprised, because it was a case where I'm like, "Oh, shit. I've read about this stuff." I met a person there that got me involved in magazines, and then someone from magazines connected me to a producer in the Bronx, and that's where it started.
Liz Goldwyn: That's pretty interesting. From stockbroker to an 18-person gang bang...
Lexington Steele: No, no, no.
Liz Goldwyn: ...that's part of the business.
Lexington Steele: The familiarity that everybody else had with the circumstance means that I was probably the only one being initiated that day because everybody else knew exactly what the protocol was. So it was funny to see your managing director buttnaked across the room, "Hey. Hey, Jim." But it led to a number of other things that took place in Manhattan that were interesting, but-
Liz Goldwyn: Including your first film, I would assume? Did you shoot your first film in New York?
Lexington Steele: My first movies. My first STD and AIDS test was December of 1996.
Liz Goldwyn: Prior to making your first film?
Lexington Steele: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Liz Goldwyn: Was that the legislature?
Lexington Steele: Yeah. There was no hard and fast protocol in Manhattan.
Liz Goldwyn: Back then?
Lexington Steele: No. There were no rules that were binding, whereas in LA, there probably were already binding agreements amongst performers to at least have something.
Liz Goldwyn: And that was the first STD tests that you had ever taken?
Lexington Steele: I would say it was my first one for professional purposes, yes. (Laughs)
Liz Goldwyn: So you took your first STD test and thus-
Lexington Steele: Well, I took my first full panel, which included an HIV test. So essentially, I'd had other STD tests before, but it was my first HIV test.
Liz Goldwyn: And once you got the go ahead, you did your first film.
Lexington Steele: Yes.
Liz Goldwyn: Which was called ...
Lexington Steele: You know, I can't recall the name of my first scene, nor the name of the title that it became a part of. I remember it vividly, but I don't know what it ended up in print.
Liz Goldwyn: So you were making films and simultaneously working in finance for a number of years.
Lexington Steele: Yeah. I would say two years, whereas my first test December of '96. I went to the East Coast Video Convention in October of '97 where I met Brian Williams, AKA Mike Raven. He went on to become a wicked director. He brought me to Dallas to work with his wife, Sydnee Steele, in December of '97, and January of '98 was my first AVN. Then I moved here completely in March of '98. So first AVN was a good one, and I said, "Hey, I think I could make a living out of this if I was out here." So I extended my stay for about a week, went home to close out January, did a full February, and I moved out in March of '98. I was still licensed for two years between the last time I affected a trade. You know, I knew I would have enough time to reconsider. There's a high attrition rate in this business, but I had the savings, too, you know. And that was before the [inaudible] online stuff where I could do maybe a couple scenes and then escape it.
Liz Goldwyn: When you say scenes, that's scenes per film?
Lexington Steele: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Liz Goldwyn: Because in one film, you might do, what? Five or six?
Lexington Steele: As a male, yes. Guys are platforms for the star.
Liz Goldwyn: You are a male star, but your female co-stars-
Lexington Steele: I believe that the primary focus of pornography is decidedly female, and as such, the real star of any production is going to be the girl. I don't care how large the guy's name is or brand is. The reason why the person's watching this is because they want to enjoy the female, and everybody likes females. Women like females, men like females, everybody's happy with that. So it's my job to provide the background with which she's going to do her very best. And I get lauded because I'm the one that's selected time and time and time again to be the platform. Other stars will tell you that we're not the actual star, she is.
Liz Goldwyn: You won AVN, which is for the adult industry, it's basically the Oscars. So you won top male star three times. What's the lifespan of a male performer?
Lexington Steele: Knock on wood, this is my 20th year. I've won Male Performer of the Year three times, but of my 20 years, I've been nominated for Male Performer 16 of 20 years.
Liz Goldwyn: So it's actually a longer lifespan than a female performer.
Lexington Steele: The career arc for a man is much different. The career arc for a female is more of a woman will jet to the highest peaks of her brand impact and then she'd either sputter out and the decline will be as expeditious as her ascension. Some women achieve longevity, not necessarily because they're the hottest women, but because they're the most liked. And you tend to find that the consumer will be satisfied with the girls that they like because that's hotter than someone looking the best. So you'll see some girls that achieve longevity are not the hottest women ever. For instance, my favorites might be different than most, but Belladonna, for instance, her singular popularity was not based on whether or not she was beautiful. It was because her spirit was beautiful.
Liz Goldwyn: You have to transition to behind the camera, right?
Lexington Steele: Women can be here today, gone tomorrow. The longevity for a woman is not the way the business is set up, it's not part of the equation. Those that achieve tenure are doing that in spite of the way the industry is structured. The industry is structured to cycle her through the companies that are shooting and producing in all manifestations, and then once she has shot for everybody, she's hired again because, A) either consumer responded, or B) they liked her. Or A and B. There's really no C. That means there's really no reason to hire a girl again because they get 12 new girls a day emailed. This is now. It's not even to speak of when everybody was balling. That's seven days a week, brand new girl that's never shot shit, so-
Liz Goldwyn: Wanting to work with you as a...
Lexington Steele: Not me.
Liz Goldwyn: ... director, producer, or a costar?
Lexington Steele: Just flooding into the business. I'm sure I'm on probably the medium to low end. Can you imagine what a Jules Jordan gets into him? The attrition rate for women is higher because of the fact that there's such a huge influx of brand new talent. The business is based upon the promotion and branding of girls.
Liz Goldwyn: Right, youth.
Lexington Steele: Where the guy, you just got to be the best at doing it. We're platforms for the real star. The money makers are the girls. So you see they are the stars.
Liz Goldwyn: So you make less, traditionally.
Lexington Steele: No, traditionally, we make more because we'll make more over time.
Liz Goldwyn: I see.
Lexington Steele: If you work twice a month as a female, you're making twice my money, that's fine because I'm going to work 18 to 20 times at not much less than what you're making per scene. Often times, I've been equal to in pay to females, if not more so. But guys can last super long by comparison because our primary thing is that we can do it. I'm not threatened by a new guy at all because some guys can do it, some guys can't. See, I was here before the age of the scientific means of to minimally get the motor running.
Liz Goldwyn: What are the scientific means to get the motor running? Viagra?
Lexington Steele: Let's just say that there are a number of very effective ways to do this, and-
Liz Goldwyn: Like?
Lexington Steele: Whatever's available.
Liz Goldwyn: Give us the tricks of the trade.
Lexington Steele: This business is no different than the Olympics, other than the fact we don't have rules. No one's looking over our shoulders. So if it's available, yeah. And as a producer and director, the miracles of modern medicine have been the greatest impact on pornography. Shit is hard for a guy to do. That's why I fear not new guys, because I can count the number of guys that have passed through my particular facet, if you will, represented by the ubiquitous three-letter BBC.
Liz Goldwyn: What is BBC?
Lexington Steele: Well, the proverbial Big Black Cock. I represent one depiction of that. So anyway, guys can last forever. Not forever, but certainly longer than women.
Liz Goldwyn: Speaking of BBC, I think many of our listeners might not know that interracial porn is a genre just like anal or double penetration.
Lexington Steele: And now it's larger than those.
Liz Goldwyn: It's a larger-
Lexington Steele: Anal and double penetration are micro-genres.
Liz Goldwyn: Do you have less options as a Black performer?
Lexington Steele: By way of comparison to my white counterparts, it's certainly less. The white guys are working with all of the women without any reservation by the women, whereas Black men in the industry do go up against certain parameters that exclude working with certain types of women. Now, these women can be interesting in working with Black men for money, but the interracial market, as a marketplace, has always been really strong, though. The hypocrisy is the myth that Black men have some emotional connection of being victimized because, "Oh, these girls won’t work with them and it's wrong." Let me tell you something. Black mother fuckers, we don't give a fuck. …Is my language offending?
Liz Goldwyn: (Laughter) No. No.
Lexington Steele: All right. We don't give a flying fuck whether you want to work with us or not. I don't give a goddamn what color of person that you want to work with. We don't care-- never have cared. There's no Black male that asserts any type of manifestations about feeling slighted because a girl won't do interracial for us. Black men don't care. Never have.
Liz Goldwyn: Do you look at a woman choosing not to do interracial porn the way as you would choose a woman not wanting to do gang bang?
Lexington Steele: No, I mean, I had no ...
Liz Goldwyn: Or is it a totally different category?
Lexington Steele: No, no, no. Bottom line is, I have no claim on who she wants to do. She doesn't owe me a whisper of why she doesn't have to work with me. Black men don't ask our women that, because there's other women, right? There's no problem. All you need to know is, "You're not cool with it? Cool." In any event, the hypocrisy of this matter is that the girls that decide to not do interracial are the ones that are making less money than the girls that are doing interracial. Because if you're excluding a major genre you can make money on a more regular basis, who's losing? It's the girl that says, "I will lose fans."
On a percentage basis, if you look at the minute number of fans that are fair weather tertiary fans at best, once they leave, you compare that to number of fans that they gain, it's exponentially greater what they gain than what they lose. Lisa Ann, for instance. In her many incarnations, her second one has been her greatest. I don't know how this third one's going to be. But her first round, she didn't do interracial. Then she came back her second incarnation and she blew up because she included interracial. Now, she was hot before. Now people that didn't know her, she gained all those fans.
Liz Goldwyn: So you've been in the industry now 20 years. Have you seen the demand for interracial porn fluctuate at all over that time?
Lexington Steele: No.
Liz Goldwyn: It's pretty steady? Is there a rise, or ...
Lexington Steele: No, it's been pretty steady. The reason why I say that anal and double anal and DP, those are micro-genres. The genre is a major segment of the industry. Now, interracial's been a major segment of the industry, certainly prior to my arrival. Has there been a fluctuation? No, it's been supportive of me for 20 years. And not only do I do interracial scenes, I also shoot Black-on-Black, or what I like to call All Ethnic. Unfortunately, the consideration for that is discounted heavily in most cases because they think that the only thing that matters to me as a performer and director would be the interracial scenes. But I pride myself in truly offering the best in Black on Black.
Liz Goldwyn: You have your Black Reign series.
Lexington Steele: Yeah, I just have not been able to produce as much Black-on-Black as I'd like to because the female market of Black talent has been decimated.
Liz Goldwyn: Why is that?
Lexington Steele: It's all business and economics. A lot of people think it's racist, and yeah, there's some elements to this business that do speak of a bigoted mentality. But decimation of the Black female in the industry is very, very economic. I mean, you have companies that didn't want to spend as much money on their Black-on-Black product, so the Black-on-Black product was inferior, and they sell that to the consumership. The consumership, after a while, begins to receive this inferior product and think that this is what they're supposed to get. At a certain point, that consumership wises up and says, "Hey, you're going to sell me garbage, but over here you're making gold. Well, then I'm just going to stick with the gold." So the consumer goes away and stops buying the inferior Black-on-Black product and then buying the superior interracial product. So the company in turns says, "Well, you know what? I'm not making any money from the Black-on-Black product," so they keep flooding the money into their interracial.
So what happens is, you have Black girls that are a number of shapes and sizes that are in the industry, and all of a sudden there's no more work for the breadth of Black female talent, whereas one end of the paradigm is working reverse interracial. The primary definition of that is a Black girl that looks like a white girl in terms of the way she's built. The other side of that paradigm is a girl that is built like a classically Black female performer, which would be a Nyomi Banxxx. She may not work as much as her thinner, smaller counterpart on the other end of the paradigm. So you have a diminishing of Black women that look like the classical Black woman in porno because there's less work for them, so then they begin to go away, as only the Black girls that look like their white counterparts are getting work, the reverse interracial work. You see fewer and fewer availability of Black female talent because you have fewer and fewer companies shooting it, not because they necessarily don't want to, but because there's less talent.
So it's purely economic. The structure is not racist or anything like that. It's economics. If people said, "Hey, you know, I can make money in this product," then the support for Black-on-Black product would have never diminished.
Liz Goldwyn: What's your favorite genre to perform in or to direct?
Lexington Steele: Females. That's my only requirement, really.
Liz Goldwyn: That's pretty broad.
Lexington Steele: It is. It is. It's the female. I will say that I have a thing where I don't shoot with petite women.
Liz Goldwyn: Those are your only no-go zones?
Lexington Steele: That's my only no-go, yeah.
Liz Goldwyn: And also always strictly heterosexual?
Lexington Steele: Oh yeah. I mean ...
Liz Goldwyn: Is it very separate ...
Lexington Steele: What?
Liz Goldwyn: ... within the industry? Heteronormative porn versus gay porn?
Lexington Steele: I mean, I'm not going to say that gay porno operates in another dimension, but in the mind of the heterosexual males, we are unaware of that type of porno unless we see it in AVN Magazine. If it's not a part of your lifestyle, it's not a part of your lifestyle, so I would not be necessarily privy, you know what I'm saying? So I'm not gay, so I may not be aware of what may be happening in that community. Now, with the women, girl/girl is a huge part, a huge genre. Always has been, and I think the celebration of girl/girl is a fantastic thing. I don't prefer to watch it, but the gay stuff is not for me. Then the trans stuff as well is becoming far more popular. But whatever people are making money on, go for it, because for me, this has just been about business. Well, it wasn't always about that, but it became such.
Liz Goldwyn: For you personally it wasn't always about business?
Lexington Steele: No.
Liz Goldwyn: What was it about?
Lexington Steele: The first couple years, for me, it was really about saying, "Hey, I made it to the major leagues. I can actually do this for a living and I'm actually pretty good at it, and I can actually see a way to manage a career at this." And then, it's not a business that requires me to went to Wharton or something to run my own business. I learned that from the people that had been my clients. I always kept that in my back pocket so when it got time for me to start my own stuff, I already had the notions and the mindsets of these guys that showed me how they made enough money to be investing with.
Liz Goldwyn: How many films have you done?
Lexington Steele: There might be some sort of program that could figure it out, "Oh, he's appeared in 1,000 movies," but in each movie, I may have done five scenes.
Liz Goldwyn: Thousands.
Lexington Steele: Yeah.
Liz Goldwyn: So you've slept with maybe 5, 6,000 women?
Lexington Steele: No.
Liz Goldwyn: Not that many or more?
Lexington Steele: No, no, no. Oh my gosh, no. You know what? Honestly, if it was 1,000, I would be surprised. And people are like, “Oh no.” Say it's 1,000. People are like, "Oh, no, no, no." Grant me 1,000. People say, "Oh, no, no. That's too low. That's too low." You said, what, 5, 6,000? Let me ask you. Do you know how many people 1,000 people actually is? Think about 1,000 people. What venue could you fit 1,000 people in? So to say that I fucked five times that, it would be-
Liz Goldwyn: That's a lot of venues.
Lexington Steele: I would be astounded if that was my number, no. So I would say if it makes 1,000, I would be shocked. I would be shocked if it made 1,000. Because remember, I didn't work with every girl through my 20 years. If I was like Manuel Ferrara, he may have worked with 5,000 women because he would have worked with exponentially greater number of women than I have. I would say let's grant me 1,000 with a 200 differential, which may include my personal life, so maybe 1,200. And even that is crazy.
Liz Goldwyn: Still gives you a lot of experience in the field. Who's your demographic? Who are your biggest fans.
Lexington Steele: 18 to 55. It's multicultural, cross gender. It might not be as broad with the females in terms of 18 to 55. Maybe 18 to 40. The reason why I say that is because women only maybe 10, 15 years ago began accessing movies online the way men have always been doing so. So you really couldn't equate female demographic into consumership, and now you can, not withstanding the fact that they've been watching porn since 13 or 14. When I was 13, 14-- and I was able to access pornography online, are you kidding me? I'd have never left the room. I'd have never left the house (Liz laughs). My mom would have been like, "Look, get out of here! Your room smells like… smells bad!" (Both laugh) You know?
I have two wonderful nephews and the younger one astounded me a couple years ago when he told me that, at 13, his older brother had introduced him to sex by calling him into the room to do a two on one with the hottest girl in high school, and that's how he lost his virginity. At 13, his older brother of two years said, "Hey, come in the room. I'm fucking such-and-such. And she's a senior at the high school,” and he's a sophomore, and he called his brother, who was in eighth grade to come in. Two-on-one at 13. All right, times have changed.
Liz Goldwyn: How did you lose your virginity?
Lexington Steele: It was with an older girl. It was my senior year of high school. I was the last of the cool guys to have sex. I never lied on my dick. What I mean by that is I never told stories, tales that you hear guys --especially in high school-- about what they did with who and such when it was really their left or their right hand, really.
Liz Goldwyn: I imagine that people probably have a lot of misconceptions about you given your career. Is there something that you hear most commonly?
Lexington Steele: That I have a preference for one type of woman or another. I don't have any preferences. I just have one particular thing that I stay away from. That's the petite girls. My default position is a preference for Black women and Latina women. As such-
Liz Goldwyn: Is this on camera or off camera?
Lexington Steele: In my life in general. I've never been beholden to parameters that have been set by society. By way of default, I've always been positioned to associate with Black women, but there's been a number of highly impactful Black men, generationally, that changed the course of society forever, and I was a product of that and a beneficiary thereof. I've still been riding that wave since what seems like the beginning of time.
Liz Goldwyn: Can you explain?
Lexington Steele: Okay, the social and cultural impact, and certainly by way of extension, the socioeconomic impact of Michael Jordan and Tyson Bedford, two individuals that introduced the hero-level worship of a Black man who would be bald and dark skinned simultaneously. Now you had the consideration of that being another form of beauty, whereas that was added to the mantle of consideration for what is considered collectively as beautiful.
Liz Goldwyn: The media talks a lot about objectification of women, and you literally and figuratively objectify yourself with your popular dildo series. Do you manufacture and distribute that series yourself as it's a lucrative market?
Lexington Steele: There was a big company called Topco. They have a huge catalog, and I was lucky enough to be one of the guys that they did a line for, but that's come and gone. So no, I don't manufacture and/or produce it anymore. And essentially, whatever was left in the inventory when they stopped manufacturing new pieces, once that burned out is that I had maybe four left at home, you know what I'm saying? And so I really want to keep hold of them or give them out, you know, it has to be a very, very special occasion. Like if you had asked me to bring one, I would have brought one and given you one today.
Liz Goldwyn: Would you have brought me the EZ Bend Dual Dong?
Lexington Steele: No, no. I would have brought you the Lex Caliber, the battery-operated vibrating edition.
Liz Goldwyn: Can you tell me about the concept behind the EX Bend Dual Dong, which is, for listeners who don't know what that is, it is a white penis fused to a Black penis, so it's almost like a U-shaped.
Lexington Steele: Yeah. The existence of the Double Dong predates my inclusion. The use of a vanilla one and a chocolate one was really just that, like a vanilla or chocolate. Sometimes you like vanilla, sometimes you like chocolate, but for those that want both, here you are. If you want to do it at the same time, here you are. I can't take responsibility for that idea because the concept was not mine. I like that campaign, but nothing was more impactful than the Lex Caliber. When you saw that, the first release of my toy, that was impressive. It was tough in the making of the piece ...
Liz Goldwyn: How did they make it?
Lexington Steele: ... the creation of the model.
Liz Goldwyn: How did they make it? They put a mold on you?
Lexington Steele: All right, in a nutshell, you take a flowerpot, cut a hole in the bottom, and you put it on the guy's dick. Now, the guy has to maintain an erection throughout the duration of the process, and so once you are erect enough, they'll come in and they'll put this flowerpot on your dick. Now, they allow you to have someone with you or either bring magazines. People are like, "Oh, that's no problem because you can look at your phone." But when I did mine, it was on the flip phones and you couldn't watch porno on your phone. At the time, I had my girl with me and she definitely got me worked up well enough that we can call the guys in. And how she did it was she literally straddled my face and I ate her pussy for about 12 minutes it took before I really felt that either she had to sit down on my dick or, "You can call these guys in, but let's do it now." So they come in. This is not an emergency room, right? (Liz laughs) But they kind of rush in like, "We need it now. Stat."
Liz Goldwyn: With the flowerpot.
Lexington Steele: Yeah. They've got the whole bodysuits on, literally. You're like, "Why do you guys need to wear that?" So my girl, Vanessa Blue at the time, she exited. They put the flowerpot on you, then one guy pours the stuff in. And it was cold. I remember it being cold. It had to settle. I really had to flex to keep my hard-on because my girl left at that point. You have to keep powering up your dick until the mold sets on you. So luckily enough, I did it on the first time. Because if you lose any of your hard-on, there's going to be air in the mold and it's ruined, and I did not want to redo this again.
So it settled, and then it was time to take it off. So there was three guys in the room. Two of them left, one guy stands there and holds it. So you're having a conversation with a guy, who's dressed up like a spaceman, and he's holding a flowerpot with the mold of your dick (Liz laughs). And you're holding a conversation with him. What kind of conversations do you have in that circumstance, right? Because you're talking to the guy and the other part of you is like, "Would you stop talking to me? I'm trying to maintain it. You're breaking my mojo here."
Liz Goldwyn: But you've been on a million sets, right? Where there's lights and cameras and you're just not-
Lexington Steele: That's different.
Liz Goldwyn: It's different?
Lexington Steele: Oh yeah, yeah. If you blow this, you got to repeat this whole-- this is work. This is business. So the two guys come back in. Now you got three guys, grown men, three of them with their hands at the base of the flowerpot, and they unwrap it so then it's this big hunk of rubberized type of molding material. The three of them pull from the bottom and literally your dick will... I would say maybe double length.
Liz Goldwyn: It's like a cartoon.
Lexington Steele: I would say my dick doubled in length, maybe more. I never saw my penis like that. I never want to see it again like that. Before that rubber releases your dick, oh my God. When it was just the head of my dick that was still stuck in the thing, oh my God, my dick was about 16 inches long. It was impressive.
Liz Goldwyn: Maybe it's a new toy. Maybe it's the Lex Caliber Two.
Lexington Steele: No, ironically enough, that's what foiled me in the end. Once the product line had been 10 years old, came time to reconsider the design of the box. They chose to not redesign the artwork because they didn't have any boxes to fit it anymore. The shell that they used male dildos was now being made smaller. It would have been too expensive to keep making a shell to fit my dildo, and so they decided to cut the line. Did I make a lot of money during the time? No. You make a lot of money only when you sell it. It was like 3%.
Liz Goldwyn: And if you manufacture. Probably if you manufacture and distribute it yourself, but the licensing deal isn't just lucrative.
Lexington Steele: Because in the 3% that I was being given, after this, that, and the other, what does it really come down to? Less than 1%, 1-point-something percent.
Liz Goldwyn: Not only do a lot of young men, especially young men today, consume a lot of pornography and have really unrealistic expectations of what sex should be, but I think it also contributes to a lot of performance anxiety. What advice do you have for young men?
Lexington Steele: First of all, guys, do not compare yourself to what you see on TV. Do you think that you could go on the highway and drive the same as a NASCAR driver can drive? A NASCAR driver could probably drive 100 miles an hour in the opposite direction on a major highway and never, never get in an accident because they are highly skilled at what they do. And the people that do movies are highly skilled in what they do, so don't fault yourself for premature ejaculation or underperforming based on performance anxiety. Don't compare yourself to the people that are performing in the movies that you watch. There's a reason that guys that are in this business are built like this and can do this. We're not doing any tricks, but there's a lot of mental gymnastics that are going on in male performers' heads, and that's not something that one would be aware of on-sight. And we as performers have arrived at where we're at and what you're seeing. We didn't just wake up and be like "Duh-duh-duh! I can get my dick hard like that!"
Liz Goldwyn: That said, have you ever dealt with those kind of issues off camera in your personal life or on set? Performance anxiety, not being able to get hard, premature ejaculation.
Lexington Steele: Oh my God. All the above, at home and on camera. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. It happens. I would say that I can identify maybe four failures in 2017, I would say I suffered an under-performance. One scene so far this year, even so. Now, last year, if one was to say to me, "Well, wow, four or five times, huh?" I'd be like, "Yeah." I had a sports hernia. So last year was a tough year, but I'm still in it. And so if you're still in it, then you can't really make excuses. You bomb and you live to tell about it. One thing about being a male performer is you got to have a short memory and/or a comfortability with the memory of underperforming and the ability to come in the next time and then be better or be best.
Now, the tough part is if you fail and then they don't want to cut you loose. If you fail and you walk out knowing that you're going to be replaced or you fail and say, "Okay, well, look. When are you going to be free again? Let's reschedule it." And you're like, "No, I got to come back and try to work with her again." So sometimes, you don't want to relive the circumstances because it might repeat itself.
Liz Goldwyn: Do you consume porn in your personal life?
Lexington Steele: Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I try to watch stuff that I don't know the people in, either amateur stuff and/or stuff produced by people I just don't know at all, like stuff produced outside of the United States.
Liz Goldwyn: For research or to get off?
Lexington Steele: No, to get off. Or my greatest attributes might be my physicality and my ability to capture video in the way that I do. My videography is quite unique. But one of the things that I pale in comparison is in my fantasy. I'm jealous of some of the craziness that some of the directors and producers can come up with, because I can't. I wish I had that element. So what I focus on is just try to produce high quality stuff. It might not be the weirdest or strangest stuff. I just wish I was weirder and stranger in what I thought about sex. So it's not boring, but it's just like I throw fastballs. It's right down the pipe. It's not going to be a slider, it's not going to be a curveball, it's not going to be a change-up. You know what's coming, but it's going to be coming at you hard and fast and it's going to be thrown well. (Liz laughs)
Liz Goldwyn: Do you ever feel over-consumed?
Lexington Steele: I think so. As a civilian, I would say there would be a problem. But me, as a professional in this industry, I'm not oversaturated because it'd be hard for me to express in a way that one could properly understand where you have to go when it is incumbent upon you to do something as essential as get and maintain an erection. You can do this shit or you can't. Nothing's more powerful than your brain. Your brain will shut that shit-- I've had 2 or 300 milligrams of shit in my system. One thought, blow, hard-on done. Done. Not coming back as in ever, as in, like, "Oh my God. My dick died. It's never to come back again." And then it could be one moment where your brain's like, "Oof, the makeup artist's right nipple is hard as shit," and that pops into your brain, and the next thing, your dick is hard as fucking Chinese maths (Liz laughs). See what I'm saying?
Liz Goldwyn: I never heard that one before.
Lexington Steele: Yeah. It's the power of the brain. So all these other things are additives. It's like you have natural bodybuilders who are awesome, and you have professional bodybuilders who are incredible. Guys that make it in this industry are better than the civilian. That's why he's here. If he uses an additive, he does because he's a better rendition of himself to the benefit of the industry. That's why the industry never complains. And will not. Where sets are shorter, girls are able to get done by 4:00, done by 3:00.
Liz Goldwyn: For you, personally outside of porn, where does intimacy in your sex life fall in your scale of priority
Lexington Steele: Ah, well, you know-
Liz Goldwyn: You're married, right?
Lexington Steele: Yep.
Liz Goldwyn: Do you have better sex when you're-
Lexington Steele: If people in the industry say that there are not certain psychological elements that are positive and negative and that they're the sort of things that you lose, if they deny that, then they are in denial of themselves. One of the things you sacrifice does include intimacy. In your brain, you get to the point where the intimacy almost becomes a non-factor because the most cases that you're having sex, the chemistry is manufactured between yourself and your female counterpart artificially so things can work. And so intimacy, being that it's not a factor there, becomes lesser and lesser and lesser of an initiative. So there are certain sacrifices, so the mentality of porno has had a negative impact. Is it compounded in that my lady, that she has no need for it either, that she didn't even think that it mattered that the penetration happened without the return of oral sex. These are things that change you once you're in the industry, and it seems you can carry it with you your whole life or maybe not, and since I'm still in the middle of it, I don't know.
Liz Goldwyn: What are you still learning when it comes to sex? Do you have anything left to learn?
Lexington Steele: (Laughs) Well, what I'm learning about sex is that it's a very, very big world and there's a lot of stuff that, as you get older, you find that certain things you couldn't imagine turn you on actually do turn you on. I'm learning that, like I said earlier, that my mental sexuality, if you will, is not as broad as others. I wish I had as horny thoughts as some of these other people do. And that the human body is the most incredible machine ever, but the female body is like-- there's the atom and then there's the female body. Everything else is just conjecture. Man, what women can do. So what am I still learning is what the female body can still do, and what turns me on with what I see the female body doing. Incredible.
Liz Goldwyn: Do you have children?
Lexington Steele: No, not yet.
Liz Goldwyn: Do you want to have children?
Lexington Steele: Yes. Yeah, I do.
Liz Goldwyn: How will you deal with explaining to your children your profession? Is it a non-issue for you?
Lexington Steele: In the explanation to my kids about what I do, when the time comes, I'll be able to tell them confidently and fitfully the process that makes us all live and breathe and you arrive at this spot. Mom and Dad did a certain thing that you'll do at some point that arrives you here where you stand today. Now, what I've done is videotaped myself doing that process and it's a part of entertainment, like what you see on TV. Daddy does something like that, but it's not for you until you're a little bit older. "Well, what is it?" Well, it's called sex and I allow people to videotape me and your mommy doing it for money.
I think the problem is when you misrepresent what you're doing. If you raise your kids in a certain way, they will be prepared when you feel that they are prepared to receive the message as to what you did. Now, the next question will be, would I like them to follow in my footsteps or perhaps their mother's footsteps? Well, you know, I wouldn't stand in the way of my son doing it. I have my reasoning and I suspect that my son would have similar reasonings. But for a female, I would leave that up to her mother to discuss with her as to why she may not want to do it, because her mother may have a different take as to why it's okay to do it. I can handle it for my son. I would leave it up to the mom to discuss it with the daughter because, you know, I might be off in the reasoning as to what it takes or why a woman would agree to be a part of this.
Liz Goldwyn: Thank you.
Lexington Steele: Yeah.
Liz Goldwyn: Thanks for answering all my questions.
Lexington Steele: All right. Yeah.
Liz Goldwyn: You can find Lex's work wherever you get your porn. Follow him on Twitter @LexSteele11. We'll leave it to you to figure out what the 11 means.
Thanks for listening to The Sex Ed. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to visit us at thesexed.com. I'm your host, Liz Goldwyn. This episode was produced by Aesli Grandi for the Media Mob in association with Fanny Co.. Our editor is Rob Abear, Jackie Wilson is our line producer, Jeremy Emery is our sound recordist, and Bettina Santa Domingo is our coordinator. Lewis Lazar made all of our music, including the track you're listening to right now. As always, The Sex Ed remains dedicated to expanding your orgasmic health and sexual consciousness. Thanks again for listening.