S4E31: The Rob Montana Interview

[00:00:04] Welcome to Demystifying Gay Porn. My name is Ike Que Grande and if you watch gay porn, I've definitely helped to get off. The guest joining me today is a sex worker, a adult entertainer, a model, a masseur, a little bit of everything, right Rob?

[00:00:35] Yeah. Go-go dancer. Okay, go-go dancer as well. Everybody, Rob Montana, how are you? Hi, nice to meet you all. Thank you very much for for joining me on this episode. Thank you for having me. No problem, no problem. So let's get into it. We have a

[00:00:50] lot to cover. We've worked together on a couple of shoots before. We are in New York. We're gonna work with Treasure Island. Yes. And we're gonna talk about what's been going on since the last time I saw you, but also I want to go over one

[00:01:05] thing in particular. What is that one thing in particular that you think I want to talk about? My penile implant surgery, which was, it's been a journey. It's been a journey, okay. Without further ado, tell me a little bit about

[00:01:18] Rob Montana. Tell me about where you're from. Well, Rob Montana is from Montana, believe it or not. That's how I got my name. When I was, you know, I started doing massage work back in 2019 and I hadn't even thought about

[00:01:39] doing porn yet. That wasn't even an idea. But I started doing massage work and, you know, I went through several different iterations of names. I had Must Love Beards. I had Made in Montana. And, you know, eventually when I first got

[00:01:56] into my first studio scene, it was Silver Steel who said, if you want to get into porn, pick a name now. Like right now because you'll be sorry later if you've chosen a name, a username for different social medias and then they're

[00:02:12] taken later or whatever. So I was like, okay, well what am I gonna be? I'm from Montana. That's where I grew up. And so I was like that seems like a natural choice. Plus there are a few other Montanas out there with, you know, porn

[00:02:26] actors or, you know, there's a Phil Montana. Don't name them now. Oh, sorry. This is your show. No, I'm kidding. There's a whole Montana family. It's like the Steeles, you know. There's a Rocco Steele, there's a Silver Steele, Dallas Steele.

[00:02:39] All right. But you're the House of Montana. And you are the leader of the House of Montana? Sure, yes. So what was growing up like in Montana? So I was a Mormon boy. Really? Yeah. So the family is still Mormon. Shit, this just gets more

[00:02:57] interesting as we go along. I have layers, yes. You were raised Mormon. Raised Mormon in Montana, rural Montana. We bounced around a lot. My parents were divorced when I was about 10 years old. So we had a very kind of unstable, I had a very kind of

[00:03:12] unstable childhood where, you know, from year to year I was going to a different school. Didn't have a lot of time to make friends before we were moving on to the next town. My mom was like trying to figure out what she

[00:03:27] wanted to do. She was a single mom, five kids. You know, my dad, I think he tried his best but he was in a really bad car accident when he was a teenager, like his

[00:03:38] senior year of high school and was in a coma and had frontal lobe damage. So that really kind of just affected our whole family going forward. You know, he had poor judgment and you know, I think that was kind of what led to the downfall of

[00:03:52] their marriage. It was up to my mom to take care of us five kids. And then my older brother was very unreliable. He was kind of a conduct disordered child where he was getting in trouble with authority all the time. So I was kind of,

[00:04:06] I was second oldest. So it's kind of on me to take care of my younger brothers and sisters and you know, be the man of the house sort of so to speak. Growing up

[00:04:16] in Montana, it was, you know, we were poor. We were poor as fuck growing up. It was, you know, I remember being on food stamps. I remember being really, you know, embarrassed of having to wear hammy downs to school. You know, things that my

[00:04:31] older brother wore. We wouldn't, we didn't have much for Christmas or, you know, different holidays. It was like we had to make our, sometimes we had to make our own presents for each other which in a way is kind of fun. Like now I think

[00:04:44] about it, I was like there were some things that were good about being poor and it really brought our family together in a lot of ways. And we did the best, we made the best out of it. You know, it's not like I feel like I was

[00:04:56] robbed of a childhood other than the Mormon stuff. And you were one of how many? Five of us. Okay. Yeah. Five. Second oldest of five. While growing up, right? You said you

[00:05:06] were the man of the house. When did you come out? I didn't come out until I was 25 years old to my family. So I started coming out right after I graduated from high school. I remember my first sexual experiences were at a adult

[00:05:23] bookstore we had in Missoula, Montana which is my hometown. And I'd been there a few times with some straight friends and I noticed there was this room in the back that guys were going to and it was like something was going on back there.

[00:05:38] It was cruising but I didn't know what cruising was. I didn't know, you know, the people were just kind of loitering there and checking each other out as they go

[00:05:46] in and out. And I was like, I don't know what that is but I think I want to know what that is. I want to go and check that out. So I just remember one day going down

[00:05:55] there by myself and I was so nervous. I was probably bright red in the face and just shaking all over. But it was like an excitement, you know? It was, I wasn't terrified but I was like so nervous with excitement. I just knew like something

[00:06:11] good was in there. And I ended up, you know, just fooling around with a guy in one of the arcade booths. That was kind of my outlet for a while. Like I would

[00:06:19] go there when I wanted to have my next sexual experience with a guy and so on and so forth. I remember meeting this guy who was very, he was Italian. He was, he

[00:06:31] seemed a lot older than me at the time but I was only 18 and he was probably like 24, 23 or 24. And I thought he was like this old man. Totally like that age difference back then is a huge difference and now it's like, you know.

[00:06:46] Well you haven't even gone to college yet and they've probably finished their college career. Yeah I remember seeing him on campus and he had a girlfriend so like he completely ignored me as I walked by but like I remember falling for this

[00:06:59] guy because we had maybe one or two hookups and in my childhood bedroom by the way. I was still living at home. How'd you sneak him in the house? My mom was away for the weekend with my two sisters and I knew like that was the

[00:07:13] opportunity to do something if I wanted to. So I snuck this guy in and then I just was like, we, I didn't, I didn't know anything about relationships or dating, you know. That's the thing about being gay I think is we're not socialized the

[00:07:27] same way that straight people are. We don't get, we're not taught how to interact with each other, how to date, how to have a relationship. Because we're not taught how to talk about and it's so shameful. Yeah and what we're taught is heteronormative values around relationships and

[00:07:46] that's not always how it works in the gay world. It doesn't help that we get a lot of our education from porn. Exactly, so that's literally how you do learn how to interact with each other is to use your bodies. You know I remember

[00:08:03] going to the gay bar, the one gay bar we had in Missoula, Montana which is called AmVets, which is the American Veterans Club. Oh wow cool. I mean I've heard that kind of the history of how it became the gay bar but it's it's down in this

[00:08:16] basement. It's dank and dark and you know just a perfect place for hiding out, right? You have to walk down these stairs and it's just so secretive and like you know this is back in the late 90s early 2000s when I was starting to come out

[00:08:33] and you know come out to friends. We're contemporaries. Contemporary yeah like I mean I remember being at the tail end of the AIDS crisis. Me too. Yeah. Me too. It's funny you say that I was just thinking about that before how I

[00:08:48] remember being 16 because I had a boyfriend in high school. I grew up not too far from here and having a boyfriend in high school and the first time we had sex I was like oh I got it. I got AIDS. We had to get tested and stuff

[00:09:05] like that. Meanwhile we hadn't been with anybody else just each other but that's just the fear that would go through your head. Absolutely. The entire time yeah that's crazy. I was running down to Planned Parenthood every time I took up

[00:09:17] with somebody it was like oh I put it in my mouth this time I must I must have it. You have these irrational fears because there was no education. There was no you know nobody took you by the hand and said it's okay. Again because

[00:09:31] okay. What you did was not as risky and instead like at Planned Parenthood they were great there and like I will always donate and support Planned Parenthood because for a young gay man living in rural Montana that was the

[00:09:44] only place I felt safe going to get tested and the people there were just so kind and you know understanding. No judgment. No judgment. You know it was it was my only you know I didn't have there was any gay physicians in town you know

[00:10:03] like here in New York or in DC or any of their big cities you you know there's there's go-to gay physicians that you can you know know a lot about gay men's health and you can talk about these issues with comfortably. I didn't have

[00:10:16] that so Planned Parenthood was my my go-to. But yeah I just remember being at the tail end of AIDS in fact going down to the gay bar there was this doorman and his name was Lance and I just I remember he was there he was there he

[00:10:32] was there and then one day he wasn't there and I don't remember noticing that he was sick or anything like that but just one day he just wasn't wasn't the doorman and then I started asking around and I found out that he died of

[00:10:46] pneumocystis pneumonia and I was just like oh you know this thing is still it's still here. Yeah I remember hearing people like or knowing people from bars that died of AIDS in like 2006 the last I heard you know what I mean? Yeah. So

[00:11:09] it was still happening and it was probably somebody that didn't decide not to take medication or you know you never know. Yeah I mean I had a drug dealer back in the day who was closeted and he would only he would sleep with men but he

[00:11:25] didn't tell anybody about it he wasn't taking care of his own sexual health and he ended up in the hospital he probably never knew he ever had HIV and he just ended up in the hospital one day had pneumocystis it was like advanced

[00:11:39] pneumocystis pneumonia I was in the ICU and then gone like it happened so fast and I was just like you know I got to know this guy not just as a dealer but

[00:11:50] like as a you know he'd become kind of a friend as much as a dealer can be a friend but you know he was he was a nice guy it it was kind of a turning point in

[00:12:03] my drug and alcohol use you know I went from using alcohol and and cocaine to now I didn't have that that source and things took a turn for the worse but we'll talk about that. Yeah okay so we're getting there so you came out at 25 to

[00:12:19] your to your family however you were already sexually active sexually with other men by the time you were 18. Yeah so I was I was sneaking down to the gay bar I remember my sister and I are like a year apart my so I have two younger

[00:12:34] sisters but the older of the two her and I were always very close because the one year difference and so we had some overlapping friends going to school together all those years and you know I remember one night after going to the

[00:12:49] bars I went to this restaurant that everybody went to is kind of like the after-hours restaurant to go you know eat and sober up or whatever and we were there I was there was a whole table of drag queens like that's that's the group

[00:13:03] I fell into because I was like drag queens are great. I love these guys like yeah they were they'd like they took me in I was just like this little baby gay and you know that that was the you know that was my introduction to the gay

[00:13:19] world so those are the people I hung out with and my sister's friends saw me with a table with drag queens and of course they told my sister about it I got back to my mom and my mom confronted me about it and I remember just like

[00:13:34] vehemently denying it I was like no absolutely that got it wrong or or maybe I said something like yeah just talk to their just friends or you know I'm not homophobic like you know it's just I made up some excuse you know I

[00:13:51] wasn't I certainly wasn't ready to come out to anybody in my family like the how that went in my head was total disaster you know I just I imagined the worst possible scenarios you know coming out to my mom or my my brothers and sisters

[00:14:07] you know I'd really good experiences actually with all the people that were close to me they didn't care they were like we love you you're a friend I had a straight friend who you know his name is Ryan he and I were as close as a

[00:14:20] straight and gay man could be we had a totally platonic relationship but like when I came out to him we were in Vegas together on a just a little weekend

[00:14:28] trip and he's like let's go to a gay bar he took me down to the gay bar and I hooked up with this guy in the bathroom of our hotel room and well my friend was

[00:14:39] in the other room you know like I was good experiences like but I you know my family I was like I don't know how to do this and I was seeing a therapist at the

[00:14:51] time and that therapist was like you need to do this you know like don't don't delay it any longer you don't want to be a 40 year old guy still in the closet and she was right like I I needed to be pushed a little bit out of my

[00:15:04] comfort zone and she really helped me do that when they say come out of the closet it's I laugh when I hear that term not because it's funny yes it implies that we have this like one moment where we like I'm gay and that's

[00:15:22] it like no I for me at least coming out has been a lifelong process and I have to come out over and over and over now you look at me and you can pretty much

[00:15:33] say okay that's a gay man but now but like coming out as a sex worker or a porn actor or coming out as a addict in recovery you know we have these things that are that are personal to us that we have to sometimes come out to people

[00:15:48] that are close to us in our life it's not just being gay but you know there's there's lots of different ways so I think it's a process it's a lifetime process yeah that's my thoughts on coming out I didn't leave Montana until

[00:16:02] I was 28 years old and I came out to my family when I was 25 and it started out with it started out in a way that I hadn't expected so my brother my younger brother I had an older brother and a younger brother my younger brother Nate

[00:16:20] he he was dating one of his high school teachers while he was in high school Wow it was his gym teacher and it was a big scandal in it oh okay do you guys roll

[00:16:34] like this it was a big scandal in Missoula Montana he was dating this gym teacher I mean she was hot like I see what everything that he saw in her but what I didn't get was like what this 30-something year old woman was doing

[00:16:49] dating an 18 year old kid who was 18 he might have even been 17 but she ended up losing her job my mom found out about this of course and was like just furious about the whole situation so I thought like here's an ally in my family like

[00:17:06] he's he's straight away from the Mormon faith and he's dating his high school gym teacher and I thought like maybe this is somebody I can talk to at some point but this this woman he was dating you know her and I kind of got close and

[00:17:21] she had a friend who was gay that knew me and this friend told Jackie was her name Jackie that I was gay and she was like well I already knew that and so she goes to my brother and she's like you know your brother's gay right and he's

[00:17:38] like no he's not well so-and-so my friend sees him down at the gay bar all the time so my little brother calls me and he just you know Nate's just very straightforward oh you know he's always been that way he's like are you gay and

[00:17:54] I just he hit me from the side I didn't I wasn't prepared to come out to him I didn't know what I was gonna say so I you know my go-to was always just lie and

[00:18:04] deny like no I'm not gay I don't know where you heard that from you know like this was this was kind of how I learned to avoid consequences in my life was

[00:18:16] just if I could lie and lie my way out of it you know I would be fine so you know I lied to him I felt horrible about it but I didn't know what else to do and

[00:18:27] then one night they got in a fight and whenever Nate and Jackie got in a fight she would come down to the gay bar because she knew that she was safe down

[00:18:35] there like he would never come down here I just a place I can go to get away from him so I saw her there and I went and said hi cuz I had seen her down there a

[00:18:44] few times by then and what do you know my little brother comes down those stairs comes down the stairs I see him at the talking to the doorman he's peeking inside he's looking around and it could tell he's looking for her and

[00:19:02] my friends were all like your brother's here like go to the bathroom your brothers they knew like what was up and so like I ran to the back I ran to the bathroom and I'm hiding in there and sooner or later I was like I can't be I

[00:19:17] can't hide here all night what the fuck like so I start to walk out I see him he's still there up at the bar and I'm like I guess you know I had a little bit

[00:19:29] of liquid courage in me so I was like I guess this is it like maybe he'll maybe he'll understand maybe he'll be okay so I went up there and I stood right next

[00:19:37] to him and he was he saw me and he looked away and I was like oh shit this is not gonna well and I said Nate how's it going he's like what are you doing down

[00:19:48] here he wouldn't even look at me in the eye he was just like what are you doing down here and I said well I said I think you know what I'm doing down here and we

[00:19:58] started fighting and it was weird cuz like we reverted back to like childhood of what like when we'd fight with each other we started pushing each other around and like we got we both of us got kicked out of the bar and it got ugly

[00:20:12] like out on the street level he punched a parking meter we were shoving each other up against the wall like it just got really emotional and physical and I went home that night and you know I passed out so I just kind of like gave

[00:20:28] it a day to like breathe and then the next day I called Nate and I said you know look I'm sorry like I'm sorry I didn't tell you I'm sorry I lied to you

[00:20:36] I just I didn't know what how you were gonna react and he was like you know like I don't give a fuck that you're gay I don't care it's just the line like

[00:20:47] that you lied to me and didn't tell me the truth and didn't like trust that I would be okay with it and I was like wow like there's hope right maybe I think

[00:20:58] the next person I told was my mom and I went down to say she was living in San Diego at the time I went down to San Diego for a visit and I was like well

[00:21:08] this is the time I have to do it she had left she left Montana my my sister Sarah had after high school moved down to San Diego to nanny for a while and just fell

[00:21:18] in love with San Diego San Diego's great like I love it so I absolutely and so she kept saying to my mom like you hate it Montana come move down here it's great like the weather's great everything's great you know so my mom and my baby

[00:21:31] sister packed up the house and moved down to San Diego so my mom lived there for like 10 years and told she moved back to Montana funny she was like I'm a you know she's like from a small-town Butte Montana where's which I've where I

[00:21:44] was born and just this since the city never caught on to her she lived in La Jolla which is like the Beverly Hills of San Diego right next to the Mormon Temple like blocks away from it so she was she still practices whole family so

[00:21:58] do you practice I haven't been inside of a Mormon Church since I think I was 18 years old so correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the Mormon Church the one that you kind of have to disassociate with everybody if you leave the Mormon Church

[00:22:14] yes it's I lost a lot of my community when I came out when you're when you're living in in the faith it's kind of like this isolation from the herd you know like you are you're you're not really it's in you're not encouraged to

[00:22:35] make friends outside of the church they we refer to them as non-members oh you're friends with a non-member hmm you know it's like that kind of attitude it's it's highly discouraged so you you make friends with people within the church

[00:22:52] you go to school together you and while you're in high school there's this thing called seminary you go to really fucking early in the morning it's like it we had to get up at 5 in the morning to go to church by 6 and then you take classes

[00:23:06] before you go to high school and take your other classes and you do that for four years while you're in high school I made some friends outside of the church but you know it was like it was an honor I knew automatically when I left the

[00:23:18] church when I stopped going that I was gonna lose a huge part of my community and I did imagine how they felt when they found out you were doing porn well I would imagine if any of them found out that I was doing porn was because they

[00:23:33] were watching it and so yeah I always say what someone's like oh you know I'm really worried about this person fighting I was like the only way they're gonna find out is if your father's watching gay porn right if you're

[00:23:44] they're googling certain things and there you go like all right so what finally gets you to leave Montana I had visited Washington DC back in the late 90s and I fell in love with it I don't know I just you know I've been to New

[00:23:59] York too but New York was like going from Missoula to New York yeah it's a big stepping would have been I can see DC being a good gradual however you state yeah DC is kind of like Brooklyn I got more of a neighborhood feel to it I

[00:24:17] really really do like DC every time I've been there has been a lot of fun to the point where come January I'm like do I want to go to Vegas or DC come to DC

[00:24:26] what it was was the you know the feel of it but also you know there's something about the power that draws you there you feel like if you move there you can like make some changes in the world and I think that's kind of where I was at

[00:24:38] coming out of college it was like you know I was very like comfortable with myself at that time and confident and I had made it through a lot of hardships in my life and I was just kind of like what's next like I just felt like I could

[00:24:50] take on the world and so I was throwing applications out job applications all over the place and I've been working in the IT field for a while that's what my undergraduate degree is in computer science and so it's like let's throw

[00:25:03] some applications out there and there was there's no shortage of IT jobs in in this country at all so I had a really good selection let's say about six months after being there I found my my ex-husband we met and we were kind of

[00:25:21] lesbians we we fell in love pretty quickly and I you know it didn't hurt that he lived like two blocks from where I worked I tease him when I you know moved in there I moved it I was staying with him all the time I like every like

[00:25:37] it started out a couple nights like once a week and that was a couple nights a week and then before I knew it I had a drawer and then you know by like a minimum

[00:25:45] October by January he gave me a key to the apartment and I was slowly moving my stuff from from Maryland to DC and you know we moved in together and the engagement was kind of long I think we had like a two-year engagement but we got

[00:26:00] married I was with Jason for 11 years we got divorced in 2017 and the the reason if I were to point to one thing you know it's never one thing but I think the main problem with our marriage was was the fact that he was an addict and I was

[00:26:20] an addict you guys were both doing drugs together yeah that's kind of how things started I met him at a I crashed one of his parties that he was throwing and you know stayed after because he was there doing coke with his friends and I didn't

[00:26:36] do drug I drank I drank a lot but I didn't do any drugs and you know that was kind of my introduction into drugs was cocaine was the first one I started using and and he was a weekly binge user was high teen and what he did high

[00:26:55] strong like I need to like go nuts on Fridays um my job was pretty easy I was a database engineer for them I I didn't you know I didn't do anything creative with National Geographic I was just around a lot of creative energy which

[00:27:10] was cool and their their company to work for it was just amazing like they're so liberal there and he didn't have a super stressful job except you know you complain you know Jason everything was was a 10 you know if there was a problem

[00:27:23] it was a 10 it was always yeah so if there was drug use it was a 10 everything was extreme with him but especially like anything just driving through town somebody cuts him off 10 you know just that was his level he didn't have a rain

[00:27:42] like much of a range it was like zero or so I was a functional alcoholic and addict for most of our marriage and you know I made it through grad school I actually decided after three years of working at National Geographic right

[00:27:58] when the economy was tanking in 2009 right so I decided to quit my job and go back to school and I wanted to go to medical school I went to Georgetown and I did this bridge program where you get all of your prerequisite so you can

[00:28:13] apply to med school you know your chemistries and your biologies I didn't take any of that stuff when I did computer science so it's for people who are trying to go from one major to you know yeah medical sciences I did my

[00:28:25] master's at Georgetown I got a master's in biohazardous threat agents and emerging infectious diseases it's a mouthful it's like a degree in bioterrorism counter buyer to bioterrorism and actually worked for HHS for a little while health and human services working on different scenarios

[00:28:42] for mustard gas attacks different biological agents it was fun it was a really cool sexy job at this point you know I was still holding it together with the drugs and alcohol I was compartmentalizing that from the rest of

[00:29:03] my life but that's cool super stressful super stressful like beyond anything I've ever done in my life like this is the most challenging thing I ever did we're talking 12-hour days easy and it's spent in lecture and in the library

[00:29:21] studying all day I mean me and my husband were like passing chips in the night you know I would he would take me to school in the morning and then I would go home when he was already asleep and I'd go to sleep and then we'd see

[00:29:32] each other in the morning again and that went on for two years and you know that's hard on a marriage to we try to put time aside for each other and try to have date nights and things like that but it always just felt like it wasn't

[00:29:47] enough you know like this we have this couple hours with each other going to dinner maybe have a movie but like I don't see them the rest of the week in 2011 I was in grad school and that was when I went to IML for my first time

[00:30:02] ever I always wanted to go and I was in Chicago of course and and then one night I decided to go out on my own and ended up at the host hotel and I was there

[00:30:11] like really early in the morning I was I was there with my coke doing a stand-up all night partying I met these guys and we were like at the hotel in the lobby together just having a good old time and I decided to wander off into the hotel

[00:30:24] into like you know the stairwells and stuff like that where people sometimes be cruising but it was kind of like late slash early you know it was like 4 or 5 in the morning the Sun was starting to come up and I would you know the

[00:30:39] hallways were dead like people were just not there but then there was this guy he looked a little something hey like wandering around but he looked sketched like he looked sketched out right and I had a feeling I knew it was going on

[00:30:54] there but I just kind of like ignored it and he was hot he was very hot but he was very tweaky you know like he came over and he was like do you want to come

[00:31:03] over to my home do you look over to my hotel room and I said sure it's like stay right here I gotta go ask my friends if you it's okay so I went check

[00:31:13] with his friends came back yeah they're fine and I went in and it was like a room full of guys right and that lights are all down it's like super pitched like black in there there's a projector on the wall with porn playing I they

[00:31:29] were all naked and they were all like watching the porn and asking me questions and I ran out of my coke and I was like I want the party to keep going like them having a good old time and asked them if they knew how to find some

[00:31:46] more and they said they're like well have you tried this before and they pulled out a gigantic bag of clear rocks and I was like I think I know what that

[00:31:56] is and I don't think I want to go there they told me oh you don't have to you know you have to inject it you can smoke it you can snort it you can do a booty

[00:32:09] bump and I'm like well what's that and they're like oh let's put it in your butt I was like oh that doesn't sound so bad I put lots of things in my butt so I one

[00:32:21] of the guys there gave me my first dose of meth and I was immediately you know when you put it in the rectum like that it goes it's almost like injecting it it's that kind of high like it goes right into your your bloodstream pretty

[00:32:37] quickly because your rectum is just full of vessels and I just kind of remember being really high and then I got off really quickly and and when I left I was like immediately feeling regret like I shouldn't have done this

[00:32:51] like I this feels wrong and I was just still wired and I went to the hotel bar and I just started drinking I was like I need to come down from this like this I

[00:33:00] don't like this feeling I felt like too anxious and like you know all the things like if you're just too too much on stimulants so I was trying to reverse that I just started drinking and drinking and drinking and like got black

[00:33:14] out drunk my friend had to come pick me up and and I thought never again never do this again until I did it again and it was like maybe six months later that I tried it again meanwhile I'm like finishing I finished grad school I

[00:33:30] started med school and it kind of became this system where you know I'd work work hard hard you know work really hard get through a block of exams and then that

[00:33:39] was the reward at the end like I'm okay I get to go out and party now for a weekend and that's all it was at the time it was like I go out and it would

[00:33:48] be like this Friday Saturday night thing come home Sunday go back to reality and then that started to bleed over into Monday sometimes into Tuesday I would I would either I wouldn't go to school high but I would like definitely be

[00:34:06] either coming down or like it was not good so did that have an effect on your relationship like did your husband and by been in crystal meth as well not he had in the past had a problem with it and him and his friends basically turned

[00:34:26] from one drug to another so they went from crystal meth to cocaine and that was like that was his solution to crystal meth was I'm just gonna use this other drug that's similar but you know he he's adamantly anti crystal meth and I

[00:34:42] thought I was too but it somehow got in there and he was still doing coke and I would disappear sometimes for like a night or two nights and I was excusing it as oh I was just out using coke and crashed at somebody's house and blah blah

[00:35:02] blah you know didn't want to tell him what was really going on and I hid it from him for a good year probably until it was just like so apparent that what was going on that I couldn't hide it anymore I actually confided in a friend

[00:35:18] who was had struggled with crystal meth addiction as well and he was a close friend to both me and my ex-husband and he kind of helped me navigate through this at the time he was like well you know why don't I reach out to your

[00:35:34] school anonymously and find out what what they can do for somebody who's in your situation and so he did that and they put me in touch with a program that in DC called Whitman Walker's addiction services program WWAS or WOS and I said

[00:35:52] that was the first time I started an outpatient program and it's an amazing program I know it's saved my life several times because I've I've struggled with this this drug has come back in and out of my life for too long I mean I

[00:36:11] was I was trying but I was also distracted by this drug and it kept calling to me you know the sex and the fun like that it was fun at that time it doesn't stay that way you know that's that's I think the realization that most

[00:36:28] people have ever used this drug come to is you know it's fun in the beginning and that's what you start chasing after a while you think that you're trying to go back to those first experiences that you had that were fun and they never are

[00:36:40] and so you're just chasing this thing that doesn't exist anymore it's never gonna be like that your brain chemistry changes and you you know you like every time I go back out and use again I go back to that last place where I left off

[00:36:53] the last time I used the paranoia the delusions all of that comes back almost in an instant the meth and everything had an effect on your marriage that eventually led to a divorce we split up in 2017 I had decided I'd made a really

[00:37:13] hard decision that I was going to move out because you know we loved each other but we were so codependent and enabling each other's addictions and he was like he was my safety net I was his safety net I was never gonna hit any sort of a

[00:37:28] rock bottom if he kept scooping me up every time I'd fall down you know and I never had any consequences really not really bad ones like I wasn't gonna be homeless while I was with Jason I decided I'm gonna move out I'm not we're

[00:37:41] not getting divorced but I'm gonna move out I'm gonna live in a sober house for a while because while I was living with him he was still using cocaine and I was trying to be sober and he was not and even though that was different at

[00:37:56] that time I had switched to a different drug of choice it was still kind of like I'd come home I'd see him partying with his friends and immediately start to think well why can't I do that why can't I use my drug it was like this

[00:38:08] permission-giving thing so he would use I would use he would you know it was like we were giving each other permission to use because the other person what is like well then it's my turn now it's kind of you know

[00:38:24] ridiculous if you think about it but that's just kind of you know the the brain of an addict when you're in it is you're looking for any reason to go back out again he said that I was the one with the problem he didn't have a

[00:38:39] problem he had it under control because he could compartmentalize it to the weekends and then you know go back to his job and then it would start all over again and he didn't think that that was any sort of a problem every addict has

[00:38:51] to decide for themselves this is a problem for my life he insisted that I stay sober but he had no plans to get sober himself and that made it really hard for me so I decided to move out and when I moved into the sober house it was

[00:39:04] owned by the the program that I was at the outpatient program that I had been in several times by now and my recovery just took a total turn for the better like it just I started getting instead of getting 30 days or 60 days and night

[00:39:19] or 90 days and then relapsing it was like I was getting three months four months five months six months I almost had a year at one time during that time I was living in the house and I I immediately knew why I was like it's

[00:39:36] because I'm not living in that house anymore I'm not living with him I'm not living with his addiction and I'm not giving myself permission anymore to do what he's doing it was really tough I I remember we were still trying to salvage

[00:39:50] whatever we had left we were going to couples therapy and all of that but I knew I think in my heart I knew that like this was this had an expiration

[00:39:58] date on it and I was just kind of like holding on to it for dear life until I couldn't anymore I mean fortunately and unfortunately I'd met somebody else who I was really into and this person kind of he was really bad for me and it was a

[00:40:13] bad relationship it lasted about six months it was a catalyst for me to get out of my marriage because I decided that I was going to end things with Jason before I wanted to start things with this new guy and I remember it was

[00:40:26] kind of almost poetic the the day that I told Jason that we were over was my mom was visiting from Montana she was first time she had visited DC ever and we her and her boyfriend went to dinner with our dinner brunch Sunday brunch with

[00:40:44] us on the same cruise ship that we got married on it's one of the cruise ships that goes up and down the Potomac River and so we were on that ship and we went

[00:40:53] up on the upper deck just him and I and that's what I told him and I just I remember us just holding each other and like you know we like helped each other through that moment it was kind of a sad but beautiful moment at the same time

[00:41:12] because you know we loved each other so much there was so much love there but you know it's hard when you just have to tell somebody that in order for me to be

[00:41:22] okay I can't be with you anymore and and that's what that was you know I had to I had to get better and the only way I was gonna do that was if I left him so I

[00:41:35] had to choose me over us and and that was tough after that after I broke up with the new boyfriend you know so I dated him for about six months and you know the new guy was also into using coke and Molly and other drugs and so I

[00:41:57] was like I just replaced Jason for another Jason which is my pattern I guess with relationships I find these guys that you know it's the same person over and over and over just different outfit different look and I excused it all away

[00:42:14] you know it was all red flags but excuse it always says fine this you know he's got it under control well he didn't and we were just he introduced me to steroids and we were both using steroids at the same time and which is a really

[00:42:33] bad idea anyway you know we we were fighting all the time and explosive arguments and to the point where you know we kept breaking up and getting back together breaking up and getting back together eventually you know just it

[00:42:50] one day it ended and I kind of said fuck it to my whole life the the big one was when I lost lost everything and was homeless and living on the streets of DC

[00:43:02] you know basically for two months this is not too long ago right this was this was like end of 2018 beginning of 2019 20 mid 2019 I had gone home stayed with my mom got sober went to inpatient and then for four years I was sober I just I

[00:43:21] think it took me to get to that rock-bottom place where I had just lost everything had nothing else before I finally was like I don't ever want to go back here again you know I needed those consequences to like appreciate what I

[00:43:38] had what I could have going for me and that's when I got into porn during the the four years I started doing porn but doing it you know doing all this stuff

[00:43:50] sober and it was it was wonderful to you know I I knew that I tried doing some escorting when I was using and it I wasn't a good escort at all I'd show up

[00:44:01] and I'd use your drugs and leave and take your money and you know just I I could approach it now with a clear mind and with like a business mindset you know for all those years of being in the corporate world that's how I approach my

[00:44:16] sex work now you know it's just very organized and so what what took me back out this last March through August was basically I decided to have a procedure and it was a cosmetic procedure and an implant called panuma and find out the

[00:44:37] hard way that it's not built for adult people in the adult I was gonna say do you think you think an implant because I remember having met you mm-hmm and at that point it was in and you were supposed to have like a six-week period

[00:44:53] of just rest yep but you didn't you kind of it's your to your livelihood right at that point you were doing sex work and I think when we shot in September I had already been having complications by then and it was before I had to have a skin

[00:45:08] graft like I was having these seromas which are just when your your body starts to reject the implant and that your your that area fills with fluid and there's swelling and there's pain and redness and I had one of these like

[00:45:25] every two weeks for six months so the first six months were great with the implant I was like a kid in the candy store fucking everything out there you were good in the beginning in the beginning it was great like I was so

[00:45:39] happy with the results I had a nice big thick dick and you know it was amazing there was now mind you nothing wrong with my old dick it was very average nice that temptation right it's yeah there's this there's a pressure in the

[00:45:55] adult film industry to be bigger better you know more and you know you start to think you start to put a lot of your self-worth and into how many likes you get on social media and you start to think everything through the lens of

[00:46:09] like well if I had this that this other person has then I would also get all the followers that they had you know if I if I was this big dick top then then I would get you know 200,000 followers like these other guys yeah yeah just

[00:46:23] magically not also not putting all the the other logical things behind that like well this person's been in the industry for 10 years and like yeah of course they have that many more hours but you know as a new new person in the

[00:46:38] industry you don't have that kind of perspective yet so I just thought that like this was gonna be a magic bullet to like change my career and now I'm not gonna say it didn't change it I think it changed it for the better for a

[00:46:50] while I was getting roles that I probably wouldn't have been cast before I was getting a lot of different kind of attention than I did before but you know all that stuff is very superficial of course and I wasn't mad about the the

[00:47:04] results until things took a turn for the worse and you know you can't predict who's gonna be that two to three percent complication rate that you hear about and you never think is gonna be you and it was me and so you know we me and my

[00:47:22] surgeon you know we tried to salvage the implant there was a skin graft in there there was lots of draining of these seromas eventually after six months it got infected really bad burrowed a hole through my skin and the created this

[00:47:38] blister all I thought it was just like a surf like a surface blister from friction or something well no it was the fistula that had been created between the inside of my penis and the outside world and when it burst tissue came out

[00:47:52] like tissue that was supposed to be on the inside came out and and that at that point I knew it was it had to come out so it was removed in December and then I

[00:48:03] had to live with the aftermath of all that for a while and and they don't tell you on the website and the surgeon tell me that there's this whole rehabilitation period even though it's reversible you know in the same way that you can take

[00:48:17] a breast implant out if it doesn't work out take the implant out but your penis is atrophied meaning you know it's like if you put a cast around a muscle it's gonna shrink because you're not using it as much you have this kind of rigid

[00:48:31] silicone sleeve over your penis so that smooth muscle tissue is going to atrophy and also because the infection I had a scar tissue tracked in there that was like holding the penis back from extending all the way so I I had this

[00:48:47] retracted penis it had a that hole in it still that he sewed shut it turns out the mesh system that he used for the skin graft was left inside of me and so

[00:49:03] in March when I went to Barcelona I was gonna do a couple studio scenes but I was just gonna bottom and they said I could leave my jock strap off because I was very in like self-conscious about what was going on down there and this

[00:49:15] this wound that I thought had closed started opening back up again and I was like what the fuck sent sent my surgeon pictures he wasn't sure what was going on but long story short all of this was just too much for me to handle like I

[00:49:32] just there was too much uncertainty about what it was gonna do to my personal life my career and just like me as a man and like what that meant to me to have my penis back and that I you know I was being told told by I'd gotten

[00:49:45] some other opinions from other urologists and they said that it may never be the same as it used to be ever again that was scary that was really fucking scary and so in Barcelona about midweek while I was there that's when

[00:50:01] opportunity met desire I went home with this guy from the bar and I was at a sex club by myself you know I didn't go with anybody else and like I just kind of I think I drifted from my program my recovery program I drifted enough to

[00:50:18] where I just kind of started throw away all the the guardrails that were keeping me in my lane and they were just I was like oh caution to the way I don't need this I don't need that went home with this guy from the bar and probably had

[00:50:32] about five or six opportunities to leave and go home before and and when we got to his place and I had this gut feeling I had this feeling like something was wrong something was off something and I think I knew it wasn't like just this

[00:50:48] ominous feeling like danger it was like I think I was repressing the fact that I knew this guy was a meth user and I didn't want to listen to that voice because I think I wanted to use I think I wanted to escape that's meth has been

[00:51:04] escape for me escape from feelings escape from tough emotions that I didn't want to deal with you know things with my family things with growing up and being Mormon things with my older brother and how you know we had this really

[00:51:17] rocky relationship all of that you know it's like things with my ex-husband escape so I wanted to escape and when I got there about five minutes in ten minutes and I see a shiny glass object sitting on his desk and it was a meth

[00:51:35] pipe and instead of me getting up and leaving I said it'll be fine I you know I can sit I can sit here it's over there I'm over here it's fine and it wasn't fine you know with it just you know slowly kept burrowing into my

[00:51:55] consciousness like it's there it's there you know I was fighting it I was saying I don't know you're not gonna use not gonna use not gonna use and then like this you know any addict will tell you like a switch goes off it's like your

[00:52:08] switches off your switches off your switches off and then it's on and once it turns on it's too late you can't turn the boat around at that point at least for me and I've heard this from a lot of other addicts in recovery that

[00:52:22] once that switch is flipped it's too late like you're the storm of brain chemicals going on your head and your brain is just hijacked now and and you've made up your mind and that's that's what happened so I was off to the races I

[00:52:37] thought it would just be a one weekend slip and it lasted I came back to the States and it continued from March to April to May all the way up to August and what saved me was my mom calling me and saying you know come home she said

[00:52:54] come home stay with me we've done it before you can do this again and so I went back to Montana for about two weeks and got sober came back started my outpatient program again at the women Walker Clinic and now I have 63 days

[00:53:13] today sober congratulations thank you damn that's one hell of a story I mean I I tell it openly I've never been really I used to in the beginning be really ashamed about being an addict and try to hide it from people and now

[00:53:31] I'm like you know when you put things in the shadows when you when you make it shameful like that that's what brings you back out to use again you know so put it out into light you know there's nothing shameful about being born with

[00:53:48] certain genetics or a predisposition to be in an addict it's if I can help somebody through my story that that's worth it all for me whoo geez I feel like we can talk more but we're gonna have some sexy time now I absolutely

[00:54:04] appreciate you sharing this story with me thank you and with everybody listening and watching all right you already have some some sexy time yes let's do it all right thank you so much I absolutely appreciate it thank you for having me

[00:54:17] whoo you've been watching demystifying gay porn I'm your host Ike Grande demystifying gay porn is available on every podcast directory as well as YouTube demystifying gay porn is on X Instagram Facebook telegram and if you

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[00:54:45] continue making content like you've just enjoyed once again this is demystifying gay porn my name is Ike Grande and if you watch gay porn I've definitely helped you get off cheers