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Male Porn Stars Share Their Secrets For Staying Hard on Set
We talked to veteran male porn stars and newbies alike to ind out the tricks of the trade

BY JEREMY GLASS JAN 25, 2018

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No man or woman on earth has watched a porn without asking the following question: “is
that actually real?” One question that comes up time and time again? How male performers
stay hard for what seems like hours at a time. That’s why we went to the Adult Entertainment
Expo (AEE) in Las Vegas to talk to some porn stars to nd out what really happens to dicks on
camera.

Veteran porn star Peter North says staying hard is a challenge that most male porn stars will
confront at some point in their career. "Everyone thinks it would be so easy to stay hard on set
and it’s not easy at all," he says.
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While we'd all like to believe that the ability to stay erect for hours at a time, that's not always
the case, says porn star Kayden Kross. “Most of our male talent uses some form of medical aid
to stay hard,” says Kayden Kross. “That can be anything from Viagra and Cialis to injections
that will keep erections going without arousal. I know others have had surgeries to implant
penis pumps.”

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Kross says that often, her coworkers will pop a pill before any scene they shoot to achieve an
erection and go on their merry way. But it's usually obvious when this is the case.

“Sometimes with the pills they'll look a little ushed, but sometimes you're just ushed
because sex is an aerobic activity,” says Kross. “With the more hardcore methods (injections,
pumps), you can tell because the dick doesn't respond to situations where arousal would
naturally dip. For example, one guy once fell through a glass wall on a shower in the middle of
a scene. He stood up with shards of glass sticking out of him and his dick was still hard. Viagra
is strong, but it's not that strong.”

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 How safe is it to be popping pills and shooting your penis full of drugs? We asked Michael
Krychman, MD, director of the Southern California Center for Sexual Health and Survivorship
Medicine, for some clarity.

“Taking Cialis or Viagra at the correct doses are appropriate in some medical conditions,” says
Dr. Krychman, “But long-term studies are certainly lacking. Documented adverse effects of
certain medications include: changes in vision or sudden vision loss, ringing in your ears, or
sudden hearing loss, chest pain or heavy feeling, pain spreading to the arm or shoulder,
nausea, sweating, general ill feeling, and irregular heartbeat.”

Yikes.

One former porn star, Christopher Zeischegg (a.k.a. Danny Wylde), went through a
particularly terrible experience from taking too much of the drug Cialis.

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“Throughout my career as an porn performer, I used erectile dysfunction medication as a

performance enhancer,” says Zeischegg, “My drug of choice was Cialis, though I dabbled in
other medications. Over the course of eight years, I ended up in the emergency room three
times for priapism [a condition in which the penis is erect for hours after stimulation has
ended]. During my last ER visit, a doctor told me that if I didn't quit taking the drugs, I risked
the likelihood of long term damage that would affect my ability to achieve natural erections.
So I quit using the drugs, and quit performing in porn.” Zeischegg suffered from an erection
that raged for more than 12 hours, which ultimately ended his affair with ED drugs.

“Most
A rmen
t i c l earen't used to the pressures of on-set set,” continues Zeischegg. “There's the lack of
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or chemistry with a partner, the lm crew, the pressure to achieve erection on cue,
maintaining an erection during still photographs, etc... So most male performers experience a
'failed' scene early on in their career/ Too many failed scenes will ruin a performer's
reputation. Most guys end up taking ED drugs to allow themselves a certain level of
consistency.”

Related: 10 Bogus Facts About Erectile Dysfunction

But short of putting a shot directly into their dicks, what do porn stars do to maintain an
erection on set?

Aaron Thompson, better known by his pseudonym, Small Hands, says that every porn star is
different, but his own secret comes down to tness.

“I can't stress this enough, as I came from a hard-partying touring band background before
porn, and saw the positive changes in my libido as I made healthier choices in my lifestyle,”
says Thompson. “I'm on the Paleo Diet, I work out every single day, and I don't party nearly as
hard as I used to. I drink a ton of water. And I go to bed early the night before I have to
perform. Real wild rock and roll stuff.”

View this post on Instagram

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 A post shared by AARON (@thesmallhands_)

During the sex scene itself, Thompson says, "everything goes out the window except the
female as far as where my mind is. I'm hyper-focusing on absolutely nothing but my partner,
the sex about to happen and the beauty of the person in front of me, and the fact that I am
one lucky motherfucker who gets to do this.”

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Thompson says he tries as hard as he can to block out every kind of external stimuli possible.
“Nothing else matters in that moment: not rent, not traffic, not the dog pee on the carpet that
you're gonna have to clean when you get home, not how many followers on IG you have,
nada," he says. "By becoming truly obsessed and immersed with what’s happening in front of
me, I become truly obsessed and immersed with my partner for the scene. That works 95% of
the time.”

Now that he's taken a more behind-the-scenes role as a producer, North regularly offers advice
to the male talent on his porn sets about how to get it up. "Guys feel like they have a time
limit on getting it up," he says. "But guys have been masturbating themselves since they were
kids — 14, 15, whatever. So if you can control when masturbating yourself and getting
yourself hard, that should give you condence. It’s like snowboarding: if you know how to
break with the edges of a snowboard, if you know how to stop, then that gives you a lot more
condence to go ahead and try to do your thing."

Of course, with the average porn shoot taking up to 12 hours to lm, according to Thompson,
it’s no wonder that men would go the synthetic route and opt for Viagra or Cialis. In fact,
taking these drugs is so common in the porn world that porn starlet Joanna Angel, who is
married to Thompson, started her own boner pill company.

But when it comes down it, Krychman says, for most men, diet and focus should be enough to
achieve
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penis health.
“Healthy living leads to a healthy penis,” says Dr. Krychman. “Diet, exercise, and maintaining a
healthy weight. Also, it is important to masturbate and have sex to help maintain good penile
blood ow.”

Hear that, guys? Masturbating is good for you! So, get to it.

JEREMY GLASS
Jeremy Glass is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer dabbling in copywriting, branded content, creative strategy, advertising, and so much
more.

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