Arts & Entertainment
‘Big Brother’ star bares all
Former reality show competitor-turned-porn god at Secrets Friday
(Photo courtesy of Unzipped via Steven Daigle)
It’s no secret at all. Steven Daigle — the gay rodeo star whose burst of fame came on the reality-TV show “Big Brother” in 2008 — is today one of the hottest stars in the gay male adult film industry.
A top star for king-of-gay-porn Chi Chi LaRue, Steven is also winner of the GayVN award for “the most rented title” of 2010, “Steven Daigle XXXposed.”
He makes his Washington premiere appearance live and nude tonight at Secrets, “so his many fans can see him, not just on video, but this time up close and very personal — it’s a real coup for Secrets,” says the club’s promoter Jon Royce.
“Without sounding cocky,” Daigle says, “the success of that first video, ‘Steven Daigle XXXposed,’ was because of me, because I brought a mainstream name to the film, because of being on ‘Big Brother.'”
There are other signs of his popularity too. Topco Sales even sells a dildo molded from his unit.
“He came into the molding session with a great attitude and ready to do anything we asked of him in order to get the best possible mold,” says Topco’s Miranda Lancaster.
“What I go through for my fans,” Daigle says. “I hope you enjoy it.”
The replica became rather famous in August when Daigle and his then boyfriend, fellow porn star Trent Locke, appeared live on a Manhunt video chat.
Locke and Daigle unfortunately came to blows recently, and definitely not in a good way. It happened Oct. 18 at the Abbey, the West Hollywood gay bar where Steven gathered with friends for a viewing party to watch his appearance on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” the hit reality show now in its third season on the Bravo cable channel.
According to TMZ, Locke (who was named by his porn name, Ryan Purdy) approached Steven and started a fight, which turned ugly and bloody. It was Daigle, however, not Locke, who was arrested. Held by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department overnight on $20,000 bail, he was charged with one count of misdemeanor battery. Conviction means up to one year behind bars.
But there may be more to the story. Daigle’s mug shot, which TMZ posted, shows he clearly took a beating. Nevertheless TMZ reported that Locke was rushed to the hospital.
Royce says “any domestic violence is unfortunate” and when he heard the news of Steven’s arrest, he “immediately crossed him off my list for bringing him to Secrets.” But then Royce watched the news and read interviews about what happened and changed his mind.
“I decided to let the case take its course and not make any judgments based on headlines,” he says.
Locke, meanwhile, voiced remorse, saying on his website, “I love Steven Daigle and am so upset and deeply embarrassed that things happened the way they did,” expressing “so much respect” still for Daigle.
“I feel lost, confused, and afraid,” he wrote.
This is the second time Locke has accused a boyfriend of domestic violence.
Royce says that in person “Steven is genuine, not a fake nice person, but real, who will mix and mingle with his fans in the crowd, sign autographs, take pictures, and have a really good time with everybody” at Secrets tonight (which also just happens to be Royce’s birthday party). Long-time adult industry impresario Royce — a D.C. native who returned here, and runs MightyMen.com, after years spent in Los Angeles — has booked porn stars on a monthly basis for Secrets’ shows since he brought in Falcon mega-star Matthew Rush in 2009.
Rush, a biracial bodybuilder and winner of the 2010 Grabby Award for Best Versatile Performer, appeared in his first post-Falcon work in a 2009 video and photo shoot produced by Royce, who has also brought in other porn stars to Secrets, and boasts he helped discover two of the club’s current dancers, Redmond Fox and Jessie Lee.
Secrets, Royce says, is a key venue on the porn industry circuit because it is only one of three U.S. clubs that can legally feature entirely unclad performers. Another is Atlanta and in the third city, Pittsburgh, he says that the law is being changed to ban nudity there.
“So Secrets is a really great place, because porn stars like Steven can be naked,” which Royce says is what it’s all about: “You see them naked in videos, so why would you want to see them with their pants on in a club?”
It was Daigle’s shirtless appearance on the CBS TV show “Big Brother” in its 10th summer season three nights a week in 2008 when he first caught the eye of Royce, who says the show is a big favorite for gay viewers, including LaRue.
Royce claims to have never missed an episode of the series, which has 13 people on a soundstage, isolated and filmed 24/7.
Daigle competed well but was voted off the show in its third episode. He returned for the season finale and at a wrap party he met LaRue, who almost immediately laid out an open invitation for Steven to begin appearing in gay porn videos.
In fact Steven’s mainstream appeal, partly due to his cowboy looks as a gay rodeo bull-riding champion, begins with his all-American-boy rearing in small-town Opelousas in south-central Louisiana.
Born in 1973, at age 8 he moved with his parents to the outskirts of Houston, where he lived at home for a time after high school working odd jobs including a stint in environmental clean-up work. At 21, he began to appear in rodeos “just as a hobby,” he says, “for fun on weekends.” He soon was riding bulls and appearing in rodeos in other cities.
Only at age 26 did he start his undergraduate study, earning a degree in agriculture and marketing at the city’s Sam Houston State University. Next he completed his master’s in applied geography at the University of North Texas in Denton, a college town near Dallas, after moving there and coming out at age 30. He soon discovered the world of gay rodeo with friends.
He owned a horse and was a natural in the saddle and at riding bulls bareback. Soon he was ranked No. 1 in bull riding and also won an international steer-riding competition. That’s when “Big Brother” producers asked the gay rodeo association to recommend someone to join the cast of 13 in the 2008 production. In the year that followed his appearance on the show he continued to work as a geographic information systems analyst for a large engineering firm with offices in Dallas. But LaRue’s offer to work in gay porn – and her motto, “save a horse, ride a cowboy” – was still in the back of his mind.
He knew that drag diva and porn promoter LaRue (AKA Larry David Paciotti), director of all-time gay-sex video best-sellers and the owner of her own production company Channel 1 Releasing, could make things happen. Inducted into the GayVN Hall of Fame, in 2008 she also opened her adult boutique, Chi Chi LaRue’s, on Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of West Hollywood, where she sells everything from 2,000 video titles to sex toys and candles.
“We were friends,” Daigle says, “and she wasn’t bugging me, and at first it was just a joke, but then I thought my job might be ending, since the economy was so hard and lay-offs were impending, so I called and asked her ‘Are you serious about this?’ and she said yes.”
So they negotiated a deal and he shot three videos.
LaRue called “XXXposed,” “the high point in my directing. Steven took to being watched like a seasoned pro.”
In the second video, “Steven Daigle Stalked,” he is stalked by Grabby (adult video awards) winner Adam Killian “into a dungeon,” Daigle says, “and we have a big orgy that begins as a three-way and then a lot more guys join in,” this time letting Daigle show his video versatility. Since then he has appeared in more than 30 scenes for different DVDs and on Internet sites, most recently for Chi Chi LaRue in “Raising The Bar,” which he describes as a web series with nine episodes about five friends who get together every week for a new episode and have sex with each other and with others who join in. Go to HYPERLINK “http://stevenexposed.com/”stevenexposed.com for more information.
He’s single now and lives in San Diego, but travels widely having made appearances and shot scenes in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Toronto and London. He’s looking forward to Secrets and says club events are fun.
“It’s the opportunity to meet my fans and hang out with them, sign autographs and show people that you’re a real person,” he says. “They’re the reason we exist, because if it weren’t for our fans we wouldn’t be making movies.”
For Royce, this is a potential money-shot for Secrets but also a chance for Daigle’s fans to connect with him in person.
“He is a big prize for the gay male porn industry, one of the most high-profile in the business, and he has the smarts to do what it takes in this industry,” Royce says.
“You don’t do 30 videos unless you’re a hot commodity,” Royce says. “The public speaks and Steven has come out a winner.”
Movies
‘Things Like This’ embraces formula and plus-size visibility
Enjoyable queer romcom challenges conventions of the genre
There’s a strange feeling of irony about a spring movie season stacked with queer romcoms – a genre that has felt conspicuously absent on the big screen since the disappointing reception met by the much-hyped “Bros” in 2022 – at a time when pushback against LGBTQ visibility is stronger than it’s been for 40 years.
Sure, part of the reason is the extended timeline required for filmmaking, which tells us, logically, that the numerous queer love stories hitting theaters this year – including the latest, the Manhattan-set indie “Things Like This,” which opened in limited theaters last weekend – began production long before the rapid cultural shift that has taken place in America since a certain convicted fraudster’s return to the White House.
That does not, however, make them any less welcome; on the contrary, they’re a refreshing assertion of queer existence that serves to counter-balance the hateful, politicized rhetoric that continues to bombard our community every day. In fact, the word “refreshing” is an apt description of “Things Like This,” which not only celebrates the validity – and joy – of queer love but does so in a story that disregards “Hollywood” convention in favor of a more authentic form of inclusion than we’re ever likely to see in a mainstream film
Written, starring, and directed by Max Talisman and set against the vibrant backdrop of New York City, it’s the story of two gay men named Zack – Zack #1 (Talisman) is a plus-sized hopeful fantasy author with a plus-sized personality and a promising-but-unpublished first novel, and Zack #2 (Joey Pollari) an aspiring talent agent dead-ended as an assistant to his exploitative “queen-bee” boss (Cara Buono) – who meet at an event and are immediately attracted to each other. Though Zack #2 is resigned to his unsatisfying relationship with longtime partner Eric (Taylor Trensch), he impulsively agrees to a date the following night, beginning an on-again/off-again entanglement that causes both Zacks to re-examine the trajectories of their respective lives – and a lot of other heavy baggage – even as their tentative and unlikely romance feels more and more like the workings of fate.
Like most romcoms, it relies heavily on familiar tropes – adjusted for queerness, of course – and tends to balance its witty banter and starry-eyed sentiment with heart-tugging setbacks and crossed-wire conflicts, just to raise the stakes. The Zacks’ attempts at getting together are a series of “meet-cutes” that could almost be described as fractal, yet each of them seems to go painfully awry – mostly due to the very insecurities and self-doubts which make them perfect for each other. The main obstacle to their couplehood, however, doesn’t spring from these mishaps; it’s their own struggles with self-worth that stand in the way, somehow making theirs more of a quintessentially queer love story than the fact that both of them are men.
All that introspection – relatable as it may be – can be a downer without active energy to stir things up, but fortunately for “Things Like This,” there are the inevitable BFFs and extended circle of friends and family that can help to get the fun back on track. Each Zack has his own support team backing him up, from a feisty “work wife” (Jackie Cruz, “Orange is the New Black”) to a straight best friend (Charlie Tahan, “Ozark”) to a wise and loving grandma (veteran scene-stealer Barbara Barrie, “Breaking Away” and countless vintage TV shows) – that fuels the story throughout, providing the necessary catalysts to prod its two neurotic protagonists into taking action when they can’t quite get there themselves.
To be sure, Talisman’s movie – his feature film debut as a writer and director – doesn’t escape the usual pitfalls of the romcom genre. There’s an overall sense of “wish fulfillment fantasy” that makes some of its biggest moments seem a bit too good to be true, and there are probably two or three complications too many as it approaches its presumed happy ending; in addition, while it helps to drive the inner conflict for Zack #2’s character arc, throwing a homophobic and unsupportive dad (Eric Roberts) into the mix feels a bit tired, though it’s hard to deny that such family relationships continue to create dysfunction for queer people no matter how many times they’re called out in the movies – which means that it’s still necessary, regrettably, to include them in our stories.
And in truth, “calling out” toxic tropes – the ones that reflect society’s negative assumptions and perpetuate them through imitation – is part of Talisman’s agenda in “Things Like This,” which devotes its very first scene to shutting down any objections from “fat shamers” who might decry the movie’s “opposites attract” scenario as unbelievable. Indeed, he has revealed in interviews that he developed the movie for himself because of the scarcity of meaningful roles for plus-sized actors, and his desire to erase such conventional prejudices extends in every direction within his big-hearted final product.
Even so, there’s no chip-on-the-shoulder attitude to sour the movie’s spirit; what helps us get over its sometimes excessive flourishes of idealized positivity is that it’s genuinely funny. The dialogue is loaded with zingers that keep the mood light, and even the tensest scenes are laced with humor, none of which feels forced. For this, kudos go to Talisman’s screenplay, of course, but also to the acting – including his own. He’s eminently likable onscreen, with wisecracks that land every time and an underlying good cheer that makes his appeal even more visible; crucially, his chemistry with Pollari – who also manages to maintain a lightness of being at his core no matter how far his Zack descends into uncertainty – isn’t just convincing; it’s enviable.
Cruz is the movie’s “ace in the hole” MVP as Zack #2’s under-appreciated but fiercely loyal bestie, and Buono’s hilariously icy turn as his “boss from hell” makes for some of the film’s most memorable scenes. Likewise, Tahan, along with Margaret Berkowitz and Danny Chavarriaga, flesh out Zack #1’s friend group with a real sense of camaraderie that should be recognizable to anyone who’s ever been part of an eclectic crew of misfits. Trensch’s comedic “ickiness” as Zack #2’s soon-to-be-ex makes his scenes a standout; and besides bigger-name “ringers” Roberts and Barrie (whose single scene is the emotional climax of the movie), there’s also a spotlight-grabbing turn by Diane Salinger (iconic as Francophile dreamer Simone in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”) as the owner of a queer bar where the Zacks go on one of their dates.
With all that enthusiasm and a momentum driven by a sense of DIY empowerment, it’s hard to be anything but appreciative of “Things Like This,” no matter how much some of us might cringe at its more unbelievable romcom devices. After all, it’s as much a “feel-good” movie as it is a love story, and the fact that we actually do feel good when the final credits role is more than enough to earn it our hearty recommendation.
Friday, May 23
“Center Aging Monthly Luncheon and Yoga” will be at 12 p.m. in person at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. For more details, email [email protected].
Trans Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This group is intended to provide an emotionally and physically safe space for trans people and those who may be questioning their gender identity and/or expression. For more details, email [email protected].
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Happy Hour” at 7 p.m. at DIK Bar. This event is ideal for making new friends, professional networking, idea-sharing, and community building. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Saturday, May 24
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar and Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ community, including Allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Black Lesbian Mixer will be at 11 a.m. on Zoom. This is a support group dedicated to the joys of being a Black lesbian. For more details, email [email protected].
Sunday, May 25
“The Queen’s Table: A Women’s Empowerment Brunch” will be at 11 a.m. at Zooz. This event will celebrate queer women’s strength. For more details visit Eventbrite.
Monday, May 26
“Center Aging Monday Coffee and Conversation” will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more details, email [email protected].
Tuesday, May 27
Genderqueer DC will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a support group for people who identify outside of the gender binary. Whether you’re bigender, agender, genderfluid, or just know you’re not 100 percent cis — this is your group. For more details, visit genderqueerdc.org or Facebook.
Coming Out Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This support group is a safe space to share experiences about coming out and discuss topics as it relates to doing so. For more details, visit the group’s Facebook.
Wednesday, May 28
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.
Thursday, May 29
The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. To be fairer with who is receiving boxes, the program is moving to a lottery system. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5 p.m. if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga with Charles M. will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a free weekly class focusing on yoga, breathwork, and meditation. For more details, visit the DC Center for the LGBT Community’s website.
Photos
PHOTOS: Helen Hayes Awards
Gay Men’s Chorus, local drag artists have featured performance at ceremony
The 41st Helen Hayes Awards were held at The Anthem on Monday, May 19. Felicia Curry and Mike Millan served as the hosts.
A performance featuring members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington and local drag artists was held at the end of the first act of the program to celebrate WorldPride 2025.
The annual awards ceremony honors achievement in D.C.-area theater productions and is produced by Theatre Washington.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Adams Morgan queer bar broken into and vandalized
‘Things Like This’ embraces formula and plus-size visibility
Calendar: May 23-29
Comings & Goings
New doc chronicles gay hero’s journey from rape to forgiveness
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
WorldPride events round-up
Wes Moore signs HIV decriminalization bill
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
