LAS VEGAS—In a college dorm room. Nineteen years old. With his boyfriend. Covered in cum. And that’s when his boyfriend leaned in…
“When you’re 19 years old and you’re covered in cum in your college dorm room and your boyfriend says, ‘We need to talk,’ it’s generally not a good thing,” recalls Davey Wavey. “Very dramatically, he leans into me and he’s like, ‘Dave, when I have sex with you, it’s like being in a porn.’ And my whole face just lit up. I was like, ‘You’re welcome! That’s awesome!’ And he was like, ‘No, that wasn’t a compliment…’”
With that relatable story of awkward youth stumbling through their early days of sex, the YouTube personality built an immediate personal connection with an audience of A-list gay porn performers, producers and business owners—whose laughs immediately welcomed the engaging speaker into the family. They were packed inside the Vinyl nightclub at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on Sunday to hear him deliver the keynote at the GayVN Brunch sponsored by Flirt4Free, MrMan.com and CCBill.
But just before he took the stage, Davey admitted to some nerves about how he would fit in.
“I’ve met a lot of the talent though different YouTube things that we’ve done, filming and interviewing, but I haven’t met the people behind the scenes, so it’s nice to meet the directors and the studio owners. It’s funny because it’s a very small community where they all know each other—and I feel very much like the outsider coming to small town. They’re a little bit like, ‘What’s this? Who’s this new girl in town?’ It’s all these people who have made this content that has shaped a big part of my life.”
With nearly 300 million followers in more than 160 countries worldwide, Davey has built his brand around spreading messages of love and acceptance—using humor and sex as vehicles—in a library of 800-plus (and fast growing) videos.
“I went to Catholic school, and I wasn’t going to learn about gay sex from Sister Mary Francis,” continued the Rhode Island native on stage. “I remember when she was teaching our health class, she pulled down the anatomy chart and she pointed to the dick and was like, ‘This is your danger zone.’ I couldn’t ask my parents about it; they’re straight, cis gender. I can’t ask my mom about anal douching…so I think like a lot of gay boys, I learned about gay sex from kind of a strange combination of trial and error, and then watching gay porn.”
Rewinding to his awkward dorm room conversation again, Davey admitted that at the time, he thought, “If I’m emulating what I’m seeing on the screen in my bedroom, then it’s like mission accomplished. I obviously didn’t understand where (my boyfriend) was coming from.”
But everything changed years later when he was living in Toronto after graduation. Davey looked out his window into another apartment three floors below to find a beautiful 20-something man completely naked—feet up and straddling both sides of his computer—going at it.
“It was super hot; I was totally enamored,” he recalls. “I did what I think any rational adult would do: I took out my webcam, and there was this new website that had just started up called YouTube. I made a video about it. It turns out a lot of people apparently search for ‘masturbating neighbors’ on YouTube, because very quickly the video got millions and millions of views, and people started subscribing to my YouTube channel.”
He quickly realized that he had a growing audience, and that maybe there was—at the very least—some opportunity (“or maybe you could even argue a responsibility”) to do something with it other than make videos about his masturbating neighbor. And for the next 11 years and counting, that’s what he’s been doing.
Davey has learned a lot about what he likes to call the “YouTube G-spot”: things emailed or texted to friends that have a combination of a really good message intersected with strong packaging. This good truth communicated in a way that has humor, sex or some sort of emotion is a principle he refers to as “broccoli and chocolate.”
“If you want to communicate to straight guys that all the pleasure that they can get with their butts that they’re not tapping into through anal play, no one wants to see me stand there and preach about it; but if you make a video about it where you invite this really hot straight guy over to your house who’s kind of open minded, and you built a little butthole booth in your living room with some curtains and you stick him in there and give him a prostate stimulator—and you film him reacting to experiencing prostate pleasure in a video called ‘Straight guy bottoms for first time’—that’s something people want to watch.”
And porn, he notes, is the best possible chocolate there is—leading him to an experiment to see if he can apply that same principle to adult work, using gay porn as a way to communicate important truths about life to gay men.
“What are these truths? There’s a few things that kept coming up; for example, youth is not the only currency of value to the gay community. Older gay men and elders bring a lot to the table—they bring wisdom, experience and they also bring beauty. Is there a way to communicate that to gay men?” he said. “We don’t need to be lone hunters when it comes to sex or love. When we open up Grindr, we’re these little faces and bodies trapped in boxes, but what happens when those boxes and walls come down and we support each other?
“Sex doesn’t need to just be dick-to-mouth or cock-to-ass; there are a million ways to connect to with another guy. Sex can be fun and creative and dynamic and an experiment, and as you learn about sex, you also learn about life. Or that our queer sex is a political statement, and that any time you stick your dick inside another man’s ass—especially if you do it on camera—you are making a political statement that the world needs to hear now more than ever.”
That was a message that brought heavy applause and cheers from the audience.
“The reason I am so excited to speak to you guys today is that so many of the people in this room and at this conference have been a part of my own journey of sexual exploration and discovery, particularly Jake Jaxson with CockyBoys, Flower at Helix, and there’s been amazing models we’ve worked with including Blake Mitchell, Joey Mills, Trenton Ducati , Calvin Banks, Josh Brady, Sean Ford…not only have you inspired and motivated me, you guys have also inspired and motivated my audience, so I’m really thankful for that.”
Off stage, Davey easily recalled his first experience with gay porn: Centaur’s Navy Blues: Deeper in the Brig, starring Brent Everett. “It’s funny, because in Toronto last summer, I interviewed Brent and we watched that porn together—he had never seen it, he doesn’t really watch his stuff—and it was really fun to watch the video with the guy who was in it. It was the first porn I ever saw, so it came full circle.”
His messages have been communicated through gay erotic content—initially one-off programs that led to the launch of Himeros.tv late last year.
“Our mission is to enhance gay men’s experience of sex and sexuality through exploration, connection and sexual ecstasy, so while I wouldn’t say in our outward messaging that we would ever say ‘this is education content,’ the reality is you do learn about yourself and techniques—how to have full-body orgasms, guided masturbations, stuff that I as a kid growing up in a gay world would have loved to have had communicated to me. There really wasn’t someone doing that.”
Davey said they have been traveling all around the world working with sex coaches, tantric gurus, directors and cinematographers to try to communicate these messages through erotic content—an experiment that he’s still learning about.
“As much as I would like to say I’m doing this content for my audience—that’s part of it, that’s true—but I’m also creating this content for myself. In particular, I’m creating it for the 19-year-old version of myself who is in his college dorm room, laying with his boyfriend, covered in cum who just really doesn’t get it.”
The speech struck a chord with many in the audience, including Ducati, who has worked with Davey for some Fleshjack promotions and other sexual videos. “His speech was great. Anything that shows passion and energy and good vibes for our industry is fantastic, and his outlook on everything is pretty refreshing…I’m thankful to have him as a part of our industry,” he said. “I discovered gay sex through watching porn, too. But what he brings up is some other key points…they fail to tell you how to get to that point, things like cleaning out, so he touches on a wider range of vital things. I’m glad I could be of help.”
The presentation prompted Adam Ramzi to introduce himself to Davey afterward. “I’ve always tried to imbue some kind of responsibly to how I conduct myself in this industry, because this industry helped shape who I am since I was a young kid…it’s important that more members of this industry are aware of that responsibility we carry. A lot of the people in this room do use their voice for good, but a lot don’t; but at the same time, consumers of porn also have to reconcile themselves that that’s not what they’re looking for in their porn actors or models or creators. So I think at the heart of it all, it’s really just the conversation about sex that is still evolving; I’m happy to be in an industry where I get to help further that conversation.”
Ramzi said he was bummed when Davey noted at the beginning of his presentation that the video he planned to open his keynote with couldn’t be shown due to state laws (“We can’t show the video, but you can use your imagination: It was this really beautiful 83-year-old man masturbating”). “I think it would have been a very valuable thing to show this particular group of people,” Ramzi said.
Added JJ Knight: “I was taken back at first, because I was like, ‘I’m kind of curious where he’s going with this’ when he brings up the 83-year-old man,” he said with a smile. “But then towards the end he brought it full circle, as to just the gay community as a whole. Being from the south, he described me perfectly back then: Being in my fraternity house, just this gay kid who’s still in the closet, unable to learn the full spectrum of being gay and watching the kind of stuff that I was watching. Toward the end I was really able to relate it to myself.
“It really makes a person from the south feel a lot bigger than they are. Just coming up in the gay community, I hear, ‘I’ve been watching you for so long!’ It really makes you sit back and say, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize it would have that kind of impact on somebody. But just to be that person for any of these kids is amazing. That’s why what I try to do with all the fans—any person that comes up to me at any party—I just try to make sure I take time to discuss with them just anything that they want to talk about. I want to be that porn star that a person can be approachable with.”
The 2018 Internext Expo continues through January 23. The overall event is sponsored by Age ID, Adult Force and Traffic Junky, with registrarion sponsored by Pussycash, speed networking sponsored by OrbitalPay and seminars sponsored by Cambuilder. For more details, visit Internext-Expo.com.
