This article originally ran in the most recent issue of AVN Men. Find the digital edition here. Photos by Keith Ryan.
In a business that often emphasizes size, it’s no wonder that Dallas Steele has found such success. Everything about him is big: His stature, his smile, his ambition … even his name (and yes, in case you didn’t know, that other thing is big, too). But for all of the physical attributes that have contributed to Steele’s rise, there’s one other big thing about him that is the most remarkable of all: his story.
Steele has lived one of the most fascinating lives of any porn performer in history, but he wishes the press did a better job of telling it. He should know—he was one of them. In a recent in-depth interview, the performer opened up about his unforgettable journey … one so big, we needed two parts to tell it.
Family Matters
Steele grew up in Stockton and Lodi, California, about 80 miles inland from San Francisco. His father was a college political science teacher, his mother a second-grade teacher. It sounds idyllic, but from the moment he was born, Steele faced adversity.
“My dad was an alcoholic years before I was born and continued to drink until 10 years after I left home. My brother, 10 years my senior, was a heroin addict by the time he was 17. My dad and my brother often physically fought, with my mom caught in the middle. My brother left home and disappeared for about four years about the same time mom got smart and divorced my dad.”
Steele was 10 at that time, and his mother went on to marry an ex-military man turned corporate businessman.
“My stepfather was quite the shock for me. After a childhood without rules or discipline, suddenly I had schedules, chores and rules. It was really hard at the time, but his structure made me a good man who is always on time, always finishes the job, and always tries to do his best.”
And despite those difficult early years, Steele and his family found a way to heal.
“My biological dad and my brother both got clean more than 20 years ago. The state had pulled my dad’s driver’s license after six DWIs when he hit and paralyzed a motorcyclist from the neck down. Then came mandatory prison time and treatment. But before dad passed in 2015, I had three amazing years where I actually got to know him as a sober man, and he got to know me as an adult gay man. The last day of his life in the hospital, he made everyone get out of the room and asked me to shave his face. Those two hours talking to him, tears streaming down my face, saying ‘goodbye,’ were some of the most memorable moments I’ll ever experience.”
To make things even more difficult, Steele’s mother battled cancer for 30 years.
“She lost both breasts in her 50s to cancer, then remission; then bone cancer in her 60s, then remission; then finally, liver cancer at 76. The doctor told her there was nothing more they could do. Her body was destroyed from 30 years of chemo and radiation. She died in 2016 after living three years. The doctor told her she would only live six months. Today, I’m still close with my step-father and my two step-sisters.”
Play Time
That family transition in Steele’s life also led to an evolution in his sexual awakening.
“My biological dad always had magazines in the house—mostly Playboy, but occasionally he’d get a Hustler, which I preferred because they sometimes featured men with the women. Later after my mom remarried, she and my stepfather got a VCR. It was big as a house back then with a corded remote, but every afternoon, I’d be watching one of the hot straight movies they had, taking care of business there on the living room couch! To this day, I still pull some of those movies up on AEBN.”
Steele’s best friend in high school would often invite him over next door to play with his Star Wars figures, but it was something else he was more intrigued by.
“His mom had a collection of Playgirls she kept on the toilet. Even in summer, I’d wear a huge baggy coat, then stuff it full of magazines. It all worked until one day they fell out right as I was talking to her!” Steele recalls as if he was reliving it. “Oh my God … embarrassing! But she was a nurse, and after asking me if her son was gay (he wasn’t and isn’t), she gave me a very thorough yet non-judgmental lecture about what then was ‘safe sex.’
“As an adult, I still prefer watching straight porn. Not sure why. But I’m mostly focused on the men or fantasizing about being the woman. The other thing watching gay porn is that I’m likely to see someone I know. And once you’ve done a scene with someone, your fantasy about them can change. If you’re imagining some stud to be a big, aggressive top, and he’s actually a super-passive bottom in person, their role in your fantasy changes.”
Soon, Steele himself would be the fantasy of fans watching him on TV … even though, initially, he always had his clothes on.
Top Story
The story of Steele’s broadcast career—and its unfortunate conclusion—has been told countless times before, but not always to his liking.
“Often, writers make it sounds like I just threw up my hands in the newsroom one day and said, ‘To hell with this, I’m gonna go do porn!’ No. There was a five-year span between news and porn. They say ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ That’s especially true in my case.”
By all accounts, he had a fabulous career in TV news: two Emmy nominations, four Katie Awards, two SoCal RTNDA “Golden Mike” Awards.
“I did everything I set out to do, and more. But the people who run traditional local TV news are in crisis. Ratings are a fraction of what they were 10 years ago. No one rushes home at 5 p.m. to watch the news anymore. Everything is online. As a result, the ‘survivors’ in TV are having to do the jobs of three or four people because the revenue to support a newsroom isn’t there anymore. When I started in the business, you had reporters, photographers and video editors. Now, that is all one position for less money—scaled—than a reporter would have made 10 years ago.
“But the biggest issue is that I always felt the managers at my respective stations were constantly trying to change me into a person I wasn’t, and asking me to compromise my values as a journalist. I grew frustrated with the constant need to exaggerate (lie) to breathlessly promote content that was hardly worth promoting. More than once I was told to tell viewers, ‘The embers are still smoldering’ at a fire, when in fact the fire had been out for five hours. I refused, and was always being told I was ‘not a team player.’”
Steele’s 23 years in TV soon came to an inauspicious end.
“My news director in Naples-Fort Myers, Florida, called me toward the end of my first contract and said the station had been doing ‘focus group research,’ which found people in that market ‘just didn’t like me.’ This was despite our ratings average being up about a full point year-to-year. Their decision was to pay me off through the rest of my contract, but I was required to stay on the air for another two months. It was incredibly challenging to pretend on-air everything was okay, when in fact you’ve been fired and your company doesn’t want you there.
“Worse yet, they brought my replacement in before I had left for me to help train him—and surprise—he was much younger and much cheaper. I will always believe had all of the management at all of the stations in which I worked just allowed me to be me, I would have been far more successful than I was with their constant use of consultants to make me into someone else.”
Bigger in Texas
Once his time in southwest Florida was done, Steele returned to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his late partner Kelly was art director for Automobile magazine.
“We had been commuting via Delta Air Lines every other weekend for almost three years. Once back in Michigan, I fell back on my other skill as a personal trainer and worked out of a local club there.”
About a year into that, Steele notes that his partner’s job was consolidated with another in Los Angeles, and his contract was terminated. “We had to do something quick, and we knew neither of us wanted to stay in Michigan.”
They moved back to Dallas, where they had met in 2000. Shortly afterward, Steele posted on social media that he was looking for a creative job. Within a few hours, an acquaintance they had hooked up with a few years earlier emailed from his talent agency with a job offer for Kelly—a mid-level creative position at Mary K Cosmetics’ corporate offices. Within two months, Steele says his partner was quickly hired as an employee and promoted to an executive position.
“It was his dream job and afforded plenty of money—enough that I didn’t need to worry about what I was going to do for work. I felt I had the luxury of just thinking about what I’d like to do next in life, and did just that. We bought a new house, new motorcycles and he got a new car. Everything seemed to be going great.”
But sadly for Steele, the struggles with loved ones that he had to face as a young man were about to resurface.
“Unknown to me, the stress and pressure of the new job was weighing on him, on top of a lifelong battle with depression. I had finished my shift as a bartender at the Dallas Eagle when I came home one night in August 2013 and found him face down in blood and vomit. Paramedics told me he had been dead for hours, but I kept trying to breathe life into him for 30 minutes. The medical examiner said he accidentally overdosed on ethyl chloride, better known as ‘Maximum Impact.’ I found six empty cans around his body that night.
“Kelly had no will, and because you couldn’t legally marry in Texas in 2013, his family swooped in and took everything. They loaded up his car, his motorcycle and all of his tools. His mom sat on our couch in our home three days after his death saying, ‘This is so overwhelming, I don’t know what we’re going to do with all this stuff.’ Trying not to explode, I said, ‘Some of this was mine before we met, most of it we acquired together, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it ahead.’ She thanked me for ‘taking the burden off of her.’ Had I been the legal survivor, they would have received nothing, especially with my knowledge of how they treated him growing up.”
And then came a turning point in Steele’s life where he made a fateful decision.
“Facing homelessness in a matter of weeks, my best friend said, ‘You’ve always wanted to do porn, you’re not going back to TV news, why don’t you apply with Titan or Colt?’ Scared, but running out of options, I did just that—and both companies scheduled me for a shoot in the same week.”
Soon, Steele would embark on yet another journey of discovery—one that would have him making his own headlines.
In Part 2 of “Man of Steele,” Dallas chronicles his career in the adult industry—and the new challenges he had to face.
