Style

ManCrush: Lance Charger

We follow him hard.

Means Happy

30 Jul 2024 — 8 min read

There’s a lot to admire about Lance Charger.

Lance was recently a guest on the Naked Men Talking podcast.

In the conversation, we talk about his smash-and grab career as a gay porn star, the benefits of having an alter ego, and why he decided to leave it all behind.

Listen to the episode.

Lance Charger - muscle-daddy

Welcome to this episode of Naked Men Talking, a podcast exploring naturism and the power of getting your clothes off.

I’m Gareth Johnson, on today's episode, we're joined by Lance Charger.

Now retired from the adult entertainment industry, Lance has helped to define the appeal of a muscle-daddy.

Lance, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

You seem to have successfully completed a bit of a smash and grab on the world of adult entertainment. You launched your fan subscription channels in 2020 and you filmed studio scenes and then you retired from the business. Was that always the intention?

No, that wasn't the intention. This entire thing was kind of me building the plane while I was flying. I remember it being the holiday season of 2021 and I just had no subscribers. Then, all of a sudden it picked up in early 2022.

Suddenly, all the things I’d ever wanted were happening -there was a photographer who wanted me for a book cover, I got a studio that I had been begging to shoot with for two years, calling me and booking me for two films, I had a couple things in Florida booked, I had something in Chicago booked.

I realised he was really just starting to take off and I thought, OK, is this the moment where Lance finally takes off? Like, all the stuff I've been working towards for two years is about to happen.

And then I got the call about going back to work in corporate for a company that I had worked for previously - I’d really, really loved my time there.

It was really hard for me to make that decision. There was never an intention to be a porn star, but there was never an intention to leave that fast either. It just was all circumstances.

Talk a little bit about getting into the porn star gig then - you've talked about how it was always something that you admired and perhaps aspired to be. What took you so long to take that plunge?

I was way too insecure. I didn't like myself. I didn't like the way I looked physically. I just never considered myself masculine or virile.

I grew up in the age of VHS and DVD - that's what porn was for me when I was younger - these guys were the pinnacle of masculinity, they were perfect men.

For me, it kind of happened by accident. I was tooling along on Instagram - I had about 75,000 followers, I had a few influencer contracts. Then, I woke up one morning and my feed was gone - Instagram said that I had violated too many of their community guidelines.

Some guy messaged me on Facebook and said that I should be monetizing what I’d been sharing with everybody for free.

I had sort of started to get a taste of the fact that there was an audience for me - Instagram proved that to me. So I was kind of feeling a little bit more confident that, well, maybe I'll dip my toe in the water.

The first thing was to come up with a stage name, which was easy - I’d had one ready to go for 20 years. I was playing a drinking game and you had to come up with a porn name using your first boyfriend and your high school mascot. Lance Charger, which I thought was epic.

At this time, I was living in Utah. At some point, my partner and I split up. I shaved my head and shaved off all my chest hair and my beard and everything. I'd been colouring it dark brown for so long, but I let it grow back to whatever it was, which was grey. Instantly, I was the daddy of Salt Lake.

I put seven or eight videos up on Twitter and literally within 48 hours, two studios had sent me notes asking me to come work for them.

The following weekend, I was filming my first scene. I set up fan-subscription accounts, an escort account, and a massage account. It just all happened so quick.

You talked about how you didn't see yourself as fitting the porn star mould, but what was that relationship with your body like when you were growing up then before you started getting to the Instagram phase of things?

It was not a healthy relationship.

I always wore long sleeve shirts. I used to love turtlenecks, long pants, always socks and shoes. I just always felt thin and frail. I always felt that I was never enough.

Where do you think that insecurity came from?

The only explanation that I can think of is that I knew that I was gay at a very, very young age, and so that meant something was wrong with me, and that made me feel really insecure about myself physically because I didn’t fit in with the other boys.

As I started to get older - while they were playing football or running track - I decided to play the violin.

I took the route of a classical musician. Throughout my childhood and into my early 20s, I was playing violin, viola, cello - I was playing in orchestras around the country.

How did that evolve then, because at some point that changed?

It got really dark when I first moved to LA at the age of 24. I moved right smack into the middle of West Hollywood where everybody was like carved out of fucking cream cheese or something.

I was comparing myself to these tanned and super-built guys my own age and I'm like, how did they get so big and how do they look so handsome? It just made me withdraw even deeper.

Then I joined Gold's Gym in Hollywood.

That must have been a big move - to decide to join a gym and to go somewhere like Golds, that must have been quite intimidating?

Absolutely, but I had friends at that point, so I would go with some of my friends.

Eventually, I began to get a bit more comfortable with the way I looked but I was also constantly coaching myself through my dysmorphia.

To be honest, in terms of my confidence and body-image, two years in porn did more for me than 20 years of therapy.

You've got a background in marketing and branding - did that help you navigate the business of porn?

Once I decided to create a persona, the first thing I did was I wrote a four-page biography on him - where he was born, his parents, their income.

He was the antithesis of me. I created the guy I always wished I could be - he was the perfect pornstar with this whole back-story.

Every time I showed up for anything, I just stepped into that character.

There were things that I was doing in bed with guys on camera that I'd never done before and there were thigns coming out of my mouth, and I was just like, wow, I love this guy - he's fucking great!

It was fascinating to watch how that developed. The interesting part about it is how much of him I've decided to keep for myself.

The lessons you’ve learnt from your alter-ego?

Yes. Escorting really helped with that too - someone's paying you to be something for them in that moment.

You never really know who’s going to show up - I got really good at opening the door and immediately being able to pick out the thing I was going to focus on with that person where I would connect.

Are there any regrets about walking away from your porn career just as you were starting to hit your stride?

When the call came in, I was like - this is that opportunity, the one that won't ever come back again, from the company that I’d be working for, who my boss is, what they're paying me. It was the door back into a corporate job that I had been hoping for, but it just came a bit earlier than I was expecting.

But I knew it had to be a clean break, that I had to leave Lance behind me.

In this post-porn era that you’re in, has your relationship with your body and your relationship with sex - has that changed at all?

I feel much more confident in my day-to-day, that's for sure. It's definitely changed how I am in bed.

There's a lot of growth that came out of those two years for me as far as body image, self-confidence, masculinity, sex-drive. I'm so proud of the work I did and I’m so pleased with how I was able to turn it into something sort of healing for myself.

If someone was interested in exploring the world of gay porn and fan-subscription content, what advice or guidance would you give them?

Think of this as a business opportunity. If you want to get into this business, sit down and think through what that means for you.

Think about what your end goal is and do something every day to reach that goal.

That brings us to the end of this episode.

You can find me on Twitter @GTV London.

Today's guest has been Lance Charger. You can find him on Twitter @LanceChargerOFC.

Stay naked, stay sexy and we'll see you next time. Bye.