Devon Hunter

Dear Devon,

I just finished reading one of your blogs and I think you may be able to give me some insight in a situation I find myself in.

In the past 2 months, I met a guy. He is a massage therapist, ex dancer. He constantly is placing ads on Craigs List to get clients. I felt we had hit it off the first session. I went back to a second session and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nothing happened sexually. Since then I have reached out to him via emai. I had sent him flowers for Valentine’s Day to cheer him up. I later found out he had recently broken up with his bf.

This past weekend we were supposed to meet for a bite and then do something. I was hoping to get to talk to him as to the status of our relationship. Client, friend, more. I really do not want to be his rebound bf. He has acknowledged that I am a very nice person and he really appreciates me. We never met on Saturday, he said he showed up at the bar, did not see me and went to another bar. I found this out after texting him where he was. He did send me a nice apology email after I had sent a scathing email to him. He promised to make it up to me.

I just do not know how to handle this. There is at least 20+ years difference between us and I have set up my walls long time ago. I think they are crumbling.

Thanks for reading this. I really did not want to dump this on you.

- L

L,

It’s time for some honesty here: I saw so many red flags that what I think you really want is for me to confirm them, so that you don’t feel bad for seeing them too.

1) he just broke up with someone
2) you don’t want to be a rebound
3) if you felt a “connection,” he’s doing his job as an entertainer
4) there’s 20 years between you
5) he’s not putting the same effort into it that you are
6) he’s too nice to risk hurting your feelings or risk losing your business
7) you have walls up
8 ) he probably does too
9) you’re already becoming possessive and there’s nothing to base it upon
10) you may be looking for something that simply isn’t part of what this person can offer you

I would say that you should not punish him by stopping the sessions. You enjoyed his touch. Why can it not simply be that? His touch heals you on some level. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean that he has to give you everything else too. Be content with enjoying what you can from him, or you will lose not only his touch, but also anything else. He needs time to heal. Give him that respect. You have walls up - you know what it’s like to hurt. Let him have his pain. We need it to grow.

I hope this helps.

xo
Devon

EDIT: Whether intended or not, this is bordering on invasion of privacy. This is exactly why so many entertainers have difficulty socializing outside of work, and why so many people who aren’t in “the biz” think us cold. Until you really know that you are welcome behind the Velvet Rope, you should not insert yourself there. You risk alienating a potential friend, being seen as a threat, and getting your feelings hurt. Remember that Adult Entertainment is a career: We are purveyors of fantasy. You do our service a disservice by complicating it unnecessarily. Try to remember what it is you are paying for - if you get wrapped up (temporarily) in the fantasy, we are doing our jobs well; however, remember that reality is still waiting for you afterwards.

I get asked fairly often what I’ve been doing in the last year or two to get my fitness results. I’ve decided to be very specific, despite the fact that each person has his/her own gender, age, body type, metabolism, race, motivation level, and other host of factors that will affect his/her ability to implement any of this. There is one overarching factor that will help you, no matter what type of exercise regimen you follow: Discipline.

I was going to say “consistence;” however, that is a misnomer. Yes, you have to consistently work for a long time, but you cannot repeat the same formulas over and over. Variety is very important. That can be applied in many ways: How many times a week you workout, time of day, what types of exercises you do, the order of the exercises, whether you focus on the concentric/essentric/isometric phase of exertion, the tempo of repetitions, how much rest you have between sets, whether you do supersets/pyramid/reverse pyramid/circuit/etc, blah blah blah.

Variety is key, because your body is extremely adept at finding the most efficient way to perform effort (i.e. the path of least resistance), and will adapt to repetition by burning fewer calories. If you do the same workout more than about three times in a row, you will see a drastic reduction in effort/caloric burn. Mix it up. Always.

Me Personally

I workout only 2-4 times each week. I workout for only 45-60 minutes for each session. However, when I do exercise it is with a focus on intensity and good form (proper alignment, proper use of breath, appropriate resistance loads). I also do not do the same workout more than once in a week. Plyometrics (explosive training that focuses on jumping/landing, locomotion while implementing resistance of some kind, and skill specific motions like throwing/catching) is very important for me, because I’ve been active so long that anything less demanding simply won’t shock my system.

Breath

What happens if you do not breathe? You die. That’s hyperbole in this instance, but you get the point. Without breath there is nothing else. You must not only breathe, you must do it with the proper coordination, in order to deliver oxygen and remove waste efficiently. Toxins in the body prevent progress - breathing properly and hydrating will help elimenate these substances.

The simple rule of thumb for breathing: Exhale on the exertion, inhale on the return. Often this means that you should exhale on the concentric portion of the repetition (i.e. flexion - decreasing the angle of the joint. e.g. bending your elbow). You would exhale when bending your elbow to do a biceps curl, and inhale as you lower it during the essentric portion of the repetion (i.e. extension - increasing the angle of the joint. e.g. straigtening your elbow). This isn’t always the case: You would inhale to go down in a pushup (when the elbows bend) and exhale to go up. So, exhale when you do more work, inhale when you do less work.

Visualization & Three Dimensional Symmetricality

Get it out of your mind right now that spot training is helpful. If you are saying, “I want to improve my (insert body part here),” you still need to implement the whole body, even while bringing some additional focus to the part in question. Be aware that the cosmetic muscles (i.e. the most superficial: biceps brachii, pectoralis major, gluteus maximus, etc.) are the furthest from the core of the limbs and torso, and although they are the prettiest to look at, they are the least important in terms of efficient development. The deep musculature is closer to the joints, and these invisible muscles are the foundation upon which the superficial muscles are built.

With that in mind, bring your focus to a deeper place within your visualization of what you are doing. Yes, imagining yourself doing an exercise will help your results, but try to think deeper than the muscles you can see. The biceps brachii (the muscle you show people when they say “make a muscle” and you flex your elbow in response) is not the primary flexor of the elbow: The brachialis is, because it is closer to the lever of the joint. When you do upper anterior arm exercises, be sure to keep this fact in mind.

In addition to working on a deeper level, also remember balance. As above, so below. What you do on the front, do on the back. If you do it to the left, do it to the right. You are a three dimensional being. You are a whole entity. It is a very Western concept to chop the body into parts without concern for integration. Eastern philosophies of the body (and the universe in general) focus more on wholes rather than portions. What does this mean for you as an exerciser?

If you do a chest workout, at some point in the next week you also need to do the back. Whether you do it immediately (Chest/Back day) or a day or so later (day 1: push exercises, day 2: pull exercises) doesn’t matter so much as finding the balance at all. Muscles work in pairs: Muscles can only pull, they cannot push. If you do not work both sides of a muscle pair you will create imbalances that will result in lowered results and greater risk of injury. Create balance on all sides of a joint.

An obvious example would be right/left symmetry. Would you only workout your left leg or your right shoulder? No. That would be ridiculous. Bring your left/right awareness into alignment with your front/back and upper/lower symmetry as well. In the movie “The Lady in the Water,” by M. Night Shyamalan (one of my favorite directors of all time), there is a character who works out only one arm. It has narrative significance for that movie, but otherwise it is exactly what it is: bizarre and unbalanced.

This brings us to upper/lower symmetry. It absolutely drives me bonkers crazy to see a huge torso sitting on top of a chicken. How gross. Ridiculous. The legs are just as important as the arms. The butt and hips are just as important as the chest and shoulders. Imbalance in upper/lower symmetry is a fantastic way to not only look like a cartoon character, but to also promote injuries. If your entire lower body is not as well connected to the core as your upper body, you will have an incredible amount of instability and weakness that will eventually lead to the break down of the whole. Whether you enjoy exercising the legs or not, you absolutely must do them: They are the foundation of everything else. You cannot build a cathedral with fancy towers and stain glass windows without a strong foundation to hold it all up.

Cardio tips

If you are going to do cardio (I personally do not, because my particular metabolism would not allow me to maintain mass gains if I were to do cardio on top of the dancing I already do), the first order of business is to make sure you can do it without hurting your joints. If you want to run, and if you run more than about 10 miles in a week, then you should plan to replace your running shoes every 90 days. Speed walking burns almost as many calories, and it puts only a fraction of the strain on your joints. Swimming, if you have access to a pool, is a fantastic form of resistance cardio that doesn’t put as much stress on the body because it is in a “zero gravity” environment.

Your cardio session should not exceed 50 minutes: 5 minutes of gentle warm-up, 40 minutes of oscillating intensities of cardio training, and 5 minutes of moderate/gentle cool-down. The warm-up and cool-down are vital, because they allow your cardiovascular system time to adapt to demands. You should generally avoid doing more than 40 minutes of cardio training, unless you have a particular goal (i.e. run a marathon), because after 40 minutes the body no longer works aerobically. Your cardio workout will switch over to anaerobic activity, and you will start burning protein, rather than carbohydrate and fat. In layman’s terms: After 40 minutes you break down muscle instead of fat.

ABSolutely not

It has been a widely accepted piece of wisdom in the fitness industry for years that sit-ups and crunches alone do nothing to help you attain physical fitness. It’s infuriating that people still get duped into buying gimmicky pieces of crap to get better abs. I think a single crunch burns something like 1/10,000 of a calorie. There are 3,500 calories in pound. So, to lose a pound from doing crunches alone, you would have to do 35,000,000 crunches. Mhm.

Abdominal work is indeed very important. In fact, core strength is one of the single most important factors for attaining and maintaining fitness; however, remember what I said about spot training: It doesn’t work. To strengthen your core (which is not just the abs - it is the abdominals, lower back, hip complex, butt, deep rotators, etc. ad nauseum), you have to implement it while doing everything else. Working out on one foot and then the other, standing on instability surfaces, jumping while performing a repetition - all of these activities force the core to stabilize the entire body. Feats of balance will train your entire core much more effectively than crunches, which train you to have bad posture by over-strengthening the abs and pulling the torso forward.

Your entire workout should be an abdominals/core training session. Every moment of every session you should be doing abs/core. Where possible, use free weights rather than machines: You standing and controlling the weight brings more exertion into play than sitting and sliding on a machine, more calories get burned, and your core works harder. Graduate off of two-dimensional machines as soon as it is safe to do so.

Doing abdominal specific exercise will help define each head of the rectus abdominis (the six-pack muscle), internal, and external obliques but those exercises will not, in and of themselves, give you a six-pack. You already have a six-pack. Everyone does. You simply have to shed that which is obscuring it, and that requires whole body exertion and an improved body composition (i.e. get your lean:fat ratio in better alignment).

Something else to remember: Think deep. The six-pack and obliques are the pretty muscles you can see… Remember that the deep muscles are the important ones. If you do not train the transversus abdominis, you will never have a flat stomach, even if you have a lumpy one. The transversus abdominis is a layer of muscle in your core that works like a muscular sac that is wrapped around your lower trunk. Its job is to stabilize and to hold your intestines in place. To engage it, try to keep your belly button pulled up (without sucking in so deep that you can’t breathe/move) at all times. Have you ever seen someone with a six-pack who still looks pregnant from the side? Or how about a very slim person with no visible subcutaneous fat who still has a potbelly? Both of these are possible examples of a tranversus abdominis that is too weak to hold the intestines up inside the cavity of the torso.

Mass vs Tone

The generalized rule of thumb for building mass versus creating definition is simple: To get big do heavy weight with few reps, and to get cut do light weight with many reps. Let’s get a tad more specific. That might be helpful.

To build mass you will need to ingest about 1 gram of protein/pound of your desired body weight (if you want to weigh 150 pounds, eat about 150 grams of lean protein each day with your whole grains and veggies), and you will need to do sets of 8-10 reps. To increase tone, you still need to eat 1 gram of protein/pound of your desired body weight, but you will need to do sets of 12-15 reps.

To gague whether or not you are working with the correct weight load/resistance you will have to be honest with yourself, and you will have to be willing to adjust alot until you find your target resistance. For gaining mass: reps 1-3 should make you feel energized and powerful, reps 4-6 should require deep exertion but not strain, and reps 7-8 (as well as 9 and 10, if you can do them safely) should exhaust your temporarily. You should genuinely need to rest 60-90 seconds after the set. If you could have kept going, you should’ve used more resistance. To encourage tone: reps 1-5 should require little effort, reps 6-10 should induce a warm sensation in the muscles, and reps 11-15 should fatigue you to the point that you are uncomfortable. You should genuinely need 45-60 seconds of rest after the set. If you could have kept going, you should’ve used more resistance. Generally you should do 3-4 sets of 2-3 exercises per body part in question.

Diet & Rest

Diet is 70% of success. Like it or not, you are what you eat. Exercise itself is 20% of success, and rest is 10%. Respect that.

You should be eating 4-6 smaller, snack-sized meals, rather than 1-3 huge and filling meals. Providing your body with several smaller portions allows the digestive tract to completely break the food down, giving you access to the nutrition in your food, and it also keeps the metabolism high.

Digestion requires energy. By grazing lightly throughout the day on lean protein, whole grain foods, and raw veggies (go easy on the fruit, it has as much caloric density as candy) you keep your body buzzing with activity. You also avoid starvation mode: Eating less frequently confuses your body, which doesn’t know there’s not a famine. It simply knows that it’s hungry and will then hold onto all the fat you eat without using it, so that you can get through the “lean” times. Avoid stuffing yourself - you should feel satisfied without feeling satiated. Drink at least 64 ounces of water each day (the bare minimum to live), and munch often.

In this hectic world it’s hard enough to get five hours of sleep a night, but you need more than that probably. At least if you intend to get fitness results. The body evolved over millions of years, so it really doesn’t give a damn that you have a full itinerary. I’m not going to tell you to get eight hours of sleep a night if you don’t need that much, and if it’s impossible for you to do; however, napping, if possible, is nice. Get as much rest as you can. The body heals itself and grows while you sleep.

Also, avoid working the same muscles on back-to-back days. Exercise tears muscles fibers at the microscopic level. Stitching them back together is what makes them firm and grow. If you break them down repeatedly without giving them time to heal, you will not gain mass and your road towards becoming toned will be longer. For mass building, avoid working the same muscles more than once in 5-7 days, and for tone, avoid working the same muscles more than once in 36-48 hours.

I am certain that I’m one of the Goddess’s most aggravating children. But I also think that She rolls her eyes affectionately as She huffs about me. I’m taking the night off. I can’t work right now. I did okay last night (a very bizarre night), and my costs are covered. I’ll go to Columbia this weekend with a respectable little “bonus” to go on top of whatever I make Friday and Saturday.

So, although there were only nine dancers at Swinging Richards last night (the lowest I’ve personally ever seen), there were also about that many patrons. I was offered a drink, something I normally don’t accept; however, after the last two weeks I was very annoyed that I’d driven all the way from Charlotte to Atlanta for such a lousy showing. Somehow I still generated a respectable piece of change. The problem is that I can’t account for half of it.

I know I did one chair dance that lasted two songs. A man tipped me a $20 on stage. I had one man get half a lap dance, but pay for three, and therefore the balance is whatever else I made on stage. It seems like an impossibly high number of $1 bills for so few tippers. I drank waaaay more than I normally do, and it really didn’t do anything except make me skip around an empty bar, singing to the Pussy Cat Dolls, Chingy, and T-Pain. Not pretty. I also told the manager (yes, The Matt) that I was tired of waiting for him to make love to me by a roaring fire, and then demanded a napkin and a lighter to simulate the effect during a quick boink. God! Stupid.

The reason I need the night off is the half-lapdance that paid for three. This has never, in all my time doing this, happened to me: He started crying. Real tears. They were rolling down his face. One fell off his cheek and splattered lightly on my navel. I thought I’d hurt him in some unknown way.

He was weeping and sobbing. I was drunk, but not completely out of my wits. He told me how it hurt him that the only way he could touch a beautiful man was to pay for it. That took me completely aback. I’ve run into this conversation before, but not with tears hitting my bellybutton, and not while I was drunk and still feeling raw about my own situation.

I made the only choice I could think of: I gave him his $20 back, and I gave him a hug. I told him something along the lines that if someone doesn’t want him for who he is, then he doesn’t need them. Something trite that sounds completely insincere today. I definitely didn’t intend to hurt his feelings. In my inebriation, this was all I could think to do. I don’t understand why, but he insisted on paying me for a dance I hadn’t even done, and then tipped me heavily. I just took it. I’m not in the mindset right now to debate these things.

Anyway, something about that entire interaction has piled on top of everything else, and I just don’t feel like being touched today. I want to be left alone, so that I can watch TV, or read, or fall asleep, or anything but entertain someone else right now.

I’m sorry that my postings have been so dark this week. I will return to form soon. I can already feel the light trying to break through the clouds. Give me a day or so, and I’ll be back to me. I may take a few days off from blogging, but when I come back my mood will be better. Promise.

Odd. Especially given yesterday’s mortifyingly pathetic blog about Allen. I’ve been getting a new affirmation that I’d not anticipated: The gay superhero/role model. Y’all, I’m 5′7-ish, weigh 150-ish pounds, and I screw up more than almost anyone I’ve ever met (no “-ish” on that one). Look at the humiliating bullshit I subjected myself to for two weeks with a gorgeous, but emotionally shattered, 22-year old college student (who told me 50 different ways up front that he had psychological wreckage piled up to his eyeballs)?! A day after severing ties with him, and I’m already wondering what the fuck I was thinking… Drama. Stupid. I know it, and I know this: He’s going to grow up and be an amazing man one day, but who has 10 years to sit around waiting for that sweet day?

The hyperbole of Super Devon is a tad much. But it’s still something I want to address, because this blog has begun to be read on a wider scale. Although I’m excited about that aspect of the site’s growth, there is beginning to be a misrepresentation of me that threatens to undermine the entire point of this blog (that I’m just a person like anyone else, and so are other adult entertainers).

With increasing regularity I am getting recognized walking around outside of the bars. I’m fine with that. I’ve had some nice little convos face to face with people; however, people have started saying that I look like a gay superhero or that I am a gay role model for them… Okay, let’s just stop this right in its tracks: I am one of the singularly least heroic or admirable people I know. I share alot of myself here, but by no means do I share everything.

People look at what I’m doing online, and although I admit it takes audacity, I don’t get that it takes anywhere near the strength some of my readers are giving me credit for. I appreciate very much that there are people who will look at my ability to wallow publicly in my own drama and analyze it as something interesting in and of itself; however, it doesn’t make me anything more than I am.

In creating this site I was seeking to scrape off the exotic, not lacquer more of it on. Please, dear readers, don’t forget why I am doing this. I bite my fingernails, fart, and fall for the wrong people as much as anyone else. I appreciate and embrace your affirmations and support, because it means that I am succeeding in making myself real (in an intangible, electronically delivered way), but I really don’t want to get turned right back into something I’m not (and on an even larger scale, to boot!). That would make everything else I do/write seem artificial.

It’s just me: If you see me getting gas, buying cat litter, or dancing on a pole, just come say hello if you feel you’d like to do so. I’ll try not to shatter your eardrums with my voice or crush you into atoms with my hand shake. Honestly, if I have any superpower at all, it’s simply that I am unapologetically and utterly me.

I wasn’t going to write this post. Despite all the ways in which I let people into my world, there are some topics that just seem off-limits; however, I need to begin the healing process, so I am going to blog about this. Even though it makes me feel naked and vulnerable (odd that being naked and vulnerable doesn’t make me feel naked and vulnerable, but that this issue does).

I blogged about two weeks ago that I’d finally forgiven my ex. Within hours of doing that the universe put someone in my path. I thought it was a sign that the world had been desperate for me to meet someone, and that since I’d put it off so long that there was an immediate blip on the radar. I’m trying very hard right now not to be angry, but what I feel is rage mingled with grief. I have been given a very distinct reminder about why I normally do not make myself available beyond friendship.

Allen streaked into my life like some kind of meteor: Brilliant and inspiring, but trailing destruction in his wake. Without realizing it, I had resolved to do everything on his terms, because he is so damaged and hurt that I wanted to make him as comfortable and happy as his ex’s made him miserable. What I realize now is that I made too many concessions, and that I lost sight of my own priorities in a bid to satisfy him and keep him around. When he asked for time and patience, I gave it. When he asked for more intimacy (despite having just asked for time to get to know me), I gave it - on the condition that he not lose interest afterward. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. So, I gave him what he said he was ready for. I am empathetic to the point of being psychic - I knew something was wrong immediately afterwards. When I finally let my cold walls down, I tend to incinerate people with my intensity. People should thank me for keeping myself boxed in - they generally can’t withstand the shock of seeing me in my fullness. It never takes long for me to burn someone out.

Eighteen hours later he is telling me about an ex for whom he still has feelings, and says he is overwhelmed and needs to slow everything down. Mhm. How’s this for slow enough: When he was online last night, he didn’t even say hello to me, let alone give me the promised response to an email (his preferred form of communication). He simply logged off. I sent him a good-bye text, deleted him from my phone, deleted and blocked him as best I could from other portals, and have decided to go back to my stance of “I don’t date.”

Let me explain that the reason I was completely ready to trust Allen is because we have so much in common: Movement/athletics/physical therapy, exotic dance background, legal adoption by cruel step fathers, extreme abuse by significant others, and a highly developed sense of empathy for others (despite an internal conflict between the need for love and the fear of it). The first night we met, he tipped me a $10 bill with a kind note on it. I have kept that tip for the last couple weeks, because it was special to me. I am depositing it in the bank today, so that I can buy some cat litter with my debit card.

What I have been reminded of is that when a gay guy says “I want a smart, kind, attractive, attentive man to love me,” what he means is “I want several douche nozzles to use me badly. Alot.” This blog takes on a bitter tone that I normally do not vent here; however, it is what I am experiencing right now, and if I am going to assert that adult entertainers have feelings too, then I have to occasionally let you see the darker moods too. I am not well.

This will take some time. But I mend quickly. If the damage isn’t too great. I am fucking fabulous. I want to lay down and die, I am so embarrassed. “I like you so much!” Not enough, it seems. The bad thing about meteors is that even small ones leave large craters.