4.
DALE COOPER
Dale Cooper’s got the sultriest voice. Like yes, he’s got a giant dick, and yes, it’s fun to watch his ass get pounded by men with equally giant dicks, but this guy could record audio books, and you’d probably jizz just as hard and then be all like, “Wow, who knew Donna Tartt was so porny?” We talked about his library of queer theory books, Twin Peaks and the AIDS LifeCycle ride.
Dale Cooper is charming and handsome, with a handsome face, a disarmingly seductive voice, and a dick the size of your arm. What’s not to love? I caught up with him recently, to find out what he’s been up to lately and also to swoon while he told me about his porn career. (Seriously, that voice.)
Let’s start with the obvious. Tell me about your name.
I was looking to choose a new nom de porn, rather than letting the production company choose one. I wanted to be Ben Joyous, because I’m jealous of Ben Jealous, who is the head of the NAACP right now. But the company I was working with at the time said no. As it happens, I was at the tail end of watching all of Twin Peaks. And ta-da! From now on, all the “Dale Cooper” Tumblr hashtags will be infused with gay porn.
So what did you think about Twin Peaks?
It’s phenomenal, really incredible. I mean I wasn't really fully aware of its place in pop culture history, that it’s this thing that everybody watched together. It’s really fantastic, that it’s this whole dark Americana cultural thing.
The second season is a roller coaster of quality. Once you find out who killed Laura Palmer, it gets a little wonky. But I love all the occult shit, the paranormal and all that.
Yeah! Like when people’s hands start shaking and you never really find out why.
I truly appreciated what it was doing with the format of the soap opera. Even that douchebag teenager with the black hair.
James! Who dates Donna and then falls in with sinister rich people!
Yeah, he was a loser. And such a campy, melodramatic actor.
What about Dale Cooper? Did you find him sexy?
Yeah, but I was more keen on the sheriff. He was more my type. And the Native American sidekick was pretty hot, too. He was a pretty stereotypically Native American figure. Long black hair, high cheekbones.
To change the subject before we get carried away… You’re also doing some writing for the Huffington Post. How did that happen?
I was approached by an organization called AIDS LifeCycle. They were looking for a sex journalist to be on their media crew. For those who don’t know, AIDS LifeCycle is a massive charity bike fundraiser which provides all sorts of amazing services from medication to housing support. It’s pretty badass. And they bike from San Francisco to LA, and so it’s a lot of gay guys in spandex.
So I was there writing, and one of the pieces got to the Huffington Post Gay Voices section, but the one thing I wrote was totally at the tail end of the ride, so there wasn't really going to be anything else. But I had a lot to say about young gay men and sex and the internet and formation of identity, and I wondered if they’d just let me submit whatever I wanted.
There was a really, really, really horrendous obituary of Erik Rhodes in the New York Times. He had a twin brother, and they made this didactic story about the good, straight, college educated brother and how Erik was the bad one, so I wrote a response to that and figured I’d see if I could get it on there, and I did.
I’ve been throwing some other stuff there, and I’ve been trying to diversify and write for some other publications.
Your website has an Amazon wishlist, where fans can send you books. There are some pretty… heady titles on there—Conceptual Practices Of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge; Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society…
I always really liked books. One of the things that really bothered me as an undergraduate was having to reference things that weren't books. So I basically ask fans to buy me books that I need. I’m working on a fairly rigorous research project.
Oh?
I’m really, really fascinated by queer theory and particularly how it reacts with new media and especially the internet. Think about how young gay men have been using the internet to learn about their sexuality. If you don’t want your family to find out that you’re a fag, you google the word “gay” and the first thing that comes up is porn. So I’m looking at how the internet is informing young gay men.
Essentially, most of the books are referenced in other works I’m reading, and I feel like they follow and idea that I’d really like to know about. Suffice it to say, I have a very large stack of books with tiny fonts and narrow margins, but I slowly and meticulously pound through them.
How is that working so far?
It’s been surprisingly successful, to the point where I started feeling bad. I’ve told people that I will snap photos of me with the books, doing something vaguely inappropriate. But that’s been taking a while. It’s harder when I have to take the photos myself. If anyone who lives in Baltimore wants to help. If they’re not creepy. An uncreepy photographer. Can you just include a huge apology in the interview?
Speaking of you doing inappropriate things, what do we have to look forward to in your future?
I recently shot two scenes with Raging Stallion, one with James Jamesson. He’s really hot, he’s a redhead and he’s got a jacked little body, but he’s sort of a rarity because he’s got this massive beard, longish red hair, and just red hair all over his body. It’s nuts.
And I did a really great scene with Alexander Garrett. We had great chemistry.
I’ll be going back to San Francisco to work for NakedSword for the first time, which is super fun.
You’ve been doing porn for a little while now, right?
A year and a half, two years. I enjoy a lot about it. It can be a lot of work, but it can be really fun. And it gives me a lot of free time to pursue whatever the fuck else I want to do: cooking and reading and generally chilling the fuck out. It supports me, and I live fairly frugally and I get to travel.
So you’re traveling a lot?
I have been, it’s been kind of nuts. I’ve been keeping really busy bouncing between the coasts. And I miss my home and my cat, but you know.
The one question I don’t want to ask but probably should is the tattoo question.
Right. I am well aware now that people think I walked into a tattoo parlor and chose random images from a little book. You know, now that I’m in an industry where my body is on full display.
I’ve had them for three or four years now. I got them right after college.
The symbols are actually borrowed from a video game that I played as a little kid, called Ultima 4. I really loved it, because in this game you can run around and kill the dragon, but you don’t win the game that way. You’re actually supposed to be the avatar of these eight virtues.
The developers have talked about how they really, really liked The Wizard of Oz, and so they took the characters that each represented a cardinal idea—love, courage, and the truth. And so love became compassion, which is the rose. Truth became honesty, which is the hand on my bicep. Courage became valor, which is the dagger on my other bicep. And then you start combining them. Compassion combined with truth is justice, and those are the scales on my back. I got humility on my ass, and I figured no one would ever see that one because that was before I started doing porn. And so now no one knows what’s going on with my tattoos, and that’s the end of that.
Got it. So, anything else besides porn in store for Dale?
I wasn’t even sure when I started that I was going to do as much with Dale Cooper as I have. I’ve now been trying to branch out into other projects, which I can’t talk about right now. But this has been a tremendous opportunity for meeting people. Professionally there are some studios that I really love.
Dale’s really just an amalgamation of video performance and tweets.
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