The adult film star commutes regularly from the Valley for at least an hour. Here’s how he keeps his cool.
Adult film actor and Los Angeles resident Micheal Vegas arrived at his career via a circuitous route. Years ago, while training to be a firefighter, he survived a motorcycle accident that left him in a coma for two weeks. The near-death experience made Vegas realize he’d been trying too hard to stick to a straight and narrow path. It was time to do something fun and exciting for himself.
“I’ve always wanted to make movies and I’ve always wanted to have sex with beautiful people, without them falling in love with me,” he says. “So, I put myself in a world where I got paid for doing something I wanted to do: making movies and having sex with a lot of beautiful people!”
Bold words. But Vegas has used his acting chops and good looks to become a well-known figure in mainstream porn, and to start a site for his personal fetish, PegHim.com, where he shows off certain other talents.
On his Instagram account, Vegas takes advantage of the platform’s live feature to broadcast himself as he drives across L.A., commuting to work, sharing his thoughts, shouting out to fans, talking about art (he’s also a professional photographer) and discussing his personal philosophies.
“I grew up with the mantra of ‘I can do anything,’” Vegas says. “If there’s something I want to do, I just try it until I get it.”
You know he really means that.
Photo by Shannon Cottrell
What kind of car do you drive?
I drive a 2005 Toyota 4Runner Sport V8.
What has commuting been like for you in L.A.?
I had never planned on moving to L.A. I lived in Orange County, then I had a total life path change and I had to be in Los Angeles a lot more … In the beginning, having to be on call all the time made it really difficult to pull off [driving from O.C. to L.A.]. I moved up to the middle of the Valley. If you know anything about the Valley, it’s flat and to get anywhere you have to drive a long way. And just like the rest of L.A., there’s lots of traffic.
I usually give myself an hour to get myself anywhere I need to go. I will give myself an hour to get to the other side of the Valley, an hour to get to Magic Mountain, an hour to get to Santa Monica. Sometimes it’s less, but if you give yourself an hour, you’re good.
How do you de-stress in traffic?
I’m constantly making shapes in my head, they’re different hand patterns for doing weird juggling tricks. I’m envisioning myself doing body movements, so I can be better at them later. I am actually a clown. I paint myself like a clown, I get paid to clown occasionally. I do it because it’s a fun experiment when you can look someone in the face and they will not look you in the eyes because of the makeup. It’s a fun way to go about in the world.
Why the Instagram live videos?
It started because people wanted to have a more personal interaction with me. They wanted me to be able to speak to them, say their name, ask questions. It’s just a personal experience they were looking for … And it needed to be a non-sexual thing, and it needed to be me holding still kind of paying attention.
It allows me to be here and think and be introspective and run things over in my head. A lot of times people are just saying ridiculous things. Every now and then people ask me a question that requires a little more in-depth answer, which I love sharing with people. I’m a fountain of knowledge. I’m called wise by very many people. But it doesn’t just come out of me for no reason. Something’s gotta spark it.
It’s always fun because I choose when to turn it on and when not to. Part of learning who I was, coming into this business, I had to come to terms with the fact that I am somebody who loves attention. And I need to get myself attention, and I figured out how to do it. In doing that I’ve also backed off on the amount of attention that I need because I’ve come to terms with it — I wasn’t just this bottomless attention monster that could never be fed. I appreciate how and what I get now.
What kind of music do you listen to in the car?
One of my favorite parts of doing Instagram live — [which] is also kind of a pain because Instagram censors the music so much — is that I listen to very eclectic music or very non-mainstream music most of the time. Or at least non-current mainstream music. And I make people listen to jazz and orchestral arrangements and Bollywood and old punk, flamenco, everything, literally everything. I make a bunch of playlists. And people always ask, ‘What are you listening to?’
Why did you start PegHim.com?
Peghim started because it’s my fetish. And there wasn’t much of what I wanted to see out there. It was always this power exchange, or something degrading … I was integrating what I’ve seen some of the girls in mainstream porn do. I was trying to have some of the boy-girl mainstream porn stuff while still incorporating elements of gay porn and making it a well-rounded everybody-loves-butts experience.
I do it as my fetish because I love it. I was doing and not getting paid before and just doing it as an anonymous thing. I realized I got so much support from the online community and the women I was doing it [with] and the other people in forums. I was just like, I’m going to be brave and really bare my sexuality to people because if I do, I can live the dream, which is making money off of something that you love doing. It’s been great.