Thoughtful Porn Daddy Dallas Steele On His Vocation: "We Serve at the Pleasure of the People"
He was pushed out of TV news in his forties. Then his lover died. Then he entered the field he'd always fantasized about—porn—and started thriving.

Hi Caftaners! It’s a veeeery cold night here in NYC and, boy, I can’t wait to warm up on the dance floor later tonight with some friends. (Actually, I wrote this Saturday night, but I’m posting it Monday morning.) But meanwhile, I am excited to give you this new two-hour interview I did on Wednesday with porn daddy Dallas Steele (real name: Jim Walker). I actually have to thank his fellow hot porn daddy Tom Chase for “e-troducing” me to Dallas and vouching for my, ahem, good character. I really loved talking to Dallas, who has a certain easygoing gravitas which I guess you might expect from a former longtime TV news anchor in various markets.
But when that career fell apart (due largely, it seems, to homophobia, even if it wasn’t explicitly stated as such), and when his longtime lover died of an overdose and the lover’s family took all his remaining assets, Jim wasn’t left with much and had to reinvent himself. So, partly to fulfill a longtime fantasy and partly out of financial need, he went into porn—first with the reigning studios in the last true decade of pre-OnlyFans/Just For Fans studio dominance, then more recently as an OF/JFF freelancer, which seems to be the way most porn actors are going these days.
I really loved interviewing Dallas, not least because—full disclosure—I’ve been a fan of his for awhile. (I love seeing hot daddies thriving in porn!) He’s handsome in that square-jawed straight-out-of-central-casting TV newscaster way and seems to have embraced his porn career with as much level-headed discipline and attention to viewer satisfaction that he brought to his TV career. Also, as you’ll see, it doesn’t appear that there’s much he’s not willing to be honest about. So I hope you enjoy the interview!
I am so grateful to have this space where I can interview someone about gay eldercare one week then interview a silver fox porn star the next. And I’m grateful for what’s been a very steady uptick of paying readers to help me devote more and more time to this. I’m nearing my goal of being able to post at least once a week! So please, if you’ve been a free reader for awhile and you enjoy what you get until you hit the paywall, consider becoming a paying reader at only $5/month. You are helping me realize a long-held goal: to be able to make a living reporting and writing on what I care about most: us!
I’ve already done another interview besides this that I’ll try to get up before Christmas. Until then, all best, Caftan readers, and please drop me a line at timmurphynycwriter@gmail.com with any feedback or ideas for future posts. Oh! I almost forgot: I’m also trying to expand another side gig, which is helping people develop and/or edit and/or polish a fiction, memoir or other manuscript. I’ve done a few already. (Here is one, in fact…self-published, and another I worked on will be out soon.) I base this work on my own experience publishing five novels of my own plus 30 years working in magazine and digital publishing as a reporter, writer, editor and copyeditor. So if you or someone you know is looking for a really reassuring professional hand bringing your book into the world (and I can also advise you on finding an agent or publisher, or on self-publishing), then reach out!
And now here is Dallas Steele… and I should mention that though there is no frontal or even posterior nudity in the images to come, they are spicy, so be advised if you’re in an office setting. xTim

Dallas, thank you so much for agreeing to do a Caftan interview! So can I begin by asking you what a typical day is like from start to finish?
Sure. I live with my partner of almost 11 years, Boy Steele, whose name is actually DJ. We live three blocks from Arenas Road in Palm Springs, which is the gay area, in a very small apartment with a fairly large patio with a privacy hedge that I have made more private by adding some fake greenery to it. I actually shoot movies out there quite often when the weather is nice, so I tell my scene partners that they can't be a screamer, because it's only semi-private.

I usually wake up at 6am, an hour before Boy Steele, and make breakfast and then pack our work lunches. He works in a supermarket and I am the manager of a shirt store called Seaplane five or six days a week.

For breakfast, along with coffee, I'll make egg whites as well as oatmeal or Cream of Wheat with protein powder mixed in. After breakfast, we head to the gym about six days a week. I usually lift weights about four days a week and do cardio and abs the other days.
Once in a while, I won't work out at all, but that's rare. I don't lift super heavy. Instead of doing 8-12 reps, I do 10-15 reps with slightly less weight to try to prevent injuries. At this point in my life, I have 13 bionic parts. I had my shoulder replaced two years ago, and the bionic shoulder is much stronger than the natural shoulder, which I'll probably have to get replaced somewhere in the next eight years.
Are you social at your gym?
Yes. Ironically, it's called Steel, without the extra "e," and it's 99.5% gay men, all local guys. So if you go there, you must be prepared to spend an extra 20 to 30 minutes chatting with your friends because basically it's like a bar without drinks. I actually have another, not-so-gay gym I go to outside of Palm Springs specifically when I'm in a hurry and don't want to talk to anyone. Especially if it's a holiday weekend when tons of visitors are going to be taking pictures with me. I can't be rude and say no, so I go to the other gym.
I think you might be first person I know who goes to both a social gym and a nonsocial gym! Anyway, do you mind if I ask if you do testosterone or steroids or any other supplements?
Oh yeah, I've done injectable testosterone and tren(bolone) and boldenone going on 25 years now. That's not a secret. Here in Palm Springs, it's hard to find someone who's not doing at least a weekly maintenance dose of testosterone. If you're trying to get huge, you're going to have to take a lot, but I think most guys are looking to maintain the muscle they have and look good.
I just did a long interview about this subject. What would you say are the pros and cons?
I haven't experienced any cons. Whatever doctor I've had has always monitored it.
It's never made you edgy or angry?
The first two years I definitely had some anger issues, but it wasn't a problem after that. As for the pros, it makes it easier to put on muscle. And definitely as you get older, it gives you more energy, makes you more alert and keeps you sexual.
You've never had any testicular shrinkage or high blood pressure issues from it?
No. I've had some cholesterol issues from it, but my doctor put me on Lipitor and within three months those levels were within range. And I've never had big balls to start with!
Okay. So workwise, you have a fulltime day job in addition to your porn work.
I think of it as having two fulltime jobs. On my days off from the store, I'm editing video, doing promotions, answering fan mail and being interviewed by people like you. So I basically work seven days a week. Friends are sometimes frustrated when I can't be social, but it takes a lot of money to survive in Palm Springs. Between DJ and me, we have three jobs, and it's still a challenge to survive here.
So the porn is not enough to live on.
It's not. I still do stuff for Carnal studios but I don't get that much studio stuff anymore, so I do a lot on my own OnlyFans and Just For Fans (both accessible through his X account), which has been a great consistent income for seven or eight years now. I was one of the first 500 people on OnlyFans back in the day. I'd say I make about $3,000 a month from porn. It was double during Covid, when everyone was inside and had time on their hands and stimulus money. Not that I wish Covid would come back—let me be clear about that. But we were all making good money [via porn] then.
Right. So most days you're at the store all day.
And after that, I'll come home and have a drink or a smoke—meaning weed, not cigarettes. I may have a porn shoot at five or five-thirty, so I have to get everything set up for that.
If I'm bottoming or flipping, I have to get myself ready too. My shoots are 60 to 90 minutes. Then post-shoot, my screw partner will leave and I start dinner so I have it ready for DJ when he gets home about 8pm.
What will you cook?
I'm not a great cook. I'm a utility cook—basics like grilled chicken and rice with asparagus, or those Birdseye bag dinners with vegetables, noodles and chicken, to which I'll add more chicken. It's not amazing cooking but it's healthy. I've also mellowed from ten years ago, when I was totally terrified of fats and pastries. I was ridiculously disciplined, but I learned a while back that I could have some of the things I wanted and still look great. At this point I'm fucking 55 years old, so I'm going to stop denying myself everything and enjoy my life.
I definitely hear that. So let's go back in time. What was your childhood like?
I grew up in the Stockton-Lodi area in northern California, in the Central Valley, which is very agricultural. They grow a lot of almonds, walnuts, table grapes and rice there. Stockton when I was growing up was very "Leave it to Beaver," a very mom and pop town. And then the demographics changed and crime increased. It now has more than 125 known street gangs, and many of them are Southeast Asian.
Anyway, when I was ten or eleven, we moved out to the country, eight miles from Stockton, a few years before my parents divorced, so I got a taste of country life. My best friend's family raised pigs and we would play with the pigs and name them and love them, until one day a guy who I think was drunk came and got out of his car and started shooting them from 30 feet away right in front of us, and it took 30 minutes for them to die a horrible death. He did not slaughter them humanely. I didn't eat pork again for seven years.
That sounds pretty awful and reminds me of the novel A Day No Pigs Would Die. Anyway, what were you like as a little boy?
Well, my father was an alcoholic and my brother, who is ten years older than me, was an addict by the time he was fourteen. So home life was fairly traumatic because one of them was either drunk or high, and they frequently fought. My mom would be in the middle and I'd be watching from a distance. So when my mom finally decided to divorce my dad and take me to live with her, I was all for it. My dad had visitation on weekends and he would drunk-drive me 30 miles to his house in the country, and by the grace of God, nothing ever happened.
Are any of them still alive?
My dad died sober about 11 years ago and my brother has been sober now about 12 years, but we're not really close. We don't really have anything in common other than the bad old times. We see each other maybe once every five or six years, like when my mom and dad died. It's not that we don't like each other—we just don't have anything to say to each other. He's now become a national AA spokesperson and he thinks of porn and drugs as going hand in hand and hence assumes I must be part of the drug world.
When did you know you were gay?
Well, growing up, my mother and grandmother both felt sorry for the environment I was growing up in, so then fed me a lot—until by the time I was 14, I weighed 240 pounds and had a 42-inch waist. I was quite sad. I got bullied and teased all through junior high school. I'd come into gym class and the boys would slap my legs until welts rose and squeeze my nipples—and the P.E. teacher would encourage it. By the time I got to high school, I was cutting classes to avoid the teasing.
Finally it got to be too much, so sophomore year, I took everything I could find in the medicine cabinet and tried to take my life. Fortunately, my grandmother had a key to our house and found me and got me to the hospital and I survived. Shortly after that, I took my GED and left high school and went on to junior college, San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton. That's where I found some direction. I held every possible role on the college newspaper and started doing news on the campus radio station.