Porn star Jonah Wheeler may be sexually adventurous, but he’s not wild when it comes to travel.
“I like to find my groove in new environments,” Wheeler, 35, tells Wander+Lust. “I have a freelance create-your-own-work-life job now. Every morning I go to the coffee shop, I go to the gym, I like to get around on foot. I have stuff I do that’s comforting and grounding. When I go to a new place, I like finding all those things. I don’t really want to explore a new place until I find my grounding.”
Now based in Brooklyn, New York, Wheeler grew up in Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C. His porn persona—easy-going pervy guy with a big moustache—channels a kind of West Virginia/Western Pennsylvania Appalachia. “It’s a fictionalized pornographic idea I like to lean into,” he says.
Wheeler went to college in Pittsburgh, got a degree in music directing and worked for 12 years conducting and playing piano in theatre before deciding about three years ago to become a sex worker. “I’m a total exhibitionist. I love being a slut. I had hit all my goals as a musician. I was burning out. [During the pandemic], I thought, ‘Try pornography. All will be forgiven right now if you do because it’s the end of the world. If it doesn’t work out or you don’t like it, nobody will judge you for it.’”
It’s been an amazing ride so far, one he says he’ll continue until he stops enjoying it—or viewers stop enjoying him. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I like working for myself. I like having control over who I work with, how much I put into it, how I portray myself and what values I put out. And the money is much better than working in the arts.”
While Wheeler does work for gay porn studios—he’s got performer credits from Treasure Island Media, SayUncle, Himeros and Bully Him among others—much of his travel is driven by teaming up with other freelance content creators to make scenes for sites like OnlyFans. There are various cohorts of gay-porn content-makers. Some take themselves very seriously, following strict roles and stereotypes of what porn is. “My bubble is very sex-as-self-expression. We’re a community of performers doing this because we enjoy it and because we want you to be able to live vicariously through us, and we encourage your own performance. Like, ‘I’m a happy slut on the Internet and you can be, too.’”
He’ll keep a list of who he wants to work with and where they’re based, then when the timing is right, he’s off to Palm Springs, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles or wherever to shoot scenes. He plans his trips three or even six months in advance. Sometimes fellow creators will host him: “These guys in Portland are, like, ‘If you need a place to stay, we have an extra room. If you’re into it, we’re going to host a sex party the night you arrive, like, to welcome you to town. And then we’d love to put together a group shoot.’”
Booking accommodations (and therefore studio space) for himself, he’s not fond of hotels because they’re mostly unattractive settings for sexual escapades and some are strict on monitoring who is coming and going from your room—though some hotels are known to be sex-work friendly. When Wheeler books an Airbnb, he wants a place he can bring people into discreetly, where he can set up lights and where he and his cohorts can be loud. “So I want an Airbnb that is not part of a duplex unit or where the owner lives upstairs or where I’m in the guest house. That feels rude to the owner of that space because that’s probably not what they want it used for.”
Once he’s on the ground in a new place, Wheeler will suss out a cozy place where he can get coffee before 8 a.m., a place where he can get a breakfast sandwich (in Houston, the sandwich croissants at Blacksmith (1018 Westheimer Rd.) are his salvation in a state that’s more about burritos than sandwiches) and a gym with a weekly membership deal. Only then will he start poking around the city or town. He’s not big on seeing conventional attractions, or even checking out gay bars. But he does love the outdoors.
“I enjoy going to a place that is natural, like for a hike or finding the outdoor cruising spots. That is a game that I love, discovering the differences between the public cruising places in different towns,” he says. “I don’t like to drink. If I’m going to interact with somebody, I either want to be having sex or I want to be having a conversation. Bars and dance clubs are a middle ground that doesn’t allow me to do either one.”
Wheeler has amassed more than 41 million followers posting goofily charming TikToks from the road. Though they can be a little naughty, it’s his wit and relatability that makes them so entertaining. A demonstration of how to play the accordion got almost 14,000 likes. Sitting around in airports certainly gives him lots of time to edit and post videos. In Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport, he declares: “This is my personal second-least favourite airport in the country—good afternoon, Newark—and it’s mostly because of the food. There are four Chick-Fil-As, in case you forgot you were in Texas…. Yes, I do know how to cruise this airport. No, I’m not telling you how to cruise this airport. [Shot of him exiting a washroom smiling.] But it just went up in my rankings.”
Like many big-city queers, Wheeler lives in something of an LGBTQ+-friendly bubble. So he dresses to tease when he’s in less friendly environments. “I want to be an obvious sex-positive homosexual in a way that is both clear and non-affrontive. My Sodom and Gomorrah Basketball Team shirt has become my go-to travel wear because I love having some gay shit on in the airport in the middle of the country,” he says. “SayUncle gave me a hoodie with their big logo on it. I wore it on the last trip and people kept stopping me, ‘Oh, I like your hoodie.’ Not one of them because they know the studio. When women tell me that, I assume they have no idea what it is. When men say it, I try to fish, ‘Do you recognize it?’ One of them pushed forward, like, ‘Is it a band?’ I’m like, ‘It’s gay porn, dude.’ We were in Palm Springs at that time so it’s not unreasonable for you to know that they film here.”
Wheeler has a partner who loves to travel and who will often join him on work trips. “It’s very helpful travelling with someone, for the airport, especially for the airplane. Having somebody you can sleep on opens up your seat space. You can sort of cannibalize half of their space and take turns sleeping on top of each other,” he says. “He also helps me explore places when I don’t otherwise particularly feel like the drive to go to the beach, go to this park, go see this person.”
Though he’s a reluctant traveller, Wheeler does indeed travel for reasons other than work. He went to Burning Man in 2019 and plans to go back. At certain communal non-commercial gay campgrounds (which he will not name for fear of ruining things), he—unbelievably—leaves his phone behind in the car. At these outdoorsy gatherings, he might run into other gay content-makers, but the sex they have in the woods is for fun, not money. “Though there may be some amount of shop talk,” he concedes.
Each summer since 2011, Wheeler’s been renting a house on Fire Island for a week—same house, same week, same group of people. He might do a bit of work there—God knows, there are lots of hot, horny exhibitionists hanging around on Fire Island—but only during specific designated times. “It is a good opportunity there.”
When we spoke, Wheeler was planning a trip to Chicago, a city he’s never worked in. And he was considering going to Europe, though contemplating the foreignness of it stresses him out.
“I’m hesitant to step into any environment that I don’t understand, that I don’t know how to move effectively in,” says Wheeler. “A different currency, sometimes another language, a new transit system. How do I connect with people to create stuff in a community I don’t know anyone in. But I visited Mexico in the last year. That was a good start. I know I can survive in that environment.”
