Where Are They Now: Conner Habib on His Porn Hiatus, Launching a Podcast and Going on Tour for His First Novel

Conner Habib was one of the biggest gay porn stars in the late 2000s. This sexy half Syrian, half Irish stud brought a new look and name into mainstream adult entertainment, highlighting underrepresented body types and identities at the time. From 2008 to 2017, he performed in nearly 200 films and won multiple awards before going on hiatus from the industry (not completely retiring!) to devote time to his other projects. 

He is the only person who has won awards for porn performance, writing and teaching. We caught up with him to chat about his active days in the industry, his podcast Against Everyone With Conner Habib, and his first novel Hawk Mountain that he is currently touring through the U.S. then Europe.

Follow Conner on Twitter, Instagram and become a member of his Patreon before reading on.

Tell us about your journey from joining the porn industry in 2008 to going on hiatus in 2017.

I wanted to be a porn star since I was a teenager, so getting to fulfill that dream was pretty incredible! Raging Stallion cast me in a movie called The Trap and once I did that, it just picked up and didn’t really stop for years. Even when I decided that I wanted to take a break from performing, I had four shoots lined up and I just decided that there are other things I wanna do. I always wanted to be a writer, even before wanting to do porn or wanting to start a podcast. I didn’t have any moral issues with it, but I couldn’t maintain all of the attentiveness to my body. Being a part of other people’s projects instead of my own, that just took a lot of energy. It was really awesome and I love it, and I’m so proud of it, and the friendships I formed were really amazing.

What has kept you from creating your own Fans channels with adult work, even if new content is not as frequent as active porn performers?

It's not that I'm not interested or would never do it, but when you have a project that you really want to work on, you feel that vibe, you know? And I just don't feel that for porn right now. If there was something that made it extremely interesting to me, I would not hesitate.

What were some of your favorite studios & talent (in front of and behind the camera) that you worked with?

It was a dream to work for and with Joe Gage. He’s a porn genius—his influence on culture and gay sexuality can't be overstated. Getting to be in so many movies that he's done was really special. I became friends with Girth Brooks and we’re still in touch sporadically.

Any special memories during your time working in porn?

I was at one of the porn awards the year I won Best Newcomer and I was like, “Oh my gosh, they're all here!” All the guys that I idolized and were so important to me. When I won, Matthew Rush—who was the biggest porn star in the world at the time— said, “You know that there's no difference between you and the rest of us. You're just doing what we do.” Which was so welcoming and loving and kind of mind-blowing because I still can't wrap my head around that concept that I got to be doing what people who I looked up to were doing—showing and sharing pleasure and love for being gay.

Tell us about your podcast Against Everyone with Conner Habib.

I have so many interesting friends—a mortician, a war zone journalist, a paranormal investigator—and been on so many podcasts where I wanted to go deeper. I just decided to make that the plan for my podcast; instead of small talk, talk about big ideas with people that have them and talk about different ways of approaching the world and approaching life. 

It took off, which is amazing! It’s been going now for five years and it’s great, it’s reaching a lot of people! I don’t think of it being out there until someone says something to me. But Olly Alexander from Years & Years and other people said they were listening to the show. I got some words of praise for my writing from Lena Dunham. All of these things were starting to come in and it was pretty shocking in a way, only because I just do what I do and when I look up, I’m like “holy shit, people are paying attention!”

What episodes should people listen to?

• AEWCH 50 is where the show just took off! It was with Muslim anarchist and feminist, Mona Eltahawy.
• AEWCH 180 with Dr. Chris Donaghue on how to live in sex and relationships, which is part of my series “How To Live in 2022”.
• AEWCH 146 with rapper Vic Mensa.
• AEWCH 83 with Italian philosopher and activist, Franco "Bifo" Berardi. This was in 2019 before a lot of the shit that we've endured for the past couple years, but we had a really intense conversation on how do we survive in a world that's going this way and what's a right way to do it.

Your first novel Hawk Mountain was just released! How are you feeling?

It has been a fucking madhouse! It’ll feel more real to me once I see it in stores during my U.S. book tour. I think it’s really gonna be like whoa!

Your book was just listed by The New York Times as one of the “12 New Books Coming in July”. How are you feeling about that acknowledgement?

It's really exciting! Without sounding egotistical, there are very, very, very few sex workers who receive any kind of recognition that isn’t directly related to sex work in some way. Not to say that a novel is better than a porn movie or sex work, because they all have a lot of value to people in a lot of different ways, but the road for sex workers is really fucking difficult for many reasons. We all have so many different ambitions and aims, but often get pulled back into what people's expectations are of us. I'm not bringing this up to praise myself, everybody has an ego, but what I was more excited about is that each time something like this happens for any former or current sex worker, it chips away at our obstacles. I hope that this makes it easier for everybody and I hope it’s true about this New York Times listing as well.

Your U.S. book tour just started. What can we expect while attending any of your events?

One is that I probably weigh 50 pounds more than I did when I was in porn, maybe 60. So don’t expect me to look the same! It’s a literary event, so be excited to celebrate books and literature and take that seriously in the same way that you love and take porn, to some extent, seriously in your life and you get pleasure from that.

Other than purchasing your book, how can people support you and your work?

Becoming a member of my Patreon. It’s just grassroots support. I don’t have sponsors on my podcast and all the episodes are free. I have a relationship with the people who listen to my show and it’s so great because I want to continue to do the show into the future, whatever form that takes! Come to my book tour events, share Hawk Mountain with others and talk about it with people!

Photo by Al Higgins

Photos courtesy of Conner Habib.

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