Chris Damned Is the Prince Promised by Genet & Cocteau, & the Next Big Thing
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Chris Damned is like a Jean Genet character come to life.
Genet who would go onto to become one of the most widely read and influential figures of radical existentialism was abandoned by his prostitute mother and as an orphan on the streets of Paris he took up his lot with the street thieves and pick pockets, scribbling his writing in notebooks until he was “discovered” by Jean Cocteau, the French poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, visual artist and critic who instantly dubbed him the “Black Prince.”
His seminal novel Our Lady of Flowers would become synonymous with gay Paris of the era.
Genet would go on to influence heavily everyone from Jean-Paul Sartre, Cocteau, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, to the Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton and activist Angela Davis and even painter Pablo Picasso. By 1949, Genet had completed five novels, three plays, numerous poems, and inspired some of the most complex existential work. i.e. What Remains of a Rembrandt, Torn into Four Equal Pieces, and Flushed Down the Toilet, on which hinged Derrida’s analysis of Genet in his seminal work Glas.
Saint Genet, written by John-Paul Sartre, the gold standard of homosexual existential angst and drama. Genet instantly in Gen-Z terms “went viral” and rose to fame as the provocative homosexual and criminal muse to virtually every artist and writer. Asked about his muse, Genet, Sartre described the writing as an attempt “to prove that genius is not a gift but the way out that one invents in desperate cases.”
When OnlyFans phenom Chris Damned begins telling me about his early life, the parallels had me thinking this was a joke, Damned like Genet, found himself inventing daily means of survival on his own after his mother lost her battle with HIV when he was 15. He hustled to get by and in turn brilliantly invented ‘a way out’ in order to survive. In an attempt to form a family he reached out to his estranged father, who picked up the phone and said “I’ll call you right back” and quickly hung up the phone and then changed his number. He never actually called his son back and that was the last he ever heard of his father.
“The original artistic outlaw and outlier who influenced and limned what would become synonymous with James Dean… the true Rebel Without a Cause.” Bruce Weber (on Jean Genet)
And his ancestry is rich in the kind of culture that cannot be accessed by spin and social media, a spiritual successor to Genet. As far back as he can remember, dance and music was his only coping mechanism for being lonely, “I would load as much music as I could get on my iPod and I’d learn the songs in my head and choreograph to them all day long.”
Chris grew up in the South of France. In Marseille famous for its seafood dish “bouillabaisse,” and coincidentally in true rebellious form Chris, “hates fish.”
Of Armenian descent, I couldn’t help but ask him about the famed Armenian name Kardashian. When asked about Kim he holds her in the highest esteem as “She never let all the ‘NOs‘ she received stand in her way, They told Kim she could never be a fashion icon, they told her she could never have VOGUE covers, They told her she’d never be takin seriously… and none of that stopped her from becoming the most iconic famous women in the world. She is an inspiration to everyone that doesn’t have a conventional look and background…” Kim is an actual blueprint to breaking down boundaries and coincidentally out of desperation to be known, invented her own genius way to world domination.
When asked about his early beginnings in sex work Chris explained that the silver lining to his mothers condition was that “It gave me an early understanding of HIV protection” it’s what essentially gave him the early onset knowledge to protect himself in his future career of sex work. So the devastating experience that almost killed him, and what ultimately killed his mother, is what actually saved him. When he lovingly discusses his mother I sense the traditional “gay-son adores his mother” relationship. Despite her battles with debilitating illness she fought and did her best to provide normalcy for Chris and enrolled him in fencing classes down the street from where she worked in a hair salon. Such a romanticized sport… Cut to his adult life in parallel where he dons a tough skin armor and uses mental fencing tactics to get through his day to day life. Chris explains that sex work is the reason he is alive today.. “It put money in my pocket so I could buy a shirt or a sandwich” and ultimately gave him a leg to stand on and hope. During his teenage years Chris thought, “I was worthless, useless, ashamed and only wanted to die”.. He attempted to take his own life as a young adult. It wasn’t until he found the community of sex workers that he found solace and sense of family. All too reminiscent of the classic Charles Dickens character Oliver Twist and his family of pick-pockets. And all too reminiscent of an uber-contemporary superstar Cardi B, who also explains that stripping and sex work ultimately saved her, While sitting down with Howard Stern she says “People want me to say that stripping damaged me, but the truth is, it saved me and gave me the freedom to follow my dreams.”
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And like other queer breakout OnlyFans hits like Dylan Geick and Reno Gold, Damned has merged the spirit of analog and digital without being pin pointed as either. But what seemingly makes him stand out from the crowd, when asked about his identity as a sex worker, He echos a sentiment of pride and a loud focus on activism “The essence of sex work has evolved, we make great money and we pay taxes on it, we arm ourselves with safe sex practices and prioritize our sexual and mental health… and as we’ve made great progress in this department, the police department still has a lot of work to do, LGBT sex work community exists with zero protections and exposed to some terribly dangerous situations, yet we have no merit on seeking refuge from police because we are “sex workers.”
Damned’s spirit evokes another French queer literary outlaw, 19th century Paris’ Arthur Rimbaud. Words from Rimbaud’s seminal A Season in Hell come to mind:
A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing.
One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up.
I armed myself against justice.
Hot Damned!
The OnlyFans phenom won the 2021 Grabby Awards Best Newcomer of the Year, starred in Best Gay Movie of the Year XBIZ, The Last Course and AVN’s Social Media Star Award for 2022 commonly known as the Oscars of gay porn is making huge waves in the porn industry, but actually garnering the coveted requests from some of hollywoods hottest casting directors. “It felt really good to just get a chance to audition and be considered…”
“It shows that they respect me as a human being and ten years ago the thought of hiring a porn actor would be forbidden, this is huge progress.”
Chris is also a regular on Hollywood’s Hottest Party scene led by the industries most beloved party host Vas Morgan.
Vas throws “the most epic parties.”
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At any given moment you can see icons like Rita Ora, Paula Abdul, Kate Beckinsale, Paris Hilton.
Damned has wanted to be an actor since he saw High School Musical in 2006. Like may of us he fell in love with Zach Efron and the idea of making it in Hollywood. But living in Marseilles in the south of France and with a mom who was facing health issues because she was HIV positive seemed to preclude his own high school aspirations. Later while in school in Paris he saw a special on sex work on TV and decided that this was a way he could make a living. The loss of his mother gave him the experience and knowledge to take care of himself and use protection long before the advent of PrEP.
…Like his contemporaries: Years and Years’ Olly Alexander, Montero/Lil Nas X, Troye Sivan, Leo Herrera, Dylan Geick, George M. Johnson, Damez, Kehinde Wiley, and Reno Gold, Chris seemingly is happy with the attention he’s getting from Hollywood and the porn scene, but it’s clear his passion lies in the wake of creating change and rustling the feathers of the conservatives who may still have a problem with him… Chris is positioned at the forefront of this sex work movement with open discussion on his twitter platform where he actively conducts the conversation of Normalizing sex work and LGBT youth homelessness. Damned represents a fresh crop of queer voices emblematic of the enigmatic late stage era of capitalism with the revolutionary panache we’ve been waiting for…
Chris Damned is your modern day Jean Genet… A rebel WITH a cause.
Photography by Ramon Christian.
