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"Once you've gotten up on-stage, butt naked, in front of 400 people, there's nothing that's going to make you nervous or uncomfortable," states Brandon Young, who bared it all as a stripper before going all the way on-camera as a porn star. But the Baltimore native wasn't always brimming with confidence.

"I'm one of those people who's having a lot of fun in the second part of their lives to make up for the crappy time they had in the first part of their lives," says Young. "Growing up, it was terrible because I was always the fat kid in class. I didn't have a lot of friends."

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After graduating from high school, the overweight teenager joined the Navy. Shortly, the enlistee was diagnosed with asthma and he received a medical discharge. On the upside, his brief stint in the Navy helped him shed a whopping 50 pounds.

A return home with a lot less weight and much more confidence was reason to celebrate. "When I got back to Baltimore, my friends took me out for a night on the town and we went to a strip club called the Atlantis. It was amateur strip night, and my friends gave me a few drinks and they talked me into getting up there. They all said, 'You lost all this weight, so why don't you give it a try?' So I did it as a joke."

Though Young didn't win the contest that night, he impressed the manager and landed a booking. That gig led to four years of steady work as a stripper around Baltimore, a city labeled "the trade capital of the world" in the John Waters' film, Pecker.

"Baltimore is a very blue-collar town, and it's known for a lot of low-income white-trash hustlers," Young explains with a casual shrug and a good-natured grin. "So when a lot of the younger men need money, they go hustling in the park for 20 or 50 bucks a pop."

And speaking of John Waters: "He's a very nice guy; he used to come to the bar all the time," says Young. "He's a big ol' freak himself!" adds Young, again flashing his friendly smile.

Like any line of work, a stripper experiences an occasional on-the-job hazard, according to Young. "I think the worst thing that happened was when a drunk customer was waving his cigarette around while he was tipping me; I was crouched down and he swung his hand and burnt the head of my dick with his lighted cigarette! I jumped up, pushed him back, and rushed offstage and ran some water on it."

Otherwise, it's a great job, he says. "I'm not a conceited person, but I like being the center of attention. I'm very outgoing, so I like being onstage and I like talking to people."

In 1997, he dabbled in erotic videos, using the pseudonym Jeremy Alexander, and debuted in Forum Studios' Young Guys and Young Shooters. "I wasn't really happy when I saw the way I looked on video at the time," he shares. "I still had a lot of baby fat and I looked like I was 12 years old!"

Over the next two years, he dropped the baby fat and now he's-- well, a babe. Also, he never liked his former moniker; hence, the name change. Now known as Brandon Young, the lean sex-machine stars in Let's See What Happens, directed by Robert Prion (Galaxy Pictures).

In addition to pursuing additional porno gigs, Young works as a bartender in Baltimore while studying business and economics. "Stripping is a job, not a career," he notes. "There comes a time when you have to have something else going for you. Plus, there's a certain reputation that goes along with it that's not the best; people make assumptions-- of course, it's the same if you do porn. All of this is something to do when you're young, but it's something you grow out of at a certain point." **

Author Profile:  Ed Karvoski, Jr.
Ed Karvoski Jr. is the author of All-Male: Quirky Quotes, Intimate Interviews, and Tantalizing Trivia from the Most Desired Men on Earth (Kensington Books)
Email:	edkarvoskijr@prodigy.net
Website:	www.edkarvoskijr.com