I was kind of hoping and praying that someone in the house would be like, 'It doesn't matter.' But nobody took that role."
"Everybody in the house kind of shunned me. When the truth came out, "Nobody in the house, not one person, was like, 'Who cares?' I wanted that," he said. Lying, Dustin told me, is "one of the things that I do. When he was confronted, Dustin lied, saying he'd been naked and masturbated but hadn't had sex with other men. The drama that resulted unfolded on this week's episode of the show, which began airing Wednesday night. Thus, Googling Dustin resulted in evidence of his porn past, which people outside of the house found and then told the cast, who then went online and saw confirmation. These are consequences of the Internet: When the show was filming last fall, Dustin was identified by a message board, and the connection to his work in porn was immediately made. Instead, that revelation "was taken from me," he said. In the end, Dustin waited too long to tell his roommates. Johnston said producers were "a little surprised by how long he waited to talk about it." But they also knew "it might never come out. While he'd intended to tell Heather, the cast member with whom he was having a relationship, he balked, "just like had happened time and time before with various family members." He said later, "When people find out about, their whole world changes about me. "It was scary to tell and I wanted everyone to learn about me first," he told me. Yet when Dustin arrived in the Real World house, he found himself paralyzed with the same fear of judgment that had struck him at home. The show's co-creator Jon Murray previously told me that he liked Dustin's story because "whether it's that particular story, having done one of these voyeuristic websites, or some other mistake someone's made in life," that "how to move on is a really important story for our audience." You're aware of that, right?' We do want people to be aware when they do this that there's no privacy." Real World executive producer Jim Johnston told me he said, "'You realize, Dustin, that you're talking about this on camera. "I would never have to tell anybody again."ĭuring the casting process, producers warned him. Dustin said he asked himself, "Why am I so scared? I didn't hurt anybody, I didn't do anything wrong." When a family friend's connection to the casting department at Bunim-Murray, the company that produces The Real World, gave him the opportunity to have his life taped for several months, Dustin thought the show "would be a tool I could use to get it out," he said. When the truth came out, "Nobody in the house, not one person, was like, 'Who cares?' I wanted that," Dustin said.īut no one in his life knew what he'd done. It doesn't define me or who I am," he told The Daily Beast, sounding more thoughtful and intelligent than he sometimes comes across on TV. Dustin, who's 24 and identifies as straight ("When I close my eyes to masturbate, I think of a girl"), is actually unembarrassed by the gay-for-pay work he did when he was 19.