PORN VALLEY, CA – Funny thing. Porn stars are always being mistaken for rocket scientists. Except Scott Styles actually was one. Styles worked five years at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and last week, a reporter from Houston’s equivalent of the L.A. Weekly visited Styles on the set of a Tom Byron shoot. And so did adultfyi.com.

Gene: How did these guys found out about you?

Styles: It’s like the L.A. Weekly. But it’s the Houston Press. I got an e-mail. They said they came across me as being a former employee over the Johnson Space Center. They were interested in the story. I don’t know how they found out about it but somehow they found me. I guess with the Web, now, whatever.

Gene; You were saying at one point you were keeping low key about this. Obviously it isn’t so low key now.

Styles: It had been there for a long time. I put my web-thing together and it says plain as day from rock scientist to porn star. I did that because any time I did interviews and would be talking to whomever whether magazines or TV, they’d bring it up. But I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. I went to college and did the corporate thing for awhile and came out here. But since it was always being brought up I decided I may as well use that.

Gene: And you’re one of the few in the business who can lay justifiable claim to it.

Styles: When I first came in I just wanted to blend and get along and be well received. That’s why I was just Scott.

Gene: What were your career goals in college?

Styles: I’d say baseball was my love when I was a kid and I played a year or two of college ball. I also played trumpet in high school and was quite good; and I had a scholarship in college and did that for a year. But I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. My mom was like don’t do what your dad did. Do something else. That was when I saw Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series that I was like, that’s cool. I had talked to a professor in college and told him I was interested in that stuff. He told me study physics or any science and math that you can at the junior college where you’re playing ball. That’s what I did.

Gene: I admire you. I excelled in weird shit like trigonometry, but physics, ugh.

Styles: Career-wise, that’s when I decided I wanted to do astrophysics, and things related to the space program. Interestingly, I had always been drawn to L.A. And I went to Texas A&M and studied physics. It was there that I planned to get a Ph.D and from there, who knows, research or whatever. I started to interview with some companies that came to campus.

Gene: Vivid I understand has a great postgraduate program.

Styles: Exactly. The funny thing was I realized that I might not want to work in an environment of geeks, basically. But I wanted to learn this stuff so I thought if I only work five years in the industry, so be it. I’ll be fine. That’s what it was. But I interviewed with a bunch of companies. I literally plotted out on a map all the companies that were coming from California. I figured the only thing that would keep me in Texas was NASA. If I get a job there, then I’d stay. That’s what I happened.

Gene: What kind of stuff did you work on.

Styles: I interviewed with four different groups there. My studies had prepared me widely for different things. I worked in the electrical systems section in mission operations. It was the shuttle-stuff.

Gene: So let’s paint a picture here. It’s the mission control room in Armageddon and Billy Bob Thornton’s talking to Bruce Willis out in space and there’s all these guys from NASA in the background on their computers. Where were you situated.

Styles: That’s the control center. That room has basically one guy for each group. he’s the main guy and usually has at least four years of experience and certification to be sitting in that seat. And the guy talking to the astronauts is usually an astronaut in training. And then you have the flight director who’s running the show. And so everybody else is the head of their group for that mission, anyway. I as a junior engineer was in one of the rooms that surrounded the main room. Those rooms were set up with computers, essentially the set up but smaller. Then I’d be in the front room occasionally to work out problems.

Gene: So how’d you wind up docking your module on planet sphincter.

Styles: LOL. I was a late bloomer physically. I love women and I love sex.

Gene: In Texas you must have been getting laid left and right. Those women are outstanding

Styles: They have a lot of nice women, that’s for sure. I had fun. At NASA and after that I had a lot of fun years. But I sort of discovered porn in graduate school. Vanessa del Rio and Seka were at the end of their careers but, for some reason, they’re the ones I had seen in the videos I got. There was just something about it. I had quit at NASA and started personal training on the side while I was working there. I basically matched my income while I was doing that part time and decided to do that because I was getting bored with NASA. Around that time Keisha came to town. I had seen a few porn star feature dancers. For some reason I decided to see if she could tell me about this. She said it was the unique way I approached her and she hadn’t helped a guy before. But she talked with me and thought I might be good for porn, whatever that meant. She said if you’re ever serious about it here’s my number look me up. It was three years later but I finally did. I contacted her through e-mail and just decided. Again, it was a great way to get to L.A. and the glitz, glamour, energy and whatever else that L.A. offers. It was a time to have fun. And here was I serious about personal training and opening a studio somehow and going from there. It was that or go back to engineering. But I figured if ever I was going to come out to L.A., now was as good a time to do it. After corresponding with Keisha, when I was convinced I wouldn’t have to sell my soul to make it, I was, okay, let me do it. I contacted Jim South, and they were very cool. And things just worked out.

Gene: It really is tough for guys to make a break through unless you come in with a woman who’s your partner or semi steady partner.

Styles: Right. So I was quite fortunate that way.

Gene: How long have you been doing this.

Styles: Since the summer of ’96. Minus a little bit of time when Kim [Chambers] and I first met and I went back to Texas to open a weight loss clinic. That was a year from hell. We had actually done a couple of movies that year and got some stuff going.

Gene: Looking back do you have any regrets about not pursuing a baseball career?

Styles: I did. But the story there was I graduated high school at 115 pounds. I was a tiny kid and I was an extremely late bloomer. And it ticked me off. But in some ways it made me develop more mentally and psychologically, though I was ticked off at the time. I had cheerleaders telling me when you get to be this tall, look me up. I was a cute little boy, basically. Baseball was sort of the same thing. I was a late bloomer. They used to tell you to wait but now we know that strength and conditioning makes a difference. I pursued it every way that I could. So when I was studying physics I tried out for the baseball team. At the school I graduated from they had a good program and had like five guys a year signing. By the time I was in my third year in college I was about 150 then. I had grown and been lifting weights but I was behind a few years in size. Technically my skills were great.

Gene: But your body had to catch up to the potential.

Styles: Right. In the one month I started lifting weights I gained ten pounds. So my body was a weed ready to grow. I was starting to hit balls out of the park every once in awhile. My throwing arm had gotten my better. I also worked as a counselor and played at a baseball camp every summer for five years in Springfield, Missouri. The Cincinnati Reds, the Phillies and Kansas City would come with scouts and have what they’d call tryouts- not major league tryouts- but sort of a scouting session with a hundred or two hundred kids from all over the place with this baseball camp hosting it. I was 19 or 20 my last year there, and was just good enough to the point where I could impress the scouts but I looked like I was 16 though I was in college already. They were like, you’re too old. So it was a timing-thing. And that was really a passion of mine.

Gene: What are your recollections the first time you performed in front of a camera.

Styles: I performed with Nikki Sinn. That was amazing. A recollection was I really wasn’t told what to do or what to expect. And so it was a little unnerving, basically. Like what am I even doing here. I know the purpose, obviously but give me steps one through five, guys. And they didn’t really. So it was like we’ll go with the flow and see what happens. That was that but she was cool. It was sort of being a kid like in Willy Wonka walking in and seeing all this stuff. Wow, cool.

Gene: Obviously you did good, you’re still around.

Styles: I’ve had my share of bad scenes, that’s for sure. But that’s the way it goes. And I’ve had my share of good ones.