Why Did More People Mourn Erik Rhodes Than Adult Performer Nelson Troy?

When Nelson Troy broke onto the porn scene in July of 2009, the muscular young vers-bottom seemed like a star in the making. But barely three years later, he's passed away with far fewer eulogies than the recently deceased porn star Erik Rhodes.

We wondered why. But when you begin to compare their public careers, the reasons quickly become apparent.

For one, Rhodes starred in 48 films and directed nine others in his eight year career. In Troy's brief two-year career, he starred mostly online in only four scenes, one of them a bareback flick (something Rhodes considered).

While bareback porn certainly has widespread appeal, its performers are rarely as well known as the more heavily-marketed, mainstream, condom-wearing stars represented by big-name studios like Falcon and Raging Stallion.

From the look of it, Troy had no online presence whatsoever nor greater public persona, save some public appearances around L.A.. Meanwhile, Rhodes regularly shared tales of depression and drug addiction through Twitter and his blog) both of which have been taken down since his death).

Rhodes also participated in art projects, appearing in Bruce LaBruce's undead porno L.A. Zombie and the hyper-colored porn portraits of Justin Monroe. Yet these artistic endeavors occurred only after he had established himself for many years in porn.

Troy never got those years or the chance for greater exposure.

Coincidentally, both men's deaths have the spectre of drug use surrounding them, with Rhodes having posted instructions for steroid use on his blog days before he died of a heart attack and Troy, "on methamphetamine when he was hit in the street by oncoming traffic" in Mexico, according to porn blogger Jason Curious (NSFW).

And yet both men, if only for a brief while, existed as sexual fantasies only to fade with very different legacies in both their wakes.