Credit: Dangerous Minds / Philadelphia Police Department

Porn attracts those who are desperate, whether this be the people who peruse or purchase, and in terms of the people who work in the industry.

The Goffney twins were desperate from the very beginning. Born in the early 1980s, they grew up in poverty in Camden, New Jersey, twin sons of a single mother who had four children in total. Raising one son yourself is hard enough; two is a whole different level of challenge, so four must have been unimaginably difficult.

However, both Taleon and Keyontyli Goffney said on multiple occasions that not only did their mother, Towana did the best she could, they also didn’t make things easy on her.

Both twins were gifted athletes. Keontyli showed a passion for gymnastics, while Taleon was a genuinely talented martial artist. Something he had to put to the test multiple times when his brother, whose sexuality was an open secret in their community, was badly bullied. These mixups led to Taleon running with the wrong crowd, and a three-year prison sentence came his way when he was 18-years-old.

The bond he shared with his twin stayed alive throughout this, with Keontyli visiting weekly despite how hard it was. Over that time, Taleon heard all about his brother’s struggles getting into acting, and by the time he was released, he found out that Keontyli was working in gay porn. Something that Taleon, understandably, had no interest in taking part in until his criminal record left him no other choice but to go back into crime.

There was no way that Taleon was risking going back to prison, so he followed his twin to Vegas and into the industry despite identifying as straight. He was remarkably candid about this experience in an interview with Philadelphia Gay News in 2014, saying: “First it was still shots and I was like, OK, take my shirt off? I can do this. But then it got more… demanding. It was then, ‘Do this for the video and do this.’ There were times when – and I don’t mean to be graphic – but to get hard for a scene, I’d have a female magazine and be chewing Viagras.”

He continued, “After we did the scene, they all wanted to go to the gay club, and I jumped right in a cab and went to a strip club. I tried to just … get it off me. I drank all these beers and spent the whole $750. I tried to drown what happened.” He also spoke movingly of his brother’s care for him on the plane ride home, when he saw the effect the ordeal had on him, saying, “I didn’t move. He just held my hand, and I was staring, thinking, I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I went through with it; I had a man’s penis in my mouth. It hurt him too. He wanted to do more for me.”

For a few years, the twins worked in porn. Sometimes in the same scene, though never doing any work with each other, despite how many people have reported on their time working together. Taleon kept up the gig for as long as he could until finally, he changed his mind. Reasoning that even if he did go back to prison, he’d do so with the pride that the porn industry was taking from him.

At first, he began selling drugs. Yet when he used his raw athleticism and martial arts prowess to escape a few close shaves with the law, he began reconsidering. Why contribute to someone else’s drug ring when he could use his athletic gifts to break into shops after everyone had gone home? Rather than steal from the shops directly though, he instead targeted their ATMs, viewing it as a victimless crime since the money was insured.

By that time, Keyontyli was also sick of the porn industry, and the two began working together. For a period of time, the two were raking in thousands of dollars a day, turning their entire lives upside down. This could last, though, and after a year living the high life, the twins were caught in February 2008, with Keyontyli naming his twin brother as the mastermind. He served two days in prison with four years’ probation. Taleon served six years.

This nearly drew a wedge between them, starting a rift that Taleon was convinced would never heal, but by the time he was released in 2014, he had patched things up with his brother, with whom he had a close relationship up until his death in 2021 from cancer of the abdomen… In the eight years he lived as a free man, Taleon spent his life working with young people from the same background, trying to dissuade people from following his footsteps into a life of crime, with nothing but love for the gay community that had never stopped supporting him through his hardships.

Keyontyli still works as a model to this day, and helps raise the two kids that Taleon left behind with his passing.