"What people see in porn, they imitate"

What effect does pornography have on our sexuality? We asked someone who can answer this question from the perspective of both the user and the performer: Florian Klein, who is also known by his porn pseudonym Hans Berlin.

The first time Florian had the courage to rent a VHS tape of gay porn from the video store near his home village in Upper Bavaria, it was only because his youthful lust was greater than his shame. At home, he spent an evening wanking his cock sore at the well-trained men on the screen. He would have loved to fuck as uninhibitedly as they did. But that seemed impossible. An unattainable horny dream that the teenager could only secretly marvel at from outside while his parents, who had no idea at the time that their son was into men, were at a party.

After the lust had faded, the shame returned with a vengeance. Florian's scruples about returning the VHS cassette and his concern that the staff at the video store might conclude that he was gay because of the film were suddenly so great that his best friend had to return the porn for him. At the time, she was the only one who knew that Florian was gay. After she had returned the video, they both felt a bit reckless. That's how it was back then. Many gays who were teenagers in the West German provinces at the end of the 1980s will be able to empathise with the situation.

The dream becomes everyday life

A lot has happened since then. VHS is history, video stores are extinct, porn is watched on tablets, mobile phone screens and flat screens instead of on screens. A lot has changed for Florian too. The uptight teenager from back then is now one of the well-trained men that gay men all over the world jerk off to. He moved to the USA in 2002 and started filming porn under the pseudonym Hans Berlin in 2012, both for major studios and alternative productions. Since the end of 2019, he has also been publishing private sex videos on a JustFor.fans account. The unattainable dream of yesteryear has become a part of everyday life. But is he still horny?

"I definitely have fun in most of the scenes I film," Florian explains in the Zoom interview. While some porn actors claim that they hardly ever have sex in their private lives, things have always been different for Florian: "I started filming because I was always organising private sex parties anyway." At some point, someone approached him in Los Angeles and asked if he wanted to make porn films. "At first I hesitated, then I thought to myself: if you can bang in front of other people at home, you can do it in front of a camera too," he says. "Now the biggest difference to before is that I earn money with sex."

22 hours with stand

Nevertheless, Florian makes no secret of the fact that working on a porn set is not always fun. He can talk about annoying endless shoots as well as unmotivated gay-for-pay performers and unhealthy practices. When he was supposed to shoot an orgy during his second engagement, a co-actor persuaded him to insert a SKAT erection syringe into his cock: "The result was that 22 hours later I was still running around with a hard-on and almost ended up in hospital," he says. You have to be careful not to inject too much. Florian never did it again after that: "If I have to help, it's with Herbal Viagra, which you can get in any sex shop."

Florian has often been criticised for talking about such internal matters in public. The industry wants to maintain the illusion of unfiltered horniness to the outside world. But for Florian, this illusion is only one side of pornography. The other is the responsibility that producers and performers have towards their viewers. "What people see in porn, they imitate, I know that from my own experience," he says.

In his first years in the Munich gay scene, he copied almost all the styles of the American Falcon models, with their cut-off jeans, white shirts and Timberland boots. When it came to sex, standards were adopted. "I remember that sex with my first boyfriend was strongly orientated towards the porn dramaturgy of the time," he says. That meant: first giving each other a blowjob until they cum, then cumming again while fucking. "I was far too horny at the time to question it, but looking back, the influence of porn was definitely there," he says. That wasn't always a bad thing either: "Because condoms were always used in the gay porn of the nineties, there was never any question for me, for example, of fucking without a condom."

Prejudices in the industry

Despite this, Florian was infected with HIV in the early 2000s. To this day, he doesn't know exactly how it happened or with whom. It's not important to him either. What matters to him is that the infection became a lesson in mindfulness and personal responsibility. Although he started treatment soon after being diagnosed and his viral load has been below the detection limit ever since, he felt insecure on dates for a long time because his sexual partners kept making him feel guilty about his HIV status. When he started making porn, some studios no longer wanted to work with him as soon as the producers found out that he was positive - even though he never shot scenes without condoms anyway. The result was self-reproach.

His friendship with Bruce Richman gave him a boost of emancipation. He is the founder of the #UequalsU awareness campaign, which draws attention to the fact that HIV-positive people below the detection limit are not infectious. It is thanks to Richman's persuasive work that Florian now confidently favours protection through treatment, both privately and at work. Since he has been open and relaxed about his infection, he has also been met with acceptance by most people around him. He not only told his family about his HIV infection, but also that he shoots porn. His parents' reaction was the same as when he came out as gay: "You're our son and we love you, that won't change now."

In 2017, Hans Berlin made his HIV infection public in a speech at the Grabby Awards, pointing out the discrimination against positive actors in the industry. After the speech, Florian expected boos. Instead, he received a standing ovation. His words spoke from the soul of many positive porn performers. Fans also applauded. "Since then, people keep telling me that I've helped them with my openness," he says. That meant a lot to him: "If I can provide positive impetus just by being a porn actor, broaden people's horizons and give them hope, then a lot has already been achieved."

"I think this range of body images takes away a lot of the pressure of having to conform to a stereotypical ideal."

In addition to the increasing acceptance of HIV, Florian welcomes the fact that the internet has opened up new avenues for sex education over the last two decades: "Where I used to post personal adverts in magazines and thought I was the only gay person in the village, today young people only have to open Grindr to see that they are not alone," he says. In addition, body images in porn have become more diverse. Where Florian still thought he had to emulate the well-trained Falcon ideals after coming out in order to be sexually desirable, today you can find more diversity thanks to normalo websites such as Alternadudes or bear and daddy portals: "I think this range of body images takes a lot of pressure off having to conform to a stereotypical ideal."

The new diversity also opens up new perspectives for Florian. Unlike most of his colleagues, he resisted a JustFor.fans account with private sex videos for a long time: "I'm still horny all the time, even at almost 50, but filming yourself having sex at that age and looking good while doing it is work. For a long time I thought: 'Why should I post videos I've filmed myself that are blurred or where I have a belly? But at some point, out of curiosity, I created a JustFor.fans profile. It went well straight away. I now enjoy filming and editing my own scenes."

Lack of intimacy

But it's not all porn in Florian's life. His favourite dates are still the ones where they fuck without a camera rolling. Thanks to Grindr and Scruff, he rarely has problems finding sex partners. Nevertheless, he can do without them if necessary: "I sometimes wondered if I was a sex addict. But when nothing was happening at all in New York in spring 2020 because of corona, the lack of sex wasn't a problem at all. I wasn't missing a cock up my arse or in my mouth, but intimacy. Holding hands, touching. I heard from a lot of people at the time that they started caressing themselves because they lacked physical contact. I did that too."

The keyword "intimacy" leads to an open construction site in Florian's life: Partnership. His last relationship broke up at the end of 2016 after a year and a half for various reasons - because it was a long-distance relationship, because different life plans clashed, but also because his porn career became a problem: "We had an open relationship, but the agreement was that we wouldn't talk much about what we were doing with others. For me, that meant that I couldn't talk about my shoots either. That was difficult in the long run. Porn is also a job, and there are also anecdotes on the porn set that you want to talk about with your partner. If that doesn't happen, something is missing. There were also prejudices in the private sphere. Not that we rubbed everyone's noses in the fact that I did porn, but some people knew and others found out over time. When my ex's mum found out in a roundabout way, it was the first time I got into a real fight with him. Today I would say that was the beginning of our infatuation."

"Every porn actor is a human being"

The fact that there hasn't been a longer relationship since the break-up is not only due to the fact that the right man hasn't turned up, but also because Florian has become suspicious: "For me, it wouldn't be a huge problem to stop doing porn if my partner was worth it. But online, the scenes I've done in the past would still be there. A partner has to be able to deal with that too. I feel like I'm constantly getting into relationships with people who can't do that. That sometimes makes me wonder if I've done something wrong."