[SFBG.com]- Fielding your questions this month is local writer/porn star, Stephen Boyer. Check out some of his movies/pics here and an excerpt from his upcoming novel here. Read our 2008 interview with Boyer here, and the last installment of Ask a Porn Star here.

James N: Do you enjoy the sex you have on camera or do you just sort of block it out and then count the money?

Boyer: I enjoy it for the most part. I got into the industry to pay rent. Then I started branching out more with my sexuality. Then I found Kink.com and a world full of toys I could explore and that is when sex got really fun and interesting. The great thing about porn, for me, was that it allowed me to try sexual positions and feel sensations that required toys that I couldn’t afford because I was poor. Doing it on video both paid my rent and gave me the opportunity to have sexual experiences with attractive contemporaries.

Elan F: What is the one thing you hate the most about sex?

Boyer: I hate trying to navigate between lust and feelings. I hate when I’m having sex with someone and I’m really enjoying it and it seems like they are too, but then afterwards a weird awkward barrier surfaces. Then tension grows out of the barrier until someone feels like they have to run away. What is that tension all about? It mainly arises when I sleep with men, which is my sexual preference, and it happens outside of the porn industry, just in my day-to-day life. Is that tension part of the internalize hate/shame lots of gay men have for themselves? I’m not sure, all I know is that that tension has led to a lot of one night stands that I hoped would become beautiful relationships.

Lucas D: In your mind, what’s the difference between doing porn and being a hooker?

Stephen Boyer: Porn is vastly different from prostitution mainly because prostitution is anonymous and there isn’t a world of people watching it. Another major difference is that, in the State of California, porn is legal and prostitution is not. This used to be less of a problem, but after San Francisco passed the bill not to decriminalize prostitution, I’ve been hearing more and more horror stories of upscale and low-end prostitutes getting into trouble. It’s a really disheartening time in San Francisco right now because the city is rapidly gentrifying.

San Francisco used to be a safe city for illegal immigrants but that is over; the DA wasted money and fought tirelessly against the decriminalizing of prostitution partly because she thought [the decriminalization] would attract illegal immigrants. If we had remained a “safe city” and if San Francisco had voted to decriminalize prostitution, I think a lot of people that are poor and struggling would have found chances to become something positive. Instead, the DA fought against trying to help people. This follows the city’s trend toward reverting back to money-hungry (keeping prostitutes illegal so that politicians and businessmen can continue to have their way with them) and moralistic (gay marriage: gay’s trying to adopt the wholesome and accepted familial image, instead of fighting the ideals that have bashed them throughout history) ideals that dehumanize and devalue people.

Kamala was thrust upon the throne of power by her black voters, but I come from a more merit-based background. She forgot that under Willie Brown, San Francisco was a “safe city” and that all illegal immigrants were considered okay. The Mayor won a lot of praise because he supported Gay Marriage. As a young queer person who pays rent to a city that is largely owned by rich gay men and their supporters (people who have never looked at me as anything but a renter), it makes me sick to know that their need to be married is considered more important than a poor person’s need to not starve.

I think we should be having candlelight vigils for all the people that are wrongfully being locked up and that are starving and dying and not receiving meds because they have to pay money to their landlords.

America became independent of Britain so that Americans could live free and create their own lives. Now that that has been lost, I don’t see why some Americans –just because they are in a better financial position than I am– get to further their financial position by making me pay a ridiculous amount of rent every month. That is the crime. If someone is a prostitute or shoplifting from a store, they are desperate and in need. My ethics tell me that they shouldn’t be locked up and that they need a hug and a warm meal. I think San Francisco was a great town once, but the people in charge now are obviously more concerned with gentrifying neighborhoods and making a profit than they are about helping the artistically minded and the diverse population that has made San Francisco a beautiful place to live.