Absolute Mayhem (11 page)

With my mother's death, I felt as though a huge
weight had been lift ed off my shoulders. She was a hard,
miserable woman who hated herself and hated life, and
now she was finally at peace. I always felt sorry for her,
even when we were fighting. I knew deep down that she
was being difficult because she could never be happy.
She tried to kill herself six times, after all.

To this day, I'm still somewhat resentful of the fact
that my mum never encouraged me to do the things
I wanted to do. She turned down every opportunity that
came my way whenever people wanted me to sing or
act, and I think that she was jealous of me because she
wanted so badly to be in the spotlight herself. Whenever
I told her I wanted to pursue a career in music, she
would say, 'Yeah, right.' She constantly put me down and
laughed at me, even in her later years.

The last time I saw her was when I tried to make
amends by visiting her where she was living in Tasmania,
a couple of years before she died. I'd told her
about my career by this time, but I think it had gone
in one ear and out the other. She didn't even care what
I was doing, and I don't think she ever comprehended
that I was a porn star. On this last occasion, she actually
had the gall to say to me, 'It hasn't been a very good life
for you, has it?' Now, how's that for twisting the knife?
She was the one who had basically ensured that my life
hadn't been a bed of roses and now she was rubbing it
in my face!

So, that's how it ended for my mum and me, in
Tasmania. I cried and told her, 'You know what? I now
realise that nothing ever changes, and so I just came
here to say goodbye.'

However, on looking back, I realise I do have something
to thank her for: getting me out of Kenmore. Had
I not fought her torrent of abuse, I might never have left
and my life to date might never have happened.

One of the many strange things about porn is
that once you're done filming, you have no way
to know how your work will be packaged, marketed
or received. While it is good to know that what
you've done has brought pleasure to people, even if
they're expressing their appreciation by masturbating
furiously to your image, they don't have a clue at
all about who you really are or what you're like as a
person, because they're fixating on you as a sex symbol.
Which is all well and good, since that's the job I'm
supposed to do, the function I'm paid to fulfil. But it
is difficult to accept that, most of the time, scenes I
shoot could end up anywhere – on the internet or
on a compilation – and I won't get any more money
for that.

Compilations are a thorny issue to us girls because
we know that the companies have the right to re-use
scenes shot for certain movies and slap them into 'new'
movies – akin to how record companies release 'greatest
hits' compilations for their recording artists (especially
when their contracts expire, so that the company can
make more money out of existing material). Unlike
recording artists, though, we don't get paid residuals or
anything extra for these additional 'movies' and there's
just nothing we can do about it, because we don't have
any kind of unionised collective bargaining in porn and
nobody sticks up for our rights.

I once did a scene in a movie for my ex-husband,
Craven, called
Bustin' Nuts on Sluts
, which had a really
great box-cover, but I found out later that he used that
same
scene (and the cover
too
) for a 'new' movie called
Fuck Me Like the Whore That I Am
. (Yep, that's a typical
Craven comment. That's really what he thought of me!)
This kind of recycling happens all the time in porn.
And nobody cares if you get called a whore, because it's
supposed to be funny.

Anabolic Video did the same thing to porn star
Sabrina Johnson, a really lovely English girl, back in 1999,
when they strung together two hours of her scenes into a
compilation called
A Cum Sucking Whore Named Sabrina
,
along with this riveting piece of box-cover copy:

Anabolic brings you a collection of scenes of a Brit whose main
source of food just may be the salty semen that shoots from the
work that her pimp/husband finds her! We believe her primary
source of income is to suck, fuck or do whatever else he might
tell her to, to whomever he tells her to! Thus,
A Cum Sucking
Whore Named Sabrina
! Enjoy!

Now, that might sound funny in a porn-friendly ironic
way, but to those in the know, it had a weird subtext.
Sabrina's real-life husband, Graham, had actually been
busted and jailed for nine months for 'living off immoral
earnings', so these guys at Anabolic were deliberately
cashing in on the couple's notoriety. It's sometimes hard
to say what's ethically or morally correct when it comes
to an entire industry that deals in dubious interpretations
and grey areas all the time. I know that if I was
Sabrina, I doubt I would find that at all funny.

This kind of marketing feeds straight into the judgemental
mindset of all those people who'll adopt the
posture of moral rectitude and use it to condemn
girls like Sabrina and myself. And I think that attitude
sucks.

Just because we play sexually voracious women in our
movies, does that automatically mean that we are equally
accepting of what gets done to us by those who deem us
lower than we deserve? In other words, do we deserve to
be treated like whores just because we play those parts?
And why should any woman be demeaned just because
she is a whore, or because she stays close to her 'inner
slut' (as progressive, pro-porn feminists have argued)
and isn't ashamed of expressing herself with her body?

Which leads me to the second example, one that for
me is much closer to the bone (pardon the innuendo).
In October 2007, I learned that my one and only anal sex
scene in the movie
Skin
had been used again, without
my prior knowledge, in a compilation film about anal
sex called
The Ass Hammer
. Both films were released
by Platinum Blue, but
Skin
was funded by an investor,
and part of the contract was that they would not use
any of the footage in any other films. Yet here they were
doing exactly that. They also used still photos from
Skin
,
which is a breach of contract too.

Unfortunately for me, Platinum Blue went belly-up a
month later, leaving my investor and me high and dry.
Neither of us has been paid as much as a single cent for
either of these films to this day, and we don't expect to
recoup our losses any time soon, since there's nobody to
collect from, given the financial insolvency of the distribution
company. I was well and truly fucked, in the very real
sense of that word, and I was well and truly pissed off .

I was initially so proud of
Skin
, but my enthusiasm
soured after I found out how they'd used my anal sex
scene in this way. It made me look bad to the buying
public, because I now appeared to have not just one
but two anal scenes out there, even though it was the
very same scene. How was I supposed to correct this
misperception in the marketplace? And how was I to
appease some of my fans who might recognise the recycling
of that scene and feel disappointed, because it now
looked like I was out to make more money any way
I could, even though this kind of avaricious behaviour
was not my own doing at all?

I contacted one of the producers of
The Ass Hammer
,
who I'd thought until then was a personal friend, and
he said I should have known better and that they had
every right to use anything they wanted for compilation
movies, which was bullshit. 'Wow,' I thought, 'some kind
of friend you are, mate!'

To this day, that whole debacle remains unresolved.
A friend of a friend lost his life savings because of that
whole mess. I felt bad for referring this guy to Platinum
Blue, but I had no idea we were going to get ripped
off . And, really, I didn't force him to take the offer – we
could've shopped it around some more, but he too
thought it was a great deal and decided to take a chance.

I learned a very valuable lesson from that whole
sordid saga: just because you enjoy being sexually
objectified, doesn't mean there aren't people out there
who won't use that to their own advantage and for their
own monetary gain, like putting your scenes in comps
without your knowledge, much less your approval, or
selling your images to websites or for phone sex ads.

Controlling your photographic image is just as difficult
as controlling the use of your sex scenes. A free
newspaper called the
LA Xpress
had me on their cover
once, which I initially didn't mind because it was really
an advertorial photo featuring the VCA logo (since I'd
shot a bunch of movies for VCA, so I saw it as free publicity
for me). I found out later that the
LA Xpress
was a
paper advertising sexual services of all kinds, mostly for
'healing' and 'therapy' by hookers. The cover shot had
the unfortunate side effect of generating interest in me
of a totally unexpected and unwanted kind – my name
and photo ended up being used on several escorting
websites, none of which I have any actual association
with, and I have no legal recourse to have these photos
removed. There are just too many of them – one of
the very real downsides of instant publishing via the
internet!

Times have definitely changed in the adult-film
industry since I began in 2001. I used to get so many
more lead-actress roles – more so than any contract girl.
I was getting so much great work to do, and so much
money, that for a lot of my career I thought a contract
wasn't necessary. Now I realise it would've helped me
to have been under contract more, since people seem to
care so much about the 'contract girl' label these days.

Just like in the old Hollywood studio system, the
adult-film industry likes to sign up girls on contracts
whereby they have exclusive rights to film them in a
certain number of movies over a certain period of time
– usually a year – turning them into stars along the way
by giving them major publicity and exposure. Vivid
Girls are a good example of this, as they seem to have a
certain prestige.

Because I'm not a contract girl, it seems like I don't
get as much respect as I used to, even though my name
on a box-cover will sell a lot of movies. I found that
out from Adam & Eve and VCA, two companies for
whom I've shot a lot of lead roles. They both offered me
contracts, but VCA's offer was very small, and I would
have accepted the Adam & Eve contract except after
they made the offer they changed management and
withdrew it, despite saying they would be able to sell at
least 5000 units of my movies right off the bat, which
was huge.

These days, contract-girl status is something all porn
stars are supposed to covet, and what the fans all believe
to be the ultimate validation of our worth as porn
stars. It sounds so glamorous and, in theory, it is. What
girl wouldn't want that? The freedom to work on only
a specifi ed number of films each year for an agreed
amount of money that is guaranteed income sounds
pretty good, right?

The idea is sound on paper, provided you read
your contract and sign off on what you believe to be a
win–win situation. The downsides, though, can be that
the company 'owns' you and tells you what you can and
can't do, including not changing your hair, not getting
tattoos, not doing any shoots or interviews or attending
events that they don't approve of, and they can also own
your website and your name, which they may not give
back to you after the contract expires.

From the viewpoint of us performers, it might save
us from the plight of the freelance girl who has to schlep
from shoot to shoot, making her money where she can,
but reality can also bite hard. There have been a lot of
contract girls at every company who have left their
contracts without renewing them or found themselves
abandoned by those very companies that originally
wanted them, for all kinds of reasons.

I've only ever signed one contract-girl agreement,
and that was with Cherry Boxxx Pictures. The year
was 2003, and I was optimistic because Cherry Boxxx
were new at the time and I believed they were going to
become a big-name company. I took a chance and came
on board. The deal was sound when I accepted it, since
it meant I was locked into a non-exclusive arrangement
for six movies for a year.

The most notable (and, I believe, the best-selling)
movie that emerged from this deal was
Monica's Sex
Crimes
. Rick Davis, the director, knew I wanted creative
input in every movie I did with them so he allowed me
to pitch this idea: I'm a girlfriend of a mob boss who
hands out rewards to his employees who have done a
good job. I either hook them up with a hot chick or have
sex with them myself as payment for their good work.
I did three hot scenes: one with Cheyne Collins, one
with a sexy Latino named Sergio and one with a sexy
brunette from Scarborough, New York, named Venus.
(She was my own reward for doing such a good job
for the boss's hitmen!) We shot for 12 hours and I was
doing dialogue in every scene, plus doing my own hair
and make-up. I even posed for the box-cover that day.
I was seriously ill with the worst cold ever on the day of
the shoot but I still showed up to work because I didn't
want to cost them money by cancelling. The funny thing
is that when I watched the movie, I didn't even look
sick. It was one of Cherry Boxxx's biggest sellers, and
I was
almost
nominated for an AVN award – I got a
pre-nomination for Best Sex Scene.

However, there were a couple of hitches in my time as
a contract girl. One of them had nothing to do with the
shoots, and it was really a fucked-up situation. While
I was at the AVN convention, signing autographs for
Cherry Boxxx, the company publicist kept pulling me
aside to do interviews to promote the company, so half
my days were spent signing autographs for my fans and
the other half were spent doing these interviews. Fine,
I thought, I can juggle my schedule to accommodate
this schizoid plan, so I agreed to it.

But a sales lady who worked there, who just hated me,
told the boss that I was hardly ever at the signing booth.
When I got back to LA and was paid, I discovered that
they'd docked US$500 from my cheque – because, they
told me, I 'wasn't there the whole time'. I explained I was
doing interviews for their company, but apparently that
didn't count for anything.

I was left to conclude that being devoted to a
company, helping them to make money, was
not
a good
way to do business. At the time, I was thinking I could
do with some extra publicity, but what good is publicity
when you're not benefiting financially from it? (A lesson
learned, and a warning to all you new girls!)

It's no coincidence, by the way, that in this business
many girls get their contracts while dating certain
directors or owners of companies. I put my hand up to
dating the owner of Cherry Boxxx, but only
after
I had
obtained my contract and had already shot two films.
When people ask me what the heck happened with my
Cherry Boxxx contract, I tell them, 'My contract was up,
and I moved on.'

I could be bitter about all this now, but I really have
no animosity to either Cherry Boxxx or to the boss. The
years have passed and I've got on with my career. I have
worked for Rick Davis again a couple of times since I
left my Cherry Boxxx contract, and in 2008 I shot my
movie
Rockstar Pornstar
for the Cherry Boxxx owner's
new company, Sex Line Sinema. It's all part of being
pro fessional about it, and I try not to bear grudges –
especially if they impede my mission to get more work!