Absolute Mayhem (3 page)

'Where were you?' she yelled when she saw me.

To which I replied, 'You fucking drunk bitch. You
said I could go if I was home by eleven!'

She said she didn't remember telling me that. Clearly,
she'd blacked out again, like she tended to do pretty
much every night.

I turned to the cops. 'You're just going to leave me
here like this?' I said to them, in exasperation. 'Look at
her! What the fuck is wrong with you people?'

To my amazement, the cops said, 'You know, we can
arrest you for swearing.'

I was incredulous. This couldn't be happening. 'This
is fucked up!' I yelled, and I went inside and locked
myself in my room.

And as for my mother, all that happened was they
suspended her driver's licence for two years.

From around the age of ten, I was always trying to
stay with my friends' families or get myself into foster
care but the people at the child-services places didn't
really help at all, probably because I didn't have actual
proof of child abuse. It was mainly psychological with
my mum. It got physical as well, but it didn't usually
leave much of a mark. She would dig her long nails
into my arm and slap me and fling me around. The
slaps had turned to punches as I'd got older, and she
would call me lots of names – 'little slut' was one of
them, thereby preparing me for my future career (gee,
thanks, Mum!).

Once, she tried to take us along to family counselling,
in order to sort out our family problems. This
was really weird since she seemed to me to be the one
most in need of counselling. It was her way of blaming
everything on us kids, blaming us for making her life
miserable. She also did her utmost to keep us away from
our father, by throwing away all the letters he wrote to us
and spending all his child-support money on herself, on
her wine and her cigs and fancy gourmet foods for the
fridge. One time, I found out that she had spent a large
cheque from my father on going shopping for herself
after she bragged about it to my best friend's mother and
this woman had then told me. I really think she didn't
want us around and was resentful of the fact that she
was stuck with us.

It all finally came to a head one night in the school
holidays when I was 14. I was fast asleep in my bed
when she stormed into my bedroom in the middle of
the night. She actually stopped to take off her glasses
before she started punching me in the face. She was
shouting at me, accusing me of doing heroin (which
was't true at all; I've never ever done heroin), and that's
when I decided I'd had enough. It was time for me to
fight back.

She clearly hadn't remembered that I'd started taking
kick-boxing lessons in my friend's garage. As she
perched above me in my bed, trying to keep punching
me, I kicked her clear across the room.

'That's it!' she screamed. 'I want you out of here!'

I ran blindly out of the house, into the middle of
nowhere. I'd taken no possessions with me, and I had
no money, no bank account and no job. After racing
thirty minutes through the bush, I finally reached a
friend's house, where I spent the night, and after that I
roamed from place to place. I remember sleeping under
a bus stop a couple of times after getting lost, probably
after doing some acid or when I was too drunk or too
stoned to know where the hell I was.

A couple of days after she'd thrown me out, my
mother had put up a 'MISSING CHILD' notice at the
local McDonald's, where my gang usually hung out. That
was
so
embarrassing! I know she did that not because
she really wanted me back but because she didn't
want people to think of her as a bad mother. In the
meantime, there I was, moving all around the area –
I stayed with a friend's family for a couple of months
but I just wasn't accustomed to living in a normal,
respectful household and they ended up kicking me
out. I then moved in with one of my gang members,
since I never formally left the gang, and slept on the
floor for a couple of weeks.

At this juncture, sex began to play its key role in my
young life. I was definitely, by nature, promiscuous. I'd
always wanted to kiss the boys in primary school, and
I'd started flashing my small boobs to them when I was
six. By the age of 11, I'd wanted to lose my virginity,
but for some reason the boys didn't notice me until
I turned 14. That was the age when I had sex for the
first time, with some kid from school.

He was 16, and I didn't really like him, but we got
wasted at a party and spontaneously agreed to have sex
on the way home – jumping each other's bones in someone's
front yard. After a while, I sort of came to my senses
and realised what was going on and told him to stop. He
got it over and done with very quickly, and then he went
round the school the next Monday bragging about it.
Such a typical macho guy thing. He told everyone that
I was a good fuck!

Some girls might have cringed or cried, but my
reaction to that was, 'Well, at least he didn't say I was
bad, right?' It's funny to me that it never occurred to him
to wonder whether
he
was any good, but I guess that's
like most boys of his age – sex is a one-way street and
you're only interested in the bragging rights. And the
way I reacted to it is pretty revealing. Even at that age, I
already had this instinctive way of accepting myself as a
sex object, since I didn't mind being called a 'good fuck'
at all – in fact, I was rather proud of it.

What bearing might that have had on the fact that I
finally became a porn star? Hmm, let's see now. Well,
I had sex with some guy I didn't really know or even
particularly like and became this romanticised sex
object to him. Pardon my frankness, but isn't that what
I went on to be for eight years and counting? That first
time probably set the trend for my future. (That and my
alcoholic mother's wonderful influence, of course.)

It turned out that being kicked out of home finally
got me expelled from school. After the holidays, I tried
to enrol myself in year ten but they wouldn't let me. The
deputy-principal told me, 'You're not welcome here. You
have no legal guardian, so you can't come back to school.'

'That's fine by me, bitch,' I said to her. 'I don't want
to be here anyway. Fuck you!'

I've since been told that her reason for expelling me
was bullshit, but that wouldn't have bothered me even if
I'd known. I walked out of there with the biggest smile
on my face. I hated that school so much. It was nothing
but hell for me every single day, which was why I oft en
ditched classes for weeks at a time. Leaving at the end of
year nine meant I'd only had two years of high school,
because we start at year eight in Queensland.

I slept with quite a few guys between then and the age
of 16 – at least five that I can remember. They were all
older than me and I never really had a relationship with
any of them. I was just being promiscuous – because
I craved attention, I think. Having sex was my way of
feeling desired and loved. That and the fact that I enjoyed
it so much!

I was seeing a 22-year-old guy at one point, when
I was 14 or 15. He worked in a boiler room, as a welder,
and he had an accident at work. When he was in the
hospital, I went to visit him with a bunch of friends.
He asked everyone to leave except me, and I ended up
giving him a blow job under the sheets! He was pretty
high on morphine at that point, so I don't know how
he even got it up. However, it was cut short when we
were busted – when everyone walked back in and joked,
'What's goin' on in here?'

About three months after leaving home, I found a
more or less permanent place to stay. I met an older girl
at a party and she allowed me to share her fl at with her.
She was 22 and already had two kids, who were a real
nightmare to deal with, but we got along quite well at
first. I think she thought I was 17 and a bit more mature
than some of the other girls I was hanging round with.

But nature took its course after a year or so. My
fl atmate found out that I was fucking her ex-boyfriend,
whom she considered the love of her life. The situation
was untenable, since I was in love with him too and
had been seeing him for most of that year, behind her
back. She actually saw us together while we were having
sex. She shouted at me 'That's it!' and walked away. Afterwards,
she had a friend come into my room and start
beating me when I was sleeping, just like my mother did.
And once again, with feeling, I was outta there. Again,
in the middle of the night. Again, into the middle of
nowhere.
Déjà vu!

It might surprise some people to learn that when I
was a teenage runaway I never fucked guys for shelter.
I know of porn stars who did, just so they could get food
to eat and a roof over their heads, back when they were
homeless like me. What I did instead was work and
make my own money to survive.

I started off as a 'tea and tidy' girl at a hair salon, and
then I worked as a cashier at a Big Rooster restaurant
(which then became a Red Rooster, when they were all
bought up and had their names changed). One of the
older girls I used to hang out with did 'promotions' for
a living, strutting her stuff in the nightclubs and pubs,
clad usually in lingerie or a bikini, and she told me how
great the money was. She referred me to the owners of
the company, who interviewed me and explained how it
worked. I was offered a job and immediately took it.

It turned out that the job entailed going to different
pubs, clubs and bars around Brisbane, wherever I was
booked, and pretty much doing whatever the managers
asked: wearing lingerie and walking around selling raffle
tickets, or wearing a bikini and washing the car windows
of their customers. I was't promoting anything, really,
just selling raffle tickets so people could win prizes, such
as free booze or free dinners.

I was a little uncomfortable about doing this for
three main reasons. Firstly, even though I got away with
it, I was so young and had to always pretend to be 18.
Secondly, all these drunk (and much older) men would
try to hit on me. And thirdly, I felt very vulnerable
wearing only lingerie, with no security guys anywhere
in sight.

The job didn't last long. I had to catch so many buses
just to get to where I had to be every time, and I'd usually
turn up late. One day, I was very late and had to put on
this complicated corset by myself, which took forever.
The guy just fired me on the job, without paying me,
after I had already worked one hour for him, so I never
went back to it.

In the short time that I'd been a promotions model,
though, I found I'd got used to parading myself in
various states of undress and become comfortable
with showing my body. In fact, I'd started to like being
looked at, even though the stares came from men who
just wanted to ogle me and fantasise about what I might
look like totally naked. That's why I see that job today as
an important step in my career. I seriously don't think
I could've made it later as a stripper in London, much
less a porn star in Los Angeles, if I hadn't first done
promotions.

It was also my first experience of my personal survival
being inextricably tied to monetary gain. If being seen
half-naked was what it took to grant me my financial
independence, then so be it. What we all ultimately
want is to accrue enough 'fuck you money' – to be rich
enough to say 'fuck you' to projects and people we're not
interested in. And for me, at that age, with no school
qualifications, promotions modelling seemed like a
very good way to go. When you've come from nothing,
there's nowhere to go but up.

After so long in the adult-film business, I have learned
that this is a very common theme in the lives of many
of us porn stars. It can be a fantastic confidence booster
if you're a young girl still learning to express yourself
through your body, needing to regain your self-esteem
after years of parental abuse.

I think I will always have insecurities that have arisen
from the ways in which I felt abandoned and neglected,
mostly by my own family and so-called friends during
my formative years in Queensland, and for that reason
alone I'm certain I will never, ever move back to Brisbane.
It's a city that reminds me of a past I'd rather forget. But
because of my last few years living in my home town,
these days when someone whips out a camera and tells
me to take my clothes off it's the easiest thing to do in
the whole wide world. I always went out clubbing half-naked
anyway. Kerry Cohen, in her lovely memoir
Loose
Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
, wrote about how a boy
once told her it was tough for guys because they have to
work so hard to get laid, whereas all she needed to do
was walk around bra-less. I know that feeling, because
that's exactly what I did. The power a near-naked woman
can have over a man, I know it well. And I find it so
intoxicating!

When I was just turning 15, however, I decided to take
a 'real job' – doing legal conveyancing for the property
market in Brisbane. I think they hired me for my enthusiasm
in the interview and because I was willing to
learn on the job. The office was a mess when I started
working there, so I got stuck into reorganising everything.
The company was called Fox Conveyancing and
I worked there for a year. It was so small that they even
had me as a manager at one point. We were responsible
for all the necessary legal searches before a person or a
company purchases a house or a plot of land – you know,
all that small stuff like the title deeds and issues pertaining
to bankruptcy and water and transportation (such as
ensuring that they're not going to build a freeway over
your house!). That job was crucial because it helped me
get used to a more regimented way of working, preparing
me for the world of financial markets.