Absolute Mayhem (9 page)

Working for Jim was a great experience. There were
always 15 to 20 girls on set, and Jim had his quirky way
of shooting things. I'll always remember that he loved
pink lipstick and pink nail polish, and he would have
us wear moccasins sometimes, as part of his trademark.
In 2003, he directed another of my screenplays,
Charm
School Brats
. Both
Charm School Brats
and
Witch Coven
College
got great reviews and turned out really cool.

It was very sad when Jim died. Jim had diabetes, but
the catering was never very healthy on his sets. It was
'Jimmyland', as he called it, and what Jimmy wanted
Jimmy got. He always said he'd be surprised if he lived
to be 50, but he made it to 55. Hustler eventually took
over VCA, and things changed. I was no longer shooting
big features for them and they were thinking of cutting
Jim's movies out all together, which shocked me because
they were apparently the best-selling movies that VCA
had to offer.

The porn-star work kept coming in during this
time, but I couldn't quite hit my stride again in terms
of reviews and notices, almost as if I'd peaked and
had to hit the brakes before I crashed. I freaked out
at that juncture and took a hiatus. There was a lull in
2003 when I worked less and less, and I didn't resurrect
myself until 2004.

After four years as a porn star, I had achieved
such fame as an adult-film actress that it had
translated into increased demand for me as a feature
dancer. That's how it works: success as a porn star is
what gets you the feature billing at a strip club, and that
can be very lucrative. I was dancing in clubs across the
USA and Canada and was also fl own out to Melbourne,
to dance at the Spearmint Rhino there, where I shook
my booty to the music of Australian bands such as
AC/DC and INXS. (As a feature dancer, you do get
to choose your own music.) My dance career became
hugely successful, and for a long time it was my biggest
source of income.

I've got some great stories about my experiences on
the dance stage. You know that famous phrase from
NASA, 'Houston, we have a problem'? Well, one time
I was featuring in Houston, Texas, and while I was on
stage I suddenly noticed some guy jacking off , right at the
tip rail! I laughed and pointed him out to the bouncers,
who began freaking out. They started discussing among
themselves who was going to go up to the guy to tell
him to stop. One of them eventually went up and said,
'Listen, sir, you can't do that in here. You're going to
have to leave.' I mean, he had his cock out in public,
right there, by my tip rail – I thought it was so fucking
hilarious but also gross at the same time!

That was the only time this happened to me, but
there have been other kinds of dance-stage drama. I've
had bouncers run up to grab guys who have jumped up
on stage, and I've also had to slap guys for grabbing me.
One guy even bit my nipple, and I responded by hitting
him really hard. (Most women defend themselves
against sexual harassment at work, but my methods take
that to a whole new level!)

At its peak, the porn-star life involves balancing
life on the road with filming. I actually loved mixing
shooting and dancing – that way I wouldn't get bored
with one or the other. But there are things you need to
do in order to cope with that lifestyle.

One night in 2007, at The Crazy Horse in San
Francisco, I nearly collapsed before my first show.
I'm sure it was due to my unhealthy, stressful lifestyle:
drinking, lack of sleep and not eating right are a bad
combination. And the random panic attacks I'd been
having weren't helping either, not to mention almost
having an asthma attack from all the strippers chain-smoking
backstage. But I still went on stage that night,
a little late. I finished up three very low-energy shows
still feeling dizzy. I was actually scared I might fall over
and pass out.

After the show, I met the cutest 18-year-old who had
seen all my movies and wanted to get into porn. I told
her to finish school and call me before she did anything
in this business. I could have easily made a ton of money
off her by setting myself up as her agent, but something
came over me. I didn't want to be the person responsible
for potentially ruining this girl's life. A lot of girls might
be emotionally stable enough to handle this industry,
but some girls end up wrecking their lives with drugs.
Instead, I gave her advice on how not to go off the rails
while being a porn star and on the consequences that
she would suffer for the rest of her life. I've learned so
much from my years of experience yet I'm still picking
up the pieces of my life. I hope that girl listened to me.
I know there are a lot of directors who will be pissed
off when they hear that. But I really don't care what
anyone thinks. I was doing a good deed, giving some
good advice, something for her to think about before
she jumps into this world.

I find it very fl attering when new girls come up to
me all star-struck, and I'm always willing to give them
advice so they don't make some of the same mistakes
I did – like partying all your money away and helping
out people who turn out to be less than true friends.
Basically, I tell them just to be wary of everyone and
not to do anything that they're not comfortable with.
Maintaining control of your career is the key.

I hate seeing these girls that come in and do scenes
for practically nothing. We deserve way more than what
we get paid, and some of the new girls who work for low
rates just spoil it for everyone. And the girls who come
in and say, 'I wanna be the next Jenna,' they really make
me laugh. They are so naive. Those days are long gone.
Jenna Jameson was a publicity machine. She came into
the business at the right time and had the right people
behind her, back when there weren't nearly as many
girls in the industry as there are today. These little girls
can't seem to grasp that fact.

The truth, though, is that they do have youth and time
on their side. Agents today like to offer producers new
girls to shoot, because new girls pay a higher percentage
in the beginning and the agents win on commission.
I miss the days when there weren't so many agents
and I'd constantly get calls for work from production
managers.

From 2002 to 2005, although I was at the top of my
game professionally – successfully combining dancing
and filming – it was hard because I could never book a
shoot within a few days of coming back into town. My
body was always too beaten up from dancing, and I felt
so bruised and sore. I needed to relax and get massages
and heal myself. It's part of the whole process of taking
care of business.

I was also doing a lot of partying, which for me
involved consuming too much alcohol, cocaine, marijuana
and Xanax. Deep down, I was just sick of porn
in general: I had worked too much too soon. It was all
starting to become a blur and I found that depressing.
I realised I was going through an early mid-life crisis
of sorts, just three years short of turning 30.

I was also starting to think that I might have chosen
the wrong profession – I wanted to be a rock star, not a
porn star, and it finally occurred to me that I may have
ruined that ambition for myself. So I tried to sabotage
my porn career by being rebellious. I had the dragon
from the Welsh national flag tattooed on my upper left
arm, as my way of saying '
Cymru am byth!
' ('Wales
forever!') and '
Y Ddraig Goch ddyry cychwyn!
' ('The red
dragon will show the way!'), as all good Welshpersons
are wont to proclaim. I had lost touch with my heritage
over the years, and as I have always strongly identified
with my Welsh ancestry it was a great way of getting
back in touch with who I really was. Except, of course,
a lot of porn producers don't like tattoos and wouldn't
hire me. What's more, I was known in the porn world as
a blonde, but I went and became a redhead, to make me
look more like a rock star. And all that did was create
problems for my public image.

People didn't want to shoot me as a redhead with
tattoos because they thought the fans would either not
recognise me or, worse, hate me for my new look. It was a
complete mistake on my part and I admit I really fucked
up. I still hadn't learned that there's a difference between
your public persona and your personal self, and if you
want to be a celebrity of any sort you have to somehow
manage to keep both in check.

Yet you can only go so far. There are cases in which
your private self and public persona do have to be
in harmony, otherwise you risk losing sight of your
identity. For instance, I've done a fair number of scenes
involving sexual fetishes and also bondage and domination.
In real life, I don't like to dominate guys, because
I want them to take charge, to act like a real man.
But I do love to dominate women. After all, I am a bit
of a tomboy at heart.

I've worked for Cybernet in San Francisco a couple
of times – a company that runs lots of bondage websites
– and for one of the scenes I had to beat the crap out of
a girl. She was the porn star Ariel X, and she loves that
kind of thing. (Each to their own, I guess.) Then I got
sent on a shoot for a fetish site, Fetishnation.com. My
agent told me that it would only be some light bondage
and spanking, so I accepted. When I got to the set, they
explained everything they were going to do to me – they
would tie me down and then force me to orgasm while
slapping and whipping me and pulling my hair, as well
as verbally humiliating me. I totally freaked out. I told
them I couldn't be submissive. I was afraid it would stir
up some old feelings from the past – of being abused,
mentally and physically. They were very nice people and
said they didn't want me to do it if I was at all uncomfortable,
though they were understandably pissed at my
agent for sending someone who 'doesn't do submissive'!
So that was one instance where the public persona and
the private self had to mesh perfectly or it just wasn't
going to work.

I do love getting dressed up for fetish shoots, though,
especially if I'm going to be wearing latex, which looks
all shiny but grips your skin at the same time. I wore a
slinky black latex number for a Penthouse movie called
Fetish Diaries
, released in April 2007. It featured me
doing light bondage stuff with a male slave, played by
the porn star Van Damage. I remember that it was very
hot – it must've been 38°C in that studio – and I was
dripping with sweat. It would just pour out of me every
time I took a piece of latex clothing off , and I had to
gradually undress to complete the scene, which involved
me sucking and fucking the slave.

I also did some bizarre fetish stuff for Taylor St Claire,
who not only is one of the best porn stars in the business
but also has a second career as a professional
domme
.
I've always thought her such a sexy woman, all natural
and curvy, and she looks so beautiful, like a soap-opera
star or something. One of her scenes involved me teasing
a submissive male slave, who had the smallest penis I've
ever
seen. In real life, he's actually Taylor's slave and he's
into that kind of thing for real – he was telling me what
kind of mean things I should say to him, and I felt so
bad. I mean, his penis was tiny and I had to point and
laugh at it and make him feel like shit.

Then I shot some scenes for this sneezing-fetish
website that Taylor had called
Sneezing Beauties
. I had
to tickle my nose with a toothpick until I sneezed five
times. And then I was filmed blowing my nose. I can't
believe there is actually a fetish for that. But there really
are guys out there who will get off on seeing me sneeze
and blow my nose, and they will actually pay the current
rate – seven bucks for a five-minute, 38-megabyte wmv
file – to see me do so. They'll get all excited and masturbate
at the sight of my nasal mucus. Good heavens, if
they knew I was really asthmatic some of them might
orgasm right away!

Another time, I did a photo shoot where I was bound
and put in a coffin filled with nails. That was kind of
creepy. And the coffin was suspended too. I couldn't
move and had no control over anything. I freaked out a
little, because I hate not being in control.

And control is something that is getting harder and
harder to keep hold of in the world of porn. These
days, the rates are getting lower and lower because the
industry has been undergoing an awful recession in
these past few years, and that means porn stars are less
able to pick and choose which jobs they feel comfortable
about taking.

The explosion of gonzo porn that occurred right after
I started out, back in 2001, has been largely responsible
for this downturn. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm
still a believer in movies as art, and today we live in an
age where our art form has been desecrated in the name
of greed. The year I got into the business marked the
end of the big-features era, and gonzo was starting to
make its way into the rental market in a very big way.
The onslaught of gonzo is what has killed the industry.
Too many companies got greedy because they thought
it was easy – because gonzo is unscripted 'reality' porn
that is cheap to shoot – but they didn't realise how many
other companies were getting into the game too, and
thus everyone ended up fighting for their slice of the
same pie. A lot of companies went bust in the summer
of 2007 and some are barely alive at this point.

People downloading free porn off the internet is
the other sure thing that's killing our industry. It's bad
enough that we porn stars don't get paid nearly enough
for what we're worth, what with all the health-andsafety
risks we take, but now we're getting paid even
less – because the companies are making less money
from their products. That's the grim reality from where
I sit on my career-transitioning perch, as we roll into
2009 and observe the market meltdown happening all
over the world. (My heart sank at the end of 2008 as
I watched the Australian dollar plunge to its lowest
value in years!)

Ironically, this doesn't seem to have stemmed the
massive flow of new girls coming into the business. In
the past year, I have gone to sets and read entire call
sheets where I don't even recognise a single name. These
new girls seem to arrive by the truckload from Tennessee
to Texas, and it oft en stuns me to realise that I have
to compete with them for places in movies.

We're all forced to work for less money as the film-production
pile continues to shrink, so where is this
industry really heading? When I started out, I got paid
US$1400 for an oral-orgy scene (a blow-bang, as it's
known in the trade), which is actually a little more than
the usual rate (though it's nowhere near enough, given
what's involved). At this time of writing, I'm getting
paid US$400 for a regular blow job, doing just one guy,
though it used to be US$500 when the economy was
better. A lot of girls in the business will now blow guys
on film for only US$300 or less.

Lack of control of our image is another issue we
porn stars face. One good example is when they use
bad pictures of me. There have been so many box-covers
on which I think I look hideous. I just don't
understand what's wrong with the people who chose
those pictures. I know for a fact that there are always
some beautiful photos of me in every set that's shot,
and yet someone with one eye gets to choose the
worst of the bunch for public display – like the ones
where they show me putting a huge cock in my mouth
on the cover, with my cheek all stretched out. Most
consumers make impulse decisions based on what they
see, and it's really important for my branding to get
my look right. However, the reality of this business is
that you're at the mercy of the art department at the
studio, and there's a train of thought that the nastiest
shots are the best. It's just that sometimes these people
forget about the girl who's at the receiving end of what's
being shot.