‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol (19 page)

Ron Jeremy:
I loved going to Vegas with Jasmin, I remember there being a GIANT billboard outside of the Sahara Hotel and Casino that said ‘Ron Jeremy and Jasmin St. Claire: The Ultimate Review.’There were two marquees: a big one that was right in front of the Sahara and one that actually attached to the Sahara on a wall, both saying the same thing.

For a while there in the later 1990s, Jasmin and Jenna Jameson were neck-and-neck in popularity, and there was definitely a competitive rivalry. I remember when we were doing the
Ultimate Review
at the Sahara Hotel, we were sold out and they were doing at the Riviera, and in fairness to them, they were close to sold out too. I thought we had a better Review because we were doing it with comedy, personality, and dancing, where there’s was more just dancing. Ours was each girl dancing on her own working with a choreographer and making it the best possible dance. We had a Penthouse Pet named Leslie Glass, who later died of cancer, and later started her own organization called ‘Pets for Pets.’Anyway, so Jenna came by one night to check out the show, watch the rehearsal and the attitudes were flaring up a little bit. Jasmin was going, ‘I hate that girl,’ and Jenna was saying, ‘I hate that girl.’ And they both had done a lot of Stern, and it was a rivalry.

Felicia, Jenna’s friend, was really getting mad at Charlie, Jasmin’s manager, for things he was saying about her ( Jenna) in the porn press, and so that night, she came in with Jenna, and started a scene, screaming at Charlie and Jasmin, more than Jenna was. Jenna was just in the background, letting them fight it out, and Jenna wanted an apology from Charlie because he’d embarrassed her in the media. He’d said something to the Las Vegas Journal about our show having Jasmin St. Claire, and Jenna’s show having ‘that other girl,’and Jenna thought that was a cheap-shot. So once Jenna and Charlie had yelled at each other, Felicia just started screaming!

I remember very clearly, after the girls left, that I was trying to cheer Jasmin up because Felicia had started screaming at her. I sat her down, and she was saying ‘I can’t go on tonight, I’m all upset, I’m all upset. I’m pissed off.’ And I said ‘Jasmin, Jasmin, Jasmin, Jasmin! Relax.’ Once she calmed down enough to listen, and continued, explaining to her that ‘it’s all good. Relax. Rivalries are good for press; it’s a lot of fun. This is great press. I’ll put it on a lighter scale: Schwarzenegger and Stallone never had a problem with their rivalry, it only helped. Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison used to have a severe feud and a war, which made headlines, and they loved it.They had insulting comments in the press to each other, and it was great, because it gave them both more publicity. What do you care about war, war is wonderful, and maybe a few months from now, or a year from now, you end this war with a nice sexy girl-girl scene.’ She didn’t exactly go for that, but got my broader point of trying to tell her, ‘Relax, it’s not a bad thing. This war is fun, and is making more headlines and making the shows in Vegas even more popular.’ She seemed to come around to that way of thinking a little.

Jasmin:
Near the end of the month, I was in Connecticut to do some features, and appeared on the
Howard Stern Show
(again,
^J
) to promote something or another. It was becoming part of my job description by that point to go on Howard Stern and Jerry Springer, and one of the only parts I didn’t mind. It was my birthday that month — I turned 23, which was much nicer than my 22nd, mainly because I had Earl in my life. We went to Argyle for my birthday, and my gay make-up artist friend Sean came over and did my hair and make-up, and Earl gave me a diamond necklace as my present, it was just a beautiful day. By that point, we were staying over at each other’s places a lot, acting like a regular couple. November went by quietly that year, until my mom came out for Thanksgiving. She was meeting Earl for the first time, which was hilarious because he told her he repaired boats for a living. It was just an inside joke that kept he and I laughing to ourselves the whole time she was out, because she really was a prosecutor about it with him, I mean grilling him up and down on boat maintenance and repair. Thankfully, he chose that occupation because Earl actually owned a boat and was quite versed as an owner with its ins and outs (pardon the pun in context of our real profession.)

I spent a large amount of December on the road, which was convenient because things had started to go a little sour between Earl and I, which led me in search of a variety of distractions — including Keith. I knew it was a mistake, but he’d been calling me again — A LOT — and I figured with my travel schedule it wouldn’t get too heavy. I literally spent the first 3 weeks of the month on the road. To give you an idea of what my life on the road was like in months like that, my signing and features itinerary read something like this: Sugar and Spice Adult Video Store, December 8; December 8-13 Pete’s Lounge, West Palm Beach, Florida. On the morning of December 13, I had to drive up to Fairville Mega Plex Video in Cape Canaveral, Florida for a signing. I was then home for two days, and then on December 17-20, had to fly back out for a feature at the Cat Walk in New Haven, Connecticut. Earl stayed back in L.A. filming this whole time, and I’d begun speaking to Keith more than I even was to Earl — officially my boyfriend at that point. I guess what started it was I stopped trusting Earl because he’d started drinking again, which he actually attempted to blame me for. That led me to be lonely on the road, which in turn led to my finally returning one of Keith’s many calls.

When I was home, Earl was working every day, and he never made any time for me. When he wasn’t working, he was drunk flirting with crack whores openly on his set, at strip bars, or off tooling with his boat. He had stopped spending time with me, and the fucking hypocrite had become more and more hostile toward my profession, even though he did the same thing! He even got so possessive at one point he asked me to marry him! It was laughable given the state he and our relationship were in. Anyway, I decided to try and give things one last shot with him, so we agreed to go meet his parents and spend Christmas up in Montana.That trip definitely let me know where his alcoholism came from. Anyway, prior to leaving on that trip, I’d called Keith while Earl was out getting drunk and screwing around. I wasn’t necessarily trying to reconcile with Keith, but he did fuck my brains out, so that was a nice release from the vices Earl was trying to put on me. Shortly after that, Earl and I left for Montana to go spend the holidays with his family. He was raised by his father and grandmother. Both of who were sweethearts and very welcoming. He told them I was model, but he actually told his own father he was an adult film star!

By that point, he’d started telling anyone who would listen, and that made me like him less. He didn’t stop to think for a minute how it would reflect on me either, as his girlfriend, but he never thought, so I guess I shouldn’t have been very surprised at all. Anyway, we went skiing at Red Lodge Resort in Montana while we were up there, and I’d been many times skiing before with Joe, but I had a horrid time on this trip because Earl was drunk the whole time. I don’t know how many of you have skied before, but it’s a challenging enough sport that being drunk doesn’t enhance performance at all — on the ski slope or in bed for that matter where Earl was concerned. Half the time we were on vacation, he couldn’t get it up at all, which just made me long for Keith on a physical level that much more. He was as cold to me as the weather that year; he even called me a ‘weak bitch’ at one point when I complained about the temperature. At this point, Earl was doing blow again too. We’d had a huge episode earlier in the month where he’d gone off somewhere and got drunk, then dragged me off to some chili dog place where he was saying awful things like ‘You are too skinny, why don’t you fucking eat, you anorexic whore?’ Just mean shit that, so much so that I was really getting scared because I’d never seen that side of him. He apologized the next day when he sobered up, which I accepted out of weakness, although I knew I never should have. It just let him feel okay about being abusive to me.

Eve ever up to that point, because I spent it with none other than O.J. Simpson! Earl and I went to St. Marks — this beach spot near Venice, and I had somehow or another befriended O.J.’s new Nicole-look-alike girlfriend. They were looking for some blow, which of course, got Earl involved, and we ended up joining their party of 5 for the evening. I have to say, O.J. was the nicest guy. I know some people will hate me for saying so, but he was a complete gentleman, and people around us were giving looks. Some were mean, and others were gawkers more than anything else, but he was chill and knew how to handle it, which made all of us around him relax as well. I’d been recognized in public by that point, but I had no sense of a real ‘celebrity’ until I hung around O.J. I mean, he was almost notorious more than just famous. That would be the proper way to frame it, I thought he was very nice though, very charming.

He was a very classy person. I think it is possible he didn’t do it, but we didn’t talk about the murder at all. His girlfriend, however, told me in the bathroom that she thought it was his son who had done it, and that O.J. had taken the rap for him, which explained the D.N.A. similarities. She said he just wouldn’t talk about it.That was their rule, so we respected that. He knew who I was, which was kind of cool. Anyway, as the night rolled on, Earl got drunker and more coked up, and eventually O.J. invited us to come back on to his boat for kind of an after party, which of course, I was extremely psyched for. Earl quickly ruined that possibility by being so publicly intoxicated we couldn’t go anywhere but home. What sucked most about how I rang in the New Year was figuring out how I was going to get home with this guy all fucked up on drugs. It wasn’t like I could ask O.J. to give me a boat ride back to fucking Marina Del Rey. Believe it or not, I ended up WALKING the 20 minutes back home to my apartment by myself because Earl — like all men when they become drunken assholes — wouldn’t give me the keys to drive us both home. He was too macho, and kicked me out of his car before we even left the nightspot because I wouldn’t A) let him drive, and B) wouldn’t take him to the hood to buy more crack or whatever the fuck he was on. It was just a side I’d never seen before of him until that winter, and I made it my New Year’s resolution that I wouldn’t let the relationship continue in its present state, which was easier said than done. We were already so deep into things that I found it harder to break away from him than I’d thought it would be initially.

I tried everything, from going to AA meetings with him, getting to know his sponsors so I could be in touch when he was falling off the wagon, stopping drinking around him, everything. It was sad how far I went in context of how far gone he already was, because he couldn’t see any of it. Maybe he just didn’t care at that point, but I still did, and had to find a way to emotionally separate myself from him once and for all. I certainly wasn’t doing myself a service by staying with him, so I made the decision heading into the New Year to work toward ending the relationship. It would take me another six months, but I knew it was the right thing to be focused on as a goal. What sucked was outside of that relationship, everything else in my life was going well — I was happy financially and in my career, and there were a million other girls who would have killed to be in my shoes professionally going into 1998.

As low as some people were sinking in their jealousy of my steadying rise in international popularity, as the New Year began, and my prospects looked even brighter still, I took the high road, preferring to focus on everything good that was happening for me at that point. Unfortunately, other people close to me had taken note of that as well, and were taking every advantage they could of our good fortune. My long-time director, John T. Bowen had signed a deal with Crème Productions, and he had also expanded his star roster to include a couple new comers — Zoe and Kendra Jade.This was motivated in part out of some financial troubles his company was experiencing, which I had stood by him through.That’s just something that’s in my blood, and if you look at my life, I’ve always been loyal to people around me, and for John, that meant tolerating his inability to produce the bigger-end movies that I wanted. So I was patient with him, and to be fair, he was getting me better male talent. So I was working with guys like Brandon Iron, who was really hot and had a big dick. There was no movie in January, but I had many bookings. I was also still dating my alcoholic loser boyfriend Earl, and even though I wasn’t very happy, I was so caught up in being Jasmin that I wasn’t thinking about what was the healthiest thing for Rhea. I was expected to be Jasmin 24 hours a day, and even though I knew there were normal guys who would not want to date me because of my profession, so my attitude had become: if you can’t beat them, join them. And Earl was in the business as well, so it was just easier.

That sense of internal surrender had really bothered me too, because for as big as my public persona had become, I had always viewed my adult film career as a stepping — stone to somewhere better. The sacrifices hadn’t just been professional so far though, they’d also taken a personal toll that drove my sense of self low enough to date a douche bag like Earl.

His alcoholism was at a high point, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I wanted someone in my life to be my partner, and I definitely didn’t have that with him. I knew he was cheating on me, and cheating in porn means that when you have sex with someone else off-camera when you’re not working. It was also hard during that time of year to be having the problems we were, because I’m very old-fashioned about love no matter what, and Valentines Day was no exception. At that same time, I had also grown sick and tired of my manager Charlie taking 25% of my money. I had figured out by that point that he was a scumbag, after anyone shook his hand they felt like they’d been talking to a used car salesman. You feel like you have to wash your hands afterward, but because of my contract, I couldn’t leave him yet.

February put me back before the camera, working with Hershel Savage on ‘
Smell My Fingers
,’ another classy title. Hershel was an older guy, but really good looking and really nice, and was from New York, a commonality in our background I picked up on and used in our conversations before shooting the scene to make him feel more comfortable with me. It was the same routine with a lot of the male stars I worked with, where I had begun making it a point to speak to them because it made everyone feel a little more comfortable. I never saw myself — and I still don’t see myself — as an intimidating woman to any man, but I tried to work with them because when a male star can’t get his dick up because he’s so intimidated, when that shit happens, what am I supposed to fucking do? Sit there all day? It’s like being a photographer, you show up with your shit, and you’re ready to shoot, but some of these guys weren’t showing up with a hard-on like they were supposed to. But in the end, we always seemed to get the problem straightened out. I took a trip in March of 1998 for GVA, who distributed my videos, to do a signing in Cleveland, Ohio, and the strangest part of that trip was Jenna Jameson coming up to my booth and talking to me as though we were long-time friends.

Dominic Accara:
When she’d show up for a shoot, she was all business, and that intimidated a lot of people. We did a shoot with porn star Mark Wood, and it was one of his first scenes ever, and Jasmin was again all business, ‘Get your dick hard and fuck me — NOW,’ and this dude crawled out of that room. That was Jasmin in general.

Jasmin:
I was also doing a lot of feature dancing, and the time on the road gave me some distance to realize just how fed up I was with John T. Bone’s whole operation. He’d brought Kendra and Zoe in without consulting me, and John was also starting to fuck around with Kendra, which is just not good business. If John had had his eye on the ball instead of on her ass, he wouldn’t have made the colossal mistake of letting the Jerry Springer scandal that followed later that spring happen.The whole thing was unhealthy for our business in general, and it was a dirty way to think, which I know sounds ironic given we worked in a business where actors and actresses are paid to have sex on-screen. But there was a big distinction — at least to most of the actors — between being an adult film star and a prostitute, so when John suggested my next film should be another fan gang bang, which was beneath me at that point. But then again, that’s how low things at Crème Productions had begun to sink by that point in general. Still, I did my best to stick with all of them — John, Charlie, Earl — all of them, because one of my biggest faults is I like to see the good in everyone, and wish and hope for the best. I grew up with a lot of negativity in my life from my mom, and I would always scream it out and wouldn’t listen to it. I think, looking back, I was doing the same thing here. At that point, I really didn’t know what to do, but personally I was becoming more and more desperate to get away from it all.

That desperation finally boiled over on one particularly ugly night in March following a fight with Earl, wherein he’d drunkenly thrown my cat Chloe against the wall. She ran out of the front door and off into the night, and I quickly booted Earl in the same direction. I was in pieces, first because I thought my cat was gone forever and also because I’d begun thinking, ‘What’s up with my life?’ I felt totally abandoned. I sunk into a deep depression that caused me to take every single pill I could find in my apartment, trying to escape it. Thankfully, I’d forgotten that I had a girlfriend coming over that evening, and it’s a good thing, because if she hadn’t, I’d have been dead.

When she found me, she later told me that she and her neighbor had raced me to Marina Del Rey Hospital. I had flat-lined. All I remember was feeling really warm and seeing white, which I know you always hear everyone say, but I also saw my dad’s face, and I was ready to go. At that point it was okay with me, it didn’t make a difference, and it certainly didn’t make a difference to anyone around me, it felt like no one really cared if Rhea was gone, in spite of how popular Jasmin had become. I wasn’t speaking to my mom, and I felt like no one really would have cared. It’s a good thing I was wrong and my friend found me, because she saved my life. I owe my life to her, and sadly, she’s dead now, but I’ll never forget her and will always be grateful to her.

Thankfully, once I had been revived, they moved me quickly to a private room because one of the hospital staff working in the emergency room recognized me.They also told me they were going to keep this quiet, and I remember a doctor saying to me ‘We’re going to act like this never happened, you’re alive now, but you should be calling a therapist after you’re discharged.’Anyway, once I’d gotten out and back to my apartment, I had the best home-coming present I could have asked for: my cat Chloe was waiting for me on the doorstep. The whole event had been a big wakeup call for me, and it forced me to ask myself: ‘Who in their right mind wants to kill themselves like this?’So I decided from that day on, the only two ways I would die would be of natural causes, or by someone choking the HELL out of me while they’re fucking me. Anyway, I knew suicide wasn’t the way I wanted to go out, because what would I have died as: a
PORN STAR
and I didn’t want that. That strengthened my resolve to keep my eye toward the goal of graduating out of that business as soon as possible. I didn’t tell Charlie or John, or even Earl about the overdose, and the next day decided to take my first step toward a fresh start by going to the pound and adopting a second kitten. I found a cute black cat, and he ran up to me, and when I came back the next day, he ran up to me again, so I named him Trent and took him home with me.

Going back to life as usual — albeit with a new sense of resolve to get out of this business sooner than later — I shot another of John’s tastelesslytitled movies later in that month,
This Little Piggy Went to Porno
. I finally started to get a better picture of what John and Charlie were trying to do with piggy backing Kendra and Zoe off my popularity, which wasn’t cool. For instance, for any type of live gig, Charlie would say to the club owner or promoter ‘Well, if you want Jasmin, you have to take Kendra or Zoe the next month.’ I didn’t see a percentage of any of their earnings, in spite of those monies coming in partially off my professional name. At that point as well in the mid-spring, my passion for wrestling was starting to grow stronger for that time, and I became an active fan and student. I watched as many matches as I could on T.V. — I was also making more of an effort to have my own life outside of porn — going to concerts, mixing with metal personalities, flying to New York now and again to see my mother when I could, and developing friendships with regular people outside of the adult film industry. I tried more and more to treat my work in adult film as a profession that Jasmin pursued, but personally, Rhea was a different person, so I also wanted that reflected in my associations.

Earl was still in the picture, but cheating on me, and so I ended the month by getting a little revenge via my first scene with Brandon Iron for
This Little Piggy Went to the Whore House.
He was a Canadian guy who was hung like a horse so he reminded me of a nice guy with a big dick. We were just friends really, but he was huge, and it was a nice little break from Earl’s bullshit, which heading into April, was at an all-time worst and we weren’t really seeing each other as much. I’d used the opportunity to break away from him and bring another guy into the picture — Keith — and we started having an affair behind Earl’s back. We were going to the beach, and it was a lot like having a normal boyfriend for a change. He wasn’t in the business, he seemed to care, he was handsome and built, and I wasn’t thinking about Earl as well. I didn’t have a film to shoot that month and things were relatively peaceful for a change until one day my beeper went off, and a hell of a different sort started to break loose. Basically, behind everyone’s back, John T. Bowen and Kendra Jade had orchestrated a sex tape with tabloid talk show host Jerry Springer, and now the rumor had officially leaked. Well, of course, as with every leak, the pipes quickly began bursting all over L.A. and it didn’t take long before it spilled over and flooded into my world.

According to Wikipedia, ‘in May 1998, a photo story about Springer having sex with porn star Kendra Jade in Chicago’s Executive Plaza Hotel appeared in the tabloids
News of the World
and
The Globe
. Kendra’s stepmother Kelly Jade was also present in the hotel room, and Kendra, Kelly, and porn director John Bowen appeared on Springer’s show the next day, discussing a 350 person gang bang.’

Kendra’s comments on the Springer show also included the following specific references to Jasmin St. Claire in July, 1998:
‘I also had seen Jasmin St. Claire’s
World’s Biggest Gang Bang
tape and thought to myself, ‘I can do this!’…I wanted to beat Jasmin’s gang bang record…I talked with Jasmin (St. Claire) the other night. She told me, ‘when you reach my status, you’ll understand why I had to move on.’ I only hope that I can reach such status.’

Once John told me he was going to do the next gang bang video with Kendra, I told her if she wanted to have that title she could, I was past all that shit. With Kendra, it’s not that I ever had anything against her personally, but I made it a point also not to get to know her that way. So when you have private investigators and tabloids like
Star
and the
National Enquirer
calling asking you all these questions about who has the sex tape, telling me they’ll pay me X amount of money to find out, it made me livid. I called John and told him what was happening, and his reply was: ‘Don’t do anything, don’t say a word. I can’t tell you any more about it.’ I was shocked he would admit its existence so easily, and even more shocked I’d been left out of the loop on something that was already affecting my privacy. I shot back by telling him ‘I’ve been here longer than any of these other people, when you were writing bad checks I stayed loyal to you, and you can’t even tell me who has the tape.’ At this point, I also figured out he was fucking Kendra, and he had lost all sight of his better judgment. That he couldn’t recognize how out of line it was that my privacy was being compromised by people looking for drama, the straw that broke the camel’s back with John and I was when Private Investigators hired by these fucking tabloids started stalking me outside my residence in early May. I had come back from breakfast one morning to find a pair of assholes standing outside my apartment door, looking like cops — I quickly realized it was bullshit when one of them asked me, ‘Are you Jasmin St. Claire? We’re looking for the Jerry Springer/Kendra Jade sex tape, and we want to know if you know who has it? We’ll pay you a huge amount of money.’ I told him, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, I was told by John T. Bowen not to tell anyone, so I’m pretty sure he has the tape, why don’t you go bother him and leave me alone.’Then the guy actually took another step toward me, and I said, ‘If either of the two of you step one more foot toward me, I’m going to kill you, stay the fuck away from me.’ So they want back to their car, and I called John and told him what happened, and he didn’t even care. In adult film, the anonymity of a star’s private life is even more important than mainstream movie stars because of the nutty perverts and stalkers who can do real harm to you if they find out where you live. So the fact that John had not cared made really take a step back and open my eyes wide, thinking ‘Wow, what a scumbag!’ I had given a lot to that company, but it was clear they didn’t value me the way I deserved based on my investment in them.