As the girls chatted and gossiped, I hunched down in a folding chair and studied the script. My eyes were dry because I was nervous. When I squinted to read a line, one of my contacts popped out. With all those blue eyes on me, I crawled around the floor for five minutes trying to find it. It was gone. I was blind.
“Jenna Jameson,” beckoned a voice from the doorway.
I walked into the casting office with my now-useless script, and proceeded to stammer and sweat through the whole reading. I was too scared to look up in case I saw the expressions of mockery or pity on the faces of the panel of experts in front of me. I blew the reading so badly that my wish, when I saw a shooting star two nights later, was that the audition tape would never get out publicly. The part went to Amber Smith.
I thought that was it for my one shot at a real movie until the casting agent called me a few weeks later. She wanted me to try out for the part of Mandy, an eighteen-year-old who was the first nude girl on Howard Stern’s radio show. By then they were already in the midst of filming, so they flew me to New York to meet with the director, Betty Thomas.
This time I rehearsed my lines well in advance. When I got to the airport, I looked at the ticket they had sent and it said 2A. I did a double-take, and then went to the gate agent.
“Is this first class?” I asked.
“It sure is, sweetheart.”
I had never flown first class before, and it showed. When the stewardess tried to take my coat from me, I looked at her like she was trying to steal it. I didn’t know how to pull the tray out of the armrest, and I didn’t order any wine because I didn’t realize it was free. Man, I was a hick.
A lot was riding on the audition. The producers obviously had me in mind for the part; all I had to do was not blow it. A driver came to the airport and took me straight to the set. I walked into the director’s trailer and every heavyweight working on the film was there. They sat and talked to me for ten minutes, then Howard entered the trailer. He was going to be my scene partner. I felt like I was going to throw up on the spot.
I sucked it up and did my dialogue. Fortunately, the great rapport we had on the radio wasn’t just an illusion: we still had it in this artificial situation. After the reading, Howard and Ivan looked at me. Ivan said it first: “You’ve got the part.”
I reacted like a little girl. I screamed and jumped up and down in front of everyone. I flew home and, one week later, they flew me back for the scene. This time, first class was old hat and I had no qualms about ordering four glasses of wine at a time.
I had never seen a set like Howard’s before. It was ten times as nice as any adult movie I had done. They even had a stand-in for me, which seemed so decadent because I was used to doing it myself all the time. And instead of shooting an entire movie in a day, we’d spend a day on just one scene. I wasn’t accustomed to doing two dozen takes of a single line. It seemed incredibly inefficient.
Everybody was much more uptight on set than they were in adult movies. When I walked around the set buck naked (because it was a nude scene), the production assistants kept trying to wrap me in a robe. It made them uncomfortable to see me walking au naturel to the Kraft services table. But I was so unaffected and inhibition-free that it didn’t matter to me. When I removed a new belly button piercing and replaced it with clear fishing line so that it wouldn’t show on camera, the crew was completely grossed out. I was in makeup for five hours each day while they airbrushed over my tattoo, and in order to even out my skin tone, they had to do the rest of my body.
Howard, of course, loved it all. We shot for four days. On the third, one of Howard’s bodyguards said that the man himself wanted to see me in his trailer. As I walked over, it dawned on me that this could turn into an uncomfortable scenario. I didn’t know exactly what he wanted. But when you’re a woman on set and the male lead wants to see you alone in his trailer, it generally means only one thing.
When I arrived, Howard was sitting alone watching videos. I joined him on the couch. The tension in the room was not sexual but awkward. We sat on the couch watching TV for what seemed like an eternity. He was waiting for me to make a move. I was waiting for him to make a move. And I had no idea how I would have responded if he did. On one hand, I liked him and wanted to have sex with him. On the other hand, however I responded to an advance, I would have been the loser. If I rejected him, he might hold it against me. If I accepted, then maybe he’d get uncomfortable afterward and things would become weird between us.
With every minute of small talk that passed, we grew more and more uncomfortable until I finally said, “You know, I should probably go back to my trailer and study my lines.”
It was our defining moment. If we were ever going to get physical with each other, that was our chance—and we let it slip by. The window had closed. The next day, he pulled me aside and said, “Jenna, I really believe in you.”
I could tell he was serious, because he didn’t want anything from me. “I really think that you are a good girl and a good person, and I’m going to do anything in my power to help you get to where you need to be because you deserve it.”
I never had anybody say that to me when they had nothing to gain. We became great friends over the course of the shoot, and I gained immense respect for him. However, to this day, I still wonder what would have happened if we’d had the guts to tear each other’s clothes off.
As soon as the movie wrapped, Howard booked me on the show. The first thing out of his mouth was, “Why didn’t you make a move?”
“Why didn’t you make a move?” I responded. “After all, you are the man.”
It doesn’t matter anyway, because everyone still thinks I had sex with Howard, probably because he hasn’t been close to that many girls on his show.
When it came time for the premiere, Joy and I were in New York. I didn’t want to have the night ruined by fighting with Rod the whole time, so I took Joy as my date and told Rod they had only given me one ticket.
I had no idea Private Parts was such a big movie. It made the velvet rope experience at Cannes seem like child’s play. There were stars everywhere, the paparazzi knew who I was instantly, and every news channel was shoving a microphone in my face. It was overwhelming, and by then I was starting to get used to being overwhelmed.
After the red carpet, we went to a cocktail reception before the movie. Joy and I didn’t know anyone, so we just stood there stupidly. I looked into the tangle of celebs and VIPs and saw, towering over all of them, Marilyn Manson. I wanted to meet him, especially since I used to strip to his music. Before the thought left my mind, he was standing in front of me.
“Oh my God, hi,” I squeaked.
He just stood there, staring right through me. It was a little creepy.
Then he grabbed my hand and started walking around the party with me. Nearly every rock star on the soundtrack was there: Perry Farrell, Billy Corgan, Flea, Angus Young, Sting, Jon Bon Jovi, LL Cool J, Rob Zombie, Joey Ramone—basically, everyone I idolized. I was a little porn girl thrust into this world of rock superstardom. I was in heaven.
The first thing Manson asked me was how I draw my eyebrows on. He kept pumping me for makeup tips. After dragging me around the room for half an hour, he asked, “Do you want to be my date?”
I agreed. I followed him to his seat. Corey Feldman was a few rows in front of us, and for some reason Manson was obsessed with Corey Feldman. He kept throwing popcorn at the back of his head all night and reciting lines from Dream a Little Dream.
Then he saw Amber Smith, who is a gorgeous girl, but that night she looked like a drag queen, so he started throwing things at her too. Everyone was a target to him. In that way, he reminded me of my brother.
When he grew bored of pelting Sherman Hemsley with foodstuffs, he put my hand in his. For the rest of the movie, he just held my hand like we were teenagers on a first date. Every now and then I’d look over and see this tall character with long stringy hair, black lipstick, pancake makeup, and mismatched ey
es, and think of how surreal the moment was.
Throughout the movie, he kept making very witty comments. I couldn’t believe how intelligent and thoughtful he was. When I came on screen, he cheered for me. As I became more comfortable, I put my hand on his leg. I didn’t consciously mean anything sexual by it, but as soon as I touched him, he got shy and uncomfortable. It was very cute, or at least as cute as a self-proclaimed Antichrist can get.
Afterward, he invited me out with him and his band. I was in a better limo, because I had insisted on a Mercedes, so Manson, his bassist Twiggy Ramirez (who didn’t say a word all night), and Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins all piled into my limo. “Watch this,” Manson said. He poured a handful of different colored pills into his hand, and then popped them into his mouth and laughed, like it was all one big joke. If I had done that many painkillers and muscle relaxants, I’d be dead in half an hour.
When everyone else became incapacitated—Twiggy’s eyes were rolling into the back of his head and Billy was drooling on his shirt—Manson took the opportunity to kiss me. I had a good buzz and thought, “Bring it on.” So Manson and I made out while Joy snapped photos. When we got out of the limo and arrived at the party, everyone was looking at me funny. I thought it was because of the company I was keeping, but when I passed by a mirror I realized that I had his black lipstick all over my face. I looked like I’d been eating mud.
Manson didn’t leave my side all night. Even when he went to the bathroom (which was often because of all the cocaine he was doing), he’d ask me to wait for him outside the door. He didn’t want to let me out of his sight. We finally found a couch, and Manson threw his coat over my lap and slipped his hands under my yellow Versace dress. All I could think was, “How can this guy remain so focused after taking so many drugs?”
We were a bizarre couple: I looked like a cartoonish exaggeration of the all-American California blonde and he was an exaggeration of the anti-American bogeyman. I was so different than most of the girls he’d been with, he said, so all night long he introduced me as his beach bunny. Yet, though we couldn’t have been any more different, between us, we represented everything that religious fundamentalists and right-wing conservatives want to stamp out in American culture.
After fifteen minutes, we left to go to another party. When we got out of the limo, paparazzi were everywhere, blinding us with their flashbulbs. The first person we saw when we made it through the gauntlet was Prince. Somehow Manson knew him, and he introduced us. Prince said “hi” and reached to shake my hand. I’d never been so tongue-tied in the presence of anyone else before. He was hot, and beautiful like a girl. Five steps later we bumped into Lenny Kravitz. Then we met Sheryl Crow and the girls from TLC and Quincy Jones, who squeezed my hand so hard I thought he was going to break it. It was all too much.
Up until then, I had lived in the sheltered world of the sex industry. And I had come to believe that I was a star, especially after Cannes. But when I met all these people, I realized I was nothing. I was just a niche icon, not a real celebrity. I had sex on screen; I did some perfunctory acting. These people moved and inspired millions of people with their music. All I did was contribute to Kleenex sales. There must be something more I could make of myself.
When we got back to the hotel, Joy returned to our room and I suddenly found myself alone with Manson. That’s when it dawned on me: we were going to have sex. And I was cool with it: I was on such a high, and I liked him a lot.
“Let’s take a bath,” he said in a voice numb, deep, and slow from painkillers, when we walked into his room. He didn’t give me time to respond. He just drew the bath, took off his clothes, and got in. It was strange to see him naked. He was tall, girlish, childlike, massively endowed, and covered in scars in various stages of healing.
I had a preconceived notion that the sex would be crazy, but he was so tender and loving. He washed me from head to toe, working on my feet for a good five minutes. My tan lines seemed like such a novelty for him. Then he went down on me for nearly an hour. It took me that much time alone to even assimilate the image of the naked God of Fuck eating me out, his white butt in the air.
Without drying off, we moved to the bed. He started sucking on the soft underside of my arm, which I’d never had anyone do before. It was a turn-on at first, but he didn’t stop and it got to be vampirish. That was the only thing he did that seemed the slightest bit kinky.
He asked me to get on top, so I lowered myself onto him. We had slow, searing sex. But every time I came close to orgasm, he’d pull me off to keep from coming himself. I would have told him, “Do me a favor, and start thinking about baseball so I can come,” but he hated sports. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. When he tried to push me off for the tenth time, I slammed my body down against his and rubbed my clit back and forth along his pelvic bone until we both came together. I collapsed onto him and then, when I got my breath back, got out of bed and began dressing to leave.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To my room,” I said.
“You can stay here and sleep with me if you want.”
“No, I really should be going. I have a lot of stuff to do tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you just stay and cuddle?” he asked.
“Did you just say the c-word?!”
I don’t cuddle, but I lay with him for a little while longer and listened to him talk about religion. Then I made my escape. Rod was still waiting in my room for me.
Afterward, Manson started calling me—every day. When I wasn’t there, he would leave me half-humorous, half-insane messages about wanting to set me on fire or feed me to Corey Feldman.
Since my marriage to Rod was loveless and sexless, I started seeing Manson on and off. But the more I got to know him, the weirder he became. He would talk about wanting to see girls fuck prosthetic limbs or sucking Twiggy’s dick, and I’d never be able to tell to what degree he was joking and to what degree he was serious. And he wanted to fuck me in the ass a little too often for my comfort. Every time we were naked, he’d be going for my butt like a rat to cheese.
I still like him to this day, but I couldn’t envision him as a boyfriend. It wasn’t that I was falling in or out of love with him. It was just that I was still married, and the whole strange affair was beginning to seem like a bad idea.
Of course, I was very discreet about the fling. However, as soon as the paparazzi photos of us hit the press, Howard Stern was on the phone asking about it. I denied the whole thing on the air and told him we were just friends. But the next day Manson was on his show, blabbing about the entire thing. I never pegged him as the type to kiss and tell.
Just when I thought life couldn’t get any more insane, a producer at the E! Channel called. She said that she wanted to fly me to Bangkok and Singapore to host two episodes of Wild On…
“We also want you to do the openings of Planet Hollywood in each city,” she said.
“What do you mean exactly by ‘do’?” I asked.
“Just interview the stars as they walk in on the red carpet,” she replied.
“No problem,” I told her with my usual lie. Actually, there was a problem: I didn’t know how to interview anyone.
The night of the Bangkok Planet Hollywood opening, I swooped my hair up, so that I looked like a reporter. At the time, most people didn’t know who I was—if they had known they were being interviewed by a porn star, half of them probably wouldn’t have done the interview. The first celebrity to arrive was Jackie Chan. As soon as he saw the big white E!, he ran over, picked me up, and kissed me. Then Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone all arrived at the same time. I was sandwiched between the three biggest action stars of the moment, and awestruck. I had to get them to say something to E! It needed to be a good question: something smart, perceptive, and classy.
“Do you eat here?” I asked.
Interviewing Bruce Willis for E! at the opening of Planet Hollywood.
I wanted
to shoot myself.
To my surprise, all three answered. I noticed that I was the only reporter they were talking to. Now was my chance to come up with a question that could elicit a headline-making response. This was going to be a test of my split-second thinking.
“What’s your favorite dish?”
I wanted to stab myself.
Still, they answered and stayed for more, perhaps precisely because I was asking such soft-ball questions instead of asking them about their personal lives.
Much more impressive than the big guys was Cindy Crawford. Just watching her walk up the stairs was inspiring, and she was so nice to me when I interviewed her.
Once the lights and cameras switched off, the party began. I sat down with my new best friend Cindy Crawford and we talked. However, I kept getting a weird vibe from her. I knew what it meant, because I’d experienced it so many times before, but I kept dismissing it. It couldn’t be true: she was Cindy Crawford, after all. When I turned my back to her to talk with an E! crew member sitting on my left, Cindy reached over and rubbed the back of my neck.
“Ooh,” she cooed. “Look at your beautiful tattoo!”
She touched my neck so softly and sensually. Was she making a pass at me? I froze. It was too much. She was so larger than life that I couldn’t even imagine running my tongue along that trademark mole of hers. So I excused myself to get a drink.
I walked past a table full of beautiful girls, with Wesley Snipes sitting smack in the middle of them all. He waved me over.
“So you’re the reporter from the E! Channel.” He smiled. “Why don’t you join us?”
Hesitantly, I sat down next to him, and all the other girls at the table shot me dagger looks. He was trying to get in their pants; they were trying to get in his pants; and I was confused. “So,” he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “do you like it up the ass?”
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale Page 28
