by Jake Brown
I was desperate to make my marriage work, and driven by the moment of love I felt trapped in, I decided to put it all on the line for my man.The next day I went down to JP Morgan where I had my IRA saving account and liquidated it. At that point, we also needed the money to live on, but I put aside almost $10,000 of it for our forthcoming trip to England. Amazingly, my travel agent was able to find two-first class, round-trip tickets from L.A. to the U.K. for $3000.00, so we had enough money to live on and would at least be traveling into the unknown in style. We were going to be leaving in September and would be staying with his friend James. At least we wouldn’t have a hotel bill to deal with on top of all the other expenses for the trip. I can safely admit I was nervous as HELL, because even though Matt was writing with viable industry players that had recently left Cradle of Filth, there was so much we didn’t know. I would ask Matt, ‘ How long is it going to take you to get a record deal?’ And he would always say, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t take long.’ Plus, he was in litigation with Himsa regarding publishing and his ex-band mates had been trashing him all over the rock media for the lawsuit, so we had a lot riding on the Europe writing trip going well.
Prior to leaving on the trip, we picked up our wedding bands — well in advance of our end-of-year wedding date — and I felt like maybe this trip would be the answer to our problems. It would give us both an opportunity to get a fresh start, away from all the drama of L.A., but I was still very nervous. He’d been displaying different sides of his personality since our engagement that I hadn’t seen surface before. From his drinking to his inability to think for himself, which routinely caused him to take the prodding of someone like his mother about my past and re-create a problem even after he and I had settled it. She was waging a campaign to derail our relationship before we got down the aisle, as were all these little groupie/hangers-on that Matt had started hanging around with at the local bar where he’d spent most of the summer running up bar tabs that I had to settle. I loved him in spite of all of the wreckage he’d already caused to my financial well-being, and the sacrifices I made for him in that vein should be all the evidence I need of how committed I was to making things work between us.
He’d gone crazy with it by this point too: demanding I go and have every site on the internet that had ever run a news story about me, or posted a picture, that made any mention whatsoever of my adult film past, be taken down. He was obsessed, to the extreme of wanting me to find some way for eBay to cease the selling of anything of mine — whether I had ownership of it or not. Fans of mine trade my memorabilia all the time on eBay, and I see nothing from it financially, but Matt was so threatened by the existence of any of it that I had to lie to him and promise I’d try. I guess by that point, the emotional abuse he was putting me through had pushed me to a desperate place of trying to do anything to keep us together. He was drunk all the time, and whenever I tried to talk to his mother about it, she would suggest it was because he couldn’t handle my past. I’d come home and find him rooting through my personal belongings, ranting on about how he had to know who he was marrying — all based on his mother terrorizing us with phone calls questioning my past on a daily basis. I was VERY alarmed at the psychotic and paranoid way Matt was acting as a result, but I just kept telling myself that once we got to England, away from everything where he could focus on his music with no distractions, that things would improve between us.
In early September, we left for London for Matt to begin his collaboration with Mark Powell, who had played prior thereto in Cradle of Filth and My Dying Brides, and their friend, James McGilroy, who was also formerly of Cradle of Filth. The collaboration looked really promising, and the plan was for the three of them to write and record a demo that we would shop later in the fall after we got back to the States. I had EVERYTHING riding on our relationship at that point, considering I’d liquidated over a hundred thousand dollars total from my IRAs to support us over the next couple years while Matt’s music career got back on track. I believed in his talent, and was betting everything on him because I was so madly in love. One thing I found ironic was he had no problem with the gamble I’d taken to finance our bohemian artist lifestyle — even in spite of the fact that I’d earned that money from my adult film years. That made him a total hypocrite in my eyes, but I felt as though when two people commit to one another on the level we had for better or worse means just what it sounds like. Things had already been at their worst for a while, and with this trip, I was investing my life savings in the prospect they would get better once Matt’s new band was on their feet. On top of everything else, I was also juggling a litigation battle with my mother over control of the inheritance my father had left to me when he passed.
When we landed in England, Matt was so happy and excited to be making music again that my hopes brightened considerably about our turning things around personally in the same time that they would professionally. We were staying in London, and the band was recording in Sheffield, so we spent our first few days vacationing around London. When we arrived in Sheffield, we were initially booked in to this SHITTY, seedy hotel, so naturally I got us moved — on my dime of course — into a charming Bed & Breakfast that was actually owned by Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen’s family. While Matt would spend his days writing with his new group, I would sightsee around the countryside, trying to make it as much of a vacation as I could. Matt and I went to see Stonehenge together, where Led Zeppelin had recorded When the Levy Breaks, which was pretty cool. We also got to see one of my favorite metal bands, Opeth, live while we were over there, which was a lot of fun. So being in England was truly a refuge of sorts for me, in spite of how expensive it was turning out to be.
Matt and his band were making progress, still, as happy as I was for him, not once did he stop to thank me for the amazing level of support I was giving him to make this trip possible. One night it came to bother me so greatly that I called him out on it, and told him: ‘It seems like you take this for granted, I’m here standing behind you and took all my money out to support you,’and he still didn’t seem to get it. Responsibility always seemed to be lost on him where money was concerned, and toward the end of the trip — in spite of how vocally happy I was about the progress his band was making with their demo — quietly I was beginning to feel I’d been used. That was a horrible feeling to have in my gut, and in the face of my still being very much in love. I dealt with it, but as we headed back to the L.A. from England in early October, my uneasiness continued to grow, even as our wedding date was fast approaching.
In October, my birthday rolled around, and Matt bought me a gift at Tiffany’s — using a credit card of course to pay for it. But he really showed his class act a few days after, when he found some old nude slides from some shoot years earlier I’d forgotten I still had buried in my closet. He used that as an excuse to begin bitching at me again about my website, which was out of my hands because of the debt I was in to the webhosting company. One thing about my husband-to-be that had always bothered me but more recently, had begun to outright alarm me was the fact that he had such a little grasp on the real world in terms of money. His naiveté was STUNNING at times, and I was only able to ignore that concern because of how deeply in love I was with him at that time. He’d even told me he’d rather starve than live off of porn money — which may sound ideal but wasn’t realistic at all given his lack of ability to bring in any income whatsoever. The only job he seemed willing to take was as a bartender at the very bar he wasted most of his days getting drunk at, which didn’t seem like a smart idea to me given the alcoholic symptoms he was already displaying in our relationship.
It was very confusing at times because here’s the love of my life professing he wants to be with me and take care of me for the rest of my life. Can’t he man up enough to go out and get a temporary job on his own to bring in any money? On top of that he had the balls to question how I put a roof over my head. It just seemed CRAZY to me! Still, for better or worse, I was crazy about hi
m, and I was about to take the former vow very literally as our wedding date fast approached. Rather than contribute ANY money toward that union — which I was paying for entirely on my own — Matt threw another monkey wrench in my confidence in him when he bought a brand new guitar in late November. He had just gotten a new credit card, and the last thing he — or WE — needed was a new guitar when he had 8 others, mounting debt, and he had no source of income. I made him return the guitar, which he pouted about, but since I was paying both his and my bills, I felt it was my right.
We went up to Seattle for Thanksgiving. I’m sure you can figure out I wasn’t really looking forward to this. We stayed at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle. Naturally I paid for it because his parents hadn’t invited us to stay with them, even though Matt said they had plenty of room. On top of that, rather than have us over for any kind of watered down congratulations party/traditional sit-down Thanksgiving turkey dinner, Matt’s parents instead met us at some Thai restaurant downtown for lunch. The whole thing was insulting frankly, and they didn’t even offer us a ride back to our hotel afterward, they told us to take a TAXI!! I felt like I wasn’t wanted, and they had done a very good job of making me feel like absolute shit, which I deduced was part of their strategy of trying to make me so mad that I would call off the wedding. Unfortunately for them, all it did was make me more determined to make my relationship with Matt work. That much harder — I did toward that end.
As our marrying date approached, Matt continued to harass me more and more intensely about my website, almost as if he was becoming obsessed. My hairdresser Debbie — who was my confidant for much of my roller coaster ride with Matt — warned me that between the pressure from his family and the jealousy over my past that was consuming him more and more each day, I would regret going through with the wedding. I was so in love with Matt though that I was willing to forge on, even though she also told me he was also not the man I wanted to have my children with — and she had four. I thought it was cute that Matt and I were always together. Attached at the hip like Siamese Twins, I didn’t have a problem with that, but friends of mine tried to point out — correctly in hindsight — that for Matt, that behavior was part of his possessive side come fully to life now that we were engaged. I hadn’t been engaged before to anyone, so I had no idea how men were supposed to behave, and I know my status as a sex symbol caused him some legitimate insecurity around other men. But he’d started to let his paranoia extend as boundlessly as the internet, which I had no control over. I knew this much: he wanted control over me, and at times I was so blindly in love with him that I guess I had no problem giving it to him.
We spent Christmas in L.A., and I’d spoiled him rotten on gifts, but on Christmas morning, Matt had climbed into bed to awake me — not with a kiss — but rather with some new rant about a section of my website he’d been obsessively stalking and prowling around the night before! I saw red and lost it, pushing him to the floor, yelling for him to get out of my house and my life: ‘That is not how you start a Christmas morning, get out of this house NOW!’ Here I’d gone out of my way to buy all these gifts for him, and this is what I was waking up to Christmas morning? I’m surprised I didn’t beat the fuck out of him, because I bet any other woman reading this would have. I just slapped him and kept yelling ‘Get out, I can’t believe this is Christmas and all you have to say to me is the same old bullshit about a website I don’t even control?!’Nothing was ever good enough for him, NOTHING, and I’d at that point given him just about everything I had to give.
He kept telling me he didn’t know what he’d done wrong as I pushed him out the door, and it was the saddest thing for me that he’d pushed me to that extreme, but all I wanted was to have a peaceful Christmas with my fiancé, but he’d ruined it. He called me an hour afterward crying about how he’d wanted to make me breakfast-in-bed, and all I could think to say back was ‘Yeah, but you probably would have been bitching about where the money to buy the eggs came from!’ I was done letting his shit slide, and it was only six days before our wedding date, so part of me was convinced the engagement was off. He came crawling back on his knees to me later that day with roses, crying and apologizing for his behavior, swearing he’d never go on the site again. I took him back because I loved him, but he’d still ruined Christmas, which is one of mine and many peoples’ most treasured holidays of the year. Even today, I still feel he deserved my rage, but I felt my hands were tied at that point because I was so in love and would have done anything in the world to keep him.
We were married on the 31st of December 2005, almost a year after we’d first met. It hadn’t been a fairytale engagement, but nothing in my life has ever been that easy, and I have always felt any real relationship requires hard work, so it didn’t scare me. I wanted to have a nice wedding, but it seemed like too much to plan, so we decided to go to the beach and just keep it simple and beautiful with the ocean as our backdrop. Matt’s mom had even surprised us by offering to make a wedding dress for me, but backed out at the last minute, which I should have seen coming. It was a shitty thing to do. Not only did they not bother coming to the wedding, but they didn’t even send a card, nothing. When my mother had expressed reservations about my marriage to Matt, I’d done the adult thing and stood by my husband. I said to my mother, ‘If you don’t want to be part of our life now, maybe you will somewhere down the line,’ but he wasn’t even standing up to his parents in my defense. I guess I made my peace with it in the moment because he was going through with the wedding in spite of his family’s objections, which was the most important thing. Thankfully, I had family and friends on my side, but his were nowhere to be found.
It was definitely a wedding pulled off against the odds: it was pouring rain the day of the nuptials, we had a small ceremony with close friends and no family, but we were still the happiest couple in our little world. Afterward, I heard Matt’s mom was crying on the phone when the ceremony was over, but not happy tears and that made me love him even more, knowing he’d gone through with the wedding anyway. I knew I had married a mama’s boy, but I never wanted anyone else but him, he’s the only person I ever wanted to be with. I was proud to be married to him, in spite of his alcoholism, jealousy and possessiveness; his nutty, overprotective mother, and lack of ability to bring in an income of any sort. I was willing to do anything to make the relationship work because as much as I might be able to fight with him, I couldn’t fight the love I felt at the time, so I decided to walk the line, as they say, for both of us. Needless to say, with that decision, my list of New Years resolutions was pretty loaded for bear headed into 2006. Still, the bottom line above anything and everything else was, I was determined to make my marriage work.
Part XX
Married, but still alone in this world…and suicidal
After we married, Matt began to become more possessive than ever before, to the point where he tried to regulate my autograph signings by demanding that I not sign anything ‘Jasmin St. Claire!’I felt like asking him, ‘Who the HELL are you to be doing any of this?’But then I would remind myself I had taken him as my husband, so in his twisted mind, he probably felt he did have a right. Our marriage was complicated right from the start, and it didn’t get any simpler as the year approached its close. He’d throw shit in my face like ‘What’s more important to you: ME or porn?’as though I were still in a business I’d worked my ass off to get out of as quickly as I did and still remain as popular years later. He had no appreciation for the work involved in getting anywhere near the level of popularity I had, from the sacrifices to the ways in which those sacrifices could continue to pay you back years after they’d passed if you played your cards right. Matt had no idea how to play that game, the only ones he liked to play were with my head, and I was getting sicker and more tired of it with each day that passed.
On top of that, NOTHING was happening with the demo I had financed his trip to Europe to write, and we were steadily sinking further and farther into debt. I kept asking
him: ‘When are you going to start shopping a record deal?’ And he finally explained the band would have to take the demo they’d tracked in England and re-record it into a more proper Label-Quality demo, and enlisted veteran producer Bob Kulick for the task. I was excited for Matt because Bob Kulick’s resume included stints as Kiss’s unofficial guitarist in the late 70 and early 80s, as well as with such rock legends as Meatloaf and W.A.S.P. Naturally, I was once again the Executive Producer on the project, laying out all the money for
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Kulick’s studio time upfront, as Matt was still going back and forth with Himsa regarding his settlement check. That same month, we attended the N.A.M.M. show, which gave Matt a chance to promote his new project while I did my Coffincase and B.C. Rich booth signings, as well as a Coffincase-sponsored Fashion Show. For a change, Matt actually acted like he was proud of me, for the day anyway, but as soon as we were home and away from the public, his jealous side reared its ugly head right back up again. He was still on me about taking down my website, www.jasminstclaire.com, which I no longer had control over, and therein no ability to remove it from the web.That only provoked him to make the even creepier suggestion that I sue the site owners or try to buy them out with what was left of my life savings that we were living on at the time.
