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

by Jake Brown

  Matt’s jealousy and naiveté were becoming more and more expensive for me by the day. We were in the middle of a lawsuit; he wouldn’t work a day job, and from what I could tell, spent most of his days waking up at noon, playing his guitar, talking on the phone for hours at a clip to his mother. When he wasn’t doing that, he was bitching at me about his paranoid delusions over my porn past, and I really felt like he was morphing from obsessed into possessed. I felt a real sense of disappointment in the way he was acting, one I’d never quite felt before, likely because I’d never invested so much faith and love in a man before. He was letting me down, one sad notch at a time. Sinking lower and lower with each day’s grilling over where I was hiding the rest of my non-existent porn merchandise in our apartment or how much of my professional name, ‘Jasmin’vs.‘Jasmin St. Claire’I was signing to a fan’s autographed still. He even got so crazy with jealousy one day that he bought a subscription to my website so he could poke around in the members-only section. I had no control over what the webmasters posted there for download, and didn’t make any money whatsoever from it. Matt’s behavior was costing me money, and in a former life, I would have dragged his ass out into an alley and beat the shit out of him for taking food out of my mouth, but my love for him made me feel helpless. I felt that much more considering the fact that there was NOTHING I could do to change my past and that Matt’s obsession with it was slowly costing us our future.

  I think the biggest problem had to do with jealousy on Matt’s part NOT over my past only, but also over my continued success as a figure within the entertainment business that was in demand where no one was knocking on his door. Yes he had his new project, but he’d walked out of a much more popular and established band, in part to be with me, so that made me more tolerant of his behavior than I might have been with any other guy. I was getting plenty of press from my metal veejaying and modeling — from Metal Edge to Metal Maniacs Magazine, if I appeared in a two-piece in an ad that would set him off. By the end of February, things had gotten out of hand between us over it: if he’d had it his way, I’d have been dressed like one of those Iranian Muslim Women cloaked from head to toe except for the eye slit. I had gotten so frustrated by that point that whenever we argued, I was just yelling back at him, no longer trying to reason. His jealousy had reached almost the point of insanity, and routinely he would storm off out of the apartment, down the street to his favorite local bar, and proceed to drink it off.

  He was a full-blown alcoholic by that point, and it got so bad that night-after-night, I would sleep on the floor of my walk-in closet because I couldn’t take another night of his badgering me about my past: ‘What was it like when you did it?’ ‘Why did you sleep with so many guys? ‘Aren’t you the queen of gang bang? Yes or no, answer me!’ Every day he would ask me that and it just hurt me so bad, worse and worse. It was all he talked about from the time I woke up in the morning till the time I fell to sleep at night, and I know one thing: my marriage DEFINITELY skipped its ‘honeymoon’ period that spring. I felt like I was on trial, or being put through a trial of some sort to test my heart’s deepest depths of resolve. Regardless of how deeply he continued to hurt me, I couldn’t bring myself to walk out on him, not so soon after we’d taken the vows to one another we had. I hope it’s obvious how seriously I took them in how much I did to support Matt — through EVERYTHING that hell could possibly have thrown at me. Sadly, it would only get worse as the spring wore on.

  By Easter, Matt had gotten so paranoid that he suggested I change my professional name, right as I had begun working as a host for a T.V. show in L.A. called Metal Scene T.V. Show. He knew that would never fly in reality, and it was becoming clear by such retarded suggestions that he was growing increasingly jealous of not just my past, but my continued celebrity where he wasn’t getting any fan attention. He would come with me to shows of the various bands I was profiling for the T.V. show, and I think deep down, when he was at these shows, he was saddened watching all these bands at the place he wanted to be, but wasn’t. Sadly, rather than

  32 0 what the hell was i thinking?!! use my position to his advantage in terms of networking, he would sit there drinking all night and usually most of the next day after he awoke from yet another hangover. His whole life was a hangover as far as I was concerned. By that point I couldn’t find a way to pull him out of it.

  He attended the comic convention with me in New York that April, and I finally think it hit me how deeply out of control his jealousy was spiraling. The first sign of storms to come began at the airport after we landed, when he lost it after watching me sign an autograph for a random fan. In the photo, I was wearing a dress, not even a 2-piece, and after the guy had walked away, Matt lost it with me: ‘You can’t sell that photo at the convention, if you sell that photo, I’ll leave you right now and fly home to Seattle.’ How could I feel good about relationship where my sense of security was constantly being shaken, where I couldn’t get any shelter? I actually felt shivers run through me at that point, and finally caved, agreeing not to sell that print at the show. Matt went as far as making me throw them in the airport trash, which made me furious because at these conventions, you make your money from autograph signings. Sure enough, I was right to be worried, because once we did get to the convention booth, Matt spent the entire day mad-dogging my fans as they asked for personalized autographs. For instance, I had one fan that drove all the way in from Connecticut, dropped about $300 on my stuff, and wanted me to sign an old nudie magazine, which Matt stepped in and stopped. His reason to the fan: ‘She can’t sign that, she doesn’t endorse that.’ I tried to maintain my composure as anger rose through me like a rocket launching, I was that red with fire, but in the calmest, sweetest voice I could muster, I said ‘Matt, be nice honey.’ And rather than getting my hint, he continued his protest, ‘No, she doesn’t endorse that.’ I lost probably $1000 from his behavior at that show.

  He was fucking with my bottom line, and ignoring the fact that I couldn’t put on my advertisement in the convention lobby/promo materials that Jasmin St. Claire — sex symbol international — ‘DOESN’T SIGN NUDE MATERIALS OF ANY SORT.’ Could you imagine that? It defeats the whole purpose. It wasn’t just on business trips either, at home I dealt with this type of manic jealous misbehavior all the time, and I’d find myself CRYING all the time because it was so frustrating. My friends hated seeing what I was going through, and they all tried to help in their own ways: one even sent me $2000 on the sly to help out because things were continually getting worse and worse financially. Matt was putting a stranglehold on my ability to earn a living, and when he wasn’t bitching about my inability to support the both of us according to his strict moral standards he spent the rest of his time wining about missing his mommy in Seattle.

  By the summer, what life we had left together had become a living hell. He would drink every night away at this neighborhood bar, and stick me with these $250 and $300 bar tabs due at the end of every week. If I threatened not to pay them, he’d counter with a threat to leave me. Even when he would admit he had a problem with alcoholism, he’d blame me, claiming his drinking habit was a coping mechanism for dealing with my adult film past. Then he’d run back off to the bar with his buddy Kaleb, who’d flown down from Seattle. I could tell, in addition to his usual griping about my past, Matt was equally as bothered by the present state of my celebrity. Traction had begun to gain with my new gig hosting the Metal Scene T.V. Show. He would HATE it when people recognized me in public, especially when it was a fan that had begun following me during my years in adult film. I couldn’t win for losing with him, but couldn’t imagine my life without him either. Not yet anyway. I just didn’t know where he was going with all of this, but it didn’t feel right in my gut, I was just too confused to know what to do at that point.

  The only thing I could think to do was support him in his quest to get a new band off the ground, so all through that summer, I drove him back and forth to the Valley while his band was recor
ding with Bob Kulick. In addition to the costs I’d already laid out for the demo — almost $3000 — I paid all the gas, bought and brought lunch to him at the studio every day. This was mainly because the loser didn’t know how to drive a car, so I had to chauffer him not just to and from the studio, but EVERYWHERE. That’s probably for the better because he was drunk so much of the time he likely would have wrecked my car in a DUI if he had had his license. I was the most supportive person of his music career out of anyone close to him, and its sad thinking back about it now how little his behavior reflected any thanks for that. Looking back, I also see now what a very self-centered guy he was — and many musicians are — but they usually have FANS to validate that egocentricity. On Matt’s end, there were none, so I never understood why he felt entitled to act like a prima donna. I was his BIGGEST fan — and arguably only visible one at that point, including his family, so I guess I felt entitled to a little more than what he was giving me in the way of love and appreciation.

  Amid the battle I was waging to save my marriage on the West Coast, back home on the East Coast, I was also fighting with my mother in court over inheritance money my father had left me that she wouldn’t give up control of. She already didn’t approve of my marriage to Matt, but then again, she had never approved of any guy I’d dated since high school so I was trying not to rock that boat as settlement talks between she and I went on. Still, Matt was constantly asking me to meet her, an introduction I DEFINITELY did not intend to make given how uncontrollable his O.C.D. blathering about my adult film past had gotten. I had kept that from my mother entirely, and didn’t intend to give dipshit the opportunity to rat me out to her with the litigation still hanging over us.That was just common sense, which Matt clearly had none of.

  By the fall, things hadn’t improved between my loving, supportive husband and me — what a shocker! — But I was doing my best to hang in. I could never understand what I had done wrong as a wife, but Matt still had this talent for mind-fucking me into believing all of his possessive jealousy and verbal abuse was my fault. He was always challenging me to prove how much I loved him, draining me of energy and the funds to keep our life going at the same time. Every day, he would make me feel shittier and shittier about myself, and I kept apologizing, but it never seemed to make a difference. Nothing was ever good enough for him, and it FINALLY sparked a glimmer of light where I’d been blind from love to the question of: Was this guy possibly using me? It sure felt like it at that point, and once that possibility had started dawning on me, it made things like his buying my birthday present that year at Tiffany’s on a credit card I eventually paid off, that much harder to ignore. It was a habit on his part that was becoming harder and harder for me to afford as well which made the news that his Himsa settlement check was coming in soon that much more welcome. It was the first money he would be bringing in during the time we’d been married, and no sooner had he gotten the news, in his head he was already spending half of the roughly $8000 he was due, on a new guitar!!!

  When I reminded him we had a heavy credit card debt and we needed to put at least half the check toward it, he shot me a dismissive ‘of course,’ and then launched into me about my ‘racy’role in Dorm Daze II — it was a movie where he’d sat on the set and watched me film. Still, now, over almost a year of marriage later, it was suddenly too racy for his conservative taste, and since I’d gotten rid of anything ‘porn-related’ he could complain about, this was the next desperate level he’d sunken too. It was disappointing in ways I can’t even fully describe in words, because he was now demeaning the transition I’d worked so hard to make from adult film/wrestling into mainstream T.V. and film gigs.To realize that my own husband would stoop as low as to try and tear down that progress was the equivalent of his spitting in my face, and I finally felt he’d crossed a line that I couldn’t forgive. Looking back in hindsight, it was obvious to me that he wasn’t ready to be married, I had his back that way, but he clearly didn’t have mine. Whenever people in the business would talk shit about him behind his back or online, I was the FIRST to come to his defense, but all he could do in return was talk the same kind of shit to me about my past. At that point in our marriage, he had nothing going on with his career and was drinking to cope with it, and instead of admitting THAT was the root of his drinking, he chose to blame it on me and things I’d done almost a decade before.

  A lot of our turmoil at that point stemmed from Matt out of desperation to have some hangers-on like he had back in the Himsa days — having hooked up with all these little 19 and 20-year-old equivalents of the cast of the movie Mallrats. He spent his days at the bar illegally plying them with drinks, then listening to them build him up about how Dorm Daze was my most offensive on-screen appearance ever. Since he’d never watched the movie to begin with and wouldn’t because of all the shit his little under-aged rat-pack was telling him would upset him, he never really could be informed. Sitting here now, I can’t believe I’m even bothering to give him this much explanatory air-time in MY life story, but he was my husband, and I want my fans to understand why I went to such lengths to try and save my marriage. I felt like there was no way a bunch of kids, who operated on my ex-husband’s maturity level, could break up our home.The whole thing seemed silly to me to begin with, but because they fed into his desperate ego, Matt took them seriously, which meant that I had to as well. Accepting the fact that my husband had the emotional maturity of a teenager was difficult to accept, but as time went on, it explained a lot of his naiveté, and made me seriously begin to question whether we could really have a future together.

  We were definitely not at a good point in our marriage, and I’d finally begun to quietly accept the possibility that things might not change. I had been the fiercest believer in the opposite notion with Matt for too long, and it had taken so much out of me that letting go of hope was at times the only freedom I felt being with him. Most of the time I felt trapped, but still in spite of a CHORUS of noise from friends of mine that I needed to cut my losses and leave him now before things got any worse for me, for some reason, I couldn’t let him go. I spent Thanksgiving that year in L.A. laid up sick in bed, and things weren’t looking any brighter heading into the end of the year. Matt’s picking and picking at me about the National Lampoon movie got so bad at one point in early December that he actually walked out on me! After a week, he came back on his knees, crying and telling me he loved me, but it didn’t give me hope things would really improve. I’d started to lose faith in him as a real man by that point, but tried to give things another shot given it was the holidays, and the little girl in me still believed sometimes miracles could happen at Christmas. That’s what I told myself anyway, I just loved him too much to let go of him that easily, even as difficult as things already were.

  When Christmas rolled around that year, Mr. Romantic decided to thank me for all these nice presents I’d bought for him by taking me to dinner at the fucking Rainbow Bar and Grill. I love the Rainbow, but it’s not exactly Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which we probably couldn’t have afforded at that point anyway. We were going broke, FAST, and every time I tried to bring up our financial situation, Matt would hit me with a new rant about my past and how he didn’t want to live off that money. Still, he wouldn’t lift a finger to try and bring in any new revenues, all he kept doing was talking on and on about his forthcoming Himsa settlement check. What he didn’t want to hear was the reality that we were so deep in debt at that point that his measly $7000 or $8000 wouldn’t begin to cover what we owed. Let alone, what we would owe as time went on and interest rates continued to mount on the credit cards we’d been living off. We spent New Year’s Eve at the Terrace Bar and Grill in Marina Del Rey, and I did my best to let my mountain of worries go for the moment, but in truth, I couldn’t shake my worries for our future. I just wanted to die. I tried hanging myself finally when Matt had been drinking, but stupidly, I didn’t tie the noose tight enough, and my feet were too close to the ground. Besides, who would h
ave taken care of the cats?

  Part XX i

  Thanksgiving Debacle

  2007 began with the receipt of Matt’s Himsa check, which was a nice, albeit brief reprieve from our impending financial storm front. Matt was still off living in a fantasyland land that I was bankrolling. In reality, and at this point, my savings had been sucked almost entirely dry — down into Matt’s liver via his nasty alcohol addition, which he spent virtually every day up until this point perfecting, rather than focusing on music or making our marriage work. On top of that, there hadn’t been any movement with his new band demo, which was truly worrisome. I’d driven him all over L.A. that prior fall to labels to shop it, using all my connections at Metal Blade Records, Century Media Records, and telling all the bands I interviewed for Metal’s Dark Side and my TV show about his new group. I had been his biggest promoter up to that point, but the bottom line was his music had to stand on its own, and no one had offered a deal thus far. When he did finally receive his settlement check from his ex-band Himsa, it was bittersweet because the money was already spent.

  Of the $8000 he received in his settlement, we paid about $3500 off on a credit card I’d been paying for him; then he took another $3000 and bought a new fucking guitar, as if he didn’t have enough of those lying around. After the credit card tab and the guitar, and settling with Bob Kulick on the balance we owed for the demo I’d financed 90% of the past summer, we were left with a little under $1000 to look ahead with. Thankfully, the NAAM convention came in later January, which was my first real opportunity that year to make any new money, so I was excited to go and just praying that Matt didn’t fuck anything up for me during my signings with his drinking and jealousy. I was signing for Coffin Case, and also covering the convention live for the L.A. Metal Scene TV Show, which was a big deal for me, because I got to email Lamb of God, Opeth,