The best thing about dancing in London was all the rules. We had a six-foot rule (meaning the guys had to keep six feet away from us), so there were no dirty lap dances, as is common in the States. I was especially grateful for this when one of the guys from Salomon Smith Barney came into the Rhino to see me one night. I gave him a table dance, from six feet away, so he had no chance of groping me!
The money was pretty good, too. I could get paid £250 just to sit and have dinner and drinks with the customers for an hour. Some guys would pay me just to hang out and talk and drink with them. It was really fun, and I enjoyed being an entertainer on that very direct, personal level.
I never saw it as any kind of stepping stone, and getting into porn never crossed my mind at all. But in hindsight it was clearly an important transitional period in my life.
If I could go back in time, I would have stuck with the singing and acting classes that I'd started in Sydney and really tried to pursue that, rather than listen to what my parents wanted me to do. Their not encouraging me to pursue my dreams – well, that's still quite devastating to me. However, I think my life would have gone nowhere had I stayed at the Spearmint Rhino in London or just carried on as a glamour model doing soft core shoots. Looking back, I'm so glad I moved on. I didn't know then about half the things I was about to do (and might've shrieked in horror if I had known) but I'm certain that I would never have taken the time to go to mainstream acting auditions while I was stripping and doing glamour modelling in the UK.
After the madness of modelling for small-time photographers, shaking my booty for the lads and louts, and freezing my butt off while trying to analyse the volatile financial markets, I was ready for a serious change of lifestyle. London is a great place to visit but, personally, I couldn't handle living there. I was a fun-loving Aussie girl, and palm trees, pink sunsets, miles of beaches and throngs of beautiful people were much more my scene. Southern California was waiting for me.
So how did my big move from London to LA come about? It was simple: one night in December 2000 at the Spearmint Rhino, a bunch of us were getting drunk after work as usual when I dared one of the club's owners, an American, to fl y me back to the States with him. To my complete astonishment, he called my bluff , and four hours later we were on a plane – I'd got a free trip to America!
I left everything behind and flew away on the wings of sheer spontaneity. I trusted my instincts to guide me onwards, even if most normal people would scarcely have considered it a good career move. My only plan at the time was to travel round the United States, hopefully making money by stripping, and then return to London to pick up the things that I'd left behind and take them and myself back to Sydney.
But things didn't quite turn out that way.
Chapter Four
LIKE A
VIRGIN
After doing more than 400 movies and magazine layouts, I find myself randomly remembering things I had once forgotten. Sequences of events come back to me in hazy fl ashes and sudden spurts, perhaps because I wasn't always entirely sober at the time (although I always am nowadays, as I'm much more conscious of my image).
This can be quite distracting when you take into account the outrageous, crazy or just downright ridiculous things I've experienced. One time, for instance, a bunch of us were smoking weed on set, and I was working with this guy who had really long balls. The camera couldn't see the hardcore action because of them. So the director yelled out, 'Hey, move your damn cow udders. I can't see the penetration.' I lost it after that, and we had to take a break. I was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes, and the make-up artist had to re-do my make-up!
Not being entirely sober on set is a common trait among quite a few porn stars, though we're not always allowed to admit it. In fact, we're not supposed to 'fess up to a lot of things. A producer I used to work with once threw a fit when she read one of my interviews in which I admitted that I have terrible trouble achieving orgasm from penetration, which is true and still remains my biggest problem sexually. But tsk, tsk, I was a porn star and porn stars don't say things like that! We're all supposed to be these super-orgasmic supersluts, don't you know?
Yep, my tough-Aussie swagger and my big mouth, those sure get me into all kinds of trouble. But I'd rather speak the truth instead of kowtowing to some prescribed standard that's hypocritical or false. And that's not something that's common to most porn stars, most of whom happily toe the line, doing what they're told. I have never been able to do that, and that could be one of the reasons why I've never been signed to a contract with any of the major porn production companies. I've never had time for all the petty politics and back-stabbing.
So here is the truth about how I got started in the glamorous profession that I'm in today, to the full extent that I can actually understand it and make sense of it all myself!
The Spearmint Rhino guy who flew me from London lived in Houston, and after we touched down at the airport there he kindly put me up in a hotel for three nights. He even had his best friend, some pro-golfer guy, take me shopping, 'cause I had no clothes and no money! Then he flew me to Los Angeles with him and got me a separate room in the hotel where he was staying.
Within my first week of being in LA, he arranged my first gig – at a Spearmint Rhino, naturally enough. Unfortunately, it was in the worst possible location – the nowheresville of the City of Industry, in what Southern Californians call the Inland Empire. I hated it and didn't go back, because the guys there were sleazy and kept trying to grope me. There might not have been a six-foot rule like there was in London, but there was certainly a no-touching rule – it was just that some of the creeps in this place didn't know how to respect it.
After doing the gig, I had my benefactor drop me off at a hotel downtown – because I didn't realise that downtown was nowhere near Hollywood! And we said our goodbyes from there.
Fortunately, my agent in London had referred me to a really great photographer named Hank Londoner, and I caught a cab to his studio in Culver City as soon as I could. When I got there, he told me he wanted to shoot me for adult magazines. And that's how my new career began, from London to Londoner! Hank was around 50 years old, with greyish long hair and a moustache and an interesting accent. (He had come to the United States from Israel and had started out in New York before moving to Los Angeles in 1997.) He was very well known for shooting for Penthouse, Swank, Leg World and many other magazines, and he had also started his own magazine, New Rave, in 1994.
Hank told me he wanted to photograph me exclusively, so I should get in touch with a guy called Roy Garcia. Roy would be my agent, and he would 'hold' me for after Hank got back from his upcoming two-week holiday. I found out that Roy Garcia had discovered a lot of major talent (Belladonna, Noname Jane, Bunny Luv and Kaylani Lei, to name just a few), so I thought 'what the hell' and rang him up. We arranged a meeting, and he came and met me outside my downtown hotel, as planned, and drove me to his place in Granada Hills. There, he asked me a deceptively simple question: 'Do you want to make a little money or a lot of money?'
I asked what a 'lot of money' would entail, and he said the magic word, 'Hardcore.'
I said, 'Sure, I'll try that.'
The single burning question most people want to ask a porn star is surely this: what were you thinking when you got into it?
Not everyone I meet actually asks it, but I'm sure they're thinking it. And the answer that a lot of the girls in the business will give you, if they're being honest, is 'I wasn't'. I know so, because I'm one of those girls.
Not a lot of deep thought went into it, at least not on any kind of conscious level. Saying I did it for the money or the drugs or the sex is only part of the answer. Those are really superficial reasons at best. Was I thinking? The truth is, I really had no goals coming into this industry. In the beginning, I did just do it for the money, and then it kind of grew on me. And I started to enjoy it, then I started to hate it, then enjoy it, then hate it, and I just keep going round a
nd round with my emotions.
Another part of the answer is that porn was a great way for me to be able to become an actress, even if it wasn't the kind of acting I had intended on doing when I was growing up. But at least I got to live a part of my dream. And I also meant it as kind of a 'fuck you' to society and all the people who put me down. My newfound sense of glamour was sweet revenge on those who had ever made me feel like shit in the past.
When I made that critical decision to leave London and move so impulsively to Los Angeles, something was simmering in my brain. What I could never escape from was the fact that I had been teased my whole school life, until I was 14, about being skinny and poor and having big eyes. There were always people saying I would never amount to anything, because all I wanted to do was be a singer, dancer, actress and model. Even my own mother laughed and jeered at me. I guess this was my way of showing everyone what I was made of (quite literally, I guess!).
So here I was in LA, about to banish the ghosts of my abusive childhood and wipe the slate clean, post-London, post-Brisbane, post-everything from my first 20 years on the planet. I was going to start anew in Southern California and reinvent myself as Monica Mayhem.
It didn't take long for Roy to sign me up to shoot my first hardcore porn film, Real Sex Magazine #38. Bill Witrock was directing and I was starring opposite Lee Stone. Talk about in at the deep end! It was my very first time in more ways than one. I had never even seen a porn movie, I didn't know any names of any porn stars, and I didn't care. I do remember being a little self-conscious about whether or not I'd shaved properly! I didn't know how much pubic hair to leave in place, and I didn't even know about douching.
Roy explained to me what I needed to know about shooting porn. He was very professional about it, by which I mean there was no question of my having to have sex with him or anything. (And there were definitely no 'auditions', in case any of you were wondering!) At the time, I hadn't even had sex in front of a still camera – I hadn't done it with any kind of camera, still or moving, at all!
A few days later, Roy drove me to the set, which was at Bill's house, and I remember being so nervous. I had not had sex for almost a year, and he kept assuring me it would be easy. Bill was the cameraman as well as the director. He was nice and made me feel comfortable. I immediately received a vibe from him that he'd obviously done this a thousand times. 'Don't worry, Lee is a pro,' he said to me. 'He'll take good care of you. This is going to be really quick.'
I was led straight into make-up and was impressed at how glamorous the make-up artist made me look – much better and more natural than I'd looked in my soft core shoots in London.
Then in came Lee Stone – this huge, very buff and totally porno-looking guy who was very flirtatious, which made me feel comfortable and sexy. I had been worried at first, not knowing if I'd like the guy, but it turned out I was attracted to him, so everything was great! I actually don't remember much about the lead-up to the scene, but my jaw dropped when I saw him au naturel. His cock was so huge and it was very uniquely curved.
There were just three of us there in that room in Bill's house, and Lee and I did it on the bed. I had the guts to go through with it partly because it sounded so crazy – like, 'Wow, am I really doing this?' Lee was indeed a seasoned pro who knew what he was doing for the camera, so he pretty much just threw me into each position while Bill filmed and directed. It was over within an hour.
I can't remember much of it, other than my own feelings of being very unsure if I had done a good job or not. I knew full well how to have sex, of course, but I didn't know how to have sex for the camera. It was almost like being a virgin all over again. (Well, almost!)
I do remember peeing in the bathtub for some 'behind the scenes' footage. I thought that was a very odd thing to do and was a little uncomfortable doing it at first. But hey, I thought, I've peed in the bush many a time in front of friends, so what the hell!
So that was my first hardcore shoot. I got my cheque (for US$1500), and when Roy picked me up I told him I was ready to shoot more. I said to myself, and to Roy, 'If I don't like it, I'll stop doing it.'
It was that direct and straightforward for me. I know of strippers who say that they can take their clothes off and spread for men to see their pink but they'd never do porn. I'm the exact opposite. Spreading my thighs for a live audience is something I've done a lot, but I find it a little creepy sometimes. It's too up-close and personal, and I really have to get a little buzzed before going onstage and stripping to show my pussy. Porn is a lot more comfortable for me. I don't really think about the fact that guys are going to be watching the film and jerking off to me. The transition was pretty smooth, as far as I was concerned, and many people have said that I seemed more experienced than I actually was.
When Hank got back from his holidays, we shot some hardcore stills in his studio in Culver City, and I really enjoyed posing for him. They were long days but good days. I did some solo sets, some girl–girl and then boy–girl layouts. I was made up to look really glamorous, and again I remember thinking how unlike my tawdry modelling experiences in London this was. Everything was so amazingly professional – the make-up, the wardrobe and the sets – and I felt like a princess.
We did other sessions in other locations after that, and one in particular stands out. Hank took me and a male star named Nick Manning and some other chick (whose name I can't remember) to a gorgeous beach to shoot. We got stoned the whole time, and it was so much fun. A lot of sand found its way into everything – in places you don't want sand, if you get my drift – and the other girl, who was from England, kept complaining about it. I didn't take much notice of her. I was too busy fucking Nick Manning.
One of those photo sets was sold to Australian Penthouse, actually. It's crazy, but I never stopped to think that people who knew me back home – including, God forbid, my brother and father – could have seen those photos in Australia. I just wasn't in that sensible sort of headspace.
Because the turnover of new actors in these stills and movies is usually very, very high (the directors and photographers like fresh faces all the time), I thought I had to make the most of it while it lasted. In my first year, 2001, I found myself doing a lot of shoots – an average of 20 shoots a month – which meant that I had a lot of sex and certainly made up for lost time. I had no problem with throwing myself into it like this, but it took me at least six months to feel confident that I was actually giving a good performance.
A few bad reviews didn't help matters. Early on, a writer who was apparently not a fan of mine criticised me in every one of my scenes that he reviewed in Adult Video News (AVN), which is the main American adultfilm-industry trade magazine. This really got to me. Back then, I would actually watch my movies and review my scenes to see what I could do better. And really, I couldn't see what was supposed to be so bad about them. I guess that guy had it in for me, or maybe he just wasn't a fan. Something like that can really hurt your career. It was only when I won a couple of awards and was getting loads of recognition that I started to feel more confident.
I won my first industry award in the same year that I'd started – the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) Award for 'Starlet of the Year' for 2001 – and then the Fans of X-Rated Entertainment (FOXE) 'Vixen of the Year' award in 2002. I was quite ambitious, actually, and I kept my mind on things like trying to get good reviews, good publicity, hot-looking box-covers, lots of magazine covers and, of course, making lots of money. Things like that kept me going, so I did feel very validated when I won. It was such an amazing affirmation, and I felt truly honoured and recognised for the hard work that I had put in.
But I was still so young and new to the business back then, and it didn't occur to me to think about whether there was some kind of disconnect between what the fans and critics felt about porn stars and what the girls themselves thought about the importance of such awards. I still don't really know, to be honest. To me, winning awards is just good publicity and recognition for a
job well done, but I don't think the directors really give a shit. I came to this conclusion because I didn't get very much new work following those two awards. I don't think the real fans care, either, because those who really like you will like you regardless of whether you win awards or not.
That's not to say that I didn't do loads of work in 2002, though, because I was able to re-shoot for all the companies I'd already shot for, and for the same magazines, too. I hadn't hit the glass ceiling yet. I was still 'new' to lots of people.
But life wasn't always a bed of roses. I have my share of horror stories from my early days. There was one shoot in particular that was a nightmare. It was for a website, and I did it because it paid really well: US$350 an hour. It was really hard work and it took a bloody eternity. We shot it in Baltimore in one day, for about ten hours, and they wanted me to do all kinds of fucked-up shit, including using a speculum to allow the camera to get real 'tunnel vision'. They also shot me fucking myself with a bottle, followed by huge vegetables and sex toys. They thought I was just complaining but, seriously, I'm pretty tight down there and a fat butternut pumpkin is just not going to fit. I mean, how much more unnatural can a sex act be? I was trying to insert a big butternut pumpkin into my own vagina and pretending to enjoy it!
After I got back to LA, I was shooting for Hank Londoner again and I told a couple of girls there about the crazy things they made me do in Baltimore. They told this guy who'd shot me what I'd said, and he responded by threatening me in an email, calling me a cunt and saying he would sue me for slander, he would have me deported and this and that, blah, blah, blah. I had to smooth things over with a fake 'nice' email, explaining that I didn't badmouth him or his company but had only told those girls what I did there and it was entirely their own decision not to work with him after what they'd heard from me. That was a very weird experience.
Absolute Mayhem Page 5
