‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol (11 page)

It was a weird time for me in a way because this huge transition was happening as a result of the nature of what I did professionally — and everything I was able to do for myself personally was an extension of that. I had never imagined doing this in a million years. I am not trying to sound arrogant, but I had an Ivy-league education and spoke four languages. I really went a little bit against type in terms of the typical co-star of mine — a white-trash bitch with no class and more semen than brains in her head at any given time we were working on the same movies. While I was always looking ahead of the moment, these girls could never escape it, and that’s what made them a dime a dozen. My value, on the other hand, kept going up month after month and movie after movie, because it felt like the natural direction of things. If I hadn’t been meant to become a star, then the world wouldn’t have ever embraced me in the first place, the media would never have cared. I had something special to offer that business, a more cultured light to project onto the metaphorical screen in context of how people saw porn stars in general terms. I changed that perception in every press junket I did leading up to the World’s Greatest Gang Bang which would give me my own universe of stars in how it knocked everyone out. They woke up to a new day for porn after that, because I was doing some otherworldly shit in how exotic it was. So heading into the end of 1995, I had to look back a little dazed and dazzled myself, because it had truly been a hell of a year. My entire life had begun to change, and I’d watched it pivot in real time, so that I wasn’t just looking back at myself in the mirror anymore, but others around me were starting to recognize me as something special. At that point, my self-esteem badly needed the adulations, so I couldn’t fight it. I became an ally, talking as much shit as I could in any interview to be as exotically over-the-top as my movies and image were. I think I worked well with my handlers, and there wasn’t much ‘shaping’ needed, I set the tone most times naturally with what came out of my mouth. My strategy was to be as shocking as my videos; it was that simple. Once I saw things starting to take public shape, I treated my time in porn like a business plan in my own mind. With projections on everything from how popular I could become in the business to how long I would have to be involved in porn before I could use that popularity to transition out of that genre and cross over into others that were ideally more mainstream. I wasn’t operating under any illusions though in terms of how long it would take me, I knew I was still at the very beginning of what would be a long road out of hell.

That Christmas, I went home to visit my mother. It was really nice being back in a place I knew as well as New York. I had missed sleeping in my own bed, and I enjoyed getting to see my dolls, my little doll house, just all the relics from my childhood. My old books — I was such a bookworm in high school that it would never have matched up with your typical porn star’s bookshelf in a million years. I read everything from J.D. Salinger and Jean Paul Sarte to Albert Camus, and anything and everything by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. My mother was happy to see me, but she kept prying about my life out in California, and I kept with my modeling story. My mother was so removed from that world that there was truly an almost 0% chance of her ever discovering what I was doing. Even if she had, she would have been in such denial that she wouldn’t have believed it anyway if she’d watched it on television. For the moment, things were good though between us, and she was obviously happy to see her only daughter.

For me, it was also nice to just enjoy New York. It was just the greatest thing going to Central Park, seeing the trees, and it reminded me of my grandmother, who used to take me there as a child. Anyway, I spent New Year’s in L.A., and resolved to begin the New Year out with a
bang
(pardon the pun) as far as my career went.That began with shooting the box cover for my fourth movie,
Possessed
, which I’d shot back in December. My first couple box covers had looked okay, but my third had looked like shit, and so I wanted something a little higher-grade for my fourth movie.That was really the first one I liked, it was just higher class than the others had been. The movie shoot itself had been messy with the male stars beginning the scene by throwing mud at me. It was awful. I was playing a mental patient chained to the gates of a Mental Institution, and we shot both scenes in one day, so it was exhausting. Plus I was in some kind of weird pain all day from the mud mixing with everything else because by the time I got home that night, I was urinating blood. When I went to the doctor the next day, it turned out I had developed a tract infection from the mud. It hurt all week, plus it was a $250 hospital bill that I had to pay out of my own pocket, because porn stars don’t get any health insurance benefits. It’s really a shitty business, and that’s an example right there: I shouldn’t have had to pay medical bills from a condition I got on the job. It was wrong, and I had no one to stand up for me, Charlie certainly didn’t try.

As January 1996 progressed, I went to Las Vegas for my first Consumer Electronics show, which was old hat for me given my background in the collectibles business from my years with Dick. Still, I wasn’t used to being the product, so it was still selling, but different because I was there on behalf of Metro to encourage retail buyers to order my movies. It went well beyond that for me. It was more like a circus atmosphere because we were simultaneously promoting the coming
World’s Greatest Gang Bang II
movie with buyers in the hopes of generating pre-orders for Metro. John T. Bone also had me sitting at the company table passing out applications to men who wanted to be in the gang bang — as my SEX PARTNERS. The big movie they were also pushing for me that was already out at that time was
Hellfire
, so that was cool, and I was paid $500 a day to be there so I was making money as well. My expenses were also paid, and in all, the convention was a great success in terms of our goals in being there- to introduce me as John T. Bone’s big new find, and to promote
Gang Bang II
.

Of course I enjoyed the attention, and though we weren’t really there to socialize, I did run into an old Playgirl model friend of mine and I sneaked him into my room one night while everyone was out, got my rocks off, and kicked him out. John would have killed me if he and his wife had walked in on me, because we were sharing a room with 2 king size beds. He was almost like a father figure at those things, so I felt like a little girl being naughty, it was fun. In sum, it was a crazy weekend that I really needed, both in terms of the attention and the realization that I was starting to become recognizable, which I loved! Metro had been pushing me and another new star Shyla at that convention because we were sort of the company’s poster-girls for naughty; we were doing the most hard core porn. Shyla didn’t last long. She was part of the turnover ratio common to porn stars with less ultimately to offer the business than I did. On top of that, I had a much higher stamina than she did, which meant she NEVER could have pulled off something like the
World’s Greatest Gang Bang II
. She wanted to do softer core stuff, and that put her in competition with a lot of clones and copycat fly-by-night bitches. I got a lot of press from the convention, including a write-up in
Esquire
, and a feature interview on
FOCUS Magazine
among others.

My 5th movie, which started shooting in February, co-starred Shyla — not only in the same movie, but in the same SCENE, which was a first for me. The movie was even titled
Two Much
, so I knew what John had in mind going into the shoot. Naturally, I was the stand out, but I was just biding my time till April, when we started shooting
Gang Bang II
. I had been schedule to go on the
Howard Stern Show
for the first time that month too, but my flight had been cancelled the day before due to some kind of incident with the plane and some guy with a gun. Anyway, Charlie lost his shit over that, calling me a ‘stupid cunt’ and whatnot, on the phone. He was a true asshole in every sense of the word. In his defense, he kept me working, but I didn’t deserve the abuse that came with it. Charlie got me so stressed over it that I ended up in the Emergency Room with an IV in my arm for dehydration. That also caused me to miss a booking for the first time, so Charlie used his three magic words over that one too. I ended up staying off the road for a couple weeks to recuperate, which upset Charlie because he was losing commissions, but he could fuck himself as far as I was concerned. Even while I was at home resting, I was still working though, doing interview after interview on the phone promoting the
Gang Bang
. I did a publicity photo shoot with this big photographer Brad Willis. John Bone planned to run a campaign in all of the adult magazines. He was a host at the AVN Award show too, which was officially the porn industry’s Grammys or Oscars, but was in my opinion mainly an excuse for trailer park white trash to dress up in gowns and get drunk.

To me it was ‘White Trash Night Out.’ It could have honestly been like a Springer Pay-Per-View, just totally classless. Metro, like every other porn studio, has their own table where all the talent and producers and directors sit, and they give out awards for like ‘Best Cock’ and ‘Best Girl on Girl Sex Scene,’shit like that. I presented one, but this company called ‘Vivid Video’ swept that year. It was just fucking stupid, people crying over winning awards for the most deviant behavior and sexual acts you can imagine recorded on screen. Oh, but wait, it’s an ‘ART FORM!’That made me fucking laugh, how some fucking bronzed statue suddenly legitimized what we were doing, it was silly to me. I won a few of those fucking things over the years, and immediately turned around and auctioned them off. How is that something to be fucking proud of ? You sucked the best cock? It’s the most degrading thing they could give a woman in terms of a label, and I realize we brought it on ourselves somewhat by starring in those movies to begin with, but to rub our noses in it afterward was just

I won ‘Best Selling Movie’ a couple years in a row, and by that time, February of 1996, my first couple movies had come out, and both were selling very well, exceeding projections and so forth. So that at least made me feel good about the fact that I was getting out to that many homes around the world, not to mention the seemingly endless press junket I was doing to promote the coming
Gang Bang II
movie. Even when I was shooting other films, it all seemed like steps toward the climax that the latter movie would bring the porn world to in April. My movie that February was titled
Delirium
, and, pleasantly enough was my first time doing a one on one girl/guy scene. My co-star was John Decker, who I’d never worked with before. He had a huge cock, and of course the scene involved anal, so that was excruciatingly painful. It was a price I was paying for stardom, which was starting to blossom around me. People would recognize me on the street or guys would yell something from a car if they drove by in reference to my movies. Sometimes it was a frat guy, usually it was a frat guy, because more mature men wouldn’t have taken that tact to compliment me on my performance. Still, whether you disagreed with the means to the end I was achieving, I was intent on having my fame one way or another.

February was a thankfully short month, because I found myself legitimately excited for March, which would mark my first appearance on
The Howard Stern Show
to promote — of course — the
World’s Greatest Gang Bang II
. For any porn star to gain even a shred of credibility they had to appear on the
Stern
show, it was like a right of passage into mainstream success in the porn world. I had grown up listening to Howard Stern, so to me it wasn’t quite as cool as meeting Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden would have been, but it was up there. To boot, I was a star on the show, rather than just a nobody. I was there to promote the
Gang Bang
by way of a contest with his listeners, such that the general public could actually come down to the station and sign up to star with me in the movie. It was a publicity stunt, but a big crowd of fucking dudes showed up nonetheless. I remember leaving the station and being mobbed for autographs and photos, which was weird, but pretty cool. Its different from a convention booth signing where you’re signing blindly for retailers who don’t in many cases have the slightest idea who you are, they’re just there for free shit or to place orders for the product. Being that young in my career, it felt good to get that kind of reaction from the public, especially Stern fans, because in many cases we shared the same selling demographic.

As a result, his listeners likely turned off their radio and turned on my videos in the same day, so it was very much one hand washing the other. One important thing for me was to not let it get to my head, to believe my own hype, because I knew I was a long, long way from where I wanted to be in terms of long-term stardom. Also, the E Channel — which filmed Howard Stern’s show, and specifically the one I was on — announced shortly after that they were using the footage from my appearance as part of the television show, so that was exciting. It was a pretty quick turn around, because that episode was scheduled to air sometime in April, coinciding nicely with the
Gang Bang
movie. Looking back now, it was a pretty big deal that I was becoming that popular that quickly given that I only had 4 movies shot and out at that point. I think I filled a void in that business. Something it was lacking in terms of quality, because it certainly had plenty of quantity in terms of generic, 15-minute famers who shriveled up soon enough due to catching AIDS from fucking their co-stars unprotected on the weekend and wilted away from the spotlight. I mean, filled to the fucking brim, if not overflowing. I knew I was better than they were too because other people validated that instinct — Howard Stern for instance, being one who specifically took me aside and said, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this, you’re too beautiful and too smart.’ And you could tell he meant it because it wasn’t something he said on air, it was a personal moment between us, and given the number of porn stars he’d made his bread and butter with on the air over the years, I appreciated the observation. Still, as much as I agreed with him, I knew that very distinction gave me my edge over my competitors in the business.