‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol (20 page)

Charlie Fry:
John and I eventually became partners in our own film production company, Crème, which was a mistake on my part, because John had a really, really bad reputation out there as a businessman, he had been notorious for not paying people and all this kind of stuff. My perspective was, being 3000 miles away in Florida, as long as I was getting what I needed for my girls, it wasn’t my problem, which was naive. Because by getting involved with him, and unfortunately letting him control the money, things eventually started to fall apart in our relationship.The betrayal came with another star of mine, Kendra Jade, who was a newcomer to the porn business, a literal nobody from Connecticut. I’d gone to Jerry Springer’s people, and successfully pitched them on a show covering a movie we’d done with Kendra for the entire hour.To get that kind of exposure for an adult film that introduced Kendra Jade was something you could have afforded to buy, certainly not a prime-time hour of T.V.

Well, John T. Bone decided behind my back and without my consultation or my approval, to convince Kendra it would be a good idea to seduce Jerry Springer — who was kind of a horn dog. John had sold the story ahead of time to the British tabloids, who had secretly set up cameras in the hotel room to catch him and Kendra in the act. So they essentially set up Jerry Springer, and that had several adverse impacts, for one, Jerry didn’t know I wasn’t involved because I was in business with John, so it put me on the outs with his camp. Moreover, it ended my relationship with John because I was furious and absolutely let him have it, and a further fall-out from that relationship ending was Jasmin was still making movies with John’s company. So now you’ve got this opportunity for a rift to develop, where Jasmin is out in L.A. working with John every day, where they already have that director-actress relationship for him to play on, telling her every distrusting thing he can think of to put in her ear. And that ultimately led to her sticking with John, who ultimately proved to be what he is to her as well, and eventually we got back together, but it caused a lot of damage to our relationship. I think after she saw how he handled the whole Kendra-Springer debacle, she wanted out of their working relationship as badly and quickly, as I did mine with John.

Jasmin:
Coincidently, the next day I had a photo shoot with another porn star, Tom Byron, who happened to co-own with another director named Rob Black a really hot film company called Extreme Associates. Also, amid the voicemails I had been getting from these fucking parasite P.I.s, there had been a few others on my machine hipping me to the fact that Rob Black was interested in working with me. Rob had even gone as far as having Gene Ross from
AVN Magazine
place a call, trying to

make an introduction. That kind of courting was exactly what I needed at that time in my career, because its attention I definitely was NOT getting back at Crème, between John’s obsession with Kendra, and her and Zoe’s jealousy of my stardom. At the level of fame I’d attained by that point within the business, I truly and legitimately, I think, felt I needed to be in business with a company that placed my interests first, because I had worked my ass off to get to # 1. Kendra and Zoe were trying to jump the line, off my back, and I wasn’t going to allow it. So at the shoot, I went ahead, did what I needed to do, and reached out to Tom to ask if he knew Rob. Once he explained they were business partners and he put me in touch with Rob. We began a dialogue over the phone about what I had in mind for my future, its extension beyond adult film, and he was very receptive, which gave me hope for the first time in a long time.

As May rolled on, the furor over the Kendra sex tape had also finally started to calm down a bit, and I was still seeing Keith. Earl was at this point living on a boat, and starting to shoot amateur porn, and in one of our only sane conversations that entire spring over a rare Sunday breakfast, I asked him what his long-term plans were, and he stated he’d intended to do porn for good. From that conversation, I realized Earl and I had very different ideals, and up to that point, I had held out this silly, false hope that he might change, but it was finally sinking into my head and heart that he never would. In any other circumstance, looking back in hindsight, I might have argued the intersection of my realizations about leaving John T. Bowen and Earl were coincidental, but I firmly believe more was at work here. It felt like a brighter sign of things to come, and since my faith in John, Earl and my manager Charlie had collectively dimmed by that point I felt I had little to lose.

With that in mind, near the end of May, my clandestine phone chats with Rob Black finally transitioned into our first face-to-face meeting at his company’s offices to discuss my possible future with Extreme Associates. I was so nervous about the step I was taking that when walking into the courtyard of his office building, I thought I saw John T. Bowen sitting there waiting for me! I wasn’t delusional, they just so looked frighteningly alike that I ran into another office and hid by a receptionist’s desk until one of Rob’s employees — some former Military Police Van Damage came and escorted me to Extreme’s offices. It turned out the ghost of John was in fact some factory worker on his lunch break, but the incident is a reflection of how internally nervous with excitement I was at the prospect of getting away from Crème. Rob and his father were both at the meeting. They took me out to lunch, and proposed an offer that I almost couldn’t afford to refuse: $8000 a month for one movie, which was twice what John had been paying me at my peak with Crème, plus a signing bonus of several thousand dollars. The deal clincher for me though was when Rob mentioned that he had a professional tie-in with NYC-based ECW Wrestling, which was the business I secretly was aiming to transition into as a way out of porn down the line. He’d even agreed to bring my hair and make-up artist Sean along, and said he’d put it in my contract! I also loved their company logo: Respect, We Don’t Earn It, We Take It.

I left the meeting floating on air, Rob had been the best salesman I’d ever dealt with professionally, and he’d given me every assurance I needed to hear that things would be strikingly different if I defected to Extreme. Even though I technically had 6 months left on my contract with John T. Bowen and Crème, because he’d bounced a check, he was technically in breach, which allowed me to leave him early, so that became my plan. I kept all of this to myself, and Rob and everyone at Extreme made sure no details of our first meeting slipped out, which is a lot more than I can say for Crème. Everything there had become so unorganized and dysfunctional by that point with the Kendra/Springer sex scandal, that truthfully, no one would have picked up on anything anyway where I was concerned.The final straw that had broken the camel’s back between John and I had already come though with the day that P.I. had shown up at my residence…that was my fucking home, and you just can’t do that. I know some adult film actresses who live that way 24/7, to where they go to the grocery store or the gym looking like porn stars, and want the attention. And maybe their acting like that would allow them to bring stalking upon themselves, but I was very much the opposite way off-screen. So by that point it was obvious to me — between John’s mishandling of the Kendra debacle, bouncing my checks or not having them at all, and a whole host of other incidents — that his respect for me had dwindled to almost zero. Most importantly, John had lost sight of the fact that it was my ass and my pussy that was paying for that fucking place, NOT Kendra or Zoe’s. They were going to have to start pulling their weight soon enough, because heading into the summer, I was on my way out of Crème.

I decided to give Earl one more chance. He was in support of my leaving Crème for Extreme, who had even given me contracts to sign by that point, and wanted me to attend the VSDA show in July to announce my debut as their new top star. I had done some other shopping around as well- meeting with Evil Angel, another big adult film outfit, and with a few others, but ended up deciding on Extreme because of the wrestling tie-in and the monetary stability. I hadn’t yet told Charlie about my move to Rob’s fold, even upon signing the papers, because his interests were so co-mingled with John’s that John would have found out immediately and tried to stop it. Charlie needed me to advance Kendra and Zoe’s careers, where for instance he’d use my bookings to muscle the door open for them, and hadn’t shared any of his commissions from their feature dance tours with me. That was probably the last straw for me with him, so in early July, for the first time in my career, I also started taking bookings from competing promoters — The Lee Network, and another from Continental bookings. Both of these firms were getting me just as well paid as Charlie had, and I never once had to worry about collecting my earnings. So I offered Charlie the option of staying on as my manager for a reduced commission base of 15%, and he naturally declined. As a result, I formally and finally (so I thought) fired him that same month, and upon signing with Rob Black, was scheduled for my first shoot with Extreme in August.

Even prior to that though, I attended the VSDA show in Vegas with Extreme’s camp, it was my public debut signing at their booth, and everyone’s reaction was one of ‘HOLY SHIT!’My line at Extreme’s booth was HUGE, a thousand people at least, and John T. Bowen’s company Crème DIDN’T EVEN HAVE a booth of their own that year! They didn’t even attend, and were getting smaller and smaller.The fact that they didn’t even pay for a booth — which would have been a MUST had I still been in their camp and attended — showed me how much smaller now they had already shrunk since my departure. Once news got out to the public and adult film press at the VSDA show, it made even a bigger impact! I was told afterward that when John got word of my defection to Extreme, he acted like a family member died, and then Kendra and Zoe tried to spin things in their media reactions as though they’d conspired to force me out, which was laughable.

Consider Kendra’s comments to one reporter following my departure in November, 1998, claiming I had been spreading rumors about her having STDs — which, for the record, is a FUCKING LIE — to which she replied in the press at the time:

‘ If you have the guts to back up your lies, I will rent a gym and fight you in the ring to shut your stupid lying mouth once and for all. I would like nothing better than to smash your stupid plastic nose out the back of your stupid plastic head. Your choice, gloves, bare knuckles, or baseball bats, either way you are going down. Put up or shut up, skank!… What was that white shit coming out of her ( Jasmin’s) pussy in
Blow It Out Your Ass?
I would be more than willing to make my medical records public. I’d like her to do the same. I’ve never gotten any STD. I hate her. She’s a cunt. I challenge her to a fight…I can’t wait until the day I see her. She will meet up with me and we’ll see how much she runs her mouth then…If she’s so happy with Rob Black, why doesn’t she just leave our company alone?’

For the record, I wanted nothing more than to leave that cesspool, but they kept trying to keep the feud alive in the press, still trying to coattail my success as always. Anyway, Kendra was right about one thing, Rob and Extreme were running a very professional show, they flew me and Earl there first-class, and Rob had even put Earl on his payroll so he could be more than just my suitcase pimp. That definitely made things better for Earl and me personally, and he also went on the road with me for my dance gigs that month, so we traveled through upstate New York, then New York City, and everything went extremely well. Many of my fans who showed up for signings during my dance tour told me how happy they all were to hear I’d parted company with Crème and John T. Bone, which made me feel reassured in my decision. Also, a lot of my peers were pretty supportive of what I did. Adult film media like Hustler Magazine and others were supportive as well. It was very important to me that my friends supported my move, and my fans most importantly supported what I was doing. A lot of people thought it was a smart move.

When I got back to L.A., I took a few days off, and I felt stable in my life for the first time in months. Rob at that time was a good boss to me, and to no surprise, Charlie suddenly popped back up in August, wanting to mend fences and work together again. I had been featuring a lot without him, and he also had seen the steady downfall of John’s company following my departure, so he knew to follow the talent and get out of there while he still could. I took advantage of that as well, and told him he had to cut my commission down to 15% from 25%, which I told him it had been at for way too long, which of course he went along with.

I shot my first film for Rob, called
The Pornographer
, and when we shot the box cover, he gave me my first $2000, and I had hit it off with one of the other Extreme senior stars, Ashlyn Gere, who I looked up to because she was beautiful and classy. It was much better to be around other stars, as opposed to up and comers trying to climb over me to the top. Also, the male talent was much better, and my first scene for
The Pornographer
was a double-penetration scene, with Luciano and Earl. Earl worked with me in a lot of my movies at Extreme, and believe it or not, we worked really well together, and got along better because of it. Then I had a few dialogue scenes to shoot with Rob, and then the box cover with Scott Preston, who did amazing photos. He didn’t DO this Gonzo bullshit John had been doing with stupid fucking titles and crap box covers, and it was time to graduate out of that. While things were good for a bit between Earl and me, I remember some of the more fun times in our relationship at that point were the Sunday rides he took me on his Harley up and down Pacific Coast Highway.

When the fall began and September rolled around, Rob was getting me more and more press, and in interviews, more and more journalists were telling me how smart it was to leave John T. Bowen.Then I received the best news I had gotten in a long time: Rob introduced me to Bubba Ray Dudley from ECW Wrestling, who flew out to L.A. to meet with us and have a discussion about ECW doing something collaboratively with me. Paul Heyman, the owner of ECW had even talked to Rob directly about the Pay-Per-View special they had in mind in November for me to make my debut in. At the dinner, it even got as far as Paul talking about flying me out in later September to New York to shoot some promo video spots for the
November to Remember
PPV. It was like a serious wet dream come true!