‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol (23 page)

After the show was over, Brian and I returned to Memphis, but only for a brief period because his Grandmother had taken ill back in Philadelphia, his home town, so he returned home to care for her. I was still based in L.A., but between my dance and signing engagements, training, and starring in the weekend ECW televised wrestling shows, I was very busy as well, and it worked perfectly for me to schedule my other bookings around ECW’s television or Pay-Per-View engagements. It was like living an entirely different life overnight from what mine had been 6 months ago, and I tried to savor every minute of it, because I’d fought so long and hard to arrive, and things were really good. I was also making a little money from Paul Heyman, but a lot more was starting to come in from eBay selling my adult film memorabilia. Brian also had wrestling fans of his own, so he and I would team up for signings; we had a huge one in L.A. in May, and thereafter started doing A LOT of signings together at different conventions. We made a great team.

Whenever we weren’t working on an ECW T.V. show, we also took a lot of indie bookings together, almost every weekend. Those weren’t televised, but were still packed with fans. We’d get paid for those appearances, then on top of that, combine them with signings where I’d sell photos and clean up big time. As the spring turned to summer, I continued training during the weeks with a new trainer, Mando Gurrero, in L.A., and on the weekends, found myself taking A LOT more signings and a lot LESS dance engagements, which was a nice change of pace for me. I finally felt like I was starting to live a normal life, still with celebrity, and being able to pay my bills from signings, and not having to dance nude before a bunch of strange men.

It was still work: we traveled all over the place for our autograph engagements — Philadelphia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, New York, New Jersey,Texas — everywhere. We were typically flown in, and though we had to cover our own hotel, I didn’t have to pay anyone a commission off of the signings, and just in every way, things were looking better and better for me. It was also fun for me to be able to have my mom see me on T.V. each week with the wrestling show, and then some aunt of mine in Europe saw me on the cover of a wrestling magazine in a supermarket in London. I was grateful, devoted to my work, and appreciative of the fact that the fans were always there to support me — whether at the matches or my signings.

As June rolled around, and we had quite a few wrestling shows that month. Even though Francine was constantly trying to cut down my on-air time out of jealousy, fan demand kept me in the regular ECW rotation for the television and PPV shows. That same month, the Blue Meanie and I were booked to appear at the Milwaukee Metal Fest in Wisconsin, and what was unique about that festival was the promoter incorporated both Metal and Wrestling. We were booked for the wrestling show for 2 days straight. I had my big tag match ever, working with the Blue Meanie against Doink the Clown and Sheri Martel. She was amazing and I loved working with her. I’d always seen her on T.V. growing up, and I thought she was so cool and really admired and looked up to her, so it was quite an honor to work with her. The first time I met her after we’d arrived in Milwaukee, I really wasn’t sure what to expect, but to my relief, when I walked into the dressing room, she was sitting there smoking a joint. Once she’d offered me a hit off her joint, I relaxed, and again, she was cool as fuck to me. She knew I was new to the business, and really went out of her way to make sure I felt comfortable. I loved being a part of this community, because it really was like one big family.

Brian, a.k.a. the Blue Meanie, and I were also getting closer at this point. He was flying out to L.A. a lot. We were kind of a couple at this point, where we were dating but it wasn’t anything too serious. We were briefly involved romantically, but were really more like best friends who tried to have a relationship. I’m almost happier that it didn’t work too because it allowed us to be that much closer as friends, and Brian was always with me. He’s one of the nicest people I’d ever met, and he had drive and ambition, and we worked well together on a lot of important levels professionally and personally that allowed us to accomplish everything we eventually would together. That July, Brian and I had a big, mainstream signing to do in New Jersey for K&S Promotions, and maybe by fluke or fate — I believe the latter — I was reunited with my long-lost friend Sickie! I couldn’t believe it when I ran into him, and he was hanging out with the Iron Sheik of all people. We became best friends again after being reunited, and it was like no time had passed.

In addition to my reunion with Sickie, I felt that particular signing was noteworthy because it marked a shift in the kinds of signings I was being offered, mainly because I was no longer associated with the dirty porn. That was slowly but surely moving into my past in the perceptions of others, and that was underscored by my last appearance on the Howard Stern Show. He’d asked me to fly in and appear on-air with Houston and Spontaneous Ecstasy to speak about gangbangs. I missed my flight due to some cancellation, but still did a call-in interview, and throughout the interview, I laid low and mostly let them argue amongst themselves, because I felt the whole thing was really stupid. I’ll always be eternally grateful to Howard Stern for playing a big role in launching me into stardom, and being supportive of me throughout my career by having me on his show so many times, so my feelings were — and aren’t to date — any reflection on him. It was more that I was just over it, and I was tempted right then and there to blow the whistle on the whole gang bang myth, but I didn’t. I just kept thinking throughout the entire interview: why am I sitting here talking about this with these idiots, one of which was Houston. Once it was over, I knew I wouldn’t do an interview like that again — no matter who offered it to me — because had I, it would have given off the wrong impression about my being finished with porn. Thankfully, wrestling gave me enough profile to not have to worry about it anymore.

As the summer steamed on, everything was going great: I was getting more and more indie bookings and mainstream signings in-between ECW events, and was becoming friends with more and more of the wrestlers. And even though I didn’t have a thing to do with Rob Black’s joke XPW league, I did keep in touch with Big Dick Dudley, who still wrestled for Rob, and he kept me in the loop on their camp. I was happy when he quit working for Rob in later that year in September.That August, ECW had a Pay-Per-View in L.A. called the
Heat Wave
, they had me shoot a promo for it on the beach with Sinister and Mikey Whipwreck, which opened the PPV. I also met for the first time a WCW wrestler working on the show named Gorgeous George, and boy was she gorgeous! She was very, very pretty, tall and beautiful, and you could right away tell that Francine did not like her. She was very nice, the opposite of Francine, I loved her. Francine ended up getting her fired in September out of jealousy, and I thought it was a real loss for the company.

The only downside of the ECW PPV was the presence of Rob Black’s goon squad. It is not a cute little wrestling nickname for his team of scum fucks, most notably including Krysti Myst, who was sitting in the front row of the PPV and at one point, stood up and started flashing her tits to the audience. All I could think was, is he that desperate? It was rude, and our wrestlers responded to his squad by jumping them in a brawl that led out to the street, and Rob’s whole crew — even Krysti — got their asses kicked! We beat the shit out of them, it even united me and Francine, who wanted to beat the shit out of her.

According to a recounting of the incident at Wikipedia.com, ‘owner Rob Black purchased six front row tickets for the show. The tickets were given to a cadre of XPW talent, and their mission was to make it clear that ECW was on enemy turf. This was not a storyline. At the beginning of the main event, the XPW contingent donned shirts emblazoned with the XPW logo, gaining the attention of security and ECW wrestler Tommy Dreamer. Security ejected the XPW group from the building and later, a brawl broke out in the parking lot between members of the XPW ring crew and the ECW locker room. The XPW wrestlers were not involved in the fracas, during which the ECW wrestlers brutalized the XPW ring crew with several of the ring crew members left in pools of their own blood. Initial reports claimed that XPW valet Kristi Myst had somehow touched ECW valet Francine Fournier and that this is what prompted the incident. Fournier herself has since gone on record as saying that she was never grabbed or in any way touched by any of the XPW crew, and other eye witnesses support the story that Fournier never had a hand laid on her. XPW were never mentioned by ECW announcer Joey Styles during the pay per view telecast. The XPW contingent who had sat a ringside consisted of wrestlers The Messiah, Kid Kaos, Supreme, Kristi Myst, Homeless Jimmy and XPW announcer Kris Kloss.’

Jasmin:
There was no working relationship between XPW and ECW, they were rival companies, and the fact that Rob was that jealous was just pathetic. It was even sadder that Rob wasn’t man enough to show up himself, and instead dispatched these minions to do his dirty work. Paul Heyman showed a lot of class I thought by not showing the disruption Rob had caused during the show, because even though it would have held great entertainment value, it would have also given Rob exactly the attention he’d been seeking when he sent them in to begin with. It was talked about for about a month afterward in the wrestling, and as the summer ended, things really couldn’t have looked more up for me.

At the first big ECW show that September at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, I ran into another ECW wrestler, Elektra, who was a manager at a strip club, a ‘House Mom’ as they called it, when she wasn’t wrestling. We were friends, and she also consulted on casting for The Sopranos at their strip club,The Ba’Da Bing. She was really cool and I loved working with her. Anyway, she told me that the casting directors for the Sopranos had a role they were looking to cast that ended up being the stripper that Ralph gets pregnant and then beats to death in Season 3. I turned it down because she didn’t tell me any of those specifics, and if I’d gotten it, I would have been on the show for five episodes! All she’d told me was that it was a generic stripper at the Bing. The Pay-Per-View at the Hammerstein was great, and the day before that we had a televised show that went over really well.

I continued with my usual routine of attending indie shows/signings in between my ECW matches, and though rumors had begun to swirl about financial troubles within the company — largely due to TNN’s decision to cancel ‘ECW on TNN’ that month. Even still, everyone was so loyal and morale was still so high that the whole family kept momentum flowing into October. For instance, without naming any names, many of ECW’s wrestlers were continuing to work the shows even though their pay had been cut, including myself. I had never been more committed to anything in my professional life. Still, being a businesswoman, I did decide to take a light look around and in talking to WCW, found out they were also having financial difficulties.

Anyway, I stayed working with Paul because he was the first to give me my chance — NOT ROB BLACK, or anyone else — PAUL HEYMAN and ECW were the ones who had put me on that map, and brought me back after I’d left Rob’s shitty little joke of an operation. Rob wasn’t anywhere near Paul’s level either, because rumor had it that Vince McMahon, the kingpin of professional wrestling, was one of Paul’s backers. Rob Black could never have commanded an audience with Vince, let alone a monetary investment. Vince’s position was what it was, he was a living legend by that time, but the fact that he had enough respect for Paul’s share of the wrestling marketplace to recognize it as legitimate is something he NEVER would have done with XPW. It was just two different levels. A lot of ECW wrestlers went up to Vince’s major leagues. Others from WWF went to work for Paul — Vince and Paul always had a respectful working relationship, Rob Black never could have gotten in the same room as Vince, unless maybe he sent a spy in like he had at ECW. We did a Pay-Per-View that month in Minnesota at the Mall of America, which was a lot of fun.

Things briefly took a darker turn later in the month when the Blue Meanie and I got into a fistfight. He sent me to the hospital with 18 stitches. It was a week before a signing at the Allentown Convention Center, and we’d had an argument that was the culmination of his bitching continually 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a week about his family taking money from him more so than he could afford. Anyway, he ended up head-butting me and pushing me down on the ground, with his mother watching, who of course did nothing. It was ugly, my forehead got cracked open, blood was shooting everywhere, which caused Brian to react by crying like a little bitch once he’d realized what he’d done. He didn’t realize his own size, because he’s like a big fucking monster, he looks like SHREK! I got up, gave him the finger, left and rushed off walking to the emergency room. Fortunately, when I arrived, the doctor who treated me recognized me as a wrestling fan from my work with ECW and stitched me up, and I was a wreck. I was crying, looked like Frankenstein, and had to go do my signing that weekend with everyone asking me what happened? Naturally, I made up a lie to cover his abuse — as I had with Dick in the past — and said I’d had an accident while Brian and I practiced some wrestling moves and hit my head. After that, things changed between us, we kept working together professionally, but personally he was a big, fat piece of shit to me. Eventually I forgave him for the sake of our professional partnership, but things weren’t the same between us again personally in the aftermath.

I spent the holidays of that year with my mom in New York, and returned to L.A. in-between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and spent a lot of my time that month tending to my flourishing eBay business, where I sold everything from (photos to videos to worn outfits.) This meant I was able to do less dance engagements, and spend more time doing indie shows/signings, and training locally in L.A. when I wasn’t in the ring. I was very appreciative for the fans that had come out to see me dance. Honestly, it was a tired routine. I’d go to these clubs where I’d spend all this time getting ready to hit the stage, and by the time I walked out of there at the end of the night, my clothes and hair smelled like smoke.The traveling was grueling; my sleep schedule would get fucked up from all the flying, so being able to tone down that part of my life was a nice change. I didn’t necessarily have a problem with feature dancing, as I’d been doing it before porn even, and considered it an entirely different profession. I would still schedule a gig if we had a signing to attend, but I found myself more and more able to market to that fan base online without so much travel necessary, and loved the fact that the money was as good. I even made a New Year’s resolution to stop feature dancing completely in 2001.