2.In order to really succeed, you will likely have to get painful breast implants.
“One of the most frustrating things about the film work was that the producers never wanted to put me on box covers. They all said my breasts were too small. My boobs were certainly big enough for all the men who stared at them every time I left the house. But they weren’t big enough by porn standards. Just like at the Crazy Horse (strip club), the girls with the monster silicone got all the attention.” (Pg. 160)
“All those customers and box covers lost to girls with bigger, faker breasts had built a deep insecurity.” (Pg. 169)
“I had done so many photo sessions in the past year that I was literally being shot out of the business. I needed to do something to get more jobs, otherwise I’d lose the only source of income left to me. (Pg. 170)
“Mine (breast implants) didn’t turn out so well…. With an implant that big underneath my muscle, it felt like fucking Barnum and Bailey’s Circus was sitting on my chest. I cried when I looked in the mirror afterward: they seemed way too big for my frame. I drank a little to kill the pain…” (Pg. 170)
“I didn’t realize until years later how stupid I was to get them. (Breast implants.) Drugs tend to impair your judgment…” (Pg. 171)
3. You will likely have to have sex with other people you find repellent.
“While I was waiting for my first sex scene, my co-star, a gentleman I had never met before named Arnold Biltmore, sat next to me. He had a soft, pasty body; a porous, greasy complexion; and a kindergarten haircut, parted in the middle and combed to either side. Nothing about Arnold Biltmore turned me on. And in ten minutes I was supposed to have sex with him. When our scene started, he tried to kiss me. I turned my head away from the camera, so that no one could see me grimace…. As my head kept bumping into his stomach while I gave him head, all I could think was, ‘What the hell am I doing here? This is disgusting.’ A bead of sweat on Arnold’s forehead…swelled and grew until it turned into a bubble, and then slowly pried itself free of his forehead…. When it smacked me between the eye, it flipped a switch in my head. ‘I’m done,’ I though. ‘I can’t do this anymore.’” (pg. 161-162.)
“Other male actors were creepy, and looked at me as if they wanted me to be their wife afterwards; or they had erection problems and, even worse, hygiene problems.” (Pg. 376)
Jenna to “one of porn’s leading men: “So do guys in the industry become freaks?” Reply: “That’s actually true in a way. Every guy in the industry has one fetish or passion that keeps him going. You have to realize these guys are working with a girl who’s beautiful one day, and then the next day they’re with a girl that they wouldn’t normally want to touch, let alone fuck. So they have to go somewhere in their head to keep themselves interested and aroused.” (P. 387)
4. Being a pornography performer can often be physically painful.
“It was such a challenge to look sexy and relaxed while manipulating my body into the various uncomfortable contortions…Even for… the simplest pose, like looking over my shoulder with my back to the camera, I had to arch so hard that my lower back cramped. When I see those photos now, it seems obvious that the sexy pout I thought I was giving the camera was just a poorly disguised grimace of pain.” (Pg. 94)
“ To keep all of my body in focus and in the light, I had to bend and contort into all sorts of unnatural positions that were supposed to look effortless… But this time I had to hold the positions much longer and wait for them to meter the light, take a Polaroid, and check the light again before they even started shooting. I was so out of shape from my unhealthy lifestyle that my knees would suddenly start knocking during a pose or my lower back would spasm when I arched it for too long…. I really wanted to please Suze, so I was willing to hold my knees over my head for twenty minutes straight, until my spine felt like it was going to snap.” (Pgs. 101-102)
“He (T.T. Boy) raced through the foreplay – a little kissing a little oral sex – then all hell broke loose. He slammed me so fast and hard that it took every ounce of control I had to stay focused and in the moment…. I could feel my thighs bruising against his. Then suddenly it all stopped. He pulled out and shot straight into my mouth. I wasn’t expecting him to pop so soon.
‘Is that all?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. He grabbed my hips and helped me just over his lap and started slamming me into his dick. I was in decent shape cardio-wise, but he moved with such force and speed that I was winded. It felt like my insides were going to fall out. And then, finally, he popped – again.
‘Is that all?’ I asked.
‘No', he grunted.
And he put it right back inside. The guy was a machine. There was no lull. His focus never dimmed. His intensity never wavered. He’d throw me into position after position, and would come in each one. I was in shock. I’d never been fucked like this in my life.
I couldn’t wait for him to finish. I was starting to get sore. Finally, after four pop shots, he said, ‘Hold on. I have to go eat something.’
‘Are we done?’ I dared to ask.
‘Not by a long shot,’ he said.
I didn’t think I could take anymore, but I kept my mouth shut. I was curious to see what he was up to now. He walked off, devoured three cans of tuna, and was back with a raging hard-on still pulsating in the air. Within minutes, he was pounding me over and over, in every position I’d ever imagine and some I hadn’t, until finally, with one last climactic pop, he was done. Time elapsed: 156 minutes. …
I literally limped away from the set, licking my wounds…” (Pg. 374)
“When it came time for my first boy-girl scene, Rod, of course, cast himself as my partner. His very first thrust banged my cervix wrong. I doubled over in pain, rocking and moaning and clutching myself for fifteen minutes. It took another six hours before I was ready to have sex again. I’m still not sure why the pain was so sharp – I may have been swollen from the workout I had already been through in the previous girl-girl scenes.” (Pg. 423)
5. The porn industry will objectify you and influence you to see yourself as an object.
“You are the product. (Pg. 333)
6. The porn industry and the people in it do not treat women with decency, fairness and respect.
“Most girls get their first experience in gonzo films - in which they’re taken to a crappy studio apartment in Mission Hills and penetrated in every hole possible by some abusive asshole who thinks her name is Bitch. And these girls, some of whom have the potential to become major stars in the industry, go home afterward and pledge never to do it again because it was such a terrible experience.” (Pg. 132)
“In a worst-case scenario, a gonzo director will take a girl to a hotel room and have their friends shoot a cheap scene in which she is humiliated in every orifice possible. She walks home with three thousand dollars, bowed legs, and a terrible impression of the industry. It’ll be her first and last movie, and she’ll regret it – to her dying day.” (Pg. 325)
“In other scenarios, she’ll work for two weeks until she’s only getting paid seven hundred dollars a scene and then, finally, no one wants to use her anymore. So she’ll agree to do double penetration or drink the sperm of twelve guys just to stay working.” (Pg. 325)
“If you take the time to read it (a sample adult-film contract) carefully, you will notice many ways in which a female performer can get shafted – both literally and metaphorically.” (Pg. 353)
“It was the most irritating shoot of my life. When I spread for him, he joked about there being an echo in the room. When I went into a doggie position, he commented on needing a fish-eye lens for my ass. All evening, he kept making comments that one shouldn’t make around a woman, especially if one wants her to feel sexy.” (Pgs. 359-360)
“For my first Wicked movies, I kept my mouth shut and absorbed everything that was going on. I looked at how the other girls were being treated (basically like Tinkertoys) and what type of people got to call the shots (the male directors). I was determined not to just be a fuck toy but also retain as much power as possible off camera.” (Pg. 368)
“When they were finally ready to shoot, J.B. came into the makeup room and ordered: ‘Get your whore ass on set and do what you do best.’ He had just used the wrong word. I ran after him in a Tasmanian Devil frenzy. The crew had to pull us apart. It was late and my nerves were frayed, but nonetheless J.B. was out of line. And I was right: they were wasting time arguing about the lighting. When he left, I collapsed in my makeup chair and started crying.” (Pgs. 453-454)
7. The industry is full of strange and scary people, who are happy to take advantage of you – like “suitcase pimps”.
Suitcase pimps “date industry girls, become their managers, take all their money, and often leave them broke, jobless, prematurely aged wrecks.” (Pg. 162)
Kylie’s suitcase pimp “knelt in front of her and reached deep inside her. He had a very strange expression on his face, as if he actually enjoyed the responsibility. When he fished it (the sponge) out between his bloody fingers, he actually sniffed it. I had to get out of there. I never wanted to do another movie again.” (Pg. 163)
“There are a lot of scumbags in the industry. They’ll tell girls they need to ‘test them out’ first to see if they give a good blow job.” (Pg. 326)
“After the AVN Awards and all the mainstream exposure, everyone wanted to interview me, even people who had passed on the offer before. One of them was Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine, who was writing for Penthouse at the time. Joy set up something after the awards show, and Goldstein came by to introduce himself. He’s an obese, greasy, slovenly man, and was very touchy-feely with both of us. When he discussed the interview, he seemed to be dropping hints about going on a date or getting sexual favors from me in exchange for the article. He didn’t say it explicitly, but it’s the feeling Joy and I got…. Goldstein never forgave us for canceling the interview. And so I made my first enemy in the business. He published a screed against Joy and me on the front page of Screw, accusing us of practically every offense imaginable – and a few that were unimaginable. He even attacked my family. That was a turning point because up until then, I could do no wrong. I was the golden girl of the industry. When I read that story, I was heartbroken. I wanted to give up and quit the business.” (Pg. 415)
“I was sick of the vampires in L.A. The only people I trusted were Steve and Joy.” (Pg. 458)
“We relaxed by the pool and ordered daiquiris. I was instantly drawn to him. (Jordan.) He was so different than any guy I had met before. And that’s probably because I’d been in a world of strip-club owners, porn directors, and suitcase pimps for most of my adult life. He wasn’t loud or obnoxious; he didn’t feel a need to brag or prove himself; and he was unaware of how good-looking he was. He had no game. And because of that, I felt comfortable, like I could let down my guard and be myself without worrying that he wanted anything from me.” (Pg. 460)
“Suitcase pimps aren’t made; they’re born. I returned home to a very different Jordan from the one I had left. My three-week absence had brought out a possessive, patriarchal, and jealous side of him. He insisted that the next time I go on the road, he come along, ostensibly to protect me and make sure I got paid. But the real reason was because he wanted to make sure I wasn’t sleeping with other guys – which, technically, I wasn’t.” (Pg. 476. Note: Jenna was sleeping with a stripper named Melissa at the time.)
8. The industry will sometimes lie about you and not respect your wishes.
“And slowly they (the pictures) began to appear: on the cover of Hustler; and then Cherry, and then High Society. All three were on the stands with me on the cover. I was the slut of the month. Of course none of them mentioned Jenna Jameson. They called me Shelly or Daisy or Missy. And, though the editors had never spoken a word to me, they featured interviews in which I discussed how inordinately horny I was, how much I like sex with anonymous strangers, and how I fantasized about inviting my girlfriends over for threesomes with my boyfriend.” (Pgs. 121-122.)
9. The other women that you will have to interact with in the sex industry usually won’t be very nice to you.
“They looked so jaded and hardened. I didn’t see a friendly face among them. There was no way I could survive here. These girls would eat me alive.” (Pg. 36)
“Strippers can be vicious.” (Pg. 48)
“My only real competition was a blond girl with a huge boob job… We never exchanged a single word, but there was an unspoken sense of rivalry – even hatred.” (Pg. 50)
“As I sat in the makeup chair, I watched one hottie after the other arrive – stuck-up, fucked-up, worked-up, or hard-up.” (Pg. 105)
“”When we broke for lunch, I made a beeline for the fruit table. As I was inspecting the bananas like a good monkey, a tall, think, beautiful brunette walked up to me. It was Shauna Ryan, a Penthouse Pet and clearly the alpha female of the tribe. She looked me up and down and then sneered, “How old are you? Eleven?” (Pg. 134)
“I began to feel like Suze (Randall) was taking advantage of me. My pictures appeared in every sex ad and foreign nudie magazine imaginable. And since I’d signed away the rights, she was raking in all the money. Whenever I asked her for a few chromes for a promo shoot or to make a modeling book, she’d refuse. I’d ask her instead to shoot an extra roll for me at our next session instead, and she’d say she couldn’t. She made her living off of enthusiastic new girls like myself, and I understood that and was grateful to her for making me an international cover girl. But there was a bigger problem – she (Suze Randall was stringing me along, telling me that each shoot we did just might be a centerfold in Penthouse. However, nothing we did ever appeared there…. So I added Suze to my mental shitlist of people I could not trust and decided to stop working with her.” (Pg. 172)
“The girls, most of whom had been in the industry longer than me, were extremely catty, probably because I was starring in the movie over them.” (Pg. 372)
“I only had to film one other sex scene in the movie, with Jeanna and another girl. Jeanna was smart, confident, and candid…She was everything I wanted to be. But the scene didn’t live up to my expectations. She just went through the motions, and seemed disconnected the whole time. I kept thinking, ‘If we are going to do this, let’s do it right.’ There was no passion, no connection, and no energy invested in the moment. The final insult came when we were done and she yelled, to no one in particular, ‘Why do you guys put me with these little girls? You make me look like I’m on hundred years old.’ I don’t think she realized how bad that made me feel.” (Pg. 376)
“I’d say, ‘Oh my gosh, you aren’t supposed to get up and go to the bathroom right now while the ‘fasten seatbelt sign’ is illuminated,’ and they’d look at me like I was the stupidest girl they’d ever seen.” (Pg. 400)
“Backstage, I overheard a couple of the other girls talking. ‘Oh, isn’t it so funny?’, one said. ‘They pick her to host, and she wins all the awards.’ ‘I wonder how many guys she had to blow’, the other said.” (Pg. 4411-412)
“I walked over to her (Teri Weigel, Playboy Playmate and porn star) afterward and the first words out of her mouth were, ‘Who in the hell are you?’ That’s when it got ugly. “I’m the girl whose show this is,’ I said. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ ‘Making money,’ she said. ‘Same as you. If you can’t compete…’ “Compete?’ I blew what was left of my cool. ‘Whose name is that on the marquee? Mine. What could have possibly gone through your mind to make you do something like this? Put the shoe on the other foot: How would you feel if you were brand-new on the dance circuit and some legendary dancer chick came in and took your fucking money?’” (Pg. 467)
10. You sometimes have to lie on the job (or be quiet) in order to “maintain the fantasy” for men or your image.
“Instantly the grilling started. He (Howard Stern) seemed determined to know what had a made a girl like me become a porn star. I told him I loved. Sex. I told him I loved the attention. But it wasn’t enough for him. He kept saying that something didn’t compute. He asked if I had a screwed-up childhood, and I said no. He asked if my parents had been strict, and I said no. He asked if my dad and I still talked, and I said we did. He asked if my mom minded what I was doing, and I said no. I had decided in advance that it was better not to discuss her death on the air. I didn’t think I could handle it.” (Pg. 391)
“But then Howard asked me if I’d ever been molested or abused. It was the one question I wasn’t prepared for.”
‘No’, I told Howard, in answer to his question. I lied like a rug. I wasn’t ready to tell anybody about any of this, (being gang raped, beaten and left for dead), and I certainly wasn’t ready to deal with Howard’s reaction. I didn’t want anyone to think that I was in the business because I was a victim.” (Pgs. 391 and 395)
“Just when I thought life couldn’t get any more insane, a producer at the E! Channel called. She said that she wanted to fly me to Bangkok and Singapore to host two episodes of Wild On… ‘We also want you to do the opening of Planet Hollywood in each city’, she said. ‘What do mean exactly by “do”?’ I asked. ‘Just interview the stars as they walk in on the red carpet,’ she replied. ‘No problem,’ I told her with my usual lie. Actually, there was a problem: I didn’t know how to interview anyone.’ (Pg. 447)
11. You will likely be around a lot of people drinking and taking drugs, with a lot of temptation to succumb yourself.
“When I was younger I followed the rules, went to school, and got good grades. On weekends, I’d drop acid for two days straight, but I never thought of it as a bad thing…. It was all part of growing up and finding yourself. In my mind, the so-called bad drugs were meth, coke, and heroin. Unlike acid and mushrooms, these were addictive drugs, and I thought I was too strong and too smart ever to fall in to that trap. But slowly and sure, it happened. When I left the Crazy Horse, I thought I was going to be a star. But now, at twenty, my career was already over.” (Pg. 172)
“Amazingly, even though the workload is small, some girls still don’t show up on set. And when they do they’re often late and hung over, with ratty hair and nails that haven’t been done in a year. They think that becoming a porn star means just fucking and doing drugs, but it’s a job. You punch the clock and go to work.” (Pg. 329)
“The biggest challenges for girls doing movies regularly are drugs and dating. A boyfriend can be a nightmare for your career and your emotional health. Some girls come into the industry with creepy guys already attached, and they’ll be doing anal, gang bangs, and bukkake all in one film just to support his drug habit. By the time the girl cleans herself up, she’s twenty-six, done nine hundred movies, looks like Margaret Thatcher in the morning, and has nothing to show for it.” (Pg. 333)
“Though my reasons made sense logically, they were also convenient rationalizations for my drug habit. Traveling to Los Angeles meant flying high and risking getting caught with speed at the airport. So I started posing only for photographers in Las Vegas.” (Pg. 173)
“Throughout the photoshoot, they told me, ‘Jenna, relax. Let the tension out of your face.’ I was clenching my teeth so hard from the crystal. Even more embarrassing, in certain poses my bones were sticking out so badly that they had to artfully drape my clothes over them so that I wouldn’t repulse readers. There were no magazines for guys with fetishes for anorexic meth freaks at the time.” (Pg. 177)
“’My life’, I said. ‘It’s not where I want it to be…I’m just…stuck. I’m…addicted.’ For the first time I had vocalized it. I was addicted…. I hadn’t done any work in a month. I looked down at my hand, and my fingertips were black from all the time spent holding hot cigarette lighters under meth pipes.” (Pg. 179)
“’I don’t have any friends… I don’t know what I’m going to do. The only person I hang out with is a fucking Mexican crack whore who calls me mija.’” (Pg. 179)
“There was a scale in the corner of the room. I stepped on it. The dial spun and wobbled under the red needle until it stopped on a number. And that number was eighty. I weighed eighty pounds.” (Pg. 179)
“Staring at me from the door of the medicine cabinet was the devil. It had strings of brittle blond hair that had snapped off at various lengths; eyes recessed deep into the sockets and surrounded by bruised black circles; cheekbones sharp enough to draw blood; and its complexion was sickly cyanotic. The devil was my own reflection. I had made my living with my looks, and now they were gone: the beautiful blond hair, the full smiling face, the big bedroom eyes. All the curves that men paid thousands of dollars just to look at had melted away to reveal a skeleton in rags.” (Pg.182)
“Amazingly, even though the workload is so small, some girls still don’t show up on set. And when they do, they’re often late and hung over, with ratty hair and nails that haven’t been done in a year. They think that becoming a porn star means just fucking and doing drugs, but it’s a job. You punch the clock and you go to work.” (Pg. 329)
12. Celebrities and the press will often treat you badly, like an object, and/or assume you want to have sex with them.
“I was sure Howard (Stern) was going to rip me to shreds. For hours, I rehearsed what I was going to say in my head. I didn’t want to come off like all the other girls on his show. They either pretended to be voracious sex kittens or poor wounded birds…. I wanted to hold my own against the pressure and manipulation… Few girls left that studio without looking like bimbos. And, unlike movie making, I had to get it right or risk national humiliation…. Instantly, the grilling started.” (Pgs. 390, 391)
“’I want to go out with you so bad,’ he (Howard Stern) said, his eyes never leaving my body. “Please date me. I’ll pay you to date me.” (Pg. 395)
“’That’s the ugliest tattoo I ever saw,’ he (Howard Stern) scolded. ‘It is ugly. You really are a psycho.’” (Pg. 396)
“(Marilyn) Manson started calling me – every day. When I wasn’t there, he would leave me half-humorous, half-insane messages about wanting to set me on fire or feed me to Corey Feldman. Since my marriage to Rod was loveless and sexless, I started seeing Manson on and off. But the more I got to know him, the weirder he became. He would talk about wanting to see girls fuck prosthetic limbs or sucking Twiggy’s dick, and I’d never be able to tell to what degree he was joking and to what degree he was serious. And he wanted to fuck me in the ass a little too often for my comfort. Every time we were naked, he’d be going for my butt like a rat to cheese.” (Pg. 447)
“I walked past a table full of beautiful girls, with Wesley Snipes sitting smack in the middle of them all. He waved me over. ‘So you’re the reporter from the E! Channel.’ He smiled. ‘Why don’t you join us?’ Hesitantly, I sat down next to him, and all the other girls at the table shot me dagger looks. He was trying to get in their pants; they were trying to get in his pants; and I was confused. ‘So,’ he leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘do you like it up the ass?’ Being a porn star, I was used to such questions. But Wesley had no idea I was a porn star. Either way, I was offended. I looked at him blankly, stood up, and walked away. That was the first and last time I ever saw him.” (Pg. 450)
“I never made it to the bar. Bruce Willis walked in front of me. He looked fine. Instantly, I felt my chest flush and tingle. Even though he was wearing a creepy pair of shorts, I was still attracted. He didn’t say a word. He pushed me up against the wall and kissed me. After thirty seconds of passionate tonguing, he just walked away without a word…. As we hit the fresh air, a bodyguard walked up to me and said, ‘Mr. Willis is waiting for you in his limousine.’ ‘ He’s going to be waiting a long time,’ I responded. There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and he had crossed it.” (Pg. 450)
13. Your fans are often creepy and/or drunk, and none of them really care about your acting, talent or showmanship, they just want to see skin and sex.
“Here, finally, was a new challenge for me, (acting), something I had never done before. Of course, in the back of my mind, I imagined the audience with one hand on their dicks and the other on the fast forward button skipping over the acting scenes…” (Pg. 371-372.)
“These guys didn’t care about seeing a show. They just wanted to see some skin. So much for my delusion of actually being respected in the world at large.” (Pg. 467)
“If I was going to stand up there all night bending over for alcoholics, no one was going to take my money.” (Pg. 468)
“I also learned to keep a close eye on my G-strings and bras, because every time I removed one, it disappeared from the stage. I still wonder what guys do with them, and how stinky and crusty they get when they remain unwashed in their rooms for so long.” (Pg. 468)
“The other thing I learned that week was that guys don’t give a shit about thousand-dollar light shows and Feminator outfits. The best way to make money is not with a Broadway-caliber show, but by being enticing and engaging onstage – by making them want to splooge in their pants. And so, by the time I arrived at my second engagement, Al’s Diamond Cabaret in Reading, Pennsylvania, I had shed all pretensions of performance art. I was back in stripper mode.” (Pg.468)
14. Working in porn will negatively affect your viewpoint of men and sex.
“After a girl works in the industry for a while, that’s the only thing guys seem good for – taking care of stuff.” (Pg. 162.)
“Every man I’ve ever met loves the idea of dominating a woman by pushing his massive dick into her tight sphincter so that she loses control” (Pg. 323)
“On top of it, (drugs and user boyfriends), she’ll have no respect for money or sex anymore. Her pussy will have changed from a pleasure center to a cash machine.” (Pg. 333)
“That night at work, she (Melissa) sat inside the ring around the stage and studied every move I made. Wherever I went in the club, I could feel her watching me. It’s funny how if a man did that, it would be creepy; but with a woman, it was such a turn-on. Maybe it’s because worship is a submissive act, and men are supposed to be dominant.” (Pg. 471-472)
“In my mind…every guy just wanted to have sex with me.” (Pg. 360)
15. It’s extremely difficult to have a healthy personal, romantic or sexual relationship with someone. Your career will likely negatively affect your relationship and your relationship will likely negatively affect your career.
“Other girls meet boyfriends after getting into the industry. And while guys may think it’s cool at first, ultimately they’ll hate you for what you’re doing. . . . Even if you end up leaving the industry for him, he’ll always hold your past against you.” (Pg. 333)
“Never bring a boyfriend to the set, because they usually stare needles into you and everyone else the whole time. You’ll be so afraid you’re going to upset him that you won’t be able to perform. And the guy in the scene with you will either be unable to get a hard-on because he’s so uncomfortable or he’ll want to fuck you to death, just to piss your boyfriend off. Some of the bigger loser boyfriends will even hit on other performers.” (Pg. 334)
“Because few outsiders truly accept and understand the lifestyle, most people in porn date within the industry. However, dating a male performer is also a kiss of death for most girls. As soon as emotions come into play and you both really love each other, you’re not going to want him to perform with anyone else and he’s not going to want you for perform with anyone else.” (Pg. 334)
“The other option is to have an open relationship and fuck other people, but then that’s not a relationship at all. It’s nothing. I’ve never seen a swinger couple work out: usually, one person will fall in love with the other first, but will keep their mouth shut until one day they just blow up and let it all out. And when they do, it’s such an overload of emotions and feelings that it scares the other person off.” (Pg. 334)
“Even to those of us behind the camera, sex is an intimate thing. This is borne out by how hard it is for anyone in the industry to have a healthy relationship off camera. No male is wired to watch his lover having sex with another man on camera, especially if he is better looking, has a bigger dick, and fucks her better.” (Pg. 334)
Quote from “one of porn’s leading men.”(Anonymous):
“Getting into porn is a death sentence. As a male performer you are doomed to be single for the rest of your life…. A guy performs seven to ten scenes per week at least. The number one performers do fifteen scenes per week. So what girl is going to go out with a guy who’s pounding fifteen other girls every week? No one. The guys don’t have any social life, because they are on set so much. And when they do go out, they are like lepers. Girls won’t touch them. Even girls in the industry avoid them, because it’s bad for their career to get stuck having sex with just one guy on camera.” (Pg. 386-387)
Rod “was the first man I’d dated with a Madonna-whore complex. Whenever we were together, he treated me like a princess. But in bed, the sex had to be dirty and he’d treat me like a slut, shouting obscenities and constantly trying to stick his finger up my asshole while fucking me, which is an acquired taste that I just never acquired. So, as the relationship progressed, it became harder and harder for him to fuck me, because he was caught in a double bind. It seemed like in order to get pleasure during sex, he had to humiliate the woman; but it was impossible for him to humiliate the woman he loved.” (Pg. 424)
“For once, I was dating a guy who focused one hundred percent of his attention on me. I was confident that he loved me and, even better, he allowed me to be in charge. I learned an important thing about dating: The person who wants the least amount of commitment in a relationship is the one who holds the reins.” (Pg. 425)
“One would think that after what I’d been through with Jack, I’d be a sympathetic partner. But, instead, I became just as bad as the men I had dated. I took out all my negative experiences on him (Rod) and really fucked him up, because I had nothing to lose. By the end of our first month of living together, we were fighting all the time. I would insult every aspect of his masculinity and threaten to leave, because I truly did not need him. “ (Pg. 425)
“Whenever I said I was out of there, he would cry. And once a man cries, it’s over. Show me any weakness, and I’ll stomp all over you. I clearly wasn’t ready for a relationship. I was still living out unresolved conflicts from my past.” (Pg. 426)
“Of course, Rod wasn’t entirely innocent himself. He seemed to be taking out all his bad experiences with women on me as well. He had a passive-aggressive way of trying to keep me under control, and that was by playing off my insecurity. It’s a time-honored tactic among men who feel like they are dating a woman out of their league: never be impressed and always put her down. He would walk into the room when I was putting on makeup naked and say, ‘You can tell the first thing that’s going to go is your ass.’ Or he’d tell me that the only women who had turned him on were Asian girls.” (Pg. 426)
“Slowly I went from being this thriving, confident woman at the top of a new career to questioning everything about my body and myself. It was his way of getting revenge by making me as dependent on him as he was on me.” (Pg. 426)
“When he (Rod) was angry, he would call me a whore. And that pissed me off more than anything, because Preacher had said that word to me when he was raping me. Hearing it since – no matter who spoke it – sent bubbles of anger boiling to the surface of my skin. I told him when he first used the word, ‘You can call me anything you want, but do not call me a whore. It will save you a lot of pain and suffering.’ It
was a big mistake to tell him that, because now he had a button he could push whenever he wanted. Of course, he still had to suffer the consequences. I’m not by nature a violent person, but I would throw books at him and pummel him with my little fists.” (Pg. 426)
“If I hadn’t really cared about him, I wouldn’t have responded to his provocations at all. So, somehow, over the course of all this madness, I must have fallen in love with him. And the more I fell in love with him, the more he pulled away and neglected me. Instead of spending time with me when he was home, he would lock himself in his room for days and write scripts.” (Pgs. 427-428)
“Eventually, our sex life dwindled to nothing – and I needed it, not just for the pleasure itself, but as a reassurance of the love that we both supposedly felt for each other. It wasn’t just because of his demeaning comments and his sexual neuroses: being business with your lover will typically squeeze the last drop of energy and passion from both of you. Some say that work is the enemy of all natural erotic impulses, that it kills off your sexual desires and channels them elsewhere. And this is doubly true when your work is sex.” (Pg. 428)
“I started scrambling to save the relationship. On some level, I wanted to make it work because, professionally, we were a good team. The movies we made were some of my favorites. So, in a last ditch effort to make the relationship work, we decided to get married. I thought we’d fall back in love – and I convinced myself that I was overemphasizing sex, that perhaps it wasn’t really that important in a relationship. So I immersed myself in planning the wedding of the century. I even bought my own wedding ring. (Pg. 428)
“The next day we were scheduled to fly to Hawaii for our honeymoon. So I booked a room for us that night at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When we checked in, we said good night and went to sleep. We didn’t even have sex. And the scary thing is I didn’t even want to.” (Pg. 429)
“When we woke up on our first morning as a married couple, nothing seemed to have changed. He was shuffling his feet across the floor to the bathroom, and all I could think was, ‘Pick up your fucking feet, loser.’ Perhaps if he had leaned over and kissed me and said, ‘Oh my God, you’re my wife,’ I would have felt differently. But instead, he just asked, ‘Do you want anything from room service?’ in his meek little voice. I wanted to smack him and say, ‘Speak up!’ Bitterness was taking hold of me.” (Pg. 431)
“By the end of the trip, I knew it was over. The only words I said to him on the way home were, ‘Fine. Go ahead and write another mother-fucking script. I couldn’t care less. They’re bad anyway.’ Naturally I only acted this way with him in private. But it was only a matter of time before it leaked into our professional life. We began to argue over every little thing on the set, which made the entire crew uncomfortable. One of us would tell the other what to do, and the other would bristle and snap back. Of course, I only had a problem when he was ordering me around, not when anyone else did.” (Pg. 432)
“We tried to make each other’s jobs as hard as possible. He knew how to get me, because the most important thing to me was the way I looked on camera. And I knew how to get him, because it was so important to him for the production to run on time, especially because he’d cram and entire big-budget movie into six twenty-hour days. It soon became The War of the Roses between us.” (Pg. 432)
“He would berate me in front of the crew; he would compliment the other girls but ignore me; he’d pretend not to hear me when I asked min something; he’d tell me I wasn’t smart enough to learn two lines of dialogue; and he’d chastise me for expecting to be treated like a star when I acted like a little kid.” (Pg. 432)
“ In return, I would spend longer in the makeup chair than I need to. And if he dared to poke his head into the room and ask how much longer, I’d tell the makeup artist that I needed more eyelashes or tell the hairstylist that we needed to re-wet my hair and start over.” (Pg. 432)
“Making movies became a miserable experience, because my dysfunctional relationship was staring at me in the face on the other side of the camera. And sometimes, on my side of the camera. He (Rod) was a great director, but he wasn’t a great performer. And since it takes two to make a good sex scene, I felt that he was fucking my career up. When your sex life is bad off camera, you can’t expect chemistry to magically come into existence on camera.” (Pg. 432)
“For one film, we had arranged a three-way, with Rod, Mickey G., and myself. But Rod couldn’t get his dick firm to save his life and Mickey was like a rock, so Rod had to be dropped from the scene. It wasn’t anything personal: it was just about getting the film done. But it was a major ego blow to Rod. I took him aside and said that we could just scrap the scene. ‘I insist that you do it’, he said. ‘If you don’t, I’m going to be mad.’ ‘Well,’ I told him. ‘You’re going to be mad either way.’ I did the scene. It was the first one I had done with another man since we were married. But Rod got his revenge.” (Pg. 433) (See also all of pgs. 434-437)
“Since my marriage to Rod was loveless and sexless, I started seeing (Marilyn) Manson on and off. But the more I got to know him, the weirder he became. He would talk about wanting to see girls fuck prosthetic limbs or sucking Twiggy’s dick, and I’d never be able to tell to what degree he was joking and to what degree he was serious. And he wanted to fuck me in the ass a little too often for my comfort. Every time we were naked, he’d be going for my butt like a rat to cheese.” (Pg. 447)
“Of course I was discreet about the fling. However, as soon as the paparazzi photos of us hit the press, Howard Stern was on the phone asking about it. I denied the whole thing on the air and told him we were just friends. But the next day Manson was on his show, blabbing about the entire thing. I never pegged him as the type to kiss and tell.” (Pg. 447)
“Every bond that held Rod and me together – except for that proclaimed by church, state, and Wicked contract – had crumbled to dust. The final blow came when we concluded that I needed to work with other directors and performers in order to maintain the momentum of my career.” (Pg. 453)
“Lee, my makeup artist, shut the door and tried to soothe me. Just then, Rod came bursting into the room. ‘You stupid fucking whore,’ he yelled. ‘You are going to ruin this whole production. You can’t treat people like dogs after how hard they’ve worked. Who do you think you are?’ ‘How hard they worked, you selfish bastard? I’ve worked just as hard. And I’m the one who has to be on camera and look beautiful at four in the morning.’ We yelled at each other for ten minutes, making Lee so uncomfortable he cleared the room. Finally, I packed my shit and left the set.” (Pg. 454)
“My marriage showed no signs of improvement. In bed, I would move my foot over to touch his, and he would move his leg away. I needed so badly for him to do something to show that he loved me, something to counteract the constant drama on the set, but instead, he’d shut himself in his room for days and say that he had scripts to write. I had been much better off living alone. I didn’t realize that it’s a lot worse to be lonely in the company of someone you supposedly love than it is to be lonely by yourself.” (Pgs. 454-455)
“After we wrapped shooting on Satyr, I couldn’t take it anymore. The exact words I used were: ‘If you aren’t going to fuck me, I’m going to find someone who will.’ ‘Go ahead,’ he said. There was no love, or even consideration or good will, left between us anymore. The minute I left, I knew I was doing the right thing.” (Pg. 455)
“With Rod, everything was work. My entire life was porn. I needed escape and balance.” (Pg. 461)
“There was nothing for me back in L.A. Jordan offered the solace I needed: He was normal; he made me feel comfortable; he gave me my space. He was the exact antithesis of the life that I was so irritated with.” (Pg. 462)
“With weeks on his own to think about our short-lived marriage, Rod realized that he had blown it. He had taken me for granted and lost me. He followed me around the house, telling me how much he loved me and begging me to stay. His eyes reddened, his voice squeaked. It actually seemed like he might act like a man for once and punch the wall. But it was all too late. In my head I prepared a response: ‘You only have yourself to blame. I gave you your chance. I would cry myself to sleep at night begging you to just fucking hug me, and you would tell me to go fuck myself. You see where it got you? I fucking hate you.’ But I didn’t say a word. I didn’t press a single one of his buttons, even though they all lay exposed in front of me. Like most men, he didn’t realize what he had until it was gone. So much of his yelling, his lack of affection, and his self-imposed workaholism had come from the simple fact that he was insecure. He didn’t feel that he deserved me. And now, it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was getting what he deserved: I was leaving.” (Pg. 463)
“His (Jordan’s) suspiciousness made some sense since I had met him in a strip club and was in the middle of finalizing a divorce with Rob. But as his attachment to me (and fear of loss) deepened, he didn’t want to share me in any way with another human being. The guy knew from day one that dancing was what I did for work – and the reason I could afford the two hundred dollar tennis shoes he had on his feet. But now he couldn’t stand it. On the road, new demands came every day. He didn’t like me making certain suggestive moves onstage. He didn’t want me talking to other guys. He didn’t want me sitting in their laps for Polaroids – I was only allowed to put my arm around them.” (Pg. 475)
“Every so often Joy would call with an offer to do an interview for VH1 or E!, and I wouldn’t call her back. Jordan didn’t want me to talk about anything sexual in public that would embarrass him. Of course, I would fight him on everything tooth and nail, but he made my life so miserable with his constant temper tantrums, guilt trips, and harangues that I would eventually give in. It was easier to play along than to fight. I don’t know how he turned the dynamic around between us and ended up in charge. Although I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, it was what I wanted to some degree, because he was the exact opposite of Rod: a real man – and manly to a fault.” (Pg. 475-476)
16. The porn industry and success within in it can change you and others for the worse.
“The first person I met was actor Lyle Danger, a dark, moody, well-built Slovenian with smoldering eyes and a day of stubble on his chin. Like me he was also new in the business…. I liked him right away. Of course, the business would eventually change him into another creature entirely.” (Pg. 317)
“They (Juli Ashton and Kaylan Nicole) had realized that with their beauty, boobs, and status, the rules that applied to the rest of the world didn’t apply to them. They had the attitude that they could do absolutely anything they wanted….They ordered drink after drink, traipsed around the plane like it was their living room, and acted openly sexual with each other, much to the excitement and consternation of the male passengers. Even though I’d been in lesbian relationships, I’d never been that forward in public. My dad the cop had taught me to follow the rules, and their behavior confused me. On the one hand, it made me uncomfortable; on the other, I wanted to have the guts to act that free.” (Pg. 400)
“I always made sure I had the best outfit on. If there was a photo op, I made sure I was front row and center. If there was a television camera in the vicinity, I made sure I grabbed the microphone. I took over absolutely everything. (At the Cannes Film Festival and the Hot D’Or awards.) I was competing with some of the best girls in the industry, and I had to prove why, out of all of them, I deserved to be starlet of the year. Even when photographers would yell ‘Pamela’ at me, I’d play along, mugging for photos and letting them think they had Pamela Anderson. Looking back on it now, I’m ashamed at how selfish and opportunistic I was, but at the same time, success requires some familiarity with the fatal flaw of narcissism.” (Pg. 402)
“I swept up at the Hot D’Or Awards on my final night in Cannes, winning Best New American Starlet and Best American Actress. Afterward, I looked around the room and thought, ‘I did it. I’m the most popular girl here.’ As shallow as it is, that’s what I thought at the time. Life was like high school, a popularity contest in a classroom as big as the world. Mainstream fame, or at least the tantalizing possibility of it, had now entered my bloodstream. I was never the same afterward. Returning home on the airplane, swigging miniature bottle of Jack Daniel’s with Juli and Kaylan, I was now one of them: I could do no wrong. And I could get away anything, because I was Jenna! with an exclamation point. I thought I was finally finding myself, but in reality I was turning into a monster.” (Pg. 407)
“A strange sort of arrogance told hold of me after all the accolades. I began to think I was smarter than everybody around me, which may have been true, but didn’t give me any excuse to act that way. On set, I acted as if I were the only one who knew what it took to sell movies. I knew what kind of sex to have, whom I had to work with, and how many scenes I needed to be in. And if anyone disagreed with me, I’d pull rank. I realized all I had to do was threaten to quit the movie or sic Steve Orenstein on a director, and he’d do whatever I wanted. When you are twenty-one and have the kind of power I did, you enjoy brandishing it.” (Pg. 412)
“An insanely talented director, he (Rodney Hopkins) had just started making films for Wicked, and he knew a lot about the business. So I quickly realized he could help me. Was that superficial of me? Yes. Was it unusual for me? Sadly, no.” (Pg. 422)
“She (Teri Weigel) began to stammer something that sounded like an apology. I looked at her body and complexion; she seemed to have fallen on hard times. But I wasn’t going to pay for her mistakes. ‘Pack your fucking shit,’ I told her, ‘and get the fuck out of my club.’ And so Teri and her loser suitcase pimp left. Next I had it out with the club owner, and finally my agent. ‘If this ever happens again,’ I screamed at him over the phone, ‘I will personally come down there and cut your fucking throat.’ (Pg. 467)
“I flashed back to the first time I stood up to Suze Randall and squeaked something about not wanting to put oil on my ding-ding. I was a different person now: fearless and terrifying. I wasn’t sure if that was necessarily a good thing.” (Pg. 468)
17. You may become tempted to become a “porn pimp” yourself, and bring someone into a world that you yourself find to be unhealthy.
“We all get paid kickbacks for finding gorgeous girls for films, so we’re always on the lookout for new talent…. If I like a new discovery enough, I’ll even use her in one of my movies. Why give her away to someone else?” (Pg. 328)
18. Strangers may recognize you and try to attack you or rape you. Your safety will likely be threatened.
“One evening, I opened the door to let the delivery man in. It was always the same guy: a hairy, thick-armed doofus with stringy black hair and a wardrobe consisting only of grease-stained button-down white shirts. But today he looked different. His jaw was set, his eyes blazed, his voice trembled. When he passed me the food with shaking hands, he just stared at me. I left the door open and walked to the loveseat to get my wallet. He followed me in and closed the door behind him. ‘I saw you naked in a magazine,’, he said. ‘Yeah, you looked real good. You and I are going to – ‘ I screamed at the top of my lungs. I just kept screaming and screaming. I was sure I was about to be raped. But instead the guy abruptly turned and ran out of my apartment. I collapsed onto the loveseat, shaking. My whole body felt cold, and I curled up and stared at the wall. I must have lain there for hours, comatose.” (Pg. 338)
“As my star rose, it became harder to live in that tiny studio. I wanted someone to share my excitement with. And, more than that, there was the issue of safety. Not only was I afraid to order food, but my deathly fear of the parking garage was not assuaged when my Corvette was broken into and thousands of dollars in clothes I had stored in the back for photo shoots were taken.” (Pg. 422)
19. You will likely find it hard to do other types of work or feel that you can do so.
“I was lying in bed at Steven’s apartment the night the E! Cannes special premiered. I was overwhelmed watching it. It was the first time in my adult life I had accomplished anything that didn’t involved taking my clothes off.” (Pg. 409)
20. You may find yourself constantly seeking approval from others.
“So when he (my father) called from yet another payphone somewhere in this great land of ours, I invited him to the awards show. Despite everything, I wanted my father to see me win. I wanted him to know that I was no longer a little girl who couldn’t take care of herself. I wanted him to see that I was successful and respected and admired. I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted him to care. And perhaps I also felt that his approval would set in stone that I had made the right decision getting into adult movies.” (Pg. 410)
“I felt a tremendous amount of pressure (which was probably in my mind) to impress everyone. I wanted to be funny, relaxed, charismatic. I didn’t want to embarrass myself and Wicked. To this day, I still put pressure on myself to be the person that everyone wants and expects me to be.” (Pg. 411)
21. If you want to increase your income, you will likely have to have anal sex and sex with multiple partners.
From a “sample adult-film contract”:
“SCHEDULE ‘A’. Additional compensation:
Same Sex Anal Intercourse (excluding DP [Double Penetration] and Air Tight. (See below.) $125.00 per scene
Opposite Sex Anal Intercourse (excluding DP and Air Tight): $250.00 per scene
Opposite Sex Double Penetration (excluding Air Tight): $400.00 per scene
Air Tight (three males with three simultaneous penetrations): $650.00 per scene
Multiple Partners: $250.00 per partner over three (Pg. 356)
22. You will likely end up touring strip clubs and doing stripping as part of promoting your career, and even though you may have already “made it” or become “a star”, you may have to work in less than desirable places, under less than desirable conditions.
“I had been told that Al’s was a high yielding club. But even though it allowed fully nude dancing, I was disappointed when I saw it. It was a total dump (though it’s since been remodeled). Of more concern, it was poorly designed. I was supposed to dance in a pit surrounded by a runway for other dancers and, far on the outside, a railing. Since the guys were along the railing and I was stuck in the center, there was no way they could hand me – or even throw me – money. So I kissed my tips good-bye. On top of that, Al took a five-dollar cut from each Polaroid in exchange for providing the camera and the film (even though I had my own).” (Pg. 468)
“In most of the other clubs I’d been to, thirty to a hundred girls worked on a peak night, but at Al’s there were only six other dancers. And there was no lap-dancing allowed; only stagework. Even stranger, all the guys hanging out had their own coolers. It was strictly a B.Y.O.B. situation. I was definitely in the boondocks, and I had bad associations with the boondocks.” (Pg. 468-469)
“My dressing room was a tiny cubicle covered with graffiti from the other girls who had been there.” (Pg. 469)
“I walked offstage with three crumpled dollar bills that had been tossed hard enough to reach the inner sanctum.” (Pg. 469)
23. You will likely be in the industry only for money or other reasons that aren’t the healthiest. (And therefore not be fulfilled in any way other than materially.)
“The other temptation was money…By appearing in a film, I could make anywhere from two thousand dollars to six thousand dollars for just a few hours work. That’s a lot of new purses.” (Pg. 131)
“Step One: Teenager becomes a model. Reason – Like all teenagers, she thinks she’s special.
Step Two: Teenager starts dating a tattoo artist and biker. Reason – He’s older, badder, and allegedly wiser.
Step Three: Teenager becomes a stripper. Reason – Work, money, and approval of boyfriend.
Step Four: Teenager starts modeling nude. Reason – It’s just like real modeling, except with the stripping added in.
Step Five: Teenager starts acting in soft-core all-female adult movies. Reason – Revenge.” (Pg. 126)
“Many strippers get into porn solely because they want to up their rates. Plus, dancing is a lot easier than being on set, a great way to build up your fan base and mailing list, and a convenient escape from the problems at home.” (Pg. 466)
“Sexuality became a tool for so much more than just connecting with a boy I was attracted to. I realized it could serve any purpose I needed. It was a weapon I could exploit mercilessly.” (Pg.287)
“You get bored, because the hours are long.” (Pg. 329)
“There is a little girl who is still inside me, and that little girl doubts everything I do, but I always force myself to go out and do everything – no matter how trivial – bigger and better than everybody else does, just to spite her.” (Pg. 401)
24. Even if you leave the industry, your porn career will haunt you forever.
“…Unfortunately, they can’t take that experience (of doing a porn movie) back, so they live the rest of their days in fear that their relatives, their co-workers, or their children will find out, which they inevitably do.” (Pg. 132)
“’You have to understand that if you are only planning on doing this for three months, it will affect the rest of your life. You will always be thought of as a porn star, even if you become a nun afterward.” (Pg. 328)
“Do not attempt to hide it (doing porn) from lovers or family, because that will only stress you out and they’ll eventually find out anyway.” (Pg. 331)
25. Since money alone does not lead to true meaningful fulfillment, you likely still won’t be happy, even when you reach the top.
“Suicide, I’ve read since, is a triggered behavioral mechanism, like throwing up. It has to do with not feeling needed, with seeing your existence in the social hierarchy as superfluous. It is something certain animals do, evolutionarily, so that their offspring can survive on a limited food supply. All that makes sense intellectually, but, looking back on it, I still didn’t know why I even contemplated it. I had gotten signed to Wicked; I’d taken the first difficult strides toward my goal; I’d accomplished something by myself for once in my life. Yet I still wasn’t happy.” (Pg. 364)
“After the ceremony I was too tired to celebrate. I went back to my room, shut the door, and cried. ‘My life is at a fucking peak,’ I thought. ‘There’s nowhere to go from here but down.’” (Pg. 412)
“Up until then, I had lived in the sheltered world of the sex industry. And I had come to believe that I was a star, especially after Cannes. But when I met all these people, I realized I was nothing. I was just a niche icon, not a real celebrity. I had sex on screen; I did some perfunctory acting. These people moved and inspired millions of people with their music. All I did was contribute to Kleenex sales. There must be something more I could make of myself. (Pg. 445)’’
“I am perpetually getting the shit kicked out of me in my sleep. I also often dream about my dad dying. What connects all these dreams is that I’m always alone, scared, and powerless in them. For as long as I can remember, this has been my nocturnal landscape. A lot of the decisions I’ve made in my waking life have been attempts to escape it: Is fame going to help me sleep? Is getting married going to stop the nightmares? But nothing worked. Every supposedly safe choice I made just ended up scaring me more. And the more wrong turns I made, the more I woke up crying. My dad couldn’t console me; Jack couldn’t console me; Nikki couldn’t console me; Rod couldn’t console me. No one could.” (Pg. 457-458)
“The budget of the movies we were making had grown from $20,000 to $200,000, and the pressure mounted accordingly. I needed a way out – from L.A., from Rod, and from the movies.” (Pg. 458)
“I piled everything in the car and drove off. I didn’t know where I was going. But somehow, I found myself at the door of a place I recognized: the Vagabond Inn. It was all this there: the bug stains on the sheets, the light-phobic roaches, the asshole at the front desk, demanding a credit card. But I was different. The little girl, wide-eyed, innocent, and fearful, was gone. I was a star now, supposedly; a married woman, on paper at least; and a confident adult in control of her own destiny, at least in other people’s perception. But in truth I had traveled so far and gone nowhere: I was still alone, looking for someone to help me make my way through the wilderness of the world. Every clearing I thought I had found turned out to be just a chimera. I threw my bags in the corner of the room and lay on top of the bed in my clothes. I turned my mind off and stared at the ceiling, waiting for an epiphany. It never came.” (Pg. 455)
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So there you have it. Said better than anyone else could say it and with more authority than anyone else. Please feel free to share this compilation far and wide, particularly with young women who might be considering entering the pornography industry. And once again, thank you Jenna!
APA, :^)
Note: The above is a work in progress. It will be added to and refined over time. But I thought in the meantime visitors to this blog might want to see what I have compiled so far. I hope you enjoyed it! :^)
