I was wrong.
Amber Lynn, Ginger Lynn, Porsche Lynn, Hyapatia Lee, Heather Hunter, Nina Hartley, Asia Carrera, Teri Weigel, Savannah. Every one of them, along with some 491 other adult models and film stars, had one thing in common: they had stared, at an early age, down the lens of Suze Randall’s camera. And, more than anything, I wanted to stare down that lens too.
Since I was ten, I’d been taking pictures of myself and studying them, hoping that I had what it took. I didn’t want to be just any model: I wanted to be the best, the most photographed, the most known. I wanted people to say, “Oh, I know Jenna. I’ve seen her in hundreds of magazines.” And my passport to that was Suze Randall. She had been in the business since the sixties in Britain, when she was working in a hospital and moonlighting as a model. Her goal was only to help pay the bills while her husband tried to write a book. But when the book was finished, she kept on modeling. On the side, she snapped nude photos of some of her gorgeous friends, and her work caught the eye of Hugh Hefner, who hired her to shoot for him. Supposedly, after she appeared nude in Hustler, Hefner fired her and, from there, she became the go-to girl for Penthouse, Hustler, and just about every other men’s magazine on the stands. I wanted her to notice me. And that was exactly what Julia Parton promised.
“If I like the photos we take,” she said at the Crazy Horse that night, “I’ll make sure they end up in Suze Randall’s hands.”
The photo shoot wasn’t actually for a specific magazine like Penthouse. Julia and the photographer were scouts, and made their money by sending the pictures to the major photographers in the business—Suze, Steven Hicks, Earl Miller, Clive McLean. If anyone hired me, Julia received a finder’s fee. She was also a scout for Playboy, but I didn’t feel like I was in that league. The women in Playboy seemed so much more mature. So I set my sights on a more appropriate goal: a magazine my father used to have around the house, like Penthouse or Hustler.
I didn’t have much modeling experience. Outside of being photographed by a guy who supplied Vegas entertainment freebies with crappy pictures, my only real photo shoot—where I didn’t have to pay the photographer to take my picture—was for the cover of Easy Rider nearly a year earlier. In the world of the tattoo shop, the cover of Easy Rider was a much more prestigious coup than Penthouse, Playboy, or Newsweek. So I sent the magazine some photos I’d taken with Vanessa in a makeshift studio. They were awkward poses, poorly lit, and tinted sepia-tone because for some reason we thought they’d look more professional that way.
But a month later Easy Rider called and said I’d gotten the cover. All I had to do was show up in a bikini at a studio in Las Vegas that Friday. I took the night off work, packed a handful of swimsuits, and arrived at 11 A.M. They did my makeup, and then put a red wig on me. As they were spritzing it with hair spray, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee of Mötley Criie arrived. Instead of just me, the pictorial was going to be Nikki and Tommy on their bikes, with girls on the back.
The other girl was Bobbie Brown, but not the model-actress-groupie Bobbie Brown from the Warrant video. This was a girl who had stolen her name (and was later sued by the real Bobbie Brown). And since Tommy Lee was dating the real Bobbie Brown at the time, nobody wanted to talk to this girl. I would have felt badly for her if she hadn’t been so unlikable and uptight.
I was so excited by the situation that I was willing to do anything. I whipped off my bikini and jumped onto Nikki’s motorcycle, wrapping my arms around him. After the photo shoot, I was in the makeup room taking off my wig when Nikki walked in behind me. As soon as he saw that I was blond, he was on me like a frigging wet blanket.
“Hey, what are you doing afterward?” he asked. (Rock stars never really have to learn social skills like the rest of us.)
“I have to work,” I told him.
“Well, we should go out,” he said.
“I’d love to, but I can’t,” I said. “Maybe some other time.”
I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. Since the time I was thirteen (which was actually only four years earlier), I’d been in love with Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx. I had pictures of those two guys all over my bedroom. (I was never really attracted to Tommy Lee, so naturally he was the one I ended up dating years later.)
Nikki, however, didn’t want to take no for an answer. He kept backing me into a corner and asking, over and over, if I’d go out with him. Each time, I told him no, until he gave up and left the room, pissed.
When my brother took me to see their Girls, Girls, Girls tour when I was fourteen, I prayed so hard that Nikki would see me in the crowd and take me backstage. I kept telling my brother, “Tony, put me on your shoulders!” “Tony, Nikki just pointed at me!”
Now, three years later, here I was, alone in a room with Nikki Sixx himself, passing up the chance for a night on the town with a rock god. Was I nervous? No. Was I a good girl? Hell no. I wanted to do it so badly. But the fact is: I was on my period. And I turned him down because of that. To this day, if he remembers me at all, he still doesn’t know why I rejected him. Because if I hadn’t been having my period, I would have fucked him forever!
At my next real photo shoot, at Julia Parton’s house in Las Vegas, I was Jenna Jameson. When I signed the release, it felt so good to write “Jenna Massoli, a.k.a. Jenna Jameson.” It was as if a public persona was suddenly coming into being.
“You look just like Racquel Darrian,” Julia said as she took my hand and led me to the bathroom to do my makeup and hair.
In my mind, I didn’t look anything like Racquel Darrian. I looked like Savannah. My dad subscribed to the Playboy Channel, and when I saw her in a movie one night, she took my breath away. I couldn’t get over the fact that a woman who was so gorgeous that she seemed untouchable would ever do adult movies.
In emulation of Savannah, I wore my hair flat with bangs. And because I was used to painting my face so that it would stand out in a dark strip club, I caked on lots of makeup and black eyeliner. All this was anathema to Julia. She scrubbed me clean and redid my face with only a little makeup. Then she wet my hair, undoing hours of work, and gave me a wavier look. A statuesque redhead walked into the room. Julia introduced the woman as her “wife,” and the first thing her wife said was that I could be a stunt double for Racquel Darrian.
When Julia finished my face, I walked into the bright lights of her living room, which had been made into a studio for the day. Everyone stared at me expectantly. They wanted me to start posing. I had no idea what to do, so I just stood there, uncomfortable with the style Julia had created for me and the looks I was getting from the photographer. Finally, Julia pulled me aside.
“Okay, what I need you to do,” she said, “is to keep your shoulders back, kick one of your hips out, and tighten up as many muscles as you can.”
Next, she put me on all fours for a butt shot and asked me to turn my head back to look at the camera. But since my head looked teeny in comparison to my ass in that position, she asked me to bend my body so that my face and my ass were the same distance from the camera and both in focus. I had no idea what she was talking about.
It was such a challenge to look sexy and relaxed while manipulating my body into the various uncomfortable contortions Julia was running me through. Even for what Julia considered 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.
When I took off my top, Julia pulled her wife aside. They conferred about something, and then talked to the photographer. Soon, the three of them were having an all-out argument. Finally, Julia turned to me.
“Are your boobs real?” she asked.
“Yeah, they’re real.”
And then, in unison, her wife and the photographer said, “No, they’re not!”
“I swear they are.”
“Then why is it,” her w
ife asked, “that when you push them together, you have that little raised area of flesh right there?”
“Well, that’s my rib.”
I don’t think they ever believed that my boobs were real. Perhaps they’d forgotten what it was like to be eighteen, firm, and perky.
After a few more shots, the photographer asked me to remove the rest of my clothes. I was used to being topless, but not bottomless. I felt so vulnerable.
Once I was naked, the photographer asked for a “standing bridesmaid.”
“What the fuck is that?” I asked Julia. I had no idea what language this was. So Julia pulled me into the makeup room. She told me about the standing bridesmaid, the piledriver, the cowgirl, the reverse cowgirl, the standing cowgirl, the sidesaddle, the doggie, the dirty doggie, the scissor, the scissor mish, the sixty-nine, the standing sixty-nine, the blow job, the reverse blow job, and the wheelbarrow, most of which I fortunately didn’t need to commit to memory because they required a partner.
And just when I had the necessary vocabulary mastered, the photographer wanted an “American split.”
Being naked was one thing, but spreading my legs was the worst. I had no idea it would be so intimidating to sit spread-eagled under bright lights in a room full of clothed people.
They kept shouting “whiter” at me. I had no idea what they were talking about until I broke down and asked. Turned out they were saying “wider.” The worst was yet to come.
“Okay,” the photographer said. “Now show me pink!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him.
“Um,” he replied. “You need to spread your lips like this.” He held two fingers upside down and slowly separated them.
Though I really wanted to please him, I couldn’t. When given a new challenge, I usually need to go home and practice alone before attempting it in front of other people. And exposing my insides to strangers was so daunting that, instead of spreading my lips with my fingers, I kept trying to cover them up.
I was uncomfortable for so many reasons. It was my first time, the photographer was a guy, and he was so quiet that I didn’t know if I was giving him what he wanted or fucking everything up. I wanted so badly for him to like me and give my photos to Suze. But the only things he’d say were, “wider,” “spread it a little bit more,” and “pull it up more.”
They worked me for seven hours before letting me go. I swore that next time I’d show them so much pink they’d think the sun was setting.
But the second day of our shoot was even more intimidating: we set up outdoors at Red Rocks, a pile of scorched earth just west of Vegas. We didn’t have permits, so we operated on the shoot-and-run principle. We scrambled up to a secluded spot, spread out a blanket, and then I peeled off my clothes and tried to remember the poses while every few seconds a stray tourist would wander over the ridge. Soon, we had a crowd, which made it impossible for me to show any more pink than I had the day before.
When I went home, I was sure that I had blown it and they never wanted to see me again. No one had prepared me for the standing bridesmaid or the American split or the hot fudge sundae with a pink cherry on top. But two days later, the phone at the apartment rang. It was Suze Randall.
I got off the plane in L.A. at 7 A.M. the next Monday, wearing cowboy boots, rolled-up men’s boxer shorts, a tiny white tank top that just barely covered my very real breasts, and a Yankees baseball cap turned backward. I’d never really had a female role model besides Vanessa and Jennifer. So I dressed with only one thing in mind: making men go “Oh, my God!” and trip over things and crash their cars and want to stab themselves in the heart.
My cab driver smelled like spoiled milk. During the whole ride to the studio, his beady eyes were fixed to the rearview mirror, scoping me out. When the creep finally arrived at the studio, a small industrial building near an overpass for the 405 Freeway, a beautiful brown-haired girl came running toward me, yelling my name in an English accent.
“I’m Emma Nixon,” she said, breaking into a wide smile. “I’m your makeup artist.”
As usual, whenever I’m nervous or in a new situation, I turn into the mouse. I reached into my purse to pay the cab driver, and suddenly realized that I had been so anxious about the photo shoot that I’d spaced out and left my wallet on the plane. I looked up at Emma, embarrassed, and explained what had happened.
She didn’t have any cash either, so she told the cab driver that she’d write him a check.
“Well,” he said, gesturing to me. “She can pay me in other ways.” He probably thought I was a hooker and, in retrospect, I can hardly blame him.
Suddenly Emma wasn’t so sweet anymore. “Oh really, motherfucker?” she told him. “We’ll see about that.”
She lifted the telephone handset that she had been holding and punched in the number for Yellow Taxi. Within ten minutes, he was fired and the ride was free. I couldn’t believe how confident this girl was. When I was in my element at the strip club, I could lay creeps like that low. But I still hadn’t gotten used to asserting myself in the real world.
Once the excitement was over, Emma sat me down in her makeup chair and examined me. “You’re not making my job very easy,” she said, laughing. I looked like such a hick to her.
Emma said that Suze had seen the photos Julia had sent her, and was instantly attracted by the prospect of a fresh, new blonde. As Emma went to work on my face, the other girls started arriving. They were so loud and confident, and it seemed like they were all friends with each other. It was like my first day at the Crazy Horse all over again. But the customers watching me here would be Suze and the editors and publishers of the biggest men’s magazines in the country. This was it: if they didn’t like me, I’d have to find another dream.
After Emma finished my face, I hardly recognized myself: I looked, for the first time in my life, like a woman. And that woman appeared sexy, confident, and sophisticated. She was Jenna Jameson. And I liked her a lot more than Jenna Massoli.
The studio basically consisted of a four-poster bed in the middle of a cold concrete room. A handful of girls were already draped seductively over the satin sheets. “Look at you,” Suze said to me. “You’re like a little baby buttercup.”
Strewn throughout the building were photos she had taken of some of the most ravishing women in the world, and every one of them looked her best. I trusted Suze instantly. Unlike Julia Parton’s photographer, who was so quiet I had no idea if I sucked or not, Suze gave me constant feedback. I learned right away how much better it is to work with a very vocal photographer. And because Suze was a woman and spoke in a charming British accent, she could get away with saying things that I would have wanted to strangle most guys for.
“Oh, you’re a pussy fiend, aren’t you Buttercup?” she’d yell as she coaxed me to bend over further. “You dirty little cunt! Oh, make it hotter! You know you wanna be a slut, you little cocksucker! Jolly good!” It was so hard not to laugh sometimes. But I wanted to show her pink, because she made me feel so comfortable and sexy.
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, just as I had at my shoot with Julia. 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. But I knew that if I moved even an inch, they’d be pissed because they would have to remeter the light; and all the other girls, who were posing so effortlessly, would be annoyed. 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.
They changed my outfit fifteen times in order to get as many different magazine covers out of the session as possible. And with each photo set, I slowly learned to transmit s
exuality in a new medium beyond the dark lights of the Crazy Horse Too. I wanted to work the camera as well as I did a strip-club customer.
After the shoot, Emma offered to drive me to the motel where I’d be staying. We climbed into her Porsche convertible, which made her even cooler in my eyes, and she took me to my hotel, a Burbank shithole called the Vagabond Inn. I went to the check-in desk and even though Suze had prepaid the room, they said they needed my credit card. I had no credit card and no money, so they refused to give me a key. I was only eighteen, and had never really traveled alone before. I had no idea where to go or stay in this fucked-up city.
I walked out of the hotel dragging my massive suitcase behind me and watched the passing traffic as I thought about how fucked I was. Suddenly, Emma drove up. She had come back to make sure I was okay. I must have made a pathetic first impression that morning in the cab.
“What’s the matter?” she asked when she saw me standing there with tears in my eyes. “Are you okay?”
“They won’t let me in the room,” I bawled.
Once again, Emma rescued me and checked me into that crack motel. I didn’t even mind the little bedbug bloodstains on the sheets or the roaches that scurried away every time I turned on the lights. I could hardly sleep that night. My mind was racing with excitement and adrenaline from the day, but I was worried that I’d created too much drama for the people who could make me into a star, or—if they wanted—lay me low and chase me out of town.
The second day, Suze shot me alone and then took me to the beach, where she wanted to pose me with two other girls, a little thing named Erin and an experienced model named Shayla LaVeaux, who looked at me like she was going to devour me. We had no permits to shoot there, so Suze blocked us from the beach dwellers with big white sheets. For the shoot, she wanted us to pour oil on each other. As we were doing that, she asked Erin to pour some directly on my ding-ding. I pulled back.
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale Page 7