How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale

by Jameson, Jenna

  Larry: Vivian had been one of my students when I taught the police academy in Carson City.

  Jenna: She was after Marjorie. She was kind of cool and nice to me, but by that time I was cold and turned off by that kind of crap. She would talk about things that really mattered to me and listen to what I had to say. And she was really bubbly. I remember Dad wouldn’t let me shave my legs. I’m Italian, so I’m a little hairy. And I stole one of his razors and told her I shaved my legs. She saved me from Dad getting mad. But there was no way I was going to open up to another one of my dad’s girlfriends. And sure enough, he eventually gave her the boot. She and Dad would fight a lot, and that pissed me off. My brother was so mean to every girl my dad brought home. He would throw stuff at them.

  Tony: Anyway, back to school.

  Jenna: What happened was that I eventually broke down. I had to quit cheerleading class and act as if I wasn’t as good as I was so I could have friends again. That sort of sucked for me.

  I remember being very confused because, after Dad and Vivian split up, I had no one to ask woman questions to. The big thing for me was when I wanted to get a bra really bad. I had no boobs. But I wanted a bra because all the girls wore bras. And I was like, “How am I gonna get a bra?” I can’t ask my dad to get me a bra. So I stole it! I went into the dressing room and put it on and left.

  I wore that fucker every day. It was the cool thing in school to have your bra strap sticking out of your top, because it made you look like a woman. At least, that’s what I thought. So I’d always make sure that my bra strap was out a little bit. I was a wacky kid.

  BOYS #2

  Name: Cesar

  Age: 12

  Location: Las Vegas

  Status: Schoolmate

  Boundary Crossed: Kissing

  When the first tremors of a strange, inexplicable attraction to boys began rumbling through my body, I was in a school that was mostly Hispanic. And the cutest, toughest-looking boy of them all, at least to my hormone-addled mind, was Cesar. He had been held back a grade, was at least a foot taller than me, and was just the kind of bad boy I wanted as a boyfriend. Even then, I had terrible taste in men. Of course, at that age you don’t need to date or even touch someone for him to be your boyfriend. It’s just a decision you make together during recess.

  My house was down the street from school. When he came over for the first time, I was so awkward and nervous. The guy had been my so-called boyfriend for four months but I still didn’t know anything about him and had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. We walked out to the porch and sat on the steps. And that was when Cesar took advantage of the moment to put his arm around me. I couldn’t relax because I was worried my dad would come out and bust me. Suddenly, he grabbed me and planted this big nasty French kiss on me.

  I was so grossed out I wanted to spit. The taste of another person in my mouth revolted me. I pulled away and discreetly wiped my mouth on my sleeve. Just then, I saw my grandmother’s head in the door. She said, “Excuse me,” and ducked back into the house.

  I left Cesar on the porch, ran inside, and begged my grandma not to tell my dad. I wanted to be the perfect little daughter to him. And perfect little daughters did not French kiss junior gang-bangers. Of course, little did my father know that my brother and I were running the streets like maniacs. That was the first and last time Cesar and I kissed. A few months later, we moved and I never saw him again. For all I know, he’s still sitting on the stoop, waiting for me to come back out.

  Me (top) at pageant.

  Jenna: After dad resigned from the force, we moved to Peppertree, right?

  Tony: No, we moved to Elko.

  Larry: We moved to Elko because I had a girlfriend in the sheriff’s department who wanted me to come up there. But my girlfriend turned out to be such a shit that I packed you guys up one day and returned to Vegas. If you don’t love my kids, to hell with you.

  Jenna: Elko was where I began my pageants.

  Tony: Dad had always taken her to dance class and tap and all that. She had always been a good ballet dancer. Not too many ballet dancers can do toe. But you were on pointe. You picked it up right away. So when you went into pageants, I thought it was a natural progression.

  Jenna: What happened was I joined the cheerleading squad again in Elko and I was really good. I was the captain. I put the whole cheerleading team together, I taught everyone dance routines and cheers. We’d have fund-raisers to get the uniforms and everything. That’s how I started to get a little bit popular for the first time in my life. Then I started doing pageants because one of the popular girls did them. I was like, “I can shred these people.”

  All the other girls had their mothers supporting them, and I was alone. Dad really didn’t have any money and it wasn’t something he was into, so I did everything by myself. When they would do bake sales for fundraisers, I would make these pathetic brownies. I bought my own dress. I got all the sponsorships for my modeling sportswear.

  Larry: I remember your first pageant in Elko.

  Tony: All the other girls had these pageant moms and choreographers, and Jenna had just choreographed her whole routine in the backyard the day earlier. And she won overall.

  Jenna: It was to “In the Navy.” I shredded. There are a lot of titles you can win for the different events, but the best one is the overall title because you’re competing with girls from ages three to eighteen.

  Tony: And she kept going and going after that.

  Jenna: I never lost a pageant. From the local pageant, I had to go to state, which is a big thing because there are probably one hundred to two hundred girls competing. To win a state title is huge, and I went in there and won for best interview, most photogenic, and modeling. I didn’t win overall. There were girls who were just so stupidly talented. Besides, singers always win over dancers.

  Larry: But you were probably the only one who did the whole thing by yourself.

  Jenna: Trying to raise the money for nationals was insane. They are in Arkansas. And I had to pay for a cross-country trip and hotel. You have to have a certain kind of dress and makeup and everything.

  I met this girl Amy at state. And we would put our crowns and sashes on, and walk around to all the businesses in Las Vegas looking for sponsors. Oh my God, I can’t believe I did this. We’d go into car dealerships and ask for money. We were shameless. We would do car washes. You name it. We scrounged. I remember selling my old pageant dress.

  Larry: I do remember Tony and I going down and hawking all of our guns.

  Tony: That was for state. We made two thousand dollars. The only thing that paid for was the entrance fee. It’s a big scam.

  Jenna: I was psycho about getting the money I needed for everything else. We got turned away from places a lot. Amy would never want to go back, but I would keep going. Remember, I’d beg you to drive me by Fletcher Jones? I went in there every day. They were like, “Oh, for the love of God, she’s back.” And I’d say, “I’m back. Are you ready to sponsor me? It’s only fifteen more days until nationals. I really need you guys. I’m going to be famous.” I was like the girl who never stopped. And I got those fuckers to sponsor me for $150. Yes! That was one of my biggest sponsors.

  Tony: And then after she won a pageant, Jenna would go back and tell them, “You are the reason I won this. Do you want to sponsor me again?”

  Jenna: I was a hustler. I would network all the different pageants. At the time I didn’t think it was anything weird. But for someone who was so shy, it was crazy. When I wanted something I would go to any length to get it. I knew I had the talent; I just needed the money. I was so determined.

  My interview capabilities were psychotic; I was able to turn it on even back then. When they asked me these generic questions, I would make each one my own. But I would always score low on my beauty because I looked super young for my age.

  Tony: It gave you great stage presence and lots of practice dancing and competing. That’s why you worked great at Crazy Hor
se. Most girls who become strippers are usually really hot but don’t know how to dance and entertain. Well, Jenna went up there and did full choreographed performances. Remember when I took you to that bike run when you were sixteen?

  Jenna: Yeah, and there was that wet T-shirt contest. I was crazy about winning any contest, so I did a couple shots and went up there. I got totally naked onstage and won.

  Tony: You got a trophy and five hundred bucks.

  Larry: I had never seen her perform outside of the pageants. The only time I saw you perform was your show …

  Jenna: … at the strip club that my uncle owned.

  Larry: Of course I walked out. But I was absolutely stunned at how wonderful you were. Stunned.

  Tony: Even when she danced at Crazy Horse I would go in …

  Larry: I was so proud, man. That was so fucked up but I kept saying, “God, isn’t she great? She’s great!” I’ll tell you what: you’ve got a cast-iron constitution. I don’t know how you do it. You have to deal with all those different kinds of guys. Twenty minutes of that and I would start stabbing people in the eye with a fork.

  Tony: You know what’s going to be funny is if anyone in Vegas finds out about these stories, they’re going to be like, “That was Jenna Jameson that did that to me. I was just standing on the side of the road and she …”

  Jenna: “… shot me with a fire extinguisher.” Remember that? She totally fogged up. We barely got away.

  Tony: It all started when we were younger and would egg people. Then we decided to take it to a different level.

  Jenna: I came up with the idea of the fire extinguisher. I was like, “They’re readily available at every apartment complex. We just gotta go break the glass and take the fire extinguisher, which sets off the fire alarm. But if we get out of there fast enough, we’re fine, right?” So we had a collection of them. And we would go “fog people up,” as we called it.

  Tony: I’d call someone over to the car to get directions …

  Jenna: … and I’d psssssshhht out of the window. It was great because it’s like a cloud of death. And the people afterward are just coated in white. We would go down to cracktown and see the crack hos on the corner and we’d fog ’em up! I remember one time we got this kid on a skateboard and there was a cop that saw us. We were in this total car chase, and we got away.

  Tony: Remember when those kids were chasing us in their car, and they pulled up next to us.

  Jenna: And then you got out of the car, because they had their window rolled down, put the fire extinguisher in there, and schpoom! You fogged up the whole car full of six kids.

  Tony: No one ever went as far as we did. We would get a camcorder and fog up all the prostitutes on Fremont Street. Remember those gang members making out with that girl? And we hit those fuckers. They were solid white. And one of the guys got in that old Impala and chased us through all of Vegas waving a gun out the window. We went through a full tank of gas in that car chase.

  Jenna: We did everything that the Jackass and CKY guys did way before they did. Maybe everyone was doing this stuff. I don’t know.

  Tony: Remember, we’d build these giant sculptures in people’s backyards and set them on fire?

  Jenna: No, I’d set them on fire. You guys would run, and I’d still be out there, trying to light it.

  Tony: “Jenna, light the wick!”

  Jenna: Finally, boom! Everything would explode in flames. People would be coming out of their houses freaking out. And then a couple days later on the news, “There’s been a rash of arsons across the Las Vegas valley.” And we’re all like, “Yaaaayyy!” Our dad had no clue.

  Larry: I had no idea what you guys were doing.

  Tony: Wreaking havoc.

  Jenna: I still get the urge to go fog ’em up every once in awhile. (all laugh)

  Selena [Tony’s wife]: Are you hearing a lot of this for the first time?

  Larry: Oh yeah.

  Larry: Does anyone know what happened to Rolly?

  Tony: He’s got to be in prison. Rolly was my best friend.

  Jenna: I loved him more than anything. But he was not the kind of guy you would ever see me going out with.

  Tony: You were a cheerleader, and he was a big ole fat kid.

  Larry: I liked Rolly. I never got mad at him. You thought I got mad at him.

  Jenna: Well, yeah, because he kept stealing all your shit.

  Tony: We stole everything that wasn’t bolted down.

  Larry: Who stole my machine gun?

  Tony: The one in the hall closet? I took it.

  Jenna: It was probably that Sterling nine millimeter.

  Tony: After the way I used that gun, I couldn’t bring it back.

  Jenna: We went to such lengths. I’m surprised we never got caught.

  Larry: That’s just luck.

  Jenna: It was jackin’ and burnin’ stuff and foggin’ ’em up. We would laugh to the point where we were half dead.

  Tony: We would have to stop and end it for a while.

  Larry: You guys always had a great sense of humor.

  Tony: It seems like our life has been really based around violence.

  Jenna: I have anger issues from it. I always did. I was a very withdrawn child.

  Larry: Jenna suffered mainly because I was overprotective of her. After what happened with Judy, I couldn’t bear losing her. I had also lost my dad. We were gambling at the Frontier, and he went into the bathroom and had a heart attack at age fifty-four. I couldn’t get him to the hospital in time. So I’d lost most of the people I’d loved, and couldn’t bear to lose any more.

  Jenna: Dad’s had an amazing life. He went into the service right after he graduated high school.

  Larry: That was in 1957. I was an, um, advisor for 729 days 16 hours and 27 minutes in Vietnam in the seventh armored division. But who’s counting?

  Jenna: It’s hard to believe that you witnessed and participated in such violent scenes.

  Larry: I’ll give you an example. I took twenty nuns and some orphans out of a little village sixty clicks southwest of Nha Trang and was waiting for helicopters to pick them up. But we were being followed by North Vietnamese regulars and some Viet Cong. So I placed myself halfway between the helicopters and the tree line. I had my Thompson machine gun on my back and my M14 rifle in my hands. When they came out of the tree line, I just started picking them off. The next day, they found sixty-one bodies that I had killed lying there. And that doesn’t include the bodies the North Vietnamese hauled off into the tree line.

  Jenna: He killed all those guys without batting an eyelash, but he was scared of bugs.

  Tony: Later, he was sent to Africa to fight against a communist revolution over there.

  Larry: The government came to me and said I could finish out my time if I’d organize and train soldiers in the Congo to fight the Simba communist revolution. It’s interesting because when you first go over you try to be so righteous. I grew up with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and they never shot anybody in the back. It was the white hats against the black hats. You have to do everything fair.

  Well, I found out in war the best way to come home alive is to sneak up on people and shoot them. When I got to Africa I still had some humanity left. When we captured the rebels, we would have a trial and then we would pass judgment: we would imprison them, execute them, or send them back to their village. But after four months of walking in the bloody wake of Simba massacres, we flew the black flag. If you ran, you were a Simba rebel. If you stood still, you were a well-disciplined Simba rebel. So we shot everyone. I would come up to a village and, instead of going house to house, I would level the whole place. I would call in the P51 Mustangs. We used Napalm. I had a contingent of howitzers. We went from village to village killing them all. We just didn’t care. We didn’t care.

  Jenna: Now it makes sense why you wanted to be a police officer.

  Larry: You know, it’s not something that really goes away. It’s always there, but I have it shut off. It
took me about ten years to be social afterward, because I was really out of my element in the world. Before I met your mom; I had contacted some people I knew at the French Foreign Legion. I was thinking of joining because I couldn’t cope in the world. I couldn’t carry on a conversation.

  My Dad.

  BOYS #3

  Name: Victor

  Age: 18

  Location: Las Vegas

  Status: Neighbor

  Boundary Crossed: Oral Sex

  It wasn’t until freshman year of high school that I was finally ready to kiss a boy. However, I was such an awkward adolescent that anyone I had a crush on either ignored me or made fun of me, in particular a cute surfer by the name of Bobby Wysaki. The only kid in school willing to go out with me was Aaron Pierro. We made out all the time, but he’d try so hard to get his hands under my shirt or down my pants that it usually degenerated into a wrestling match. Eventually, he broke up with me because I wouldn’t have sex with him.

  Not long afterward, I was tanning on the side of the swimming pool of our apartment complex with my friend Amy when an older boy who had just moved next door started talking to me. He asked how old I was, and I told him the truth: fourteen. He was Italian with long dark-blond hair, a muscular body, and a motorcycle helmet under his arms; I was small even for my age, had a baby face, and a small swelling of the chest that only a career biologist would call breasts. I couldn’t believe he had picked me to talk to over my friend Amy, who was ten times hotter than I was. No guy had ever singled me out like that before. Looking back on it, I can’t help wondering if he was some kind of perv. Either way, my hormones were raging, and snagging an eighteen-year-old guy was a very cool coup for a fourteen-year-old.

  After we talked, I went home. Every night he’d throw rocks at my window to get my attention and leave notes for me underneath a tree. He lived with his mother, but she worked nights. So one night I snuck over there and made out with him. I yearned to be kissed, to be desired, to taste a man in my mouth. When our tongues met, my knees melted and my heart soared. I was in love. I wanted to be needed. I needed to be wanted.