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

by Jameson, Jenna

  We waited for Jay to get hard again, and filmed the pop shot once more. Two months later, when we were editing, we saw the scene for the first time. Everything looked fine until suddenly, when Jay was about to come, the camera zoomed in on my face. All Jim had filmed was a close-up of my cheek and half my lips getting splattered from some invisible source. Jay was livid.

  All we needed was a pop shot, so Jay and I decided to film it ourselves at home. I did my own makeup, which was extremely difficult because I had to match the artsy tribal look that my makeup artist Lee had given me. In addition, I had to somehow make my hair look like it hadn’t been growing out for two months. To get the camera angle right, Jay stood on a box so that his crotch would be at the height of my face. Then he jumped off the box, ran around to the camera, hit record, ran back to the box, jumped on top, and started beating off until, just when he was about to pop, the tripod collapsed.

  He ran to the tripod, boner bouncing in the air, and tried to raise it. But it wouldn’t stay up. He dashed to the kitchen, grabbed some duct tape, and jerry-rigged the tripod. Then he ran back and forth between me and the tripod, trying to line up the shot, boner still raging. Finally, he leaped onto the box, started beating his meat furiously, and then, just as he was about to come, he fell forward off the crate into me. I pushed him back and, with my hand propping him up, we finally managed to get the pop shot. If we had ruined the scene again, I think he would have given up.

  In the end, the effort was worth it, because Briana Loves Jenna went on to become the second bestselling adult movie of all time next to Marilyn Chambers’ 1972 classic Behind the Green Door.

  Ironically enough, we made a distribution deal for our movies with Vivid, so after all my bitching about being just another girl in the pack, I ended up as a Vivid girl anyway—but one who actually owned her own movies.

  The shooting of our next film, I Dream of Jenna, went much better. We were finally relaxed enough to enjoy the sex like we did in the bedroom. Somehow, Jay had transformed into a natural performer. He must have been practicing while I slept. He fucked me in a dozen different positions for two and a half hours—without a mask, even. You can actually see my stomach contracting from all the orgasms I had while he was eating me out. Just before he came, he pulled out, popped on my butt, and then licked it up. He pulled himself up, grabbed my face, kissed me, and spat it into my mouth. I had no idea what possessed him, because he had never done anything like that before in bed. Measured by porn standards, it was the sign of a healthy relationship.

  With Jay and Emma.

  I thought the nightmares would stop once I was secure and in love, but they didn’t. They revisited me every time I closed my eyes, always replaying the same fear: being alone. When dreams recur, it is often because your subconscious is trying to tell you something. And one morning, I woke up and realized what it was: I was worried about losing my father. He was still ill; now he was having trouble with his prostate. I was consumed by a fear that he would die far away from me, and that we’d never have the chance to make up for all those years of running away from each other.

  Talking to him every day wasn’t really filling the emotional void I felt. It was good hearing his voice, but it made me miss him more each time. My brother and his family had moved up to New Jersey to be with my father, but it didn’t alleviate the sadness and the strain in my father’s voice. I started crying myself to sleep at night because I missed him so much. It was as if I was a little girl again, staying up all night waiting for my dad to come home.

  It seemed strange to feel the emotion of missing him, because he’d never been there for me, but I couldn’t help feeling a hole inside where a family was supposed to go. I started talking to Tony more as well. One of the main reasons our conversations were so awkward, I realized, was my fault: I was still jealous of his close relationship with my father.

  Every time I went out with Jay and his sickeningly happy relatives, I thought of my dad thousands of miles away. I turned into such a wreck that my therapist told me I had post-traumatic stress disorder. I translated that to mean a late onset of separation anxiety from my father. It was time for him to stop running around and start acting like the old man he was. So, as usual, I made the first move. I called him and said, “How do you feel about moving?”

  “Do you mean it?” my dad asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I mean it more than anything. Let’s be a family again—you, me, and Tony.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I don’t want you to do anything for me. But I’m going to save as much money as I can and try to get out of here so I can join you.”

  Tony had tucked away enough money to open his own tattoo shop. Since nearby Tempe, Arizona, was a college town, he figured it would be easy to turn a profit. So he arrived a month later with Selena and his son, Gage. Tony and I had grown so far apart that it took weeks before we were comfortable enough around each other to become friends again. And once we were, it was such a relief, because I’d never truly let him back in my life since I’d cut him out of it for stealing my meth. All along, a piece of me had been missing and I’d never been aware of it until it was back.

  In general, I never worried about Tony, because he was successful wherever he went and whatever he did. I always knew, somehow, that we would eventually come full circle and become brother and sister again. But I had no sense of certainty with my father. His life was constantly up in the air. He clearly needed a way out of his dependence on this older woman he was living with. If he was going to be a kept man, he might as well be kept by me. I had the financial means to do it, and perhaps I could learn to have the mental means as well. So I sent him a check and told him to pack up and get out of there. I was through with being away from him. It wasn’t time to pick up where we had left off when I was fifteen, because we had never really started anything. It was time simply to begin.

  When I finally saw my father, he looked so different. He had grown gentle, and had finally resigned himself to adulthood. I had never realized it before, but all along he had been a child, with two responsibilities—me and Tony—that he was too emotionally immature to handle. So he ran as far away as he could without abandoning us—both physically, by burying himself in his work, and emotionally. And when he got to Arizona, he instantly saw the change in me: his little drug-addled teenage daughter had actually turned out okay.

  Sometimes I think it’s not fair that I’m giving my dad a happy ending when he never really gave me a happy beginning. But I can’t help caring about him in spite of everything. He could hurt me again, and I’d still go to the ends of the earth for him. And that’s simply because, as fucked up as he is, he is all I have, and it makes me more comfortable knowing that he’s close by. I may never have complete resolution with him. I’ve forgiven, but I haven’t forgotten. There will always be a permanent scar and, though it hasn’t yet healed fully, at least it doesn’t hurt anymore. Besides, since I’m paying his phone bill, I know that his number won’t be changing this time.

  To launch our first Club Jenna movies, we threw a party at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Despite all the times I’d returned to Vegas since my Jack days, I had never felt entirely at ease there. But now, in what came as a surprise even to me, I felt like a new person. I was not the lost teenage stripper with the abusive boyfriend, the insecure girl trying to find her footing as a porn star, or the hard-partying feature dancer living a second childhood with her girlfriend. I was, for the first time I could remember, stable in Las Vegas.

  The Club Jenna party itself was a whirlwind of faces. Everyone I knew in the business was there. Even Nikki had shown up, though she had left the business and was living with her husband and daughter in a town where no one knew of her past, putting herself through nursing school. Even though she had been everything to me—lover, best friend, savior, antichrist—we talked only for an instant. This wasn’t because we still had bad feelings left over for each other, but because we knew better. As soo
n as we interact, some spark of mischievousness ignites. We were both miraculously leading separate, normal lives, and all it would take is for one thing to happen between us—a dance, a Vicodin, a drink, a word—and we’d be running wild again. Neither of us wanted to slip up; there was too much to lose now.

  I felt comfortable, however, seeing her again. But when I heard another woman screaming my name, my heart froze. I recognized the voice instantly. It was Jennifer—my Jennifer. I turned around, and saw the same beautiful girl I had fallen in love with so long ago at the Crazy Horse. Even though Jay stood at my side, all the old feelings flowed through me as if they had never left (and perhaps they never had). I stood up, and gave her a massive hug. She told me she had left stripping and modeling altogether. She had given birth to a little boy with Lester, who had of course left her soon after, and was now working as a cocktail waitress at a casino.

  Jennifer and I talked for fifteen minutes about those pivotal days, which had turned me down a path that, though it seems dark to most, ultimately became my source of light. Jack, she told me, had moved to Mexico. His hair was white from drug use, and his hands were so shaky he could no longer hold a tattoo needle. I wonder if he kicks himself in the ass now, because if he hadn’t left me, he would have had all the money in the world to do drugs.

  I could see in Jennifer’s eyes as we talked that she was still in love. She wanted her little Jenna back. But her little Jenna was no more. And before we could even exchange a phone number, we were swept away in the torrent of people. I haven’t seen her since, though I do still visit Melissa from Al’s Diamond Cabaret. Her star had blazed across Playboy and Penthouse, and I was with her to celebrate when she became Pet of the Year. She went on to have four more children, and constantly promises to move with them to Scottsdale so that we can be closer. When I first sat in my hotel room bonding with her back in Pennsylvania, I had no idea I’d end up with more than a plaything for the night, but a lifelong friend.

  After the party, I was feeling so wistful that I decided to go back to the Crazy Horse Too. It had been a long time since I’d last set foot in that place. Though I had changed, the club had not. It seemed to exist in some sort of topless time warp. The old lady in the merchandise booth was still there, as was Vinnie, who hadn’t changed at all except for the fact that he greeted me for the first time ever with a smile.

  Opal was gone, but some of the strippers remembered her. She had left town with Preacher after some bikers put a contract out on his life.

  One of the girls there said she had visited their house in Maryland.

  “He collects everything you do,” she told me.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked her. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “He has a whole room full of your photos and videos and everything you’ve ever done,” she continued. “He’s, like, your biggest fan.”

  My stomach turned. How could a creature I hated so much be my biggest fan? It made no sense. I suppose no one ever thinks that the actions they take are wrong or evil. They simply justify them after the fact; the only problem was that I couldn’t figure out whether his strange trophy room was an unconscious form of penance or pride.

  I thought about the random events that had led me to this point in my life. If I had never gone to Jack’s tattoo shop, and if the tattoo shop had not led me to the Crazy Horse, and if the Crazy Horse had not led me to Jennifer, and if Jennifer had not led me to Julia Parton, Jenna Jameson would not exist. All the wrong choices I had made served only to ferry me to the right place.

  If my constitution weren’t so thick, however, perhaps destiny wouldn’t have been so kind. I still think, sometimes, that this is all a dream I’m having as I’m lying emaciated on the floor of my old Vegas apartment the day Jack left me. I should have been dead. I don’t know why I was spared.

  on Christmas, after eating dinner with my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, I pulled into the driveway of the house that Jay and I share in Scottsdale, Arizona. The grass outside had been mowed that afternoon and the smell, as it always does, reminded me of meth.

  I unlocked the door to discover Jay standing in the living room alongside forty oversize presents. I opened them slowly, savoring each gift: a Louis Vuitton purse, a Tiffany bracelet, a pair of Prada shoes. By the time I arrived at present number thirty-nine, I was exhausted. As usual, Jay had gone too far.

  I carefully removed the wrapping, unveiling a cheap black T-shirt that had been scribbled on with puff paint. It was a somewhat anticlimactic gift, considering what I’d already received. But evidently Jay had made it himself, and I guess it was a sweet gesture.

  “So am I supposed to wear this or something?” I asked him.

  “Jenna, look at the shirt!”

  On the front, he had scrawled: “Marry Xmas.”

  “Oh, that’s cute,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ, do I have to spell it out for you?”

  I looked at it again and realized that the word “marry” wasn’t a spelling error.

  When I raised my head from the shirt and saw his face, so nervous and eager, I burst into tears.

  “Is that a yes?” he asked.

  The shirt was crumpled in my hand like a rag. I wiped my runny nose with it, dropped it to the ground, and stammered a choked-up “yes.”

  Jay didn’t respond. He just stared at the shirt, as if I had dropped something precious. I picked up the shirt and examined it again. I can usually sniff out a diamond, but my senses had miraculously failed me because there it was—six carats—in a pouch attached to the shirt.

  Inside the last box was a bottle of Perrier Jouët with two champagne glasses. And together, that night, we celebrated our engagement.

  One morning, three and a half years later, I woke up. Jay was curled around me. It was strange, because, for some reason, I wasn’t seized by the impulse to push him away. In the past I’d never allowed men to cuddle with me.

  He woke up, and we began our daily routine. He brought me coffee and then went to the computer to edit together a scene from my next movie, Bella Loves Jenna. I padded into the living room in my slippers and switched on the TV. We were like the stereotypical married couple. There was just one problem: we’d never taken the time to get married. We were so focused on building our company, and on flying constantly to L.A. to take meetings for various mainstream film and TV projects—nine-tenths of which never happened—that we’d kept procrastinating.

  I wanted more than anything to finally have a child. With each passing month, I thought about it more and more. Every article I read about the mainstreaming of porn declared that I was going to be the one to make the industry legitimate (practically a pipe dream considering the conservative political climate), but business was the last thing on my mind. My only ambition was to be the mother I never had.

  There were times in my life when I had thought, “I don’t even care if I’m with the right guy. I just want to have a baby.” But I’d thankfully come to the conclusion that it was a selfish thing to do. I didn’t want my children to have to go through a divorce or have to deal with fighting parents. They need to be as healthy as possible, because they’re going to have to go through enough shit with a porn star for a mom.

  So I padded into Jay’s office and plopped down in a leather chair. He knew exactly what was on my mind.

  “What day?” he asked.

  So I got together with my assistant, Linda, who also happened to have become my best friend and the heart and soul of Club Jenna, and planned a wedding in two weeks. I didn’t want to get too busy to become a wife again.

  I don’t do things half-assed, so we worked twenty-hour days planning the thing. With Rod, I had been so nervous and plagued with doubt before the marriage. This time, there were no butterflies and no worries.

  We had the wedding in our backyard, surrounded by eighty of our closest friends and family. When we exchanged vows, I promised myself that I wouldn’t cry. I even made it to the altar without getting mist
y. But the minute I started my vows, I broke down completely. I wiped my eyes and looked out at our guests—at my dad, my brother, Nikki, Melissa, Joy—and they were all sobbing with me. Then I looked into Jay’s eyes, and saw such softness and love that I just knew I would be with this man forever. I saw not a husband, but the father-to-be of my children. I didn’t think I’d feel—or even deserve to feel—anything like that in my lifetime. As cheesy as it sounds, I never knew what love was until that moment.

  Because we were too busy at the time to travel, we decided to have our honeymoon at the Ritz-Carlton in Phoenix, so we booked the rest of the week there. That first night, we had fantastic sex—especially compared with my first wedding, when I didn’t have sex at all—and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  When we woke up at 10 A.M., I looked into his eyes. He looked into my eyes. And we both said the same thing: “Let’s go home.”

  ADDITIONAL PHOTOS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Neil Strauss is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Game, Rules of the Game, Emergency, The Dirt, with Mötley Crüe, and The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, with Marilyn Manson. He writes for the New York Times and Rolling Stone, and wrote and appeared (clothed) in one of the bestselling adult films of all time.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  PHOTO CREDITS

  All epigraphs are from the sonnets of William Shakespeare:

  Book I: Sonnet #1; Book II: Sonnet #5; Book III: Sonnet #12; Book IV: Sonnet #23;

  Book V: Sonnet #31; Book VI: Sonnet #48.

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.