by Jake Brown
65 to him? Had he ditched me? My self-esteem was at such a low point I would have believed anything, and I did when he returned after almost a half-hour covered in a marathon run’s worth of sweat. He gave me some bullshit excuse I was more than happy to believe as I was so relieved he came back at all. Experiences like this were an unfortunate pattern in my life that had first caused me to begin dancing, seeking the attention and approval of men. After Dick, my ego was reduced that much further and my desperation in turn had grown that much greater for the approval of any man I was interested in. In the case of Kurt, I took it to a new low — starting that night when we walked past the Gay Strip Theatre following dinner and a guy asked Kurt ‘So how much money did you make?’ He blew the guy off, but in hindsight, it was clear the gay bouncer had been speaking to Kurt.
Kurt returned to California a day or so later, and naturally, the distance fueled longing, and built up my hopes that much higher, putting myself in yet again the vulnerable position to have them knocked down that much farther, and with that much harder to fall. My mother apparently wasn’t having any of it, disapproving of any dating scenario after what Dick had put us through. I guess I couldn’t blame her in a way. She went about it all wrong as usual: he called one night to speak to me, and I happened to be out with some girlfriends at dinner, so naturally my mother answered, and proceeded to tell him I was out with my boyfriend. He was pissed and believed me after I explained her nutty history with men. It was still clear this wasn’t going to work living under my mother’s roof. I was a grown woman anyway, and it was my life to lead, not my mothers, a concept almost impossible not to agree with. Anyway, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to take a trip to California both to visit Kurt and to check out the West Coast on the possibility I might move there. Well, needless to say, I badly required the break and loved every moment of it, and came back home to New York strongly considering the possibility of relocating. My mind was made up by the time I reached the front door and finding all my shit set out on the front stoop by my mother. I was lucky nothing had been stolen, but my mother had thrown me out. I took that as a sign that it was time for a major change of some sort…(Who knew how big of a change I would end up making!) Anyway, I stayed in some shithole motel for the next few nights in Jersey. It was just awful. My roommate was a mouse, and the place cost like $100 a week, so I guess I got what I paid for. Anyway, I was basically broke, so Kurt flew me out to L.A. and paid to ship all my belongings out there, and I felt maybe this was fate
kurt the construction worker 67 pointing me in the right direction to some new start. I moved in with Kurt. Almost immediately, he took me with him to Cancun, Mexico for a ‘vacation,’ which was fine by me. Trouble came quickly into paradise on that trip when he did several of his now infamous and increasingly puzzling disappearing acts, always returning sweaty and strapped with more cash. I almost didn’t want to know at the time, so I didn’t ask, and he certainly didn’t tell.
We lived in a beautiful apartment complex in Huntington Beach and I enjoyed not being under my mother’s thumb, but still missed New York. I didn’t have a car, so I supported myself by running a friend’s antique business out of my living room. I went back to New York in August, trying to make contact with my mother so she at least knew where I was and that I was okay. I took up residence at the Sheraton Hotel on 52nd Street and while I was on the fact-finding mission regarding my mother’s feeling toward me, I uncovered an awful truth about Kurt that would rock me to my very foundation. It happened one day walking past one of the dozens of adult video stores that adorned Times Square (this was before Rudy Giuliani cleaned the place up.) I happened by chance (or fate I believe) to see a picture of my LIVE-IN boyfriend on the front of a gay jack-off video called ‘Sunsex Boulevard!’ I almost immediately flew back to California, and when I confronted Kurt about it, he told me it was none of my business. Then when I tried to leave — a natural reaction I thought at the time — he started ripping my clothes up, so I agreed to stay to get him to calm down. Almost instantly, I found myself back in the abusiverelationship hell I had just gotten out of, and things just got worse from there. After that, every time he left and came home in his nasty-ass sweaty state, I knew he’d been stripping for faggots, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was off shooting gay porn videos. If not that, then — as I found out later — he would be running off to Laguna Beach or Palm Springs for the night with older men, doing God knows what. I would soon also discover that he was a strip club fanatic, and since he dated me, I had to give him that he wasn’t totally gay. But then was he bisexual I would wonder, and of course, he’d have knocked me across the room if I’d tried to probe him about it. Once things calmed down a little, I went back to New York to again try to re-establish some relationship with my mother and when I returned, I found blonde hairs all over the bedroom pillows. It turned out he’d hooked up with his ex-girlfriend — a fucking CALL GIRL — while I’d been gone, so that added a couple new logs onto the fire that was my latest relationship and ego burning down to fucking shit again. One, the fact that he was cheating on me openly was obviously upsetting, but to boot, the fact that I’d been sleeping regularly with a guy who also had slept with a prostitute just freaked me out on a whole other level. Things got that much more out of control over the next few days when he started calling escort services and bringing girls to our home.
At that point, I took what little self-esteem I had left and decided to make a stand. I confronted him about everything, and of course, it quickly turned nasty and he started smacking me around. The beating culminated with his knocking me out cold with the phone. Then he took all my shit and dumped it on the front porch while I was still lying on the floor in a bloody ball crying. I had no car, no where to go, but I decided to take advantage of the window of opportunity he was giving me to willingly leave. I managed to get to a Comfort Inn down the Pacific Coast Highway a bit, and just tried to get my shit together over the next day or so. Anyway, this was August of 1994, so the O.J. Simpson trial was just starting, which gave me something to watch on TV during the day while I figured everything out. I remember the final thing that convinced me to stay in California. In part just to spite Kurt and show him I could make it without him. It came when I was on the phone with Sickie back in New York and Kurt showed up at my hotel room window, high on drugs with some sign he’d scratched out telling me to go back to New York. We shared a lot of the same friends from the local gym we frequented and a lot of them took my side. I think he felt embarrassed about what he’d done, and knew all our friends knew, and so that burned him on a whole other level. The final straw was one night shortly thereafter when I’d been out to dinner with several of his former friends at a local restaurant, and saw him eating with some she-man steroid bitch, that let me know in my heart it was officially over. It also cemented my decision to stay in California to show him, my mother, and anyone else who I felt like showing up that I could and would be something bigger and brighter than anything they would have ever expected of me.
Part V
The 35% Guy
At this point in my life, for my Ivy League education and all its implied intelligence, I really felt I had no common sense when it came to men. The only thing I had figured out was they liked to have sex with multiple women on account of them all cheating on me, which was probably subconsciously my first lesson in the porn business. I knew a lot about how to please them because I’d been dancing at this point for a couple years, most likely to a bunch of assholes whose wives were at home with no idea they were out paying to watch me. It was escapism at its most basic, and the idea didn’t totally bother me as long as the guy I shared my bed with wasn’t the star of the show. I knew that there was a market for some massive sort of dissatisfaction in the home life of a lot of the male population in America, but through dancing I’d only flirted with the outskirts of the pleasure they were after. I could tell even from that vantage point that they weren’t getting it at home and that confused me even
further as to how to please the men in my own personal life. Oddly though, it planted the seed in my head that where I couldn’t be happy in my own life, I could possibly find some satisfaction — and potentially stardom in the same time — in making men happy vicariously through the pleasure I gave them onstage (and later onscreen.) The latter hadn’t occurred to me yet as an option, though a personality would soon enter my life that would introduce me into the world of pornography, and transform me from Rhea to Jasmin St. Claire.
Heading into 1994, I needed to make some bread fast, so I took the last $400 I had and bought a plane ticket to New Orleans to do some dancing dates that would last a few weeks. My plan after that was to head back to California, but I rented an apartment for the month for $500 through a local realtor as the dates spread over several weeks. I guess at
71 that time in my life I was focused most on survival, rather than thinking ahead on any bigger dreams, but a new man would come into my life around this time that would change it forever. The owner of the club I was dancing for — Charlie Frey — lived in Florida, and was a booking agent and manager for female talent all over the United States. He booked dancing features, arranged photo shoots in adult entertainment magazines like Penthouse and Playboy among many others, and little did I know at the time, also had the ambition to break into the adult film business. He seemed like a competent agent at the time, and my only interest was in getting work at that point, so we were a good fit. Charlie was the coolest friend/manager, and ironic as it might sound, the kind of male presence I needed in my life at that time because he wanted NOTHING from me personally. He was my friend: he listened to my problems and was comforting. He was also — hands down — the best businessman I have met to this day.
The temporary vacation to New Orleans was a good break for me. I was there for three weeks and during this period, Charlie convinced me and a fellow dancer I’d met from Texas to come down to Florida for a series of extended dates that he said would last about two months. He said he’d put us up at his condominium (very pricey place) and he also gave us a car to drive, and said we could spend our days at the beach or the gym, so that sounded good to me. I just needed a mental break from pressure of any sort. By that point, I was desensitized enough from dancing in my mind to handle work without viewing it as a pressure, and just getting over two fucked-up relationships, was keen on rebuilding my ego from the ashes back up. For better or worse, the attention I got dancing and the money I made helped with that, so I went with it. It was really a good move too, I made really good friends with this girl Jennifer, and the staff at the clubs where we worked, were very nice to us, along with Charlie, who I was building a business rapport with in the same time, so it was cool. I felt I was around some very cool, positive people — just as people — and I needed that at that point in my life. To cement the foundation of my recovery, I found one of Kurt’s gay porn videos at a local adult video store, and mailed it to his mother’s house.
As far as I was concerned, he more than had it coming. Anyway, once the dates came toward a close, I decided I was ready to return to California. I had decided by this point to sign on with Charlie as my agent, which officially changed his name to the ‘35 % guy,’ because that was
the 35% guy 73 the commission he demanded in my contract. Being naive completely to the illegality of it all, I signed his agreement without batting an eye or reading a line.
Charlie Fry, a.k.a. Mr. 35% Guy: I wasn’t doing it for free. A large part of why I asked for that percentage had to do with the reality that I knew from experience that within a short period of time — a year to two years usually — we were going to wind up going our separate ways. So to do all the work I had to do, with no budget or backer, to create and help build their brand, for the first 6 months or year of that time I’m not seeing a dime. So I was getting 35% of a very little amount of money starting out, and mind you my commissions from booking them adult feature gigs didn’t include a piece of their tips, just their appearance fee from the club. So for instance, if Jasmin at her pinnacle was paid $6000 to feature at a club, and then made another $6000 in tips that I saw none of, I was only seeing 35% of the principle booking fee. To charge any less, I’d have to ask ‘What is the point of me doing it?’ when I’m putting in thousands of hours of labor, using all my contacts, all my creativity to make nothing. So I feel I earned every penny of that 35% every single time I was paid a commission.
Jasmin: See, I hadn’t come out to California with aspirations of stardom like every other girl from the South or Mid-West. I hadn’t stepped off the bus — or plane in my case — and immediately started looking for a talent agent. I hadn’t desired to pose nude in magazines, let alone movies. I just never had that kind of agenda, my only agenda had been to get 3000 miles away from any type of a rationality my mother had to offer me about men or anything else involved in how I should lead my life. That is the extreme she’d pushed me too, and I honestly felt like I could breathe for the first time in a way. Anyway, where I lacked ambition, Charlie more than made up for it on my behalf, even before I knew it, he’d started building the foundation for what would become my launching pad into stardom in the adult film world. It would turn out the industry wanted me as badly as I could have ever wanted it, because that rise would happen almost overnight, and was as unexpected for me as it could have been for anyone who was involved. It even widened Charlie’s eyes.
Charlie Fry: When I met Jasmin, she was a wallflower, a very sweet, subdued personality, but underneath all that was a desire for recognition and fame of some sort, and typically what I was very adept at was saying: ‘Okay, you can have it. You can have all the money in the world, and international fame. Here’s the price for it. Being not just a porn star — because there were lots of porn stars — but to be the most infamous porn star,’ and to be the most infamous porn star in 1995 meant doing anal scenes at a time when it was very uncommon, kind of taboo. Because in the porn industry at that time, it was a big deal for a girl to have to do anal so you wound up watching not the prettiest or most famous stars that did those types of scenes. In the porn industry — like every other, there was a hierarchy. At the top, there were girls who would only do girl-girl scenes, but wouldn’t do girl-boy scenes.Then there were girls who would do girl-boy scenes, but you couldn’t cum on their faces; then there were girls who would do girl-boy scenes, but only with one guy at a time; so a gang-bang was in that context a horrible thing.
Dominic Accara ( Jasmin’s Assistant): When I met Jasmin, it was before the gangbang and I was working a lot on John T. Bone’s sets as a porn journalist, and I remember her standing out immediately. She seemed like she knew what she wanted to do and had no qualms about doing what she had to do to get it done.
Part V i
California Fun: The birth of Jasmin St. Claire
I want to reiterate that I didn’t come out to L.A. to get into show business; I came out with a guy. Really, I came out West for a change of scenery, but it never entered my head that I would become an adult film star, or even start doing magazine and calendar modeling for that matter. I also want to be clear about the fact that my childhood was wonderful — it was filled with education, culture, travel, and love. Despite what Howard Stern may think, what happened to me later in life is what drove me professionally in the direction I eventually headed in getting involved with adult modeling and film. I would say it was the key thing. In terms of that too, there’s things I do and don’t regret about getting into that business. You have a lot of these young girls who don’t know any better. Believe it or not, I can count on both hands and feet three or four times over, the number of girls I have talked out of getting into the adult film business. I don’t counsel them too hard, because I can hardly counsel myself on the subject, but I try to tell them there are better things to do with their lives, and no matter how bad it seems it can only get better.
I realize that seems like generic advice, and in many ways it is, because I would estimate only about 10% of t
he girls who start in adult films ever gain fame on the level I did, or girls like Jenna Jameson, or Vanessa Del Rio, or so forth. Most end up back on the pole dancing, and those who were meant to stand out beyond that usually do. But I do use my story to try and ask the question — what about when you want to move onto other things? That career can come back to haunt you, it certainly has been both negative and positive for me. The biggest negative for me
77 has been the stereotypes and judgment I’ve gotten. I felt I was driven to that extreme by my experience with Dick just to get away from him, and look at the background I came from educationally, culturally, and financially. That shows you how bad it was for me to be driven in that direction, because it wasn’t for a lack of other opportunities. So there is an element of helplessness in it I think, especially for the 80% of those who do porn — they come from the other side of the tracks, certainly not from the background materially and culturally that I did.They either can’t do anything better with themselves, or come from abusive households. I’m too smart to be in that business, which is why a lot of people dislike me. It’s not that I feel I’m better than anyone, it’s just that they look at me that way because I used it as a stepping stone and got out. I was in that business in the moment for the money and the attention, and in the longer term, as a means to the end of doing something larger within the entertainment business. I never discerned between dancing or adult film, or magazine and calendar modeling, or even more mainstream acting from the collectibles or wrestling business I ran, they were all a means to the same end for me: to make money. I was never interested in anything beyond that, but I did pay attention to the fact that my sexuality had something unique about it to others as I started to get more known in the business.