‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol

by Jake Brown

  Part X

  Picking Up The Pieces

  May 1996 began as a busy month press-wise, and put to rest for me any illusion that the Gang Bang II circus was behind me just because the shoot itself was over. Now everyone who interviewed me expected me to recall and recount it in as explicit detail as possible, especially on the Howard Stern Show, which I did for the second time at the beginning of the month. Howard definitely rose to the occasion — as did I’m sure the dicks of his millions of male listeners — because he was dirtier than the shoot itself was with his questions, and plays on my answers. I mean, I was honestly shocked by some of what he asked, and I went along with it all like a seasoned veteran, which this movie would make me overnight in the eyes of millions of porn fans even though I wasn’t even a year into my career yet. That didn’t matter, what mattered was how outrageous my genre of porn was — hard core — and my biggest challenge honestly in pulling off the whole charade to the public was selling it to Howard. He was truly skeptical going in, which probably explained the depth of his questioning. I mean, I’ve listened to him interview a thousand porn stars, and he took it to the extreme with me, not just in terms of the nature of my style of porn, but in terms of how thoroughly he probed. He just really didn’t seem to believe it at first, and he’s very smart, so he was really like a porn prosecutor, grilling me on the stand, i.e. except a national radio audience was my jury. I guess I pulled it off, probably sealing the deal when I threw in that they had had to ice me down between takes because of the pain.

  Charlie Fry: An important measure in those days of the difference in popularity at that time was the number of times a star had appeared on Howard Stern’s radio show was a direct measure of their notoriety, and Jasmin had more appearances, which reflected her having more notoriety,

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  14 0 what the hell was i thinking?!! popularity and recognition than Jenna did at the time. Howard being a shock jock, Jasmin had what’s called star quality, and had the ability to turn on the charm and magnetism when she wanted to. Star quality is not something you can teach to somebody, they have to have it within themselves and Jasmin had it. She could turn it on and be very magnetic, and Howard liked that she was willing to say anything, and willing to go in whatever direction he wanted them to lead them in. Howard doesn’t book shows based necessarily on what we called and pitched, there was a lot of times they’d call me and say,‘We’re doing this type of show, who do you got that can meet it?’ If they knew Jasmin would fit a certain criteria, they would call us because they could count on Jasmin to deliver on being as wild and crazy as the show called for and that Howard loved. She was a star, and knew how to be a star.

  Jasmin: That put me over the top, got me off with his jury of listeners, and probably got them off too in the process. That was the desired effect anyway. It amazed me how fascinated the world truly was with porn, I mean, Howard Stern’s listeners were the every-dayers, the John Q. Auto Mechanics and Cab Drivers and Construction Workers of the world. They were the ones who made up much of our viewing audience, so that immediately gave me mainstream validation, albeit in an after-hours light. When I got through, Howard seemed happy and convinced which made me believe the whole world would buy my story, and the tape. It’s all hype till people lay their drooling eyes on it, and it was my job to tease and tantalize them up until the movie’s release, which wasn’t scheduled till late summer. When I got outside of the radio studio, there were hundreds of horny men waiting for me down on the street, holding everything from magazines I’d posed in to movie cover boxes to shit they’d downloaded off the internet, clamoring for my signature. It was my first true mob, and I loved every second of it. My asshole manager Charlie was in New York with me for the appearance and told me shortly afterward that I would have a poster in Times Square in the window of one of main adult film stores, which was huge.The only concern I had was that a family member would be listening and might possibly recognize my voice on the radio. The only one who ever caught wind of what was involved in was my cousin Penny, and she lived in England, and for some reason, kept her mouth shut to my mother, so I didn’t really care. My ex-boyfriend Tommy even discovered I was a porn star that way, and would actually call in on one of my next couple appearances on Stern to talk to me, but Howard didn’t let him on the air. All that was behind me now, that was one positive that

  Picking uP the Pieces 141 came out of Gang Bang II, I felt it liberated me from any remaining need to spite any of the men who had hurt me in my life. I had gone as low as I could go, and the only place to head after an experience like that was up. And higher I would climb indeed.

  It should have been a detriment to me that I sounded smart on the air. Society thrives on dumb women, and it comes as almost a requisite assumption that porn stars are stupid. I guess I was trying to defy that whole stereotype in some way, but anytime I would call an interviewer on his shit with a stupid or chauvinist question, I was labeled a bitch. Once they saw they couldn’t pigeonhole me, I guess journalists started trying to see how far they could get me to go in terms of saying extreme things. I indulged most often to be both consistent with the nature of my hard core porn movies/image and because fans seemed to respond to it. I do think people misunderstood me quite a bit though, which is fine, but I wasn’t trying to be snotty or come across as stuck-up when I talked about other stars in the business or in wrestling or whatever topically came up at different points in my career. I was just being honest most times. In terms of labeling me snotty, right out of the gate, I disputed in the press that all porn stars were friends off screen, because it wasn’t at all cozy and chummy like that! It pissed me off that I was expected to play along in that lie, because most of those bitches were just beneath me intelligence-wise, and in the end of the day WERE my competition. This was a business, and I wasn’t talking shit, I was being honest, and usually responding to questions, not instigating the attack. That probably hurt me a little bit in the media, but it did succeed in distinguishing me from that pack of whores, which was the desired effect. Besides, at that time heading into the summer of 1996, I was still building my reputation, and Charlie told me to be as outrageous as possible to raise the hype-level surrounding Gang Bang’s release.

  Beyond that even, I don’t know if it hurt me fan-wise to be as candid as I was about how things really were off-screen. I think me telling the truth about the infighting and discord that did go on between porn stars turns fans on because they probably translated it to mean CAT FIGHT — which turns all men on. It certainly didn’t seem to hurt me with fans in terms of sales. I think I did more damage amongst people in that community because they treated it as such a tight community as friends and family and to me that’s not what a family is. My definition of family is decidedly different. My definition of family is someone you’re related to by blood or someone that’s maybe been a long-time friend that knows

  142 what the hell was i thinking?!! everything about you in and out, and I found very few people in that community who I could trust enough to call a close friend, let alone family. Also to me — and this might sound silly to read — but to think of those people who I worked with as family literally, which some of them did, felt like a form of incest to me. Some went home together and fucked off screen and weren’t even involved and then the next day fucked someone different, and had no line separating the professional from personal, they were just whores.

  There are a lot of industry people who will read this book, and will definitely hate me for saying what I just did, but it’s true. I wouldn’t have socialized with most of those people outside of an industry event if you paid me, and usually you had to pay me to hang out with any of them off-screen. I’m not saying I was better than any of them, but above them in at least that I wouldn’t do it. What did I have in common with any of them outside of porn? I can understand why a lot of them gravitated toward their co-workers socially, because of the way the mainstream world viewed people who worked in that business, looked down on the
m, and judged them. Socializing with people who were doing the same thing immediately eliminated that, but what they didn’t ever see was the fact that the only way to move beyond that scarlet letter was to do so literally. By letting the public know this wasn’t something I planned to do forever, it made them more eager to buy up anything I did for the simple fact that it wouldn’t last forever.

  On top of that, it allowed me to network with other entertainment mediums while still in the business. I didn’t just want to hang out with mainstream stars; I wanted to be one of them, because I had enough talent to be. To me, it was that simple, and if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to move so smoothly into wrestling and then into mainstream acting in a fucking National Lampoon movie among some of the other non-porn films I have done. I always kept the bigger picture in mind, even years ahead of getting there — it was a dream, a goal, and I always kept my eye on the ball in that respect while most of my fellow porn actresses were busy licking those of their male co-stars on the weekends. While they stayed home and fucked each other, I was out on the road featuring, or doing interviews, or photo shoots, or media and convention appearances- anything I could do to set myself apart from the norm. I feel it’s an important distinction that I treated it like a business and nothing more when almost everyone I saw around me was taking their work home with them.

  Dominic Accara: After the gang bang thing and she really, really started taking off, it was a golden time in porn. The days of stars of Jasmin and Jenna Jamison’s caliber are gone. And I don’t know whether she did it intentionally or not, but Jasmin understood marketing, what it meant to do interviews with both porn and mainstream media like Howard Stern. So when Jasmin was on the scene, she was a big fish in a little pond, and while she did help to create her reconcilability, but when she was on Rhea time, and fans couldn’t differentiate, it did bother her. In the grand scheme of things, she came to understand that when you’re a celebrity, there is no distinction for most fans. When you step out in public, you’re on, love it or hate it, for better or worse, its just part of the turf. When you’ve done the gig, your meet and greets, etc inside the club, and in theory, she wasn’t playing Jasmin anymore, she wanted to mentally shut down and go back to being Rhea, which her fans wouldn’t let her do.

  So even as she became more and more recognizable, a lot of times when I traveled with her, she never seemed to be really happy, even though she was one of the biggest drawing features on the road. She had one of the highest profiles because the woman busted her ass the whole way through. Here we were staying at the best hotels in the country, she was making top dollar, and she didn’t really seem to want to deal with it. I got the impression that she never wanted to be recognized as Jasmin the Porn Star offstage. Most of the times when you meet fans on the road, they’re terrified of you, because for whatever reason, whenever men meet woman who have sex for a living, they’re intimidated. Today, with the internet, it’s not such a big deal, but back then we were still taboo, so to see someone like Jasmin in person was a big deal. Because of the gang bang and everything else she was doing, she had a higher profile.

  I’m not sure if she intentionally pissed people off as a defense mechanism or to make a name for herself, but whenever someone would come up to her in a hotel lobby or outside of a club and ask for a picture or autograph, she’d say,‘ Leave me alone.’I can’t totally blame her, there were times when it was very inappropriate on her fans’ part; for instance, from the vantage point that some of her fans would get REALLY into her scenes. So we’d be sitting in Denny’s at 2 in the morning after she’d been on her feet for 8 hours, because a lot of times when you did club features, in addition to the dancing, there were bookstore signings and radio and whatever else. I remember a great example of this being one time when we were in Sacramento, and at a Denny’s after a long day, and some fans of hers recognized her, walked up to our table, and just started engaging her, ‘You remember that scene you did with such and such?’ These guys would know how long the scenes were, the different positions, everything. I could see that it both annoyed her and in some ways, it creeped her out a little with their weird fascination.

  Charlie Fry: As a sex symbol, that doesn’t end when the scene’s over, she had to be on, and she got tired of that after a while to the point where she developed a hostility that came through to fans, and anybody she worked with. It’s one thing to be a diva on the set, it’s another to be one with fans, and that’s part of what hurt her. After she became a star, she got this ‘Fuck You, I can do anything I want’ attitude, which eventually bled into me as well, where we both I think big heads because she was such a big star. Unfortunately, that ‘I can do whatever I please’ attitude can lead people to be irresponsible. For the first 40% of her career, she would pretty much listen to my recommendations and behave appropriately. As she became more and more a victim of her own success, she lost site of that she had to be polite to her fans, and essentially what she felt was probably being funny, was actually abrasive.

  Jasmin: Some people don’t understand that being a porn star — in terms of the fucking — starts when the director yells action, and stops when he yells cut. It’s a character we play on screen, not who we are in real life — ideally anyway. When I answer my door at home, I’m wearing jeans and Metal band T-Shirts, not a fucking G-string. When I went rollerblading at Venice Beach, I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, not a fucking nightie. It was vitally important to me — given the psychological rigor of the work I did onscreen — to maintain that distinction in identity between Rhea and Jasmin. How else could I ever have had a regular boyfriend? The sex I have onscreen is very different from the love I make to my man, believe it or not. To me, that should just be common sense.

  Obviously when I would do meet and greets, there is a certain expectation among fans that you’ll be as sexy in person as you are on screen in terms of overall persona, and that is one thing. But when I go into the fucking grocery store to buy fruit, you don’t find me sucking on a banana like a dick in the fruit aisle. I know a lot of people wish that were the case, and maybe fantasize it is when they see me out and about in my personal life, but I have NEVER had one of them come up to me and do more than ask for an autograph. I never had an issue getting that respect from my fans, it was always within the industry that I had my battles in the press, or was dubbed as controversial because I was the first to call the business and its slutty-bitch-whore-‘stars’ like Jenna on their shit. Even when I did features, I never did lap dances or danced for dollar-bills. I had a much shorter set, usually 20 minutes, and it was a pre-set fee the club put up in deposit ahead of time to secure my appearance. I would sign stuff afterward, and sell Polaroids for $20 a pop, but it was fucking business to me. I never went out back with some sweaty dude who was willing to pay me $1000 to fuck him, and A LOT of the girls I worked with did JUST THAT. That is the point I am making, I called a lot of them sluts because they were, and drew no distinction for themselves on and off screen. I won’t name any names on the advice of my lawyer, although when I call someone a slut in the press maybe now you have a little better idea of what I’m possibly implying. Anyway, heading into the summer, I had a lot of features scheduled, and had also started to feel the affects of my stardom taking hold in the public’s perception, namely in that I was getting recognized around Los Angeles and on the road a lot more, which I LOVED. One thing I will readily admit I LOVED about the porn business was the stardom it brought me. My ego craved that, and I have no problem admitting that. Any woman who tells you she doesn’t like being desired by thousands of men is lying to both you and to herself. Who wouldn’t? I think this new rapper who just came out recently, Kanye West, said in one of his songs,‘The people highest up have the lowest self ESTEEM.’That explains it in a nutshell, so I didn’t mind the glamour at all, because my ego and confidence was still re-building itself after Dick and Kurt.

  The only thing I felt ill about — talking on Stern about the details of the Gang Bang — was th
at I was lying to everyone, from Howard to the public, and it just didn’t sit right with me. I’ve honestly felt bad about it since that day. I just don’t like lying to people, especially when, in every other facet of my public persona, I was known for saying exactly and explicitly what was on my mind. It was like I was violating my own standard — and I’d certainly already lowered it enough. But I was on national radio lying to sell something, and that worried me always too, that I might be opening myself to some legal exposure. But I had signed a confidentiality agreement with Metro, so I couldn’t talk about ANY of the truth, the only thing I could talk about were the LIES I was telling on the air that day. I would come to tell it so many times, in so many interviews, that I should have probably come to believe it myself. I was certainly convincing. Charlie tried to make me feel like it was part of being an actress, which I never bought, that bullshit they tried to feed into porn stars’ heads that they’re somehow also legitimate actresses. I knew what I did, I knew how people saw it, and I never diluted myself with that illusion. One thing I will give myself props for though, as an actress, was pulling that shit off, because everyone grilled me on it, starting with Howard. I had to be as convincing as a fucking Oscar winner as far as I was concerned. It also made me HIGHLY anticipate the release of the movie myself on one level: to see if John T. Bone actually successfully pulled off the con I had been busy selling to everyone on screen. This might seem small to some of you in the grand scheme of things. I grant you it’s not the same as rigging a ball game or a boxing match but in the circles I traveled and promoted in, it was a big deal to pull off what we did. For me personally, that movie made me too. That whole scam made me the ‘World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol,’ and selling that image was part of the whole package, bundled with the gang bang movie.