by Jake Brown
As May rolled on, the furor over the Kendra sex tape had also finally started to calm down a bit, and I was still seeing Keith. Earl was at this point living on a boat, and starting to shoot amateur porn, and in one of our only sane conversations that entire spring over a rare Sunday breakfast, I asked him what his long-term plans were, and he stated he’d intended to do porn for good. From that conversation, I realized Earl and I had very different ideals, and up to that point, I had held out this silly, false hope that he might change, but it was finally sinking into my head and heart that he never would. In any other circumstance, looking back in hindsight, I might have argued the intersection of my realizations about leaving John T. Bowen and Earl were coincidental, but I firmly believe more was at work here. It felt like a brighter sign of things to come, and since my faith in John, Earl and my manager Charlie had collectively dimmed by that point I felt I had little to lose.
With that in mind, near the end of May, my clandestine phone chats with Rob Black finally transitioned into our first face-to-face meeting at his company’s offices to discuss my possible future with Extreme Associates. I was so nervous about the step I was taking that when walking into the courtyard of his office building, I thought I saw John T. Bowen sitting there waiting for me! I wasn’t delusional, they just so looked frighteningly alike that I ran into another office and hid by a receptionist’s desk until one of Rob’s employees — some former Military Police Van Damage came and escorted me to Extreme’s offices. It turned out the ghost of John was in fact some factory worker on his lunch break, but the incident is a reflection of how internally nervous with excitement I was at the prospect of getting away from Crème. Rob and his father were both at the meeting. They took me out to lunch, and proposed an offer that I almost couldn’t afford to refuse: $8000 a month for one movie, which was twice what John had been paying me at my peak with Crème, plus a signing bonus of several thousand dollars. The deal clincher for me though was when Rob mentioned that he had a professional tie-in with NYC-based ECW Wrestling, which was the business I secretly was aiming to transition into as a way out of porn down the line. He’d even agreed to bring my hair and make-up artist Sean along, and said he’d put it in my contract! I also loved their company logo: Respect, We Don’t Earn It, We Take It.
I left the meeting floating on air, Rob had been the best salesman I’d ever dealt with professionally, and he’d given me every assurance I needed to hear that things would be strikingly different if I defected to Extreme. Even though I technically had 6 months left on my contract with John T. Bowen and Crème, because he’d bounced a check, he was technically in breach, which allowed me to leave him early, so that became my plan. I kept all of this to myself, and Rob and everyone at Extreme made sure no details of our first meeting slipped out, which is a lot more than I can say for Crème. Everything there had become so unorganized and dysfunctional by that point with the Kendra/Springer sex scandal, that truthfully, no one would have picked up on anything anyway where I was concerned.The final straw that had broken the camel’s back between John and I had already come though with the day that P.I. had shown up at my residence…that was my fucking home, and you just can’t do that. I know some adult film actresses who live that way 24/7, to where they go to the grocery store or the gym looking like porn stars, and want the attention. And maybe their acting like that would allow them to bring stalking upon themselves, but I was very much the opposite way off-screen. So by that point it was obvious to me — between John’s mishandling of the Kendra debacle, bouncing my checks or not having them at all, and a whole host of other incidents — that his respect for me had dwindled to almost zero. Most importantly, John had lost sight of the fact that it was my ass and my pussy that was paying for that fucking place, NOT Kendra or Zoe’s. They were going to have to start pulling their weight soon enough, because heading into the summer, I was on my way out of Crème.
I did my last movie for Crème in June with Dave Hardman, and my affair with Keith was starting to taper off, and stupidly (I know, readers)
182 what the hell was i thinking?!! I decided to give Earl one more chance. He was in support of my leaving Crème for Extreme, who had even given me contracts to sign by that point, and wanted me to attend the VSDA show in July to announce my debut as their new top star. I had done some other shopping around as well- meeting with Evil Angel, another big adult film outfit, and with a few others, but ended up deciding on Extreme because of the wrestling tie-in and the monetary stability. I hadn’t yet told Charlie about my move to Rob’s fold, even upon signing the papers, because his interests were so co-mingled with John’s that John would have found out immediately and tried to stop it. Charlie needed me to advance Kendra and Zoe’s careers, where for instance he’d use my bookings to muscle the door open for them, and hadn’t shared any of his commissions from their feature dance tours with me. That was probably the last straw for me with him, so in early July, for the first time in my career, I also started taking bookings from competing promoters — The Lee Network, and another from Continental bookings. Both of these firms were getting me just as well paid as Charlie had, and I never once had to worry about collecting my earnings. So I offered Charlie the option of staying on as my manager for a reduced commission base of 15%, and he naturally declined. As a result, I formally and finally (so I thought) fired him that same month, and upon signing with Rob Black, was scheduled for my first shoot with Extreme in August.
Even prior to that though, I attended the VSDA show in Vegas with Extreme’s camp, it was my public debut signing at their booth, and everyone’s reaction was one of ‘HOLY SHIT!’My line at Extreme’s booth was HUGE, a thousand people at least, and John T. Bowen’s company Crème DIDN’T EVEN HAVE a booth of their own that year! They didn’t even attend, and were getting smaller and smaller.The fact that they didn’t even pay for a booth — which would have been a MUST had I still been in their camp and attended — showed me how much smaller now they had already shrunk since my departure. Once news got out to the public and adult film press at the VSDA show, it made even a bigger impact! I was told afterward that when John got word of my defection to Extreme, he acted like a family member died, and then Kendra and Zoe tried to spin things in their media reactions as though they’d conspired to force me out, which was laughable.
Consider Kendra’s comments to one reporter following my departure in November, 1998, claiming I had been spreading rumors about her having STDs — which, for the record, is a FUCKING LIE — to which she replied in the press at the time:
‘ If you have the guts to back up your lies, I will rent a gym and fight you in the ring to shut your stupid lying mouth once and for all. I would like nothing better than to smash your stupid plastic nose out the back of your stupid plastic head. Your choice, gloves, bare knuckles, or baseball bats, either way you are going down. Put up or shut up, skank!… What was that white shit coming out of her ( Jasmin’s) pussy in Blow It Out Your Ass? I would be more than willing to make my medical records public. I’d like her to do the same. I’ve never gotten any STD. I hate her. She’s a cunt. I challenge her to a fight…I can’t wait until the day I see her. She will meet up with me and we’ll see how much she runs her mouth then…If she’s so happy with Rob Black, why doesn’t she just leave our company alone?’
For the record, I wanted nothing more than to leave that cesspool, but they kept trying to keep the feud alive in the press, still trying to coattail my success as always. Anyway, Kendra was right about one thing, Rob and Extreme were running a very professional show, they flew me and Earl there first-class, and Rob had even put Earl on his payroll so he could be more than just my suitcase pimp. That definitely made things better for Earl and me personally, and he also went on the road with me for my dance gigs that month, so we traveled through upstate New York, then New York City, and everything went extremely well. Many of my fans who showed up for signings during my dance tour told me how happy they all were to hear I’d parted company with Crème and J
ohn T. Bone, which made me feel reassured in my decision. Also, a lot of my peers were pretty supportive of what I did. Adult film media like Hustler Magazine and others were supportive as well. It was very important to me that my friends supported my move, and my fans most importantly supported what I was doing. A lot of people thought it was a smart move.
When I got back to L.A., I took a few days off, and I felt stable in my life for the first time in months. Rob at that time was a good boss to me, and to no surprise, Charlie suddenly popped back up in August, wanting to mend fences and work together again. I had been featuring a lot without him, and he also had seen the steady downfall of John’s company following my departure, so he knew to follow the talent and get out of there while he still could. I took advantage of that as well, and told him he had to cut my commission down to 15% from 25%, which I told him it had been at for way too long, which of course he went along with.
I shot my first film for Rob, called The Pornographer, and when we shot the box cover, he gave me my first $2000, and I had hit it off with one of the other Extreme senior stars, Ashlyn Gere, who I looked up to because she was beautiful and classy. It was much better to be around other stars, as opposed to up and comers trying to climb over me to the top. Also, the male talent was much better, and my first scene for The Pornographer was a double-penetration scene, with Luciano and Earl. Earl worked with me in a lot of my movies at Extreme, and believe it or not, we worked really well together, and got along better because of it. Then I had a few dialogue scenes to shoot with Rob, and then the box cover with Scott Preston, who did amazing photos. He didn’t DO this Gonzo bullshit John had been doing with stupid fucking titles and crap box covers, and it was time to graduate out of that. While things were good for a bit between Earl and me, I remember some of the more fun times in our relationship at that point were the Sunday rides he took me on his Harley up and down Pacific Coast Highway.
When the fall began and September rolled around, Rob was getting me more and more press, and in interviews, more and more journalists were telling me how smart it was to leave John T. Bowen.Then I received the best news I had gotten in a long time: Rob introduced me to Bubba Ray Dudley from ECW Wrestling, who flew out to L.A. to meet with us and have a discussion about ECW doing something collaboratively with me. Paul Heyman, the owner of ECW had even talked to Rob directly about the Pay-Per-View special they had in mind in November for me to make my debut in. At the dinner, it even got as far as Paul talking about flying me out in later September to New York to shoot some promo video spots for the November to Remember PPV. It was like a serious wet dream come true!
The only downside was Earl had begun to drink again, mainly stemming from his depression over the amount of press I was getting comparative to his, that was really irking him. There was nothing I could do, I’d go to his AA meetings with him, but if I got recognized, it just made him more irritated. I’d even been supportive of his shooting his amateur porn films on his stupid boat. He’d actually gotten some kind of indie deal to shoot x number of films, largely based off his work with me, and as a favor to him I even shot a scene with him for his first film to help him get started. We shot the scene on his boat and it was fucking horrible. Deep down, I didn’t want to have a pornographer boyfriend, but he looked good on my arm and that was that. He didn’t seem to give a fuck what happened to me, but Charlie did, as he was back in my camp 100% and had cut all ties to John T. Bowen. I was happy we were friends again, and he put me right back to work, sending me up to Canada for a club tour at the end of September. My friend Sean came with me, because Earl and I were at a low point and I had asked him not to come. I had a blast in Montreal, they threw a big party for me, and I hooked up with a little fling named Kaleb — this local from Montreal. We started hanging out a lot in between my press and dancing gigs, and finally after a couple of days I was in bed with him having the best sex I’d had the whole year.
Its funny, because saying that probably makes you imagine me in one of my on-screen sex scenes, but to be honest people often ask me: do you have better sex on or off camera, and the honest answer is I don’t remember much about the scenes on camera. All the great sex I’ve had in my life has been off camera, because it’s more personal and I don’t have some director telling me what to do. I’m smiling now thinking back about how amazing it was, and I’ve always wondered what happened to him because he was so handsome, and we had so much in common, and to top it all off, he was definitely the best sex I ever had. It was really therapeutic, because I just really needed someone at that point who treated me as me, and wasn’t going to judge me or treat me like a ‘stupid whore,’ as Earl used to do. When I got back, I was floating on air, and throughout the rest of October, I did some photo shoots for Rob, and though I didn’t have a scene that month, was paid my full $8000 just to hang out with the company. We were a tight-knit family, where at Crème I’d felt like a red-headed stepchild.
As November rolled around, I was preparing for my first wrestling payper-view with ECW, and even prior to that, I’d been asked to host my first ‘New Jersey Metal Fest.’ So back-to-back, I had two dreams come true for me in that professionally I was working in two of my favorite worlds: wrestling and metal. The metal fest gig had come about at the VSDA show that year, when the promoter Jack Koshick approach me and asked me to host. For me, it was a natural fit, and even though I know at first people just saw me as a porn star hosting a metal festival, but in truth, I grew up listening to Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, all the New York death metal. There were thousands of fans at the festival, and their reaction to me was great, which led to my getting a good deal of mainstream rock press, from Spin Magazine, Revolver, Metal Maniacs, etc. It was a fucking blast, I was partying with all the bands at the hotel, and everyone was puking out the windows all night, it was so fucking awesome! The highlight for me was introducing my favorite band of all time: SEPULTURA.
Right on the heels of that, following a scene I shot with Rick Majors for House of Whores Pt. II, I left for New York to prepare for the November to Remember ECW Pay-Per-View. I flew out for a few days early with the whole Extreme crew: Rob Black, Tom Byron, myself, and a couple others. We took a red-eye flight out, and when I arrived at L.A.X. to leave, I actually ran into Johnny Cochran, who was really nice, and then when I got on the plane, Macaulay Culkin was sitting in first class with us. I thought it would be really funny of one of the Extreme crew went over and gave him a business card, and Tom Byron actually went up to him and did so! Once we got into New York, we actually had dinner at Sparks Steak House, where A Mob Boss Paul Castellano had been gunned down in the mid-80s. After dinner, we went and visited all the porn shops in Times Square asking which of my films they had in stock, and every shop was sold out of all of my titles — every single one. So I really felt on top of the world, even ahead of the Pay-Per-View. We attended a pre-PPV party that ECW sponsored the night before the match, and I met the Dudley boys, who were ECW’s tag-team members, as well Chris Chetti and Danny Doring, among a bunch of other wrestling-related personalities, and I felt like I instantly fit in.
When I woke up the next morning on the day of the match, I was so anxious with excitement I actually got a little scared. I sucked it up and headed up to the event, which took place on November 7th at the Asbury Park Convention Center in New Jersey. Upon arriving with Rob, Tom and everyone at the venue, I was escorted backstage to start prepping, and one of the first stars I was I met Spike Dudley, Tommy Dreamer and his girlfriend Francine, who was known in ECW’s circle as the ‘Queen of Extreme.’ She taught me how to take my small bumps in the ring, and it was planned that I would take what was called a ‘Stone Cold Stunner’ from her once we were live in the ring. Basically, it was choreographed that she would put her hand around my neck, pull me down, and I had to do the movement of going down on my knees and falling back, and Spike and Bubba Dudley were helping me practice.
One funny thing I took note of right away about the wrestling culture that differed from th
at of adult film was the etiquette, such that when you come into a dressing room, you have to say hi to everyone and then excuse yourself. There wasn’t as much socializing, and when you’re through with your match, you thank your opponent back-stage and that’s it. It’s not as personal ‘on-set,’ but much more loyal and normal off-set, unlike porn, where so many of the actors and actresses live that way 24-7. For me personally, I enjoyed and appreciated that different right off the bat, and knew this was definitely the next profession I wanted to seriously pursue.
Once the event actually started, you could hear the crowd thundering with applause from backstage, and when it was my turn to go out to the ring, I got this huge adrenaline rush as soon as I hit the floor. When I stepped into the ring, the plan was for me to announce to the crowd that I was the new ‘Queen of Extreme.’ Essentially challenging Francine for her title, so I gave my rap to the crowd: ‘My name is Jasmin St. Claire and I’m the new Queen of Extreme,’and everyone was cheering and cheering. Then all of a sudden, Francine appeared out of nowhere and gave me the stunner, and then I was carried out of the ring. I’d been told to act like I was injured, which I did, and everything went off without a hitch. I really enjoyed the adrenaline rush that I had as I entered the ring and just the whole atmosphere of the crowd, and enthusiasm and warm welcome I got. I knew that this was for me, and that I wanted OUT of porn altogether.