by Jake Brown
Already I’d given up a company I’d built from the ground up for him, and unfortunately, it marked the beginning of what was a lot more sacrifice on my part to come for that fucker. At the time, I was still drunk on love, and he was getting drunker and drunker by the day on alcohol, which really alarmed me, but I didn’t know how to approach him about it. When he finally told me near the end of March that he’d decided to stop drinking for a while, I thought that would cure him of the possessive side of his personality — which seemed to rear its ugly head primarily when he was drinking. Sadly, I was wrong, because he kept getting worse and worse with his jealous judging of my past. On top of that, he had girls texting him all the time and wouldn’t change his relationship status from single on his MySpace page, to which he retaliated by pointing out that fans of mine would leave comments on my website. He also had a sick talent for making me feel like his treating me that way was my fault, and of course I fell for it because of how madly in love I was at the time.
We ended up working it out, and just in time, because heading into April Matt had a falling out of his own with Himsa involving a disagreement over songwriting-credit related issues. That would result in his formally exiting the band later that summer, and I guess in a way I played a role in that exit, because ahead of his leaving he would constantly tell me how lonely he was without me in Seattle. I wanted him with me in L.A. so I didn’t try to stop him, and I believed in his talent enough to support his decision without blinking once. His plan for the moment was to continue commuting as Himsa had gone head long into writing on their next album, and I supported Matt’s career 100%.
As May began, things were full underway with my 3PW lawsuit, and as livid as they were making me trying to steal my company without compensating me properly, they had the nerve to try and get me to come back! Eventually, my lawsuit with 3PW was settled, and I was awarded all the footage we’d shot of the first two years worth of matches, which had been in syndication in the U.K. on the Wresting Channel and was among the most valuable of the companies assets. Brian was awarded rights to the 3PW name, which pissed me off, but I didn’t blame him entirely — he had partners idiot partners in ‘One Eye’ Rich, my former accountant, and this power hungry limey named Mike who had no idea what he was doing. Neither had any idea what they were doing in trying to run a wrestling league, and paired with Brian, they were spending more than they were taking in at the shows, and the company was just heading downhill. I was just relieved I wasn’t going along for the ride, and that I’d gotten out when I had. I had my eye to the future, and my first mainstream feature film with the National Lampoon’s Dorm Daze II shoot, which began in principle that month.
While I was working on my movie, Matt was in Denmark with Himsa writing on the band’s new album, and while the distance was hard, he would call me every day in between my scenes, and we’d talk for hours. I guess he wasn’t getting very much in the way of a per diem from the band while he was there recording, so I sent him some money for phone cards and basic expenses. At the same time, he was still in the dark with Himsa over how much money he’d be getting paid from his publishing share on the album the band was recording. He was worried he wouldn’t be getting his fare share of the writing credit reflected in royalties, so per his request, I got him hooked up with a lawyer through my dear friend Brian Perera at Cleopatra Records. It felt good to be supporting someone I loved, it came naturally to me, and gave me happiness, but as often as he called me to tell me how miserable he was without me. I missed him fiercely as well, and so we decided on my break in later May from the National Lampoon shoot, I would fly to Denmark to see him.
After the first half of my shoot was over, Matt was still in Denmark writing the new Himsa record, and I’d lined up some Metal’s Dark Side- related business in Europe so I could fly over to visit him as we’d planned. From the moment I landed in Arhus, we had just the best time together. The northern lights were beautiful, and the whole vibe going on in that part of the world was just a welcome change from L.A. I put us both up at the Radisson Hotel so he didn’t have to sleep in the shit hole the band was bunking up together in. When he’d get done with his sessions, we’d spend our nights together walking around Arhus, Denmark, and I felt for the first time in my life like I had a real partner. On the weekends, we were inseparable, and when it came time for me to fly back to the States to continue work on the Dorm Daze movie, he was nearing the end of his writing sessions. So I arranged for him to fly back as early as possible to join me in L.A.
I picked up shooting on Dorm Daze in early June, and I remember the first day I was back on the set, which was down by the Queen Mary in Long Beach. I had my own trailer, and was playing the wife of the ship’s Captain, who was played by a really talented performer named Richard Riehle, who’d played Tom Smykowski in Office Space! As one of my — and America’s — favorite cult film classics, that was a real honor, and he treated me as a total equal on the set, which was really cool. I was also acting with the Chris Owen, who’d played the Shermanator in the American Pie movies, and felt like I’d really arrived. I had my own trailer with an air conditioner and my name on it, and the catering on set was amazing, it was definitely a step up from the indie-sets of Communication Breakdown and Swamp Zombies. It was funny because when I walked on set for the first time, people were expecting me to be horrible, and I did what I do best on-screen: I winged it, and my scenes went over really well. I had one day of dialogue with this Frat kid named Oren Skoog, who was of the nicest people I worked with on that movie, which made me feel horrible when I had to torture and slap him in one of our scenes.
When I wasn’t on-set, I spent my time in my trailer playing video games and talking to Matt, who was flying in from Denmark, I was into the second half of my Dorm Daze shoot. My dressing room was moved onto the actual ship the next day because I had scenes to shoot with Charles Shaughnessy, who played Fran Dresher’s love interest on the Nanny, and I was again just so excited to be working with real actors for a change. I also got on really well with all the crew people, because there were a lot of female actresses on the set. Even though they were nobodies, would still play the whole L.A. prim Madonna part and not give anyone but the director in the film crew the time of day. I never treated anyone that way — dating back from my days on adult film sets, to signings when I watched Francine blow off her fans during my wrestling days, to where I was at by now with my film work in metal and mainstream movies. I always felt like the crew worked as hard — if not much harder — than any of the talent. They got up hours before we did, worked much longer hours and got a lot less sleep than we did, and it’s just an etiquette I’ve always brought with me to the job.
Driving home with Matt that night after my shoot had ended, I got the happiest shock of my life when he told me about a dream he’d had while sleeping that day in my movie trailer: in the dream, we were living in Europe together and married. Then he shocked me literally to where I almost lost control of the steering wheel when he popped the question out of the blue and proposed marriage to me! I was stunned, and IMMEDIATELY said ‘YES,’almost as an emotional reflex — that’s how natural it felt to me. He didn’t have a ring, which I couldn’t have given a shit less about — I was just so happy to be engaged. Naturally, our euphoria only extended as far as our own little world, because neither his parents nor my mother was very thrilled about the news upon hearing it. Though that made us a little sad, but everyone on the set was thrilled for us when I broke the news the next day, popping Champagne and celebrating in between takes. Our friends were also very excited for us, and I think I felt 100% content for the first time in my personal life because I had everything I wanted: a man who loved me for me, a burgeoning mainstream film and veejaying career, and no headache anymore with 3PW. In that moment, I was completely content with my life overall.
Matt had to head back to Seattle to deal with some Himsa business, and I flew back to New York to spend some time with my mother to calm her overprotective nerves
about my wedding. While I was still in N.Y., I got a bit of a shock when Matt informed me that he had quit Himsa, which everyone of course blamed me for.The truth was Matt was unhappy with the musical direction the band was heading in, coupled with his dispute with fellow members over his publishing splits. And even though the lead singer had literally threatened to beat Matt’s face in for leaving and blamed me for his exit, I’d been the loudest critic of his decision when he’d first made it! I was the one who pushed him to stick it out, so the bottom line was, regardless of my presence: there was enough internal acrimony going on within the band that Matt would have left either way. He decided he would move down to L.A. full-time to be with me, and put together a new group locally. I thought with his talent, and name recognition from playing with Himsa, he would have no problem and I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t 100% thrilled about things being solidified between us as a couple.
I was still shooting on Dorm Daze when he got to L.A., and he was coming with me to the set every day, making arrangements to hook up some of the members of Cradle of Filth — the keyboardist, Martin Powell, and guitarist James Mc Ilroy. I was excited for him — and quietly relieved — because prior to him hooking up with a new gig, there were a couple weeks early on where he wasn’t doing a thing but sitting around my movie trailer or apartment playing his guitar and drawing. He was an amazing artist, and at first he was going to try and get a part-time day gig in animation, but that possibility quickly withered off the vine. Then, he was going to teach guitar for a little while to west L.A. Music, but that went away. I am a work-a-holic, and in my book, actions have always spoken louder than words, so it started to get a little alarming to me when his pattern of maybe jobs that always dried up became regular. I was patient and supportive of his transition, even to the extreme of charging his engagement ring to me on his new credit card…that I was paying off.
As wonderful as that was, the adjustment of learning to live with someone full-time was definitely that, because Matt upon moving in immediately picked back up on his trend of slamming me about my porn past. Most often, he picked on the fact that I had old copies of Playboys and other magazines I’d been the centerfold in or DVDs I sold on eBay to pay ALL OUR bills stored away in the back of a closet. It wasn’t like I had these things on display on my living room walls, and this was our livelihood at the time, but still I agreed to move everything related to that era of my career into storage, which I thought was a big concession. I was willing to make it for him, but I definitely didn’t appreciate his rubbing my face in it. I had worked hard to get into and out of that business in as short a time as I had, and considered it a real achievement that I was still big enough of a star to be making money off of it six+ years later. Looking back now, I think a lot of the insecurity on his part came at his parent’s prodding too, because his mother — who would NEVER speak to me on the phone — talked to him on almost a daily basis. He was a tragic mama’s boy, I mean, it bordered on unhealthy, and it was definitely that for us after he’d hang up because routinely, he’d begin bitching at me about my past.
Once he started dictating to me that I had to get rid of my nude photos, and couldn’t sell them on eBay any longer, I thought he’d crossed a line because he was fucking with my bottom line. I was paying ALL OUR bills with that money, and Matt at that point wasn’t lifting a finger to bring any money into the house, so I felt he really had no right to be complaining at all. I kept telling him it shouldn’t matter: it was all from my past, and reminded him additionally of the fact that this was our primary income source. In the end, I caved when he threatened to end the engagement and got rid of — NOT SOLD OFF — but literally threw out $15,000 worth of merchandise! That was how deeply I loved him, and how devoted I was to making the relationship work. When I tried to explain to him that even though I was bringing in some money from the Metal hosting, it was still getting off the ground, and between our monthly overhead and my legal fees relative to the 3PW litigation, it wasn’t good timing at all. Clearly his pride had made him a zombie in those moments because he persisted, even to the point of next demanding I shut down my website, which I didn’t even have control over.
He didn’t want anything porn-related being sold to support us, and was doing nothing on his part to replace that revenue.The deeper into the summer we got, the more his jealous, controlling side began to emerge from whatever swamp it had been hiding. As much as I loved him, at times it was almost like a fucking horror movie. He would never raise a hand to me, but he was verbally abusive via his rubbing my nose on a daily basis on my adult-film past. It seemed like I couldn’t escape that, no matter who I was with, and it was almost heart breaking at times. I only survived by the same spine I’ve had to steer my entire adult life with. Whenever any guy let me down and I had to carry both our weight: I’d done it with countless men: from Dick to Earl, and now to Matt, but with him, it definitely hurt the most. I knew he was different from any other man I’d ever been in a serious relationship with, and my heart kept giving him the benefit of a doubt, even when my head would be screaming at me not to. It was maddening at times, because I’d never been so in love and so naturally compelled to keep trying to make the relationship work.
I felt helpless and really didn’t know what to do at this point, so I went ahead and did what he’d told me: I called the webmaster of my online site, and got the process started of taking it down. That unfortunately would take a while because they had to recoup some money I’d been advanced from merchandise sales, which of course I got screamed at for. I also had an online diary my fans regularly read that I wanted to keep up, but my jealous hobo-hubby to be had a problem with that too. He was very jealous, and I thought it wasn’t ever right, but especially once I found out he’d slept at some bitch’s house earlier that spring, while lying to me that he’d been elsewhere. It may seem petty to you now, but at the time it was the straw that broke the back of all the stress I’d been carrying around because of him and his fucked-up possessiveness. I slapped him, threw his ass out to the curb, and broke off the engagement. I felt so betrayed, and once he crawled back to me in tears, I took him back but still had decided to put the wedding on hold. I felt we had some serious, deep-seated issues on his part to work through relative to his jealously and possessiveness.
I am sure many women have been through this, even without an adultfilm past, to add on top of the mountain jealous men can build up over the woman they love. It’s a universal problem that I’d been through on some much more severe levels in the past where physical abuse had been involved, but what Matt was putting me through in the way of his constant mental and emotional torture was much worse to me. There was nothing wrong with me as a person, and it burned me up inside that he wouldn’t accept me for me, in spite of my having taken him into my home and heart with all his faults. Deep down, I had all this animosity for everything he was putting me through — especially in the face of everything I was doing to support him, more than anyone else in his life. I can’t lie and say we came to a complete resolution that day, but I agreed to put the engagement back in play. I was too in love with him to let him go at that point, even in spite of the fact that he was living off a credit card I paid the bill on every month!
He backed off for a few days after that on berating me about my past, but then his mother — upon finding out our engagement was back on — persisted in calling him every day with some new piece of my adult film past she’d found online that day. It was a sick little routine she had of playing head games with him, trying to interfere with our life. When I demanded he tell her to stop, he refused, and when I finally got on the phone one day and asked her, ‘What is your fucking problem with me, lady? What have I done to your son? I’ve stood behind him and taken care of him all this time.’She had no reply, and I decided they were almost like mother-and-son Norman Bates, from the movie ‘Psycho’at that point, because it was an unhealthy alliance against me. He was an irretrievable mama’s boy, and that was a fact that definitel
y caused a regular rift throughout our marriage.
I also found it funny that in spite of how concerned Matt’s mom pretended to be for him where his choice in women was concerned, when it came to her son’s health, it was ME who picked up the doctor’s tab. He had to cure an acne problem on his back that was causing him to break out horribly. That mattered past personal vanity because onstage as a guitar player, your shirt is off the entire show, and appreciating that from a professional angle, even though I had no health insurance myself at that time, I paid for his operation. The initial visit alone was $200, then there was another $600 in medication costs, all of which I paid for. In spite of his parents knowing this, his mother still said horrible things about me to Matt on a daily basis during their creepy ‘mama’s boy’ phone call routine. Trying in every way she could to cause a rift between us: ‘Well, you know where that money probably came from Matt,’ all sorts of nasty things of that nature.
As the summer rolled into August, Matt finally got off his ass enough to decide he wanted to relocate temporarily to Europe to record new material with the ex-Cradle of Filth band members toward the end of starting a new group together. I was delighted at the prospect of getting him A) off my sofa and out of the apartment, B) back to work doing something he was absolutely talented at, and C) getting his head into a space where he would be happy. Thus we would be happy as a couple. I LOVED seeing him play music, and once he’d made his wishes known, as excited as I was, I also had to figure out how we were going to pay for it. Once I found out how expensive the trip to England was going to be, I was alarmed because we were running really low on money, but I really believed in Matt and wanted him to do well. And I thought that things might change for the better if I could pull it off, especially knowing his lazy ass wasn’t going to lift a finger to help. But in hindsight I should have known I was living in a fantasy of sorts because the truth was: without money coming in from my website at that point, coupled with what he’d made me throw out in the way of merchandise, we had a lot less coming in.