Absolute Mayhem

by Monica Mayhem

  I also did some bizarre fetish stuff for Taylor St Claire, who not only is one of the best porn stars in the business but also has a second career as a professional domme. I've always thought her such a sexy woman, all natural and curvy, and she looks so beautiful, like a soap-opera star or something. One of her scenes involved me teasing a submissive male slave, who had the smallest penis I've ever seen. In real life, he's actually Taylor's slave and he's into that kind of thing for real – he was telling me what kind of mean things I should say to him, and I felt so bad. I mean, his penis was tiny and I had to point and laugh at it and make him feel like shit.

  Then I shot some scenes for this sneezing-fetish website that Taylor had called Sneezing Beauties. I had to tickle my nose with a toothpick until I sneezed five times. And then I was filmed blowing my nose. I can't believe there is actually a fetish for that. But there really are guys out there who will get off on seeing me sneeze and blow my nose, and they will actually pay the current rate – seven bucks for a five-minute, 38-megabyte wmv file – to see me do so. They'll get all excited and masturbate at the sight of my nasal mucus. Good heavens, if they knew I was really asthmatic some of them might orgasm right away!

  Another time, I did a photo shoot where I was bound and put in a coffin filled with nails. That was kind of creepy. And the coffin was suspended too. I couldn't move and had no control over anything. I freaked out a little, because I hate not being in control.

  And control is something that is getting harder and harder to keep hold of in the world of porn. These days, the rates are getting lower and lower because the industry has been undergoing an awful recession in these past few years, and that means porn stars are less able to pick and choose which jobs they feel comfortable about taking.

  The explosion of gonzo porn that occurred right after I started out, back in 2001, has been largely responsible for this downturn. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm still a believer in movies as art, and today we live in an age where our art form has been desecrated in the name of greed. The year I got into the business marked the end of the big-features era, and gonzo was starting to make its way into the rental market in a very big way. The onslaught of gonzo is what has killed the industry. Too many companies got greedy because they thought it was easy – because gonzo is unscripted 'reality' porn that is cheap to shoot – but they didn't realise how many other companies were getting into the game too, and thus everyone ended up fighting for their slice of the same pie. A lot of companies went bust in the summer of 2007 and some are barely alive at this point.

  People downloading free porn off the internet is the other sure thing that's killing our industry. It's bad enough that we porn stars don't get paid nearly enough for what we're worth, what with all the health-andsafety risks we take, but now we're getting paid even less – because the companies are making less money from their products. That's the grim reality from where I sit on my career-transitioning perch, as we roll into 2009 and observe the market meltdown happening all over the world. (My heart sank at the end of 2008 as I watched the Australian dollar plunge to its lowest value in years!)

  Ironically, this doesn't seem to have stemmed the massive flow of new girls coming into the business. In the past year, I have gone to sets and read entire call sheets where I don't even recognise a single name. These new girls seem to arrive by the truckload from Tennessee to Texas, and it oft en stuns me to realise that I have to compete with them for places in movies.

  We're all forced to work for less money as the film-production pile continues to shrink, so where is this industry really heading? When I started out, I got paid US$1400 for an oral-orgy scene (a blow-bang, as it's known in the trade), which is actually a little more than the usual rate (though it's nowhere near enough, given what's involved). At this time of writing, I'm getting paid US$400 for a regular blow job, doing just one guy, though it used to be US$500 when the economy was better. A lot of girls in the business will now blow guys on film for only US$300 or less.

  Lack of control of our image is another issue we porn stars face. One good example is when they use bad pictures of me. There have been so many box-covers on which I think I look hideous. I just don't understand what's wrong with the people who chose those pictures. I know for a fact that there are always some beautiful photos of me in every set that's shot, and yet someone with one eye gets to choose the worst of the bunch for public display – like the ones where they show me putting a huge cock in my mouth on the cover, with my cheek all stretched out. Most consumers make impulse decisions based on what they see, and it's really important for my branding to get my look right. However, the reality of this business is that you're at the mercy of the art department at the studio, and there's a train of thought that the nastiest shots are the best. It's just that sometimes these people forget about the girl who's at the receiving end of what's being shot.

  Another example of this lack of control of my image was the occasion I did an internet-TV show, in which I was filmed blowing Dez, who had become one of my best friends despite having been best man at my ill-fated wedding to Craven. I didn't really want to do it, because I had to go out right after that and I didn't want to have to re-do my make-up. So it was a held-back kind of blow job, and when he was about to cum I opened my mouth really wide so that he would get it in there and not on my face. I kept my mouth open for about ten seconds, right until he came, and then he did it on my boobs instead. Anyway, they took a still of the mouth-open-wide shot and they kept showing it throughout the show, on high-rotation, like it was supposed to be funny.

  I didn't think it was funny at all. I thought I looked terrible, and not exactly the epitome of grace and beauty, to be sure. I don't think that's cool at all. I have to look good and hot for the fans: they can't be showing me looking like some stupid, slobbering, sex-starved whore.

  But you also have to keep a sense of humour about yourself, in order to maintain your sanity in this business. Someone recently showed me the box-cover for one of my old movies, Uninhibited, directed by F. J. Lincoln, which this person had acquired in London. This was the British VHS-version box-cover, made by Hot Rod Productions, which was startlingly different from the American version. They'd used old photos of me from an earlier era of my career, taken from a different movie altogether, when my hair was bright blonde and straight, rather glamorous-looking, and juxtaposed them with a main photo of my co-star Evan Stone sticking his middle finger into my exposed vagina, which was completely shaved for the viewer's maximum ogling pleasure. There are two smaller inset photos of penises jammed into vaginas (not mine) and the spine of the box had a shot from the movie of me with my tongue lovingly lapping a very erect cock (belonging to Marty Romano, who did the opening scene with me).

  What can you do, you know?

  These companies will do their utmost to sell a movie the best way they can, appealing to the baser instincts of the potential purchaser, and I have no say when it comes to the artwork. When you're a porn star, you offer up your body for the viewing pleasure of so many, regardless of decorum or taste.

  Exerting control in other areas of the industry has at times meant I've made choices that have ended up backfiring on me. My 'condom only' work, for instance, resulted in some good films with Wicked Pictures and VCA Pictures but caused too great a loss of income to support my working lifestyle. I eventually had to go back to doing condom-less shoots, and that backfired too, when I contracted chlamydia and gonorrhoea. There were only two occasions each when that happened, though – amazing given my output of more than 400 films over eight-plus years.

  Around this time in my career, I was working on some great stuff , some really big-budget porn. (In porn, US$250,000 is big-budget.) For Dark Angels 2: Bloodline, shot in May 2005 for New Sensations, I sat with Nic Andrews, the director, and discussed vampires and fight scenes with him before he started production. I have always loved vampires and action scenes, so he thought I would be perfect for the role of Petra, the undead leading lady. I spent hours
on my fight scene with a real Hollywood stunt coordinator, and my staged death was also pretty amazing, aided by computerised special effects. I think I should have won an award for acting and fucking in this movie, because the sex scene is unbelievable too (with Evan Stone, both of us as vampires performing wild, aggressive sex in the dark basement of an old downtown LA building). All of my friends who have watched my scenes in this movie are absolutely blown away. But hey, it's oft en about politics when it comes to winning awards.

  A small role in Sacred Sin (Ninn Worx/Red Light District) came my way after that, which was still great because Michael Ninn is one of my favourite directors – he's so strangely creative and artistic. The film's music was scored by Eddie Van Halen, who was also its executive producer, and it went on to win Best Music, Best Art Direction and Best Videography at the 2007 AVN Awards. This was another US$250,000 big-budget production, and it was shot at Eddie's house. The first time I saw him, he was asleep on his couch with his guitar still in his hands. It was so cute. These stupid girls were being disrespectful and taking photos of him, but that image will always be in my head. Eddie's a freakin' legend, and an idol to most guitarists.

  My sex scene itself was so crazy – me and Scott Nails on a pile of rocks, out in the freezing cold, with TV monitors all around us showing me enticing him to come and fuck me along with some other crazy images from the movie. Now, given that I was balancing on a pile of rocks, giving Scott a blow job and then having sex with him, I think I should also have been nominated for the AVN Best Sex Scene award. But meeting Eddie Van Halen did mean I got to star in the music video for his song 'Rise'.

  Professionally, 2005 was a very big year for me. That was the year that Skin was produced, and that is something I'm very proud of, for several reasons. Firstly, it was the movie for which I finally received my first nomination for an AVN award, for Best Solo Scene – for a scene where I'm masturbating in the shower. The film has no director's credit and it just says 'produced by Storm Productions' on the box-cover, but it was actually partly produced and directed by me and my friend Darren Kaye, who shoots mainly independent films. We distributed this movie through Skye Blue's then-company Platinum Blue (now defunct, as of November 2007); hence she is credited as executive producer. The film came out in 2006 but it was actually shot over a three-year period – 2003 to 2005 – which is why you'll see several scenes featuring me with my hair blonde and without tattoos and then others with my red hair and new tattoos. A number of things had kept getting in the way of its production – like finding an investor, and me being on the road so much that I didn't have time to do anything else.

  Because I owned part of the movie, I decided it was the right place to perform my one-and-only anal scene, with my best friend Dez and his girlfriend, Alaura Eden. The three of us were all a bit drunk at the time and he challenged me to do it – 'C'mon, you tough Aussie!' he kept taunting me – so I took him up on it. I can never resist a challenge. Several years later, when he was interviewed about doing my sole anal-sex scene with me, Dez said I did really well and it didn't even seem like that was my first-ever on-camera experience. 'She was great. She took it like a champ!' he said.

  In the final cut of the movie, that whole three-way scene – me and Dez and Alaura making whoopee – is ridiculously long. It runs for 37 minutes in total, of which a whole nine minutes is yours truly getting frigged anally, my bare butt open wide for all to see. It was my idea to have completed footage from the actual movie play in the background – from my projector onto the wall behind us – while we were having sex, and I think it looks really great.

  Dez, Alaura and I have had such good times together off -camera. There were many evenings where we'd meet at Taylor Rain's house – yes, we porn stars have our own house parties! – and our big thing was to play the computer simulation game Rock Band together. I got to play drums and break drumsticks, and it was always fun. I still relive those good memories in my mind and I know I'll always cherish them after I go home to Australia some day.

  Another of my favourite movies that I shot around the same time as Skin was Return to the Edge, made for Adam & Eve in 2003. I was the lead in this fetish movie directed by Nick Orleans, set in a house with different fetish-themed rooms, in a swingers' party type of scenario. It remains memorable for a great glory-hole scene that I did with five guys. Their erections were the only things visible through open holes in the wall, and I took them each in my mouth, one at a time.

  Steven St Croix was the male lead in that movie, and we used to shoot a lot together so I guess we had good on-set chemistry. But when he started seeing this new girl (whose name I won't mention), she got very jealous and ended up hating me. I finally confronted her about it at a party, and now we're friends. Anyway, a lot of acting was involved in this movie, which I always love, and the costumes were great. We got to wear some items from the film Moulin Rouge, so we had to be careful not to leave cum stains on the clothes!

  In late 2005, I had an experience that changed my life. One evening, Dez called me up last minute to go with him to the Playboy Mansion. My friend Sky and I quickly got dressed and Dez picked us up in a limo. When we got there, a very well-known band was playing. Suddenly, Sky ripped off my dress and I was naked with all the other girls! That was not my intention, I'm not one of those girls who does that kind of thing, but I went with it. The lead guitarist came up to Sky and me after the show and said that his drummer was a big fan of Sky's, so we met up later that night and hung out in the grotto.

  The next night, Sky went to the Teen Choice Awards with the drummer and while she was with him called me up to say that the guitarist wanted to see me. I couldn't remember what he looked like, as I had been pretty drunk at the Mansion. She reminded me he was cute, so I went to a bar, Dragonfly, in Hollywood to meet up with them. There was an instant connection – we were drawn to each other – and that never happens to me. We were dancing and making out when some fans of mine came up to me, some girls from Australia. I invited them back to his hotel room to party for a while, and they were calling up their boyfriends in Australia so I could say hi. It was hilarious. The guitarist was quite astonished and said to me, 'I can't believe I'm the rock star and you have the groupies!'

  Eventually, I asked them to leave 'cause I wanted to be alone with this guy. After having deep conversations all night, we finally hooked up. I stayed all night and was kind of sad to see him go the next day. When I look back over my journals from that time,

  I notice there are a lot of entries that are missing. I'm surprised, because my encounters with this guy over the last few years have been so dramatic, and I thought I would have recorded them. We fell in love and it was intense. It was like nothing I've ever experienced before. But circumstances and problems always kept us apart. It was never going to work. Long-distance relationships are tough, and we were on and off so many times. I even wrote a song about him called 'Never Again', which I think is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever written, although it makes me sad every time I hear it. I gave myself fully to this guy, but he just never believed I was for real.

  And it seems now that I just can't fall for anyone else. I can't seem to let myself get attached to anyone. I really have major trust and abandonment issues. And guys have a really hard time trusting me too, because of what I do for a living.

  It wasn't long after I fell for the rock star that I learned my mother had died. She had succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver – a common fate of dedicated drinkers – in November 2005. A few days beforehand, my aunt in England had emailed me to say my mother had lapsed into a coma. The morning I got the email saying she had finally died, I was supposed to go on a shoot. My initial reaction was, 'Wow, it's finally happened.'

  I went to shoot a girl-on-girl scene like nothing had happened. My best friends Sky and Lisa came with me for moral support, in case I broke down or something, but I didn't. It was like a relief, actually. I didn't even cry. I knew this day would come, and I was already at peace with the f
act that she would die soon, so I wasn't going to put my life on hold just to sit around and think about it all day. All my life, I'd been kept repressed and restricted by her, so now that she was well and truly gone I was going to do what I wanted to do, all the way. So what if I was shooting porn? She had indirectly put me there.

  My brother, on the other hand, had a very different situation to deal with. When my mother died, she didn't have a funeral and had already requested that she should be cremated and her ashes sent to Wales, to be sprinkled over her beloved homeland. My poor brother, being the eldest sibling, had to take care of it and it was extraordinarily difficult for him, since he despised her. I used to hear her beating him in the hallway at night when I was younger, and I remember how I would push my bed up against the door so she couldn't come into my room to do the same for me. I literally would be shaking and crying in my room, afraid to go to sleep, thinking she was possessed by some demon.

  I don't think my brother ever got over what she did to us, yet he had to spend a lot of his own money sorting out her stuff and arranging for the cremation. The irony was that she had inherited a lot of money after her own mother had died, but as usual she'd spent it on her own good self – on expensive vacations she paid for but never took, and on cruises she did take but didn't complete because they booted her off the ships for drunken behaviour.

  She had also donated AU$50,000 to the Red Cross and to the Hurricane Katrina rescue fund just a couple of months before she died. Her acts of whimsical philanthropy were gleefully off set by her warning to us that she would cut us out of her will if we didn't call her on command or do whatever she said. That was her in a nutshell – bitter to the end. I still like to think that the money went to a good cause, since it sure didn't go to us.