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or weeks now, the publishing industry has been abuzz over the autobiography of a public figure whose sex life has been an ongoing national obsession. Despite reviews slamming the book as indulgent and — at nearly 600 pages — far too long, the author's signings have drawn crowds more suited to pop concerts than literary events.
I am speaking, of course, about My Life by Bill Clinton.
Or actually, wait a second. Check that. I am speaking about How to Make Love Like a Porn Star by Jenna Jameson (with Neil Strauss).
Like our former president, Ms. Jameson seems resigned to the notion that the American public is more curious about her sex life than her policies, though in her case this makes sense, given that she is the leading lady of adult cinema, not the elected leader of the free world.
Regrettably, her saga is not without its share of tragedy. Many of the early chapters document the various sexual assaults she has suffered — which include a gang rape as a sophomore in high school — all of which, oddly, go unreported to the police, or to her father, who is, confusingly, also a policeman.
Instead, the former Jenna Massoli, born in 1974, sets about a path familiar to anyone who has explored the nascent genre of porn biography: she finds herself a tattoo artist/biker boyfriend (whose uncle, somewhat expectedly, rapes her), runs away from home, and begins stripping.
Her desire to strip is, to her way of thinking, one way of connecting to her late mother, a Vegas showgirl. Alas, she is rebuffed in her initial job interview, for the flimsiest of reasons — because she is wearing braces.
Many applicants would take this as a sign that they are perhaps a bit too young to be dispensing lap dances. Jameson, however, does what any future porn princess would: she goes home and yanks off her braces with a pair of pliers, then chips the dried cement out of her teeth. Thus begins her odyssey into the empowering realm of adult entertainment.
Nor is Jameson content simply to strip. She wants to be the best stripper ever. "My shows got better," she tells us, "as I invented little male-exciting tricks like dangling a string of saliva from my mouth to my ding-ding." Soon, she is traveling to Los Angeles to do nude photo shoots, and, within a few months, movies. It's hard to deny the narrative momentum established as Jameson works her way up the ladder — imagine a Horatio Algier story, but with real live ding-dings. All should be well, but her boyfriend uses the money she earns to buy himself crystal meth, and before long, he's gotten her hooked, as well. She bottoms out, nearly dies, and learns her lesson by breaking up with the biker and settling down with a more stable guy: a porn director named Rod.
Jameson is not blind to the risk of self-objectification. No ma'am. But she insists that porn can be a great living "because you'll make a lot of money while doing very little work. And you'll get more experience in front of the camera than any Hollywood actress. Though watching porn may seem degrading to some women, the fact is that it's one of the few jobs for women where you can get to a certain level, look around, and feel so powerful, not just in the work environment but as a sexual being. So, fuck Gloria Steinem."
It's hard to argue with results. Before long, she is the No. 1 XXX star in the universe. She fucks Tommy Lee. She fucks Marilyn Manson. She crashes the Cannes Film Festival. She buys many expensive dresses. She gets herself strung out on vodka and Vicodin and returns to her roots as a stripper, newly empowered by her fame:
"At one show, when a guy threw a penny at me, I kicked him in the throat with my heel. I got in constant fights with local dancers — I even hocked a loogie in one girl's face — and had guys thrown out of the club on a nightly basis. If some asshole dared to touch me, I'd reward him with a backhand to the skull. I was out of control. It was awesome."
Take that, Condi Rice.
Those who are concerned about reading 579 pages of such prose should take heart. There are a lot of photos. In most, Jameson is naked from the waist up. Her breasts are the approximate size, shape, and elasticity of her head. The book also includes diary entries, interviews, contracts, and comic book treatments of subjects such as Suitcase Pimps and Stripper Injuries.
I'm not sure who's responsible for these non-traditional narrative elements, though I tend to doubt it's Jameson given that, based on her recent interview with Howard Stern, she hasn't actually read her own autobiography. Something tells me she probably wasn't the one who suggested that the chapter titles be drawn from Shakespearean sonnets, either.
Then again, Jameson is no stranger to literary allusion. As she explains to the manager of her first strip club, "The name I had always used in my imagination for my fantasy self was Jennasis."
"Like 'In the beginning'?" he asked.
"Exactly."
You may be wondering, at this point, why this dewy bildungsroman was affixed with the title How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. That is, does it offer any practical advice for those of us who wish to pursue a career in the pornographic arts?
Why yes. Yes it does.
An unnamed male porn star, for example, advises aspiring Johnny Wadds to befriend a hot teenage stripper who's interested in being in the industry, but who will agree to have sex only with you on camera. Then, of course, you need to learn dick tricks, such as "pull out and make the girl suck your dick, which will give you enough time to stop yourself from coming. Or you'll pull out, beat your dick on her pussy, go down on her real quick, spit on her pussy, and then start fucking her again."
Got it?
As for the ladies, Jameson suggests that they, unlike her, avoid drugs, show up on time, and don't date or marry any man.
Of course, there are other cherished tricks of the trade.
"The way to get good consistency in your spit is to deep throat," she notes, cheerfully. "The farther down your throat the spit comes from, the thicker it is."
In other words, fuck Gloria Steinem, but make sure you do so farther down her throat.
Unfortunately, Jameson's book is not consistently this penetrating. It reads, for the most part, like an ABC Afterschool Special that just happens to include money shots. For those readers who like their salacious memoir served up hot and nasty, with lots of graphic descriptions of sexual acts, do what I do: dig out your underlined copy of The Starr Report. n°
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: | ||
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Steve Almond's new essay collection is (Not that You Asked). It is, like much of his work, filthy. |
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 To buy How to Make Love Like a Porn Star (A Cautionary Tale), click here. |
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Comments ( 16 )
How to Make Love like a Porn Star? a contradiction in terms. if anything remotely resembling love had been a part of Jenna's early sexual experiences, it is likely she wouldn't have become a porn star or perpetuated the degradation and violence that has given sexuality and eroticism a bad name.
my dewy wish: that no kids would ever experience abusive sexuality - it robs them of their god-given right to enjoy intimacy and diminishes their ability to revel in their own bodies
agreed on all counts. what's sad is that this book will sell more copies than all the short story collections of the past five years combined. suck that.
Another book that feed the actual sick trend of"glamourizing porn",I hope that Jena makes enough money with this book to quit the industry she most despises (in her own words) and becomes the Hollywood actress that she's longing for.I feel sorry for her,and I hope she doesn't become a role model for troubled teenage girls reading the book who may think that becoming a porn star leads to this "exciting,glamorous and wild life that will make them rich" and get them to fuck Tommy Lee.
Signed:
ex-stripper turned graphic designer
probably because it's better than almost all the collections that have come out in the past five years. other than denis johnson, and junot diaz, and a few others, name a story collection worth reading; in the meantime, i'd rather read an account of a porn star -- at least it's regaling the reader with someone who's actually lived a little, and not spent his/her days in MFA classrooms.
Is it any different that teens modeling themselves after Britney Spears, or Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, et al?
in defense of those who spend their days in MFA classrooms (see AG below). i think one of almond's points is that Jenna attempts to elevate her life and activities to an artform and fails miserably in her attempts to instruct us in her manual for making love like a porn star. try as hard as we might, it is doubtful that any of us will find any semblance of symbolism in her spit, nor are we likely to be turned on by it (but i could easily be wrong on this point). anyway, if we read or view the work often studied in MFA programs, we will discover the elements of Jenna's life and more. as a matter of fact, i didn't get to know truly f----- up people until i went to college. the really messed up ones stayed on for graduate school LOL not only have many educators experienced much life, they've buried much of it and if they are conscious of it, are clever enough to rationalize it away. talk about hot ....
ag: a brief list of recent story collections worth reading... "on the nature of human romantic interaction" by karl iagnemma; "birds of america" by lorrie moore; "last days of the dog men" by brad watson; "civilwarland in bad decline" and "pastoralia" by george saunders, anything by jim shepard, "half mammals of dixie" by george singleton; "emporium" by adam johnson, and on and on. your attitude is so sad and tired, dude. your heart might be too bored to connect to any of the amazing story writers out there, but that's no reason to inflict your lazy MFA snobbery on the rest of us. grow a soul.
Wow, leave it to an bitter jerkoff columnist to inject his neo-con politics into an article about fucking... Still trying to jab at Bill Clinton four years after he left office? Fine - but remember, he wasn't the one that was obsessed with putting his sex life on the front page of every newspaper in america for two years straight! No, that was actually the sexually repressed bitter republicans that couldnt stand the idea of a president for the people... I digress.
Nice critical analysis of Jenna's book -- maybe while you were busy scoffing at the very un-Jenna chapter titles and literary devices, you could have troubled yourself to read one of the other 10,000 reviews and press releases about the book that have come out in the past few weeks, all of which explain that the book was written as told to Niel Strauss... She has never claimed that she personally transcribed the 579 tale of her life. And as far as her not reading it? Well, a lot of celebs don't go see movies that they star in, and most writing professors i know (including the acclaimed T.C.Boyle and Aimee Bender) sometimes don't read their own work. If you poured out a lifetime of trauma and tragedy and rape and abuse into a novel, would you be keen on re-living every moment of your life in drawn out prose? I wouldn't.
You criticize the role she takes as a victim throughout her life, as well as the post-fem, empowered, sexualized thing she did to try to make lemonade. I would ask what you want from her, but that's irrelevant. This is her story - the good times and the bad times that have made her who she is now. I personally don't care for her as a person or as a pornstar. but i think your review is biased because her values don't seem to agree with yours. and hardly gives a viewer any insight into the book, save to say that it made you complain a lot.
In response to AG, i think that jenna's stilted view of her own life is a symptom of her trying to ratonalize what she's done for the past 10+ years or somehow her own longing to have some impact on this planet. I dont think she's trying to glamourize her life at all, but rather has revealed her need to believe that she has not wasted her life (kinda like a garbage man who comes home every day from work and must force himself to believe that his life has meaning to keep from slitting his wrists). I've spent some time with Heidi Fleiss on a few occassions and she exhibits this exact same behaviour -- she knows that she's no nelson mandela, but has to take pride in what she did so that she doesn't hang herself when she feels dead inside... I'm not saying that this behaviour is healthy, but I think that the lesson to be learned from this book (if there is one) is not the stories that are told but the way they are told.
As far as the "get a soul" comment - get a life! Ramble off a few more short stories / novels that you feel are important, and make sure you give us some more angst-emo lines like "get a soul"... great. this isn't about them, this is about Jenna Jameson's book and A) it will sell better than all of those B) don't be bitter because this person has probably lived more in one paragraph of her book (for better or worse) than you will live in an entire lifetime and C) fiction is what people do (whether it be writing it or reading it) while life is passing them by... enjoy your last few minutes on your death bed thinking about all of those amazing memories throughout your life... of reading other peoples stories.
to BIG - i like your voice - however, it is my point of view that sex is often what adults and teenagers do when they are bored. they either do it with themselves, others, they watch it in films or look at it in magazines or on-line, all hoping to get a little thrill and energy into their lives. do their lives still seem empty even after screwing like bunnies? it seems that away for Jenna. is this what some of you refer to as "living"? are you trying to say that experiencing emotional and physical pain, along with degradation, is "living"? if this is the case, show me a person who has become a paraplegic later in life, who can't feel their genitals when they once had a virile and healthy sex life, and i will show you someone who is living. sometimes fucking is meaningless, even when done with someone u love. please don't suggest that my husband doesn't know how to fuck, or else i wouldn't be making these comments. i made it a point to compare and contrast lovers in my twenties, (the selection process took a few years, and many hours tangled in crazy positions), i was able to assure myself, within reason, that i hooked up with someone who would continue to be a great lover and with whom i could mate for life. BTW - has anyone tried reading or writing after having great sex? it's the best!
I'm a European photographer (architecture and interiors) and I absolutely don't agree with some of the postings below stating that "you have to be a porn star in order to have a life",excuse me,I've never been a porn star,but I've sowed my wild oats pretty much indulging in all kinds of kinky & vainilla sex,I've travelled,I love my proffession,my friends and my family,and when I read about Jennas life and I think NO WAY I would have like to live her life,a life full of drugs,sexual abuse,stripping in bars and fucking for money infront of a camara,I think it's pretty depressing and I'm sure that given the chance she would have rather done something else.I think that people who think that "you have to be a porn star in order to have a life" are like sheep who follow this trend nowadays that glamorizes porn and sends the message that "porn is cool" and Paris HIlton is "funny".
some of the folks down below seem to be missing the point: by comparing jenna to clinton, almond is attempting to highlight how insane the media focus on clinton's sex life was. it's called irony. anyone who knows almond's work ("how to love a republican" etc.) knows his politics are extreme left, anyway. you need to work a little harder on yer reading comprehension, big. tho you get an A in bitterness!
the media skewered clinton? "i did not have sexual relations with that woman" does that ring a bell? well, i DID NOT HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS with a few embarrassing individuals either. did Bill have sex with Jenna? she had sex with just about everybody and is willing to crucify herself in the media because of it. i think the average man and woman on the street decided that when clinton tried to weasel out of his affairs, he was a liar who could not keep his dick in his pants. is Jenna a liar, doesn't appear to be so, hence we buy her book. if clinton pens a memoir, is he telling the truth? why waste money on what may be a pack of lies? if he wrote a fiction piece however, then i might pay to play. imagine, if he disguised his real life as fiction, then he may just be able to convince people to buy his book thinking they might find grains of truth in the characters and scenarios. now that would be a bit of reverse pop-culture psychology to go down in clinton history.
>>>Like our former president, Ms. Jameson seems resigned to the notion that the American public is more curious about her sex life than her policies >>>
Sorry, DC, but where in the above statement do you see a critique of the media's obsession with Bill Clinton? To me it looks a lot more like a accusation pointed at the former president. I don't know much about literature, and I'm certainly not an ardent reader, but I think my reading comprehension skills are just fine (at least that's what my SAT says). Speaking of analysis though, CC, where did I (or anyone) claim that the media skewed Clinton? I said that the media were obesessed with his sex life - i never said its claims were in any any way untrue.
Moving on, I also never claimed that fucking for money and getting raped repeatedly was a Robin Leach-y good life. I said that Jenna Jameson has lived a lot in her 30 years, for better or worse. I don't limit my idea of "living" to those candy coated days of love and bliss when the sun's shining and the Mai Tais are icy cold... However I also don't subscribe to the angst-poetry, gothy idea that one needs to be kicked in the balls by life every hour on the hour to truly live... I'm just saying that Jenna Jameson has had a life filled with (whether good or bad) extraordinary experiences, and in the outsider art/ 'real life crazier than fiction' way, I am much more intrigued by her real life experiences than by a grad student's device driven, metaphorically cumbersome, esoteric character study of a porn star, that is either condescending in its exoticism of a tortured/victimized protagonist or worse, some sort of pedantic foucaultian case study. I can appreciate intelligent work, and i believe that a technical understanding of literary tropes is essential to good writing, however I value Jenna's account as a primary source of a lifestyle that is often written about but rarely documented from the perspective of those who live it.
to big: i wrote "skewered" as in shishkabob, not skewed. clinton, dead meat, sliced and diced, marinated in his own, ahem, you know ... put on the grill or put out to pasture, whatever, yesterday's news, too bad. Steve Almond for president - sisboombah.
Almond's just jealous of her book like every other writer who tries to write "erotic" -- check the blogs, they can't stand her success:).
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