Miami- It might be a tad early in the day for talk about straight men and their tired obsession with lesbian action, but Jenna Jameson, undisputed queen of porn, is happy to go there.
While the breakfast crowd at the Loews Hotel downs eggs and O.J., Jenna nurses a Coke and tries to explain why she’s not allowed to make movies with any man but her husband. She can have a free-for-all as long as her co-stars are women.
”Actually, to me it’s much more passionate and sexy and connected to have sex with a woman. Having sex with men is easy. But my husband doesn’t see it that way. No man does. My husband thinks I’m cheating if I’m having sex with another man. But not if I’m having sex with women. I think he’s totally wrong. But, hey, I like girls. So I’m not gonna argue,” she says and smiles.
The woman who turned her body into a fortune-making franchise (you can mail-order auser-friendly, um, tribute to Jenna’s most famous feature for $229) arrives at breakfast in jeans and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Her hair is swept up in a pony tail. She wears no makeup.
Stare all you want, even in this hard morning light. You won’t find a trace of the brutal life she details in her recently-released autobiography How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, A Cautionary Tale (ReganBooks, $27.95). She looks much younger than 30. In fact, she has the air of a fresh, unsullied school girl — no doubt a big part of her success in the adult industry.
”Oh my God, I thought that was her,” says a giddy waiter when Jenna takes her leave.
Here is a woman whose mother died of cancer when she was 2, whose father was emotionally absent, whose step-mother was abusive. A woman who was gang-raped as a teenager, who wasn’t legal yet when she started stripping for greasy men, who posed for cheesy magazines, who nearly died from a crystal meth addiction, who got used and abused by slimy boyfriends — who, well, she even endured Marilyn Manson under the sheets.
But none of that seems to have rubbed off. Somewhere along the way, in an industry that regularly destroys women’s self-esteem, Jenna found herself.
‘I look back at certain times in my life when I didn’t think I was going to survive and I think, wow, my survival mode was actually so incredibly strong. Once I was able to look at myself and say, `I will never be victimized again,’ I went to the ends of the earth to make sure of it.”
Once the cameras are rolling and the director is barking commands, most girls in the industry have trouble drawing the line. Jenna says she has been offered hundreds of thousands of dollars to allow a particular act. But she just says no.
”What’s key here is to set your boundaries and never allow them to be crossed,” Jenna advises. “If you do, it will break you down, and you won’t have any longevity because you’ll be freaked out about the things you’ve done.”
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star is spliced with all kinds of practical advice on doing the nasty — and striking a smart deal if you intend to get paid for it. It offers the nitty-gritty on everything from proper porn grooming to what a good contract looks like.
”Though watching porn may seem degrading to some women,” Jenna writes, “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, f— Gloria Steinem.”
Of course, Jenna’s autobiography is strictly for adults — but even adults who think they don’t blush easily will turn a few shades of red when they get to Jenna’s 10 Commandments for, um, a certain type of job well done.
Jenna, who claims a relatively modest list of lovers, all things considered (”somewhere between 60 and 80 people — men and women, on screen and off”) also offers her Top 10 dealbreakers.
“I don’t mind heavy guys, skinny guys, short guys, tall guys, little boys, old men, trust-fund babies, chronically unemployed slackers, convenience store clerks, rat-catchers, drug addicts, or rock stars (who fit into most of the above categories anyway).”
But as far as she’s concerned: “Thou shalt not have a tan line in the shape of a thong.”
Today, Jenna lives as large as a mainstream movie star. She and husband Jay Grdina, a porn producer, have a home in Scottsdale, Ariz. She stars in one or two films a year, which take a few days total to shoot, and the rest of the time she grows her brand.
The website ( www.clubjenna.com) is hers, the films are hers, the product lines are hers (she gets paid on everything from the Jenna coffee mugs and mouse pads to the ”I Dream of Jenna” magnets, the Jenna personal trimmer, Jenna bobble head, Jenna action figure, even the Briana Loves Jenna snowboard).
”It’s kind of nice to be a business head instead of a a beautiful blond in front of the cameras,” says Jenna, who built her first house in Kendall when she was 22, when she made a pile of money dancing at a nudie joint called Miami Gold.
”I just sold that house. I came to Miami and met a very cute Cuban boy and fell hard and fast for him,” she says. “I love Latin lovers. They are so incredibly passionate and dedicated and gentlemanly. But maybe a little controling.”
She dated Grdina, her second husband, for five years before marrying him a year ago. She says this time, it’s forever.
”Even four years ago, I didn’t think I could get over all my drama,” says Jenna, who obviously picked up the language of therapy. “I had become so jaded. There were so many things I had to deal with to be in this relationship. Fear of intimacy, absolutely no trust, fear of abandonment. When I met my husband, I thought it was just going to be part of the same cycle. Now I think there is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel.”
The couple is now working on having a baby.
“There were so many years of my life when I couldn’t have, but now if I have a child, I will be able to give them the best life in the world.”
Jenna still wonders how things would have turned out if she had had some mothering of her own. But one thing she’s pretty sure of:
“I always think, what if I had been a loved child? I’m sure a lot would have been different. But would I still be doing this for a living? All I know is that I’ve always been so sexually forward and open. I can’t imagine not doing this. It’s been in my blood since I was a young girl. I would steal my dad’s Penthouse magazines and look at them and wish I was those girls.”