promotion

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:
	Steve Almond is the author of the story collection My Life in Heavy Metal and the nonfiction book Candyfreak. His new collection, The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories, contains several of his stories for Nerve.com. To find out what kind of music he listens to, check out www.stevenalmond.com.

To buy How to Make Love Like a Porn Star (A Cautionary Tale), click here.