I was just talking about Jenna Jameson's new "bestselling" memoir on my In Bed show... I ordered it for a lark, and was prepared to savage it, but then found I was spellbound for the two thirds. Mad at the last act, though, a definite cop-out.
The most emotional details about this book are not about sex... at all. It's about her mother's untimely death and her gradual, and then gruesome addiction to methamphetime. The drug parts really have your hair standing on end. Real Valley of the Dolls drama, and I mean that in a good way. Neely, move over!
The other tidbit, that is my own analysis rather than Jenna's admission, is that she is what I would call a "working lesbian." Her most compelling sexual and romantic liasons are with women, but because she makes her living from fucking and teasing men, she is invariably involved with a string of would-be Daddys and pimps.
I doubt she thinks of herself as a dyke except in really private moments. She hasn't "come out," except in that gratuitous "porno bisexual" way. But I am expert in reading between the lines, because Jenna's situation is so common, in the most tragic way. Aside from San Francisco and Amsterdam, I don't know of a single town where a lesbian sex worker can get queer support and understanding for who she is... everyone else just gets suicidal about it. This girl needs dyke therapy... actually, any kind of therapy would be okay... she's been through a lot, and I don't buy the book's premise that her sheer spunk is going to heal all wounds.
The b.s. with the book's final act is that Jenna overnight becomes "clean," her family is cheery, and she has a new husband who's just such a doll! It was so unbelievable that it became an instant bore.
The final mystery to me is her celebrity. She is not the first pretty blonde porn star with a lovely figure and angelic face. Really. She's about number 405. Her movies are not remarkable-- people won't be talking about them years from now. So why has she crossed over? She doesn't have the underage/FBI bust/John Waters type story that Traci Lords had... and Traci was an incredible sexual performer. So I am honestly bewildered.
Nina Hartley, the first porn star/red diaper baby to bring unabashed feminist activism to porn sets, and porn to the N.O.W. convention, is writing her memoirs. I'm very interested in them. She has a cousin.. now be patient as I explain this... who was a member of the same Trotskyist sect that I was in in the 70s, and he was, to my mind at the time, one of the biggest prudes I ever met. He "industrialized" in coal mining, which means he got a job in the mines deliberately to be a socialist agitator. I spent some time with the UMW crowd as well, and this particular cousin was so dour I just didn't think he could keep up with the party aspect of being a miner. Of course, I was 17 at the time, and Dear Cousin was much older.. maybe I was in my "Don't bother with any over 30" stage.
Anyway, years later, when I found out that he was related to Nina, I just flipped. Her family has so many prominent and dedicated radicals. Nina is remarkable because of her background, and because she lasted and created a place for herself in a world that usually goes through female performers like Kleenexes.
I look forward to her book, and I can't wait to hear the REAL Jenna Jameson story as it inevitably spills out in the real news.
Recent Comments