Amber Lynn, Ginger Lynn, Porsche Lynn, Hyapatia Lee, Heather Hunter, Nina Hartley, Asia Carrera, Teri Weigel, Savannah. Every one of them, along with some 491 other adult models and film stars, had one thing in common: they had stared, at an early age, down the lens of Suze Randall’s camera. And, more than anything, I wanted to stare down that lens too.

Since I was ten, I’d been taking pictures of myself and studying them, hoping that I had what it took. I didn’t want to be just any model: I wanted to be the best, the most photographed, the most known. I wanted people to say, “Oh, I know Jenna. I’ve seen her in hundreds of magazines.” And my passport to that was Suze Randall. She had been in the business since the sixties in Britain, when she was working in a hospital and moonlighting as a model. Her goal was only to help pay the bills while her husband tried to write a book. But when the book was finished, she kept on modeling. On the side, she snapped nude photos of some of her gorgeous friends, and her work caught the eye of Hugh Hefner, who hired her to shoot for him. Supposedly, after she appeared nude in Hustler, Hefner fired her and, from there, she became the go-to girl for Penthouse, Hustler, and just about every other men’s magazine on the stands. I wanted her to notice me. And that was exactly what Julia Parton promised.

“If I like the photos we take,” she said at the Crazy Horse that night, “I’ll make sure they end up in Suze Randall’s hands.”

The photo shoot wasn’t actually for a specific magazine like Penthouse. Julia and the photographer were scouts, and made their money by sending the pictures to the major photographers in the business —Suze, Steven Hicks, Earl Miller, Clive McLean. If anyone hired me, Julia received a finder’s fee. She was also a scout for Playboy, but I didn’t feel like I was in that league. The women in Playboy seemed so much more mature. So I set my sights on a more appropriate goal: a magazine my father used to have around the house, like Penthouse or Hustler.

I didn’t have much modeling experience. Outside of being photographed by a guy who supplied Vegas entertainment freebies with crappy pictures, my only real photo shoot —where I didn’t have to pay the photographer to take my picture— was for the cover of Easy Rider nearly a year earlier. In the world of the tattoo shop, the cover of Easy Rider was a much more prestigious coup than Penthouse, Playboy, or Newsweek. So I sent the magazine some photos I’d taken with Vanessa in a makeshift studio. They were awkward poses, poorly lit, and tinted sepia-tone because for some reason we thought they’d look more professional that way.

But a month later Easy Rider called and said I’d gotten the cover. All I had to do was show up in a bikini at a studio in Las Vegas that Friday. I took the night off work, packed a handful of swimsuits, and arrived at 11 A.M. They did my makeup, and then put a red wig on me. As they were spritzing it with hair spray, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee of Mötley Criie arrived. Instead of just me, the pictorial was going to be Nikki and Tommy on their bikes, with girls on the back.

The other girl was Bobbie Brown, but not the model-actress-groupie Bobbie Brown from the Warrant video. This was a girl who had stolen her name (and was later sued by the real Bobbie Brown). And since Tommy Lee was dating the real Bobbie Brown at the time, nobody wanted to talk to this girl. I would have felt badly for her if she hadn’t been so unlikable and uptight.

I was so excited by the situation that I was willing to do anything. I whipped off my bikini and jumped onto Nikki’s motorcycle, wrapping my arms around him. After the photo shoot, I was in the makeup room taking off my wig when Nikki walked in behind me. As soon as he saw that I was blond, he was on me like a frigging wet blanket.

“Hey, what are you doing afterward?” he asked. (Rock stars never really have to learn social skills like the rest of us.)

“I have to work,” I told him.

“Well, we should go out,” he said.

“I’d love to, but I can’t,” I said. “Maybe some other time.”

I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. Since the time I was thirteen (which was actually only four years earlier), I’d been in love with Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx. I had pictures of those two guys all over my bedroom. (I was never really attracted to Tommy Lee, so naturally he was the one I ended up dating years later.)

Nikki, however, didn’t want to take no for an answer. He kept backing me into a corner and asking, over and over, if I’d go out with him. Each time, I told him no, until he gave up and left the room, pissed.

When my brother took me to see their Girls, Girls, Girls tour when I was fourteen, I prayed so hard that Nikki would see me in the crowd and take me backstage. I kept telling my brother, “Tony, put me on your shoulders!” “Tony, Nikki just pointed at me!”

Now, three years later, here I was, alone in a room with Nikki Sixx himself, passing up the chance for a night on the town with a rock god. Was I nervous? No. Was I a good girl? Hell no. I wanted to do it so badly. But the fact is: I was on my period. And I turned him down because of that. To this day, if he remembers me at all, he still doesn’t know why I rejected him. Because if I hadn’t been having my period, I would have fucked him forever!

At my next real photo shoot, at Julia Parton’s house in Las Vegas, I was Jenna Jameson. When I signed the release, it felt so good to write “Jenna Massoli, a.k.a. Jenna Jameson.” It was as if a public persona was suddenly coming into being.

“You look just like Racquel Darrian,” Julia said as she took my hand and led me to the bathroom to do my makeup and hair.

In my mind, I didn’t look anything like Racquel Darrian. I looked like Savannah. My dad subscribed to the Playboy Channel, and when I saw her in a movie one night, she took my breath away. I couldn’t get over the fact that a woman who was so gorgeous that she seemed untouchable would ever do adult movies.

In emulation of Savannah, I wore my hair flat with bangs. And because I was used to painting my face so that it would stand out in a dark strip club, I caked on lots of makeup and black eyeliner. All this was anathema to Julia. She scrubbed me clean and redid my face with only a little makeup. Then she wet my hair, undoing hours of work, and gave me a wavier look. A statuesque redhead walked into the room. Julia introduced the woman as her “wife,” and the first thing her wife said was that I could be a stunt double for Racquel Darrian.

When Julia finished my face, I walked into the bright lights of her living room, which had been made into a studio for the day. Everyone stared at me expectantly. They wanted me to start posing. I had no idea what to do, so I just stood there, uncomfortable with the style Julia had created for me and the looks I was getting from the photographer. Finally, Julia pulled me aside.

“Okay, what I need you to do,” she said, “is to keep your shoulders back, kick one of your hips out, and tighten up as many muscles as you can.”

Next, she put me on all fours for a butt shot and asked me to turn my head back to look at the camera. But since my head looked teeny in comparison to my ass in that position, she asked me to bend my body so that my face and my ass were the same distance from the camera and both in focus. I had no idea what she was talking about.

It was such a challenge to look sexy and relaxed while manipulating my body into the various uncomfortable contortions Julia was running me through. Even for what Julia considered the simplest pose, like looking over my shoulder with my back to the camera, I had to arch so hard that my lower back cramped. When I see those photos now, it seems obvious that the sexy pout I thought I was giving the camera was just a poorly disguised grimace of pain.

When I took off my top, Julia pulled her wife aside. They conferred about something, and then talked to the photographer. Soon, the three of them were having an all-out argument. Finally, Julia turned to me.

“Are your boobs real?” she asked.

“Yeah, they’re real.”

And then, in unison, her wife and the photographer said, “No, they’re not!”

“I swear they are.”

“Then why is it,” her wife asked, “that when you push them together, you have that little raised area of flesh right there?”

“Well, that’s my rib.”

I don’t think they ever believed that my boobs were real. Perhaps they’d forgotten what it was like to be eighteen, firm, and perky.

After a few more shots, the photographer asked me to remove the rest of my clothes. I was used to being topless, but not bottomless. I felt so vulnerable.

Once I was naked, the photographer asked for a “standing bridesmaid.”

“What the fuck is that?” I asked Julia. I had no idea what language this was. So Julia pulled me into the makeup room. She told me about the standing bridesmaid, the piledriver, the cowgirl, the reverse cowgirl, the standing cowgirl, the sidesaddle, the doggie, the dirty doggie, the scissor, the scissor mish, the sixty-nine, the standing sixty-nine, the blow job, the reverse blow job, and the wheelbarrow, most of which I fortunately didn’t need to commit to memory because they required a partner.

And just when I had the necessary vocabulary mastered, the photographer wanted an “American split.”

Being naked was one thing, but spreading my legs was the worst. I had no idea it would be so intimidating to sit spread-eagled under bright lights in a room full of clothed people.

They kept shouting “whiter” at me. I had no idea what they were talking about until I broke down and asked. Turned out they were saying “wider.” The worst was yet to come.

“Okay,” the photographer said. “Now show me pink!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked him.

“Um,” he replied. “You need to spread your lips like this.” He held two fingers upside down and slowly separated them.

Though I really wanted to please him, I couldn’t. When given a new challenge, I usually need to go home and practice alone before attempting it in front of other people. And exposing my insides to strangers was so daunting that, instead of spreading my lips with my fingers, I kept trying to cover them up.

I was uncomfortable for so many reasons. It was my first time, the photographer was a guy, and he was so quiet that I didn’t know if I was giving him what he wanted or fucking everything up. I wanted so badly for him to like me and give my photos to Suze. But the only things he’d say were, “wider,” “spread it a little bit more,” and “pull it up more.”

They worked me for seven hours before letting me go. I swore that next time I’d show them so much pink they’d think the sun was setting.

But the second day of our shoot was even more intimidating: we set up outdoors at Red Rocks, a pile of scorched earth just west of Vegas. We didn’t have permits, so we operated on the shoot-and-run principle. We scrambled up to a secluded spot, spread out a blanket, and then I peeled off my clothes and tried to remember the poses while every few seconds a stray tourist would wander over the ridge. Soon, we had a crowd, which made it impossible for me to show any more pink than I had the day before.

When I went home, I was sure that I had blown it and they never wanted to see me again. No one had prepared me for the standing bridesmaid or the American split or the hot fudge sundae with a pink cherry on top. But two days later, the phone at the apartment rang. It was Suze Randall.