I got off the plane in L.A. at 7 A.M. the next Monday, wearing cowboy boots, rolled-up men’s boxer shorts, a tiny white tank top that just barely covered my very real breasts, and a Yankees baseball cap turned backward. I’d never really had a female role model besides Vanessa and Jennifer. So I dressed with only one thing in mind: making men go “Oh, my God!” and trip over things and crash their cars and want to stab themselves in the heart.

My cab driver smelled like spoiled milk. During the whole ride to the studio, his beady eyes were fixed to the rearview mirror, scoping me out. When the creep finally arrived at the studio, a small industrial building near an overpass for the 405 Freeway, a beautiful brown-haired girl came running toward me, yelling my name in an English accent.

“I’m Emma Nixon,” she said, breaking into a wide smile. “I’m your makeup artist.”

As usual, whenever I’m nervous or in a new situation, I turn into the mouse. I reached into my purse to pay the cab driver, and suddenly realized that I had been so anxious about the photo shoot that I’d spaced out and left my wallet on the plane. I looked up at Emma, embarrassed, and explained what had happened.

She didn’t have any cash either, so she told the cab driver that she’d write him a check.

“Well,” he said, gesturing to me. “She can pay me in other ways.” He probably thought I was a hooker and, in retrospect, I can hardly blame him.

Suddenly Emma wasn’t so sweet anymore. “Oh really, motherfucker?” she told him. “We’ll see about that.”

She lifted the telephone handset that she had been holding and punched in the number for Yellow Taxi. Within ten minutes, he was fired and the ride was free. I couldn’t believe how confident this girl was. When I was in my element at the strip club, I could lay creeps like that low. But I still hadn’t gotten used to asserting myself in the real world.

Once the excitement was over, Emma sat me down in her makeup chair and examined me. “You’re not making my job very easy,” she said, laughing. I looked like such a hick to her.

Emma said that Suze had seen the photos Julia had sent her, and was instantly attracted by the prospect of a fresh, new blonde. As Emma went to work on my face, the other girls started arriving. They were so loud and confident, and it seemed like they were all friends with each other. It was like my first day at the Crazy Horse all over again. But the customers watching me here would be Suze and the editors and publishers of the biggest men’s magazines in the country. This was it: if they didn’t like me, I’d have to find another dream.

After Emma finished my face, I hardly recognized myself: I looked, for the first time in my life, like a woman. And that woman appeared sexy, confident, and sophisticated. She was Jenna Jameson. And I liked her a lot more than Jenna Massoli.

The studio basically consisted of a four-poster bed in the middle of a cold concrete room. A handful of girls were already draped seductively over the satin sheets. “Look at you,” Suze said to me. “You’re like a little baby buttercup.”

Strewn throughout the building were photos she had taken of some of the most ravishing women in the world, and every one of them looked her best. I trusted Suze instantly. Unlike Julia Parton’s photographer, who was so quiet I had no idea if I sucked or not, Suze gave me constant feedback. I learned right away how much better it is to work with a very vocal photographer. And because Suze was a woman and spoke in a charming British accent, she could get away with saying things that I would have wanted to strangle most guys for.

“Oh, you’re a pussy fiend, aren’t you Buttercup?” she’d yell as she coaxed me to bend over further. “You dirty little cunt! Oh, make it hotter! You know you wanna be a slut, you little cocksucker! Jolly good!” It was so hard not to laugh sometimes. But I wanted to show her pink, because she made me feel so comfortable and sexy.

To keep all of my body in focus and in the light, I had to bend and contort into all sorts of unnatural positions that were supposed to look effortless, just as I had at my shoot with Julia. But this time, I had to hold the positions much longer and wait for them to meter the light, take a Polaroid, and check the light again before they even started shooting. I was so out of shape from my unhealthy lifestyle that my knees would suddenly start knocking during a pose or my lower back would spasm when I arched it for too long. But I knew that if I moved even an inch, they’d be pissed because they would have to remeter the light; and all the other girls, who were posing so effortlessly, would be annoyed. I really wanted to please Suze, so I was willing to hold my knees over my head for twenty minutes straight, until my spine felt like it was going to snap.

They changed my outfit fifteen times in order to get as many different magazine covers out of the session as possible. And with each photo set, I slowly learned to transmit sexuality in a new medium beyond the dark lights of the Crazy Horse Too. I wanted to work the camera as well as I did a strip-club customer.

After the shoot, Emma offered to drive me to the motel where I’d be staying. We climbed into her Porsche convertible, which made her even cooler in my eyes, and she took me to my hotel, a Burbank shithole called the Vagabond Inn. I went to the check-in desk and even though Suze had prepaid the room, they said they needed my credit card. I had no credit card and no money, so they refused to give me a key. I was only eighteen, and had never really traveled alone before. I had no idea where to go or stay in this fucked-up city.

I walked out of the hotel dragging my massive suitcase behind me and watched the passing traffic as I thought about how fucked I was. Suddenly, Emma drove up. She had come back to make sure I was okay. I must have made a pathetic first impression that morning in the cab.

“What’s the matter?” she asked when she saw me standing there with tears in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

“They won’t let me in the room,” I bawled.

Once again, Emma rescued me and checked me into that crack motel. I didn’t even mind the little bedbug bloodstains on the sheets or the roaches that scurried away every time I turned on the lights. I could hardly sleep that night. My mind was racing with excitement and adrenaline from the day, but I was worried that I’d created too much drama for the people who could make me into a star, or —if they wanted— lay me low and chase me out of town.

The second day, Suze shot me alone and then took me to the beach, where she wanted to pose me with two other girls, a little thing named Erin and an experienced model named Shayla LaVeaux, who looked at me like she was going to devour me. We had no permits to shoot there, so Suze blocked us from the beach dwellers with big white sheets. For the shoot, she wanted us to pour oil on each other. As we were doing that, she asked Erin to pour some directly on my ding-ding. I pulled back.

“I’d rather not do that,” I said. “It’ll get infected.”

“Fine,” Suze sighed.

I was sure she’d be upset or take me off the shoot for saying that. I couldn’t believe she had agreed so quickly. I’d never stood up for myself before. It felt good. I’d have to try this again sometime. Maybe I could ask for a nicer fucking motel next time.

With Nikki Tyler

And so it began. I woke up at five every morning and got to the studio by seven for makeup. If I weren’t so young, my face would have looked like hell after all the sleep deprivation. Though she is a great person and a talented photographer, Suze, I soon realized, is also a shark. Her specialty is naïve young girls —much like myself— who are so happy to have a modeling opportunity that they’ll do anything. Once she sank her teeth into me, she didn’t let go. She shot me until I was half dead.

The pay was three hundred dollars a day, but sometimes she’d cram three different photo shoots into a day. And I had no idea how much she was getting paid for the photos or how many magazines she was selling them to. I was only supposed to be in L.A. for two days, but she kept me for a week, shooting nonstop. For all I know, she snuck into my hotel room while I was sleeping and shot more sets. Probably the reason she liked me so much was because I was so grateful that I didn’t complain once. If she wanted me to balance on one foot on a cliff, I would have done it, because I was finally living my dream.

The third day, Suze planned a big wacko shoot with ten girls at a huge mansion. As I sat in the makeup chair, I watched one hottie after another arrive —stuck-up, fucked-up, worked-up, or hard-up. They all seemed to be looking at me and wondering what a little girl was doing on a set full of women. And I was in mouse mode, stuck in my head and not talking, as usual. However, once Emma was finished with me, all the girls looked at me differently. They couldn’t believe the transformation. Suddenly, I was competition.

Outside the mansion, there was an opulent fountain spitting water dozens of feet. I sat on the marble steps, talking with Emma, when a blonde with long, straight hair and the cutest little freckles walked up. “Hi, Em!” she chirped.

Then she looked at me: “What’s your name?”

“Um, Jenna.”

“I’m Nikki. Nikki Tyler. You must be one of Suze’s new girls.”

I couldn’t believe a model had actually acknowledged my presence. She was so outgoing, and I was entranced by her freckles. Throughout the different setups, such as the classic lay-all-the-girls-naked-in-a-row-on-deckchairs-and-get-a-shot-of-all-their-butts pose, she stayed at my side, gave me advice, and filled me in on gossip about the other girls. As the day wore on, thanks to Nikki’s support, I started to get comfortable enough to let my personality out in the photos. My eyes sparkled, my energy intensified, and I even started suggesting poses. And the more I relaxed and expressed myself, the more Suze encouraged me with deep heartfelt praise, such as, “Yes! That’s it, you dirty little thing.” Because I was so flexible from dancing as a teenager, I could contort my legs and spine in ways that the other models couldn’t, inspiring Suze to actually name poses after me, like the Jameson Split, for which I balanced my body on my upper back with my legs spread, my ass in the air, and my head resting on one leg.

Of course, in the excitement of the moment, I thought Nikki was being sweet to me because I was the new girl. I was too naïve to realize that she was as bisexual as the day is long and completely on the make. When we paired off together for a girl-on-girl shoot, she’d follow through by kissing me on the lips whenever the camera stopped, even though intimate contact between the models was not allowed. For some reason, it neither made me uncomfortable nor aroused. I just thought it was rad. She, on the other hand, was a psychology major, and knew just what she was doing. She wasn’t getting sexual enough to send any warning signals, but not being so distant that I didn’t at least entertain the idea.

I was giddy by the end of the day, because I knew I stood out from the other girls, even though they had much more experience. Life was repeating itself. I liked thrusting myself into these new worlds where I didn’t fit in or know everything, especially when I ended up discovering a natural talent that surprised me.

When the photo shoot ended, Nikki switched into her mild-mannered day guise —horn-rimmed glasses, overalls, and a ponytail— and offered to drive me back to my hotel.

“So where are you staying?” she asked.

“The Vagabond Inn,” I told her.

“No!” she screamed, jamming on the brakes. “They did not put you there. That is no place for a girl on her own. You’re coming to stay with me. I won’t hear any protest.”

Game, set, match: Nikki Tyler.