Suitcase pimps aren’t made; they’re born.

I returned home to a very different Jordan from the one I had left. My three-week absence had brought out a possessive, patriarchal, and jealous side of him. He insisted that the next time I go on the road, he come along, ostensibly to protect me and make sure I got paid. But the real reason was because he wanted to make sure I wasn’t sleeping with other guys —which, technically, I wasn’t.

His suspiciousness made some sense since I had met him in a strip club and was in the middle of finalizing a divorce with Rod. But as his attachment to me (and fear of loss) deepened, he didn’t want to share me in any way with another human being.

The guy knew from day one that dancing was what I did for work —and the reason I could afford the two hundred dollar tennis shoes he had on his feet. But now he couldn’t stand it. On the road, new demands came every day. He didn’t like me making certain suggestive moves onstage. He didn’t want me talking to other guys. He didn’t want me sitting in their laps for Polaroids —I was only allowed to put my arm around them.

Every so often Joy would call with an offer to do an interview for VH1 or E!, and I wouldn’t call her back. Jordan didn’t want me to talk about anything sexual in public that would embarrass him.

Of course, I would fight him on everything tooth and nail, but he made my life so miserable with his constant temper tantrums, guilt trips, and harangues that I would eventually give in. It was easier to play along than to fight. I don’t know how he turned the dynamic between us around and ended up in charge. Although I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, it was what I wanted to some degree, because he was the exact opposite of Rod: a real man —and manly to a fault.

When I did photo layouts, he would come along just to make sure I didn’t do any spread shots. He didn’t want people to see the inside of me, he explained, because it belonged to him. In fact, he insisted that I stop shaving so that the pubic hair would grow long enough to cover up my opening when I was naked. Telling him I was blond and had very fine hairs that wouldn’t hide a thing was useless.

Eventually it got to the point where he didn’t want me to wear tampons. His reason? “I don’t want anything else inside you.”

His jealousy wasn’t just limited to the work environment. When I was driving, I wasn’t allowed to look into other cars, because he thought I was making eyes at the men inside. So I had to keep my head straight forward, like a horse with blinders. Eventually, it got to the point where he launched a guerrilla campaign to make me look ugly. He would say, for example, that he preferred bigger girls who wore less makeup. And, subconsciously, I responded, slowly gaining weight and spending less time in front of the mirror.

I loved him to a certain extent, although he wasn’t intelligent enough for me. He had no drive or ambition of his own. His life consisted of eating meals with his family, playing basketball with his buddies, and watching me like a private investigator.

I couldn’t believe that this sweet, normal, inexperienced guy I had picked out of the crowd was just as bad as the rest of them. I had wanted to be in love so badly —and now I was screwed.

Because I couldn’t get back at him for his possessive control over me, I took it out on everyone else. I became the angry dancer. There was a part of the show when I’d give away posters for my movies to the guys who screamed the loudest. But one night, no one yelled or showed any enthusiasm. So I dropped the posters, flipped everyone off, and walked offstage. It was a total Axl Rose move.

I was good at reading lips because my dad’s mother had lost her voice from old age. So if I caught a guy saying something obnoxious to his friends, I’d knock his hat off or spill a drink on his pants. 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.

Oddly, the more I acted out, the more guys liked it. It riled up the crowd when I was a fucker. I’d never dared to act like that at the Crazy Horse, but I’d never been that angry there. I didn’t know it was an option.

At a club in Boston, a skinny guy came up to me and said that he had worked as a roadie for Tool. I gave him my usual response: “Right on.” At the time, I had no idea who Tool was.

“The singer, Maynard, is a big fan of yours.”

“Right on.”

“He even has a picture of you on his road case.”

“Right on. That’s super. I really should be going.”

It had been a terrible night. The club owner said he wouldn’t allow me to take tips, because it wasn’t in my contract. It was pouring rain outside. And my dressing room was in a trailer behind the club, so I was soaking wet. The last straw came when someone snuck into my dressing room and stole a two thousand dollar outfit, and the manager didn’t do a thing about it.

So when the manager came back to remind me not to take any tips, I blew up. That was how I made my money. We argued for five minutes until I finally said, “Fine, no tips. I’ll be out onstage soon.”

I packed my bags and prepared to quickly ditch the club before he caught me. Roadie boy saw all this and said, “Watch this.” He proceeded to superglue the club-owner’s wipers to the windshield of his Mercedes. Then he keyed both sides of the car.

I thought the wiper prank was funny, but the keying was a little too much. That should have been a warning sign right there. But I liked him: he had cheered me up, and he said he’d be willing to leave the Tool tour and work for me for free just to have the experience. So I hired him as my own personal roadie intern to deal with clubs, costumes, money, and all the practical details that were such a headache.

At rock shows, I’d seen what bands asked for, so together we came up with a rider for my tours. My dressing room had to have flowers, a sofa, linens on the table, and a fully stocked bar. No stripper made demands like that. And it wasn’t just that I was a diva, it was also because if I was going to be pulling all that money into a club, I shouldn’t have to deal with outdoor trailers, filthy stools, no ventilation, and yellow tap water. Roadie Boy even had a laminated all-access pass made up for the tour, just to make it official.

I quickly learned to forbid clubs from playing any songs from my set lists when I wasn’t onstage. It would kill my performance if I had a routine designed to Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People,” and then some girl danced to the song right before I came out. Often, after I stripped to a song by the Revolting Cocks in some small club, the DJ would burn the CD so he could play it for other girls after I left town. My riders grew the more I took on Jordan’s mind-set that everybody was out to screw me over, and I needed to protect myself. But, at the same time, my shows got better as I invented simple little male-exciting tricks like dangling a string of saliva from my mouth to my ding-ding.

I knew that the protocol was to remain silent onstage, because saying anything ruins the fantasy for the guys. Everything can be conveyed in the expression on your face and the language of your eyes, but as my anger built, fuck subtlety —it was all about whatever I wanted to do.

Every night became my birthday. I realized I could pull in more money if I told them that I blew off the chance to celebrate my birthday because it was so important to me to be there dancing for them instead. “So I’m here, happy birthday to me,” I thought. “That’s right, fuckers. Cough it up.”

At first, I refused to do lap dances and private shows. But when Jordan wasn’t around, I was willing to sell out, but not for less than five hundred dollars per song —and even then only if I was in the mood.

Behind the scenes, I would make club owners move my hotel room every night for some dumb reason: if the hotel didn’t have room service —or if it did and there weren’t any burgers on the menu. I didn’t know these jokers, so it didn’t matter to me. But actually, it did matter, because I ended up getting a reputation as a cunt. That was never my intention. I was acting out because I came from shit, my relationship was shit, and my life was shit, so I needed an outlet. When I look back at the people who had to deal with me, I feel terrible. I’d call my agent at 2 A.M. screaming, “If there isn’t a limo here to take me back to the hotel, I’m flying home right now.” That guy definitely worked for his commissions with me.

In the meantime, my father’s side of the family decided to take advantage of my small renown. My uncle Jim opened a strip club in Anaheim, just outside Los Angeles, and offered to pay me a percentage of the take if he could use my name. And so the ill-fated Jenna Jameson’s Scamps was born. Its manager: my dad, who had hit the road again, and moved to California to run the club with my brother.

The main problem with Scamps was its location: Anaheim is home to Disneyland, so when I performed at the opening, there were families protesting outside. And a big poster of me that my uncle had put up outside had already been taken down by the city. The only other thing I remember that night is being so deep in money I could barely walk onstage. I must have made $2,500 in singles.

However, the romance was short-lived. I had originally thought going into business with family was a great idea, because your blood relations are not going to shaft you. But I was wrong: your relatives will screw you more quickly than anyone, because they feel a sense of entitlement. He used to be my favorite uncle, a guy with a cool Corvette who would let my brother and me stay up all night and watch movies; soon, he became just another bloodsucking leech. And he was dragging my father down with him. My dad, a former cop, whose sense of righteousness was so strong when I was growing up that he neglected his own children and risked his job to fight corruption on the police force, was now living this squalid life on the margins of society —running away from some sort of trouble in Vegas, dating a stripper, and, unbeknownst to me at the time, smoking the exact same drug he had seen nearly kill his daughter. I had managed to drag my whole family down.

So when Steve Orenstein called one afternoon and said he had a film for me —worded not as an option but as a gentle order— I was grateful. I needed a break from my break. With my permission, he had hired a second contract girl, a friend of his named Serenity. Steve liked her because she had everything I lacked. She was meticulously organized, dependable to a fault, and always on time. However, she came complete with her own suitcase pimp; and he was upset that Serenity wasn’t getting as popular as me, so he was constantly accusing Steve and Joy of not trying hard enough.

Jordan didn’t take the news that I would be doing another movie very well. He put me through hell. Every waking moment, he poured poison into my ear, telling me that I had no respect for myself or him; that the company was taking advantage of me; that I was destroying the chances of my children ever having a normal life. But I had no choice —I was under contract. I’d been doing these films for years, so there was no great harm in another one. But Jordan was turning me into a mess.

I had never been confronted before on my choice of lifestyles since I’d moved out of Nikki’s house and, in retrospect, it was a good experience to have, because it made me think about the decisions I’d made. And, because I was ultimately comfortable with them —my conscience was clean, my star had risen, and my fucked-up lifestyle was at least exciting— I was stuck in an emotional tug-of-war. I couldn’t continue to do movies without hurting Jordan; yet to leave the industry for Jordan would mean throwing away everything I had worked so hard for.

As usual, when my life was at a low, I thought of Nikki. We hadn’t spoken much since I’d moved out, but she was always on my mind. She was my first friend in the industry and I’d formed a bond with her that was impossible to replicate with anyone else. So one night, I called her —not only because I needed her but because I missed her and wanted to hear her voice. I told her that I loved her and that it was silly to be enemies after all we’d been through. Our whole disagreement over my entry into the industry was moot now anyway since she had signed a contract with Vivid and become an adult star in her own right. Though it only took minutes to recapture the tenderness we used to have for each other, we talked for hours. She had been through rough times herself, had finally divorced Buddy, and was now actually dating Lyle Danger.

For the two days before I was supposed to leave for L.A., Jordan didn’t speak a word to me. And then, the afternoon I was leaving, he blew up. He couldn’t believe I was actually going through with it.

Because of his constant haranguing, my self-esteem was at a new low. He had ingrained in me the idea that I was just a slut with no self-respect. I was so wracked with guilt that it wasn’t until I was on the plane that I had time to consider the movie itself. It was being helmed by Wicked’s number-one contract director: Brad Armstrong, né Rodney Hopkins.

The movie, Dangerous Tides, was shot on a boat on Catalina Island, off the coast of Los Angeles. When I saw Rod, I felt nothing. I was fully over him now and in love with Jordan. Rod didn’t say a word. He just glared at me with sad, mute anger. His revenge came in passive-aggressive ways: He had booked himself in a threesome in the movie, with my good friend Jill Kelly and, of course, Asia Carrera.

Everyone on the boat seemed to be having a blast. It was like a carnival on the water. But I moved through it all in slow-motion despair. I threw up constantly. Whenever I wasn’t on set, I sat in my dressing room with puffy eyes, crying about how much I hated myself for hurting the man I loved.

After every relationship, I always said, “I’ve learned my lesson.” And I never made the same mistake twice. But each new relationship always presented a fresh mistake to be made never again. If mistakes and failures are really nothing but learning lessons, then I was well on my way to a Ph.D. in men.

When shooting wrapped (and, as a parting memento, a five-thousand-dollar Gucci dress of mine was stolen), I told Steve I needed to go on hiatus for a while. I couldn’t go through this again.

On the plane back to Miami, I thought about the words I had chosen in that conversation with Steve. I hadn’t told him that I was quitting. Instead, I had used the word “hiatus.” I must have known, somewhere in the depths of my mind, that I’d be back.