‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol (37 page)

It was good we were in such a great place in our relationship because after his Munich concert we arrived at another of the tour’s dates, where I ran into my ex-husband Matt for the first time since NAAM of 2008, after we’d first split up. I wasn’t nervous about seeing him because I knew in my heart I was WELL over him, but it still presented the prospect of being awkward. Thankfully, Matt — though not surprisingly drunk and touring with a band called God Forbid — didn’t want it that way either, and even helped me get backstage after Mustis’s bitch manager stripped me of my V.I.P. pass. Not only did he get me backstage, but he also made sure I was able to stand on the side of the stage and watch Dimmu Borgir. Amazingly, even he and Mustis got along, which naturally was a huge relief for me instead of having tension in the air, which I’m sure has happened to every woman reading this before. This happened at another show where both bands happened to be on the same bill, and that time, Matt took me up to the soundboard to watch the band after that shedevil had had my backstage pass yanked. Unfortunately, this divisiveness continued throughout the dates, which only worked to bring Mustis and me closer together. When we were in Sweden for the last of that series of shows, I remember I was shooting some footage for
Stay Heavy TV
and the bitch tried to pull another backstage pass — thinking I was with Dimmu. I was able to tell her to fuck off because my access had come from working with another band. That felt like an awesome way to tell her goodbye with a middle finger!

I split the rest of the summer between Brazil and Norway, and looking to the future, I felt like I was looking out on really clear horizons for the first time in a LONG time. I have come full circle several times in my life — beginning with my induction into and graduation out of adult film, and everything thereafter I did as a pioneer for female promoters in the world of wrestling. I have carved out a niche for myself as the female face of death metal in both the U.S. and worldwide — given my show
Stay Heavy TV
’s continual expansion in popularity throughout South America, at 9 million viewers strong and growing. It’s ironic to me that when I started out my career in adult film, my being multi-lingual made me seem exotic as it still does — only now, I literally am as a Veejay — I speak Portuguese when hosting
Metal TV
locally in Brazil. I have been amazed at the number of cultures I’ve had the opportunity to experience locally throughout my global travels over the past two decades, and have found Brazilians to be among the warmest. I feel blessed to call San Paulo home, and to have found the peace I have in my heart today living there. Sometimes when walking against the sunset along the beach near my home in Brazil — typically a time for reflection in most movies, greeting cards, or ballad music videos — that I really am like one of those few characters who escaped to paradise. When I look back on everything I’ve been through in my life leading up to now, I feel I’ve gotten a lot of closure, but at the same time I feel my life is still a very open-ended affair with the unknown. I find a great deal of comfort in that fact too because more than anything else I love the adventure of life. While I wouldn’t encourage anyone to go down many of the roads I’ve traveled, I would also very honestly say I don’t regret the consequences of my journey, as it was a means to the end of finding myself again…

Writing this book has been an exhausting once in a lifetime cathartic experience. It has completely drained me. I feel emotionally flat-lined. In giving you my life story, I feel like I have given you a piece of my life & my soul.

Where do I go from here? Who the hell knows? I guess that after writing this book, I have realized how much of my life I have lived in denial. Looking back at it objectively, to say the least, is overwhelming.

Decisions that I have made, people that I have trusted & loved, have constantly let me down to the point where I no longer expect anything positive in this lifetime.

When I really get sad, I try to tell myself that life begins from this moment on and the past is as relevant as yesterday’s newspaper. But unfortunately, the world is filled with people (you know who they are…Matt Wicklund) that will never let you forget the mistakes you have made and throw them in your face with a venom that would extinguish the spirit of the most optimistic and happy person. I still have nightmares about being shaken awake from a dead sleep with Matt’s eyes bulging out of his head (I swear he had smoke coming from his ears) when he was berating me by serenading me, ‘are you the gangbang queen or not?’

I guess it’s not that hard to see why he reacted that way, given my former manager Charlie Fry’s conclusionary assertion that: ‘Even today — a decade later — in 2010, Jasmin is still in the top 10 in terms of brand name recognition.

Now particularly with the internet, there are thousands and thousands of girls, and back in her heyday, there were hundreds and hundreds of girls who did lots more movies than Jasmin ever did, and you couldn’t name me one of them. But at the end of the day, people will always remember Jasmin St. Claire.’

I have never been the strongest person, any amateur psychologist, or anyone who has read this book, can tell you that. So, between being cursed with a fragile soul and a bruised ego, all of the snide remarks, all of the judgmental comments, all the sarcastic jokes about my past have taken a cumulative toll on my feelings and self worth. I cannot tell you how many times in the past decade I have attempted, or just thought about ending my life. Rationalizing that I would be doing my critics (my ex husband and ex boyfriends from hell) and the hypocritical charter members of the moral majority a favor…You know who you are…We have crossed paths many times on my turf. For example, the first boyfriend from hell, Dick, whose abusive ways were chronicled earlier in this entire book, is now a successful lawyer for a prestigious NYC firm. He parades around in a clown outfit he calls an Armani suit. Underneath his cheesy phony Australian accent and freshly groomed slimy fingers, is the same low life that not only beat the living crap out of me, but was able to convince me that I deserved it. I could never fight the Dicks of the world back with my fists, but I can fight them with the words more powerful than any punch to the head…the truth.

Before I do, or did, anything really drastic, I had to write this book and get my side of the story out to the masses. It is too late for me to save my own life, but hopefully my experiences can prevent others from suffering a cycle of abuse and attempted suicides like I have experienced.

I am also known as the mistress of extreme metal. So, at this point, I must defend the music I listened to. It was the only thing that stopped me from doing something drastic to myself or to the people who abused me.

The advent of the ‘world wide web’ and the process of how information is infinitely stored in a collective memory bank called the internet — caused several heartaches for me — and for my loved ones. My name is forever linked to one or more acts that I committed when I was a naive kid. I never dreamed that when I entered the world of porn that I would be taunted and haunted on a daily basis about a few acts where nobody or nothing was hurt or killed, except for my own self worth. Society has treated me like a pariah.

The only way I can escape the stigma of my past is to disappear off the face of the earth. At that point, nobody can whisper, ‘isn’t that the girl who?’ or threaten to expose my past to my loved ones. I cannot tell you how many times I have met people who really liked me and were charmed by me and then after putting my name in a Google search, they would not even talk to me.

There are a million ways to die in this world such as overdosing on sleeping pills, pain killers, hanging myself, blowing my brains out, slicing my wrists up, jumping from a building or even drowning myself. Believe me, I think of them in alphabetical order on a daily basis.

I think my mark in this world is going to be that I will be the first person to die of unnatural causes. The coroner will state that Jasmin St. Claire did not die of any illness or injuries…she simply stopped breathing from being googled to death…

Nashville-based music biographer Jake Brown has published twentyfive books, including the authorized memoir of founding Guns N Roses guitarist
Tracii Guns, Motorhead: In the Studio
(co-written with Lemmy Kilmister),
Jane's Addiction: In the Studio, Heart: in the Studio
(co-written with Ann and Nancy Wilson),
Rick Rubin: In the Studio, Dr. Dre: In the Studio, Suge Knight: The Rise, Fall and Rise of Death Row Records, 50 Cent: No Holds Barred, Biggie Smalls: Ready to Die, Tupac: In the Studio
(authorized by the estate), as well as titles on Kanye West, R. Kelly, Jay-Z, the Black Eyed Peas, and non-hip hop titles including
An Education in Rebellion: The Biography of Nikki Sixx, Red Hot Chili Peppers: In the Studio, Alice in Chains: In the Studio, Meat Puppets: In the Studio
(co-written with Curt and Cris Kirkwood), and the Behind the Boards Rock Producers Anthology Series. Brown is also a featured author in Rick James’ autobiography,
Memoirs of Rick James: Confessions of a Super Freak,
and is the author of
‘AC/DC in the Studio, Tom Waits: in the Studio,
and
Iron Maiden: in the Studio,
all due in the late spring of 2011. In February 2008, Brown appeared as the official biographer of record on Fuse TV’s
Live Through This: Nikki Sixx
TV special and Bloomberg TV's forthcoming Jay Z special. Brown has received additional press in national publications including
USA TODAY,
MTV.com,
The New York Post, Vibe,
NPR,
Billboard, Revolver,
and
Publishers Weekly.
Brown was recently nominated alongside Lemmy Kilmister for the 2010 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards in the category of Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. Brown is also owner of the hard rock label Versailles Records, distributed nationally by Big Daddy Music/MVD Distribution and celebrating its 10th anniversary in business.

Project Thanks:
First to Jasmin for the amazing journey that has been writing this opus, I am happy we’re finally heading to stores, congrats!; to Harry Slash for hooking Jasmin and I up in the first place; our literary

agent, Albert Longden for your tirelessly hard work getting this book to the finish line; our publisher Ben Ohmart and BearManor Media for taking the chance you did on this memoir; Robin Perine for the AMAZING cover photo; Lemmy Kilmister, Ron Jeremy, George Fisher, Dominic Accara and Charlie Fry for the fantastic interviews; and lastly to my friends and family for your continued support of all the dreams I live to chase and chase to live!