Book IV, like the other chapters of Jenna Jameson’s autobiography, references a Shakespearean sonnet: “An Imperfect Actor on the Stage”. The admission of Jameson’s own shortcomings as an actress seems odd: there is a belief that porn is meant to be the unfurling of a fantasy—a ludicrous situation presenting itself, the fiction trope of a stranger (you!) coming to town, the everyman victorious. In Jenna’s tell-all tale we learn that everything has purpose: the implants were to enhance her film career, the pale lipstick to make her lips look larger, the dark cat-like eyeliner to make her look older—perhaps to remind men of their daughter’s friends and not their daughters.
Jameson also reveals what she believes to be her rationale behind her career path: a long series of traumatic experiences. Jenna describes these moments in vivid first-person detail—stories of unwanted sex, finding friends dead in hotel bathrooms, meth addiction—in order to shock us and in order to let us know of the real Jenna Marie Massoli. These terrible things! we say. Our fantasies are ruined now! we say.
Our fantasies, of course, are not ruined. We are not shocked. Of course! we say. No wonder she turned to porn! we say. The falsehood of pornography is nothing new: like that would ever happen, those can’t be real, she’s totally faking it, that’s what our slumber parties looked like, sure. Knowing the fantasy makes the fantasy. The zipper on the monster suit (or in this case, the areola scar or the exaggerated breathing) is a beautiful reminder of the disingenuous—Prospero asking for our indulgence—false simulating real, a gentle breath from our own sexual utterances in the moments leading up to, during, and after orgasm: our belief that this, God, this is the best thing ever.
-DeDe DiDonato ghostwritten by Brian Oliu
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