Chapter 15 TrickTreat
Trick or Treat
MY TWENTIES HAPPENED DURING THE GOLDEN AGE of porn—porn was absolutely popping.
The OGs Jenna Jameson, Jesse Jane, and Belladonna were at their prime, and business was booming.
Rock stars dated Playboy models and porn stars, and the paparazzi were obsessed with toxic love stories and couldn’t get enough.
It was Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s world, and we were just living in it.
Porn wasn’t the shit you can get today on a website with a million pop-ups trying to sell you dick enlargement pills. It was an elite industry, and those girls were glamorous and beautiful. It was hardcore as shit, but it was still soft enough to be passionate and sexy.
Everybody in Vegas wanted to be a stripper or a porn star. It was just what girls there did—and it was the path to the high life. Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll the dice.
I guess you could say I was the luckiest-little-stripper-in-the-world, because porn scouts started hounding me every single day—including a major, major scout who contracted with Vivid.
Vivid was the cream of the crop, the top dog in the porn industry at that time, and if I was going to do porn, I was going to go big.
Mikey Fuckin’ B. walked into my life at just the right moment—or so he thought.
He was an old white dude who wanted to try his pasty hands at being my manager.
I stumbled upon his lap one hazy night at the club, and he sold me dreams. His first plan was to turn me into some kind of sexpot Vegas lounge act, but when the porn scouts started circling, he switched gears.
Plan B was for me to become the iconic Jenna Jameson’s understudy—or so he said.
Jenna was the queen—nobody did it like she did.
But Mikey claimed that he had industry knowledge that she was planning to retire soon, and I’d be the one to slide my ass onto her lube-covered throne.
Who the hell knows if he was talking out of his ass or if he’d really heard something around town.
I went to a meeting with Mikey and some scouts, and right away I could feel something was off.
These were weird fucking people, and the whole scene was seedy as fuck.
People in the porn industry who aren’t doing the performing give me the creeps—the directors and the producers who get to keep their clothes on and make money off performers always looked so damn dead-eyed to me. Just soulless.
And let’s be real: Stripping and porn are close cousins, but they’re two different things. And once you step over the wall into porn, there’s no coming back.
These creeps were coming on strong. They placed a contract in front of me, and I could almost hear them panting like dogs.
“We’re going to change your name,” one said.
“Change my name? Why?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna call you Crystal Method,” the other one said. I shifted in the vinyl seat. That feeling of something being off got even stronger. Isn’t that a drug?
Today, I’m wary of contracts—I’ve always felt uncomfortable tying myself financially to anyone.
Maybe in another life, someone had made me sign a contract and then kept me under their thumb, because my body physically revolts against such authority.
I sure as hell didn’t trust the contract these men put in front of me.
I didn’t want anyone to own me—least of all these creepy dudes.
“I’m not signing shit,” I said, and Mikey’s pale face turned fire-truck red.
“If you want to fucking work, you need to sign this,” he said in a sharp tone.
We’d been working together for months at that point, and nothing had come to fruition.
First it had been record execs who ghosted, then it was showgirl auditions that never happened, and now he wanted me to sign a contract without legal advice?
And wasn’t my manager supposed to fight for me? Why the fuck was he on their side?
I haven’t gotten anywhere in this life without trusting my intuition, and my intuition was screaming at me to get out of that room.
There were so many times when all I had was trust in God and trust in myself—and without them, I wouldn’t have survived.
I wouldn’t have survived the two kidnapping attempts when I was just a kid.
I wouldn’t have survived being a homeless teen runaway.
My instincts were everything. They were all I could count on.
“You can go fuck yourself,” I said right back.
I didn’t need a manager. I could handle my own affairs.
* * *
SUNNY WOULD COME INTO OLYMPIC Gardens all the time. He owned a huge car chop shop not too far from the club, and he’d stop by for a dance or a VIP. He’d bring his boys—and they loved to drop money on us. He’d always say, Nice to see you, you sexy motherfucker, to Tasha or our girl Katie or me.
That man loved blondes—and so he loved Tasha and me.
But he really took a liking to Katie. That girl was absolutely gorgeous.
She looked just like Pamela Anderson. She was also your stereotypical blonde—the ones they talk about in movies.
The lights were on, but no one was home. It was impossible not to love her.
One night, it was getting late, and Sunny and his boys had already spent thousands on us. But he had something else in mind.
“You ladies should come back to the shop with me,” he said. His banged-up wedding ring flashed. If he was going to cheat on his wife, his place of fucking business was as good a place as any. The girls and I took a beat to talk it over. I wasn’t convinced, but Tasha and Katie were ready.
“Come on,” Tasha said. “Let’s just go.”
“Well, how much money are they going to give us?” We agreed on our number, and I took it back to Sunny.
“We want two thousand dollars to go back with you,” I said. “Each.”
“Done.”
“Really?” I asked. He didn’t blink. It was that fucking easy?
“Yeah,” he said. “Each of you want two thousand dollars? I’ll give you two thousand dollars. Get your clothes on.”
We headed to the back to tip our house mom out and get dressed—our house mom kept the dancers running, helped us with our day-to-day like bringing us dinner or keeping the dressing room clean.
Those women have seen it all. Love or hate your house mom—they could make a dancer’s life hell—but at the end of the night, we’d give her a portion of our tips for her service.
Sunny took us to his shop, and—surprise, surprise—the shop had an upstairs with a set of bedrooms. I guess this was a regular thing for him.
“We’re not doing anything until he gives us the money,” I whispered to Tasha and Katie.
I’d learned the ropes of the game a long time ago—when I was just seventeen—and all these years later, I have nothing but respect for girls still in it.
Back when I was still living between my various girls’ places, I met a dude named Anthony, who was dating my other bestie, Michelle.
He drove a Cadillac on rims, and he had freckles, long hair, and long nails.
Pimps in Vegas are flashy as fuck, and Anthony was always trying to get me to choose up with him—basically agree that he’d protect me if I’d make him money.
I had zero interest in choosing up with any pimp, but I wanted to learn the business.
I wanted to understand the ins and outs of the underworld.
I wanted to know what made the people inside the industry tick.
So I’d tag along with Anthony and Michelle to the clubs, even though I was underage, and get him liquored up so I could ask him all my questions. He explained all the levels of the game to me, everything I knew back then.
It all fascinated me, except for the part about handing over your money.
I couldn’t imagine making all the money those girls were making and giving it over to a man—a man who usually treated them like shit and had other girls too, all stacked against one another in some kind of twisted hierarchy.
I’d heard horrific fucking stories of pimps beating on their girls.
One pimp even put a fucking hot curling iron in his girl’s vagina because she didn’t come back with enough money. None of that appealed to me.
If there’s a jump between stripping and porn, there’s sure as hell a jump between stripping and hooking. But there was something different about this job—I was in control in a way I wouldn’t have been in porn. It was easy, and that feeling of running the show was electric.
I was about to have my first customer, and I remember what Anthony had taught me: You never turn a trick without getting your money up front.
We took the cash—and we’d keep it all, by the way—and it was on.
I tried not to wince when he took his shirt off, since he was covered with wiry, gray hair.
He was furrier than a Persian rug. Katie and Tasha weren’t first-timers like me, and they had no fear.
But I was scared, so they went first, while I secretly hoped he’d cum before it was my turn.
In between each of us, we switched out the condom, washed his dick off, and put a new one on.
From that day on, whenever a group of us shared a trick, we always played it safe.
When it was my turn, I straddled him and double-checked that his condom was on. This dude is so fucking gross, I kept thinking the whole time.
And then I started focusing on the money. I was just an actress getting paid to do a scene. I started riding him while Tasha and Katie made out—we were giving him his own little personal porn scene. When is this going to end?
It was over faster than I could remotely have anticipated.
I must have ridden him for no more than two minutes.
He finished, and me and the girls took our money and left.
Driving home, I decided it wasn’t really so bad.
I didn’t feel guilty or even that gross.
Two minutes of that fucker inside of me, and I got paid and left.
What I really, really liked was that the motherfucker had to pay to touch me. He couldn’t do a damn thing to me unless he paid me first. If I said no and didn’t take his money, he didn’t get me.
And I thought that was the most beautiful fucking thing I’d ever heard.
* * *
AFTER THAT, I DIDN’T MIND turning tricks.
I could dissociate my way through them and watch my cash stack grow.
I knew I was supposed to feel shame about doing sex work, but it was becoming obvious that sex work was a tool.
I could use it to gain some control over my body—which helped heal my childhood trauma—and I could get revenge on men who didn’t see it coming.
After that first night, Sunny became a regular. And it was easy to make money from other men, too, because honestly, sometimes I just robbed them silly.
Super-rich guys would come into the club, looking for the full VIP experience. They’d get hammered, the girls and I would bat our eyelashes, and they’d fall in love. It was so predictable—that’s when they’d ask us to come back to their room.
By this point, they’d already dropped a few grand on me, and so I could name my price. I’d say another three grand or even more, and these guys always came ready to play. No problem, they’d say. Sometimes, they’d pay me right there in the club and just slap a stack of bills into my hand.
And when they paid me right there, I just took their money and went on with my night.
In fact, I’ve been fired from just about every club in Vegas for robbing people.
It’s what I was known for—I didn’t care what people said.
I didn’t care about my reputation. I was in the driver’s seat for once, and I couldn’t get enough.
The smart customers wouldn’t pay me until I went up to the room with them—but I always stuck to my guns and got my money first. All right, honey, I hate talking business, so let’s just get it out of the way so we can focus on the fun, I’d say, and it worked like a charm every time.
The ones I didn’t rob kept coming back for more, so my list of regulars started to grow.
My clientele were high rollers and VIPs—locals who owned major businesses in town or celebrities, like actors or pro athletes.
I wasn’t thinking about part-time or full-time sinning anymore.
I was fully supporting myself now. In fact, it was probably the first time I was being kind to myself, or so I thought.
I was in control. I didn’t mind what I was selling.
I just cared that the price was right and that the clients were buying.