Absolute Mayhem (16 page)

I got lots of fan mail about the Monica Mayhem
love doll from customers who'd bought it and wanted
to share their thoughts with me. Now, how about that?
They were fantasising about fucking me through using
my doll. Some of them told me they thought it wasn't
well made because it broke. I wrote back and told them,
'Don't fuck it so hard! It's just a plastic doll!'

At that same toy-trade show, I hung out with other
girls who had ranges with Pipedream. For instance,
I spent a lot of time with Hannah Harper, just chatting
when we weren't too busy. Hannah is English and comes
from a small fishing town off the coast of Devon, and
she'd entered the industry about a year before me. We
were both promoting Pipedream's new product called
Sex Water – different flavors of water filled with ingredients
such as ginseng and guarana, meant to help
enhance your stamina, prolong your pleasure, give you
that nice post-orgasmic afterglow and all that kind of
good stuff . It tastes a bit like vitamin water, and I guess
it's fine if that helps some people. It sometimes takes an
event like that to remind me that, yes, we are offering
a service that does help people. We bring comfort to
those who need sexual stimulation, particularly those
with sexual dysfunctions. I see it as an act of compassion
and empathy on our part.

The downside of being constantly appreciated
sexually, though, is that I am permanently obsessed
with my weight. If I see the slightest thing that I think
is off , then I will obsess over it. In the past, I have taken
diet pills or laxatives a few days before a shoot, because
I've felt like I wasn't the perfect weight and the camera
adds a few pounds. Most of my fans won't ever point
it out, but I'll notice when I am a little overweight. I'm
now competing with girls much younger than me and
I think my body is much more in shape than most of
theirs, because I eat right and I do yoga and exercise.
When I was their age, in my early twenties, I could eat
what I wanted and never exercise and it kind of sucks
now that, after turning 30, I've really got to watch it.

It also doesn't help that, no matter how the porn
magazines like to glamorise our industry and make us
look as near-perfect as possible, the easy availability of
drugs can become a personal problem. There's a very
famous porn star who had to stop working at one point
because the directors and cameramen and photographers
were tired of figuring out how to shoot her so her
needle-track marks wouldn't show. She was forced to
clean up and eventually made a comeback.

Most of the time, drug use is all about needing to
anaesthetise yourself from inner pain. I think that's
exactly what I've been doing my whole life. I don't
understand why I can't just be sober and be happy with
myself. The days when I am sober, I'm so lost and so
bored, and I just don't know what to do with myself. I'll
try to find a million things to do, but I'm still left feeling
lost. I don't ever seem to feel at peace.

It's even harder now, since I've resolved to not smoke
weed any more, because that was the one thing that
took my mind off everything. I could just escape from
reality and be happy and laugh. Now, I find it hard to
sleep because my mind is constantly racing about all
my problems and about how I am going to fix this and
that. My vocal chords love me for it – I gave up weed
for music, so I could sing better – but I feel like I also
gave up a piece of my soul. I am now finding new ways
to achieve inner peace and appreciate everything that
I have to be thankful for.

My deviated septum, though, remains a nagging problem.
There was one year, 2006, when I was snorting
cocaine pretty much every day. Did I have some kind
of subliminal death wish? Perhaps. I had been on and
off with cocaine since I got into the industry. Prior to
that, I had only done it a few times, in Sydney, starting
when I was 18, but it was definitely the 'rich man's drug'
over there, as it was so expensive. In LA, it's cheap and
very easily accessible, so it's very hard to not want to
do it when it's around. That is where you really have
to use your self-control. And in 2006, I guess I just
didn't. I don't know why, exactly, but I know that I
was very depressed, so the coke was most probably
my way of escaping reality.

Being in the adult-film industry hasn't exactly been
healthy for me in this regard. For some people in porn,
drugs are accepted as the norm. Although I don't like to
be high on set, it's very common for other girls to take
drugs while they work. On one shoot that year, one of
the other girls whipped out a bag of cocaine and started
doing lines between scenes. While I posed for photos,
did a ten-minute girl–girl, a ten-minute solo and a tenminute
hand-job, all for three MILF ('mother I'd like
to fuck') movies, she was just busting out lines right
in front of me! The director didn't know about this,
mind you.

I know a lot of girls do speed – which I absolutely
hate, especially due to all the friends I've lost to that shit
– but I don't even like doing blow and shooting a sex
scene. I guess a lot of people get horny doing it, but I
never did – it kills my sex drive. Guys totally have it all
wrong when they try to lure girls home with coke. They
think they are going to get laid, but really the girls just
want the drugs.

At some point, I finally realised that I really needed
spiritual help. I had to find the path that could bring
me comfort and peace – the kind that could erase the
emptiness in my life that all the drugs never really filled.
And so I began a new life journey and started to find
myself again. I made a pact to myself to read up on
spiritual healing way more intensively as my New Year's
resolution for 2008. The rest of my life was waiting
to begin.

Do porn stars need spiritual guidance? You
bet we do. And more than most people, I would
say, given the crazy things we have to deal with. Some of
them would do anyone's head in, and sometimes I myself
think it's a miracle I'm still sane. So many girls burn out
just past their first year, and I could so easily have gone
the same route too had it not been for one fateful day
back when I was 22, when I chanced to walk into a spiritual
bookshop in Woodland Hills called The Psychic Eye.

I realised life's a bitch, so I became a witch.

At this transitional time in my life when I was questioning
so many things, being in that bookshop just
felt so good and I knew this was it. I bought a bunch
of books and supplies, and I studied Wicca for the
recommended 'year and a day', a process by which you
show your commitment and initiate yourself into the
religion. You also need to perform a self-dedication
ritual during this time. An important distinction is that
I am a solitary Wiccan, and to this day I still practise
alone. I don't belong to a coven or even socialise much
with other witches, because I just don't trust anyone in
LA. In fact, I have only just met another Wiccan girl
here: she's the girl who does my facials.

Once I started practising, I found myself with the
best, most powerful feeling I'd ever experienced and
I felt completely at peace. Ever since I can remember,
I'd always felt different. I'd always felt out of place,
like I didn't really belong anywhere. I had no religion
growing up, but I was always obsessed with medieval
times, connecting it with my identification with the
Welsh part of me. I do believe that in a past life I have
lived in medieval Wales, and that might well be one
explanation for my own practise of Wiccan spirituality.
(Perhaps I was previously a Welsh witch?) I have
always loved books like
The Mists of Avalon
by Marion
Zimmer Bradley and anything to do with the story of
King Arthur and his fabled Camelot. (Arthur's queen is
named Gwenhwyfar, the Welsh spelling of Guinevere.)
I collect medieval weaponry and currently own various
swords and daggers, even a double-headed mace. (I still
need a battleaxe, though. I don't have one of those yet.)

I always get a special charge when I have to play a
role that involves dressing up in medieval costumes
and riding horses, as occurred when I appeared in an
online series called
Whorelore
(
www.whorelore.com
),
originally based on the popular game Warcraft . My
friend Dez made the series and I was the first person he
thought to call when he was casting the very first episode
back in 2006, in which I was the only female character
and played opposite an actor named Christian. Dez
had chosen me because he knew I could kick-box, fight
and do dialogue well, since he needed all three skills as
well as the fucking. Christian and I donned our full-on
medieval outfits and shot in blistering 46°C heat in
Topanga Canyon around the Chatsworth area.

For the first three weeks after it launched, the server
kept crashing because the site had something like 500
million hits, and Dez got sent a massive bandwidth bill.
He sold a lot of videos and said he had no idea it was
going to be so big. He'd started it as a side-project,
and now I'm very proud of my place in its success since
I was its very first star. Some critics wrote that the
series was successful from the start because I was
the female lead in the first episode.

I was delighted when Dez brought me back in
April 2008 to shoot another episode. The second time
around, I did a scene with my ex-boyfriend Barrett
Blade and had to ride a Clydesdale horse while dressed
in medieval armour – a custom-made steel bra and
skirt, plus gloves and helmet and shin guards. I ran the
horse around in circles while I was wielding a sword. We
shot it out in Ojai, California, in the middle of a forest.
I came home all bruised, my hair full of spiderwebs and
sticks, and just flopped into bed, hardly able to walk.
That was the best scene I shot for
Whorelore
– I really
loved it. (At the time of writing, the show is in season
two and Dez is hoping to do a 12-episode box-set with
extra material.)

Part of being different, or feeling like I was different,
meant that I was always trying to be everyone else's
psychologist but I would somehow not sort out my own
problems. I still do that, but now I realise I was born to
use my spiritual gift s to help and to heal others. I am
very sensitive to other people's energy. It sucks when it's
bad energy because I feel like I have to leave the room
immediately and I get panic-stricken. I also tend to
read people's thoughts a lot – it's not like I hear them
or anything but rather I just tend to say what people are
thinking even before they say it. It's like I have a strong
sense of the way people are feeling, and I'm very aware
of other people's emotions. It's not a Wiccan thing, really,
but just the way I am. Being spiritual helps me to notice
these things and learn how to deal with them.

This isn't an easy thing to explain, of course. Some
people who visit me at home are surprised that I have
a Wiccan altar in my bedroom, which is where I pray.
Every Wiccan should have an altar and mine happens to
be in my bedroom, which is my most intimate personal
space. The altar should really be where people aren't
going to touch it or even look at it, because it's very
personal and not many people understand. The general
judgement on us Wiccans is that of the Hollywood stereotype,
which is why I usually don't like to say the word
'witch'. Most people are still very ignorant when it comes
to understanding the Wiccan religion.

My collection of medieval-type things has led some
people to say they think my home has a Gothic vibe.
I just hope that people are as open to hearing about
Wicca as I am in talking about it, knowing that there
are thousands of people around the world who believe
in such things.

Basically, Wicca is the 'old religion' – a natural, spiritual
practice that has nothing to do with most people's
notions of what is 'evil'. In fact, we don't even believe in
Satan or Heaven and Hell. There is an afterlife, which
some call the Summerland, and there are many gods
and goddesses, relating to different things. We believe
in 'the threefold law', which is similar to the Indian spiritual
idea of karma but with a difference – whatever
you do will come back to you but it will happen times
three. It could be three times bigger or three times
longer, depending on the particular deed in question.
Another golden rule is 'And it harm none, do as ye will',
which means do what you want as long as you are not
hurting anyone.

In Wicca, there are spells and rituals you can do,
which involve elements from the earth. Different items
relate to different things. Such items include crystals
(which can be useful for all kinds of healing), candles,
herbs, incense and essential oils. Wicca teaches you to
use these spells and rituals to heal and help yourself,
as well as others. However, another rule of Wicca is
'to remain silent'. To reveal a spell or ritual you have
done will ruin it, so you never reveal anything to
anyone, ever.

Before performing a spell or ritual, you should create
your sacred space and cast 'a perfect circle', cleansing
the area in which you are working and calling all
the elements – north is earth, south is fire, east is air,
west is water and, finally, there is the ubiquitous element
of spirit. These five elements are represented on a
pentagram, the five-pointed star with a circle around
it, which is a perfect circle (and which is, perhaps not
coincidentally, the name of one of my favourite rock
groups).

No, guys and girls, the pentagram is not evil! An
inverted pentagram is for Satan worshippers (a pentagram
drawn upside down to resemble goat's horns)
and that unfortunate symbol has been a cause of some
anxiety in my life. I used to wear a pentagram chain
around my neck but I don't any more, because people
who saw it tended to associate it with Satanism. I do
wear a pentagram ring, though, on my left index finger,
because it's less noticeable. I feel protected with my ring,
and it is important to me.

The other problem many people have with Wicca
is the whole idea of us casting spells, which they only
know from things like the three witches in Shakespeare's
Macbeth
. I personally have never stirred any kind of
potion or made a soup in an iron cauldron. It really is
regrettable that many people think so badly of us.

A spell, in Wicca, could be considered the equivalent
of praying in most other religions, only ours tend to be
a little more complex. Sometimes, I'll just sit and pray
by my altar, especially when I'm going through a hard
time. It makes me feel better. My altar is a wrought-iron
and wooden three-tier bookshelf, wrapped in a grapevine.
On it lies a pentagram, lots of candles, a god and
a goddess figure, sage (for cleansing negative energy),
chalices, a cauldron, boxes full of crystals, oils, herbs, an
athame
(dagger) and many books on Wicca and spells,
including my 'Book of Shadows', where I write down all
my studies and any spells I have tried.

These days, I don't always cast spells or perform rituals
but I do pray and meditate and I sage myself regularly –
that always helps when you are feeling negative energy
or just not quite yourself. White sage is a cleansing
shrub; you burn it and let the smoke fl oat around you.

Oh, and of course I have my broomstick. No, we
do
not
fl y on them! The sole purpose of the broom is
for sweeping away negative energy. Mine is old and
traditional, comprising a carved tree-branch handle
and black straw. The flying-broomstick thing is just
another misconception due to the popular mythologies
surrounding witchcraft . Fiona Horne, who is arguably
the foremost Wiccan practitioner and educator to come
out of Australia, was once asked in an interview if she
owned a black cat and a broomstick. She replied that
she's allergic to cats but she does keep a broomstick at
her front door because the folklore says only people
who love you and treat you well will enter your life if
you keep it there.

I've never read that myself, and I may try it now, but
in my understanding the broomstick is for sweeping
away negative energy from any area, especially before
a ritual. As for the cat, it neither has to be black nor
does it have to be a cat. Seriously. It can be any kind of
totem animal. My cat Smokey is grey and white, and is
always by my side. He is a little healer. Everyone who
crosses his path seems to be enlightened, even if they
hate cats or are allergic to them. He has a way about
him. Smokey has helped me through many hard times,
and a lot of my friends say the same thing. Animals
are very spiritual beings and oft en take after their
owners. Smokey is very obedient and sits by my side
when I am doing a ritual or praying. I live alone now,
but a friend of one of my old fl atmates' once asked me
if I was a witch – because my cat followed me around
everywhere!

I can't blame people for their curiosity, but I will
also say that there are people right where I live, in
what's supposedly the most open-minded and socially
progressive city in the United States, who will baulk or
shudder the moment they hear that I'm a real-life witch.
Many people will actually say, 'What's that?' or 'Oh, so
you're evil!' Or worse, they'll make stupid jokes about
it like, 'I'd better be careful around you, then!' It really
pisses me off . There's so much ignorance out there.
I would like to give these people books to read so they'll
understand, but it's a sad fact that most people don't
want to know. They live their lives like sheep and just
believe what Hollywood or the tabloid press tells them.
So I now go by the notion that if people don't take the
time to get to know me, they are not worth having in
my life.

On the flip side, I have some friends who totally
depend on me when they're in need. For instance, an
old friend came over to see me last year, someone I
hadn't spoken to in about a year. He was going through
some really rough times and I was the only person he
felt he could turn to for guidance. I believe I helped put
his mind at ease. He actually thanked me and I could
see that he was happy when he left . You don't need to
be Wiccan to do this for someone, of course, but I do
believe my own spiritual touch was a great help.

I even have friends who tell people, 'You should hang
out with Monica.' They know I will try to help them
as I've helped a lot of people overcome a lot of things
in their lives. Sadly, most of these people just end up
disappearing from my life, without even so much as a
thank you. So many people take everything for granted.
Well, whatever. At least I feel good about myself for
changing a person's life, even if only in a small way or
temporarily so.

I know this is true because of what happened with my
mother. Despite everything she did to me, I felt sorry
for her – so when I heard she was ill I cast a little spell
for her health, which had an interesting result. She had
been given six months to live but she lived another two
and a half years. How much I actually had to do with
that I will never know.

As witches, we honour nature and recognise the
masculine and feminine principles of divinity. Every
day, I thank the gods and goddesses for all that I have
and all they are bound to give me. I ask for their strength
and guidance to get through each day. I'll also pray for a
friend or family member when they're in need.

I find that I can feel the strength of my faith in the
simplest of ways sometimes. I love to sit by the ocean
and just soak it all in. I feel so energised, particularly if
it happens to be raining or if there's a storm. There are
some forces of nature that just make me feel so alive.
And the full moon is the best time to do any ritual.