Jesse Jackman Came Out To His Mom… As A Porn Star

May 13, 2014
VINCENT-THRICE

Coming out to your mom is never easy, and Jesse Jackman's had to do it twice.

In an exclusive article he wrote for The Huffington Post (link below), Jesse discusses all of the fear and anxiety that surrounded his decision to tell his mom that he was a porn star.

As a gay man growing up in the 80s and 90s, though, I've experienced plenty of guilt, self-loathing, and shame. Not wanting my mom to see me as anything less than perfect, I've always hidden those feelings from her, hoping to stay impossibly angelic in her eyes... My rationale at the time was that I didn't want her to worry about my health (despite my studio's strict adherence to safe sex practices), but in retrospect I realize that was just an excuse. My real fear was how she'd react if she found out that her angel-lamb is actually a gay porn star. Would she be disappointed in me? Would she be ashamed? Well, she did find out. And her response was amazing.

On a trip to his mother's house on which he intended to tell her about his job, he discovered that her computer was opened on his blog.

She'd known the whole time. Our bank accounts are linked because we co-own some property; several months earlier she'd noticed a deposit from a source she didn't recognize -- my studio -- and traced it back to their website. At the time, Dirk and I had just released a bondage film called Loud and Nasty, and our images were plastered all over the studio's homepage. With video! And in this particular video, Dirk shocks me with a violet wand. Mom said that it looked like I was being tortured, and she felt like a part of her had died.

Once he explained and showed her the above image, an outtake from the film, she understood everything.

When she saw the image, she understood. We were in love. Nothing else mattered. In essence, I'd come out to her a second time. It felt like a giant boulder had been lifted from me -- just like when I told her I was gay some fifteen years earlier, and once again she was entirely caring and supportive. I don't think she fully understands my decision to make porn; she has difficulty grasping how I can be so open about something as private and intimate to her as sex. But that's not really the point. The important thing is that we actually talk about stuff now.