We ran into Jay Ashley at the Sabrina Johnson gangbang. Jay, now a father, is back in the adult business having attended college, where he graduated top of his class, to become a certified commercial air diver. Ashley had to take advanced physics and physiology classes and carried a 4.0 average. ["I can do something when I put my mind to it," he says.]
Ashley likes the solitary aspects of underwater work and had been a scuba diver a long time.
Ashley: "What that means is I'm an underwater construction worker - a certified commercial air diver."
G. Ross: "As opposed to a certified commercial Teri Diver."
Ashley [laughs]: "It's deep sea diving. I've worked out on the platforms for Exxon, Texaco and others."
G. Ross: "There's got to be good money in that."
Ashley: "There was, but I have a little boy and it was keeping me away for weeks at a time. The money was about the same as I was making here. Right now I can do this and see my little boy [he's 11 months old], whereas I was seeing him every four weeks. I'm not with his momma [ex-performer Monti] anymore, unfortunately. We had differences that we couldn't work out.
"So, right now, we're staying friends and I'm back here because I don't have somebody saying, 'I don't want you in that business anymore.' I'm back with all the people I know. I don't know anybody else. This is my life. This is my family, period. When me and Kaitlyn came out to California in 1993 this was it.
Ashley: "Coming back I thought I was going to be persecuted. Actually it was the other way around with people saying glad to see ya. We'll get you work. It's been a really good experience. I'm more welcome now that I'm back in, then when I was in.
"Everybody knows that I've had a drug history. A lot of people see that I'm working clean and sober. It's been really nice."
Ashley said his drug problem came from his inability to handle the responsibilities of the fast-paced money that came into his hands. "I've never blamed the industry for any of my problems," he says. "The industry is not to blame. It's a living, breathing thing just like any other big corporation. It's how you handle it through your own maturity. That's what makes you. I wasn't ready to handle it at the time. I handled a lot of things badly. But having a son puts things in really good perspective. I've managed to hold down a job that only a couple of thousand people in the world can do."
At the time the Ashleys first came to California, Jay was in the Marines and stationed in El Toro. "I was due to get out, and this is always what I wanted to do [sex performing], from the time when I saw my first porno when I was nine," he says. [Yes, he says this with a straight face.]
Ashley: "I thought that was so cool. So I talked Kaitlyn into it because we used to have sex with our friends and everything. I said let's try it, so I picked up a bunch of papers and started making calls. She ended up taking it as far as she can go. We came in together just wanting to work. I got off in watching her fuck people. She got off on keeping me from working with other people, at first. Then she started to change things. But we had a good long run but split up due to circumstances. It was kind of sad, but we're better friends now than then. I talk to her all the time."
G. Ross: "Was that thing with her and Sindee Coxx for real?"
Ashley: "The passion was hot. They were very much in love. That was a real thing. They wanted to do it [get married]. They were ready to do it. They had the date set. They were going to get married..."
G. Ross: "Didn't you feel like the odd man out in that whole thing?"
Ashley: "I was sort of mad because it was okay for her to have sex with Sindee. It was okay for her to have sex with Sindee's husband. But I wasn't allowed to have sex with Sindee. I was being selfish which is what it was. Yes, I felt like the odd man out. This wasn't right. Why should you get to play and I can't?"
Jay says it was his drug problems that finally estranged the Ashleys. "I went to a rehab and got clean. She went to other things. Without any names being mentioned she was led to believe that I was trying to kill her. A lot of people in this industry have problems with drugs due to the fact that they have the money and nothing to do with their time. Now I can look back having been there."
Jay says he talks to Kaitlyn at least once a week. She's now a teacher in North Carolina. "She loves it," he says. "She's doing wonderful. She's engaged again. In fact, every time I tell her I talked to somebody, she says tell them I said hi. She misses certain people. She mentioned your name.
"For awhile, she wanted to come back," Jay continues. "But she decided she was better off where she was. She always wanted to teach and wanted to do that when we were still together. But she was never really motivated to do it because the money was so good, here. Now in North Carolina she's leading a regular life."
G. Ross: "There for awhile you were directing..."
Ashley: "Hopefully, that's going to start again. Right now I got a company that wants to talk to me about production."
G. Ross: "As I recall, you had latched onto a pretty good [directing] style and were on a roll. You had done a couple of videos for Elegant Angel that got great reviews [Femania and Liquid Lust.]."
Ashley: "I loved working for them. They were all-girl visual fantasies with a lot of lighting shots and camera effects."
G. Ross: "You really had a feel for that genre. Not many do."
Ashley: "Thank you. I had a lot of fun shooting them. Liquid Lust was couples-related and I used a lot of the same kind of lighting techniques and crew. They sort of knew what I was looking for and liked doing it because it was all relaxed. Patrick [Collins] and I got along pretty well, but things fell apart. We'll let that drop. I don't want to bring any names into it. But now I can't even get Patrick to sit down and talk to me. I have the master tapes from that movie, Femania 1, but he won't sit face-to-face with me to take them back. I understand that people move on and there's no hard feelings. To me amends are worth a lot, they're worth more than just words. You have to take some action to make amends.
"There are two amends that I need to make in this industry. One is with Patrick because I left him on bad terms because of Rob Black. The second amends is the one I really regret which I have to do. That's Jeff Lam. I sort of left him high and dry, and as soon as I'm able, I'm going to make amends. When you take a moral inventory of yourself, you realize it's time to grow up."
