The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz

by Ron Jeremy

  A few years ago, I did a porno called The Adult Apprentice, a parody of Donald Trump’s TV show The Apprentice. I had a scene with Vicki Vette, an incredible blonde bombshell who gives absolutely amazing head. Every time I’ve been with her, it’s been a struggle not to climax too soon. We were doing a position called the pile driver, which is very physically difficult. The woman is basically turned upside down. Her head is on the floor and her legs are sticking straight up in the air, and the guy is standing over her and penetrating her by putting his legs on either side of her. In a way, it’s like you’re trying to simulate human scissors.

  So Vicki and I were doing the pile driver, and even though it’s a taxing position, she was getting me really excited. Vicki knows how to do things with her body that are probably illegal in forty-eight of the fifty states. I got the horrible feeling that I was going to pop too soon, so I did what I always do in that situation. I started thinking of disgusting things: war casualties, deceased relatives, etc.* To my amazement, it wasn’t working. So I pulled it out just long enough to regain control. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I had forgotten that I was doing the pile driver. I was standing on a bed, perched precariously over Vicki with nothing but her legs to hold on to for support. The moment I backed up to pull out my penis, I realized that I was losing my balance.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was cumming.

  I fell over backward, tumbling off the bed and onto the floor, my sperm trailing behind me like the burning smoke from a crashing plane. The director adjusted the camera in time to capture my orgasmic plummet, so at least it wasn’t a complete waste.

  And that, in a nutshell, is the main difference between sex at home and sex on a porn set. When one of you suffers from premature ejaculation, the most that gets hurt is your pride (and maybe that of your wife or girlfriend). But when we do it, we can end up with a broken back and a face full of our own jism, and the entire cast and crew gets to witness it.

  At least I’m getting paid to put myself through the abuse. What’s your excuse?

  * * *

  On the set of Scoundrels. (Photograph by Cecil Howard/Command Cinema)

  EPILOGUE

  It is very difficult to fail at pornography.

  —Michael Chabon

  In 2004, Slash invited me backstage to hang out with his new band, Velvet Revolver, at the Roxy in Los Angeles. Slash was an old buddy, and I couldn’t have been happier that he was making a triumphant return to music after the nasty breakup of Guns N’ Roses and the semisuccesses of his new bands, the Snake Pit and Slash’s Blues Ball. I watched as he tuned his guitar while his wife, Perla Ferrer, sat by his side.

  I knew Scott Weiland (Velvet’s lead singer, former front man for Stone Temple Pilots) and the other band members, but I felt a special kinship to Perla and Slash. After all, I had introduced them to each other.

  You see? I haven’t always introduced musicians to porn stars. Sometimes when I play Cupid, I can actually get it right.

  It all happened just five years earlier, as I was on my way to Slash’s hotel room in Las Vegas for a late-night party. I bumped into Perla in the lobby, and she asked me to bring her upstairs to introduce her to Slash.

  “I’m going to marry that man someday,” she told me. She didn’t say it hopefully; she spoke with a confidence that I’d never seen in the groupies who usually chased after Slash. She knew in her heart that she was destined to be with him, and nothing could convince her otherwise.

  So I brought her up to meet Slash, and they hit it off almost immediately. A short time later, just as Perla had predicted, they were married. It’d been a few years since I’d seen either of them, and I was happily amazed that they were still a couple. Relationships in rock tend to be short-lived, but Slash couldn’t have been happier. He loved his new domestic life and raising a family with Perla. They had two kids already, and Slash told me there were plans to have another.

  The other members of Velvet Revolver had undergone similar transformations. Scott had spent the last decade battling his substance-abuse problems, an addiction that he had finally been able to kick. He was also married with a kid, and his rowdy past seemed to be completely behind him. The rest of the band was no different. They were all clean and sober, and to watch them lounging together backstage you would never guess that these four guys were once the hard-partying, booze-swilling, drug-taking, sexed-up wild boys of L.A.’s rock scene.

  I glanced around the backstage dressing room. There were no empty bottles of beer or Jack Daniel’s, no blonde groupies, no panties draped across lamps or overturned furniture that had recently been set on fire. It was just a small group of friends and their wives, a social gathering no different from what you’d find at any suburban dinner party. I pretended to be horrified.

  “This is absolutely appalling,” I barked at them, breaking the silence. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves!”

  The band looked up at me, stunned by my outburst. I walked around the room, surveying the shameful display of rock impotence.

  “You call yourself rock stars?” I continued. “What the hell is this? There’s not one bottle of hard liquor in the place. Not even a beer. You’ve got bottled water and sodas, PowerBars and granola. What kind of rock star drinks fruit juice? I mean seriously, fruit juice? Are you worried about your prostates or something?”

  Slash began to giggle. He knew that I was just having some fun with them, mocking how radically their lives had changed since the glory days of the 1980s and early ’90s. I stormed over to the buffet table, on which the usual amenities had been replaced with something far more sinister.

  “And what do we have here?” I asked, my voice shaking with rage. “Antibacterial Handi Wipes? Baby powder? Pacifiers? Rattler toys? Diapers? I remember a time when this table would’ve been covered with unconscious groupies. And now it’s been replaced with boxes of diapers? I’m telling you, if word gets out that the Velvet Revolver touring machine is moonlighting as a day-care facility, your careers are finished. You think your teenage fans want to know about this? It’s an affront to rock and roll!”

  I collapsed next to Slash, and we both burst into laughter. “Seriously though,” I said. “I’m proud of you guys. This is the best it can be. And I’m one to talk. I don’t touch drugs, and I barely drink.”

  “That’s right!” Slash exclaimed. “Where do you get off scolding us?”

  “Well,” I said with a wide grin, “I do enjoy the occasional groupie.”

  “Oh, sure,” he agreed. “There’s that.”

  Slash gave me a consolatory hug. “It’s okay, Ronnie,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll catch up with us eventually.”

  I just found out that my ex-girlfriend Juniper is moving to Florida.

  To be honest, Juniper hasn’t technically been my girlfriend for two years. I mean, we had been living together, and we were what you’d call “romantically involved.” But now we’re friends, first and foremost. We enjoy each other’s company, and Juniper always tells me that I’m the best friend she has in the world. But whatever we were—or are—was never clearly defined. I was in love with her and wanted to be with her, and that’s all I needed to know. We were just taking our relationship day by day, without any expectations of what tomorrow would bring.

  But then Juniper announced that she was fed up. She didn’t think I’d ever be ready to settle down and commit to her. She wanted me to quit the swinging lifestyle. She didn’t want to share me with other women, and if I couldn’t devote more one-on-one time to her, mind and body, then she didn’t want to waste any more time on me.*

  The monogamy thing is difficult for me. I have no problem with emotional monogamy, but physical monogamy is different. I’ve sometimes asked my dad, “How did you do it, Pop? How did you stay married to the same woman for so many years?” He knew what I was really asking. It wasn’t marriage itself that confused me. It was monogamy. It was the idea that anybody could ever limit himself to just one sexual partner.
>
  “Well,” my father said cautiously, “you just find ways to keep it fresh. You think of new things to do.”

  “Like what?” I asked. “After thirty-some years, what is there left to do that you haven’t already tried? Do you hang from the chandelier, or hang glide into it?”

  My hat goes off to anyone who can make monogamy work. I’ve known very few people who could pull it off (especially men). Even if they stay in the marriage, they’ll eventually give in to the temptation to cheat. If a guy is approached by a beautiful woman and she offers to massage his ball sack, no strings attached, he’s often going to say yes. I don’t care who he is. Most men cannot turn down free sex, and it has nothing to do with our emotions.**

  In most cases, the thing that bothers women about cheating isn’t the sex but the deception. It’s not cheating if you’re truthful about it and you’re willing to let your partner do the same thing. I’ve known some actors and rock stars who couldn’t grasp that concept. They’d go on tour and have sex with a different woman every night. But when they came home and their girlfriends so much as looked at another guy, they’d freak out.

  When Juniper was breaking up our romantic relationship, I tried to explain this to her. I told her that the world is filled with men who consider swinging a one-way street. They’re too insecure or chauvinistic to realize that it’s something that can be shared. Most guys are going to cheat, and the best you can hope for is to end up with somebody who’s honest about it.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But that doesn’t change anything.”

  “Why can’t you give us another chance?” I asked her.

  “Because you’re never going to change. Isn’t there a small part of you that’s tired of this swinging nonsense? It isn’t normal to be so obsessed with this.”

  “I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed. I’m more like a bonobo monkey.”

  “A what?”

  “A bonobo monkey. They don’t just have sex for procreation, or when they’re in heat. They do it every day with a variety of partners. They’re one of the few animals that practice fellatio and group sex. And because of it, they’re very nonaggressive and peaceful. They’re the happiest, healthiest monkeys in the jungle because they’re too busy screwing. So I’m pretty sure that I evolved from a bonobo.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’m more like a tamarin monkey,” she said, “or like most birds.”

  “You mate for life?”

  “Exactly.”

  And that, in the end, is why Juniper and I decided to break up. I’m a bonobo and she’s a tamarin. As much as we loved and respected each other, we’re two very different monkeys.

  I can pinpoint the exact night that everything almost changed between Juniper and me. It was the moment when my feelings for her changed from like to love.

  It was years ago, when Juniper and I were still a couple. She was sleeping at the time, which is usually when I feel the most affection for her. For as long as we’d been together, watching her sleep had been one of my favorite things. She doesn’t just lie there and breathe deeply. Her arms are outstretched, and she purrs like a kitten. And she has this adorable smile that just kills me. She looks so innocent and sweet and harmless. Sometimes when I come home late at night, I’ll just sit on the edge of the bed and watch her sleep.

  She hates it when I do that. And she hates it even more when I bring friends to watch her. But I just can’t help myself. On some nights, I’ve invited porn stars like Taylor Wayne and Jacklyn Lick over to our apartment, and I’ll bring them into the bedroom just to look at Juniper.

  “Have you ever seen anything so cute in your whole goddamn life?” I’ll whisper.

  “Ronnie, why don’t you just give it up and marry that girl?” Jacklyn asked me. “It’s so obvious you’re in love with her.”

  I guess it was.

  As I already mentioned, she was sleeping.

  And holding a bald, partially blind rat named Fetus.

  As a kid, I once had a pet turtle named Timothy. But as an adult who travels constantly, it didn’t make much sense to leave an animal alone in an empty apartment. But Juniper is a veterinarian’s assistant, and she doesn’t think clearly when it comes to adopting pets. And big softie that I am, I’ve never been able to say no. It started with Cherry, a tortoise who hasn’t left my side since Juniper brought her home. That would’ve been enough for me, but Juniper pushed for more. A few years later, she adopted a rat. A skinny, hairless, partially blind, adorable rat.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I asked when she walked into our apartment with the bald bundle of joy.

  “What?” she said, clutching the naked beast to her chest. “I love rats. I had lots of rats as pets when I was growing up.”

  “It’s a rodent. And they only live for maybe two or three years. You’re just setting yourself up for unnecessary heartbreak.”

  Juniper fought for the rat, and it stayed. She named it Fetus because of its resemblance to a misshapen embryo that was all but begging to be aborted. And like a sucker, I ended up falling in love with the weird-looking thing. I told Juniper that I hated it, but she’d catch me sharing a meal with Fetus or spooning with it on the couch.

  “You’re in loooooove,” she’d tease me.

  “Okay, fine. You were right. Don’t rub it in, okay?”

  We found out later that Fetus once belonged to the comic Howie Mandel. He’d given it up after his daughter went to college,* and it somehow got passed along to Juniper’s clinic. During a visit to Las Vegas, I learned that Howie was performing at the MGM, and I immediately called him to share the news that his onetime pet was alive and well.

  “Oh my God!” Howie laughed. “What the hell is Ron Jeremy doing with little Chemo?”

  “You called her Chemo?” I asked. “You are a sick, sick man.”

  “Oh come on, you’re telling me she doesn’t look like a chemo patient? I’m just amazed that she’s still alive.”** He was so excited, he thanked Juniper on my cell phone. The MGM staff and Howie’s manager were in shock, and I didn’t know why. They explained to me that Howie is a germophobe. He won’t even shake hands with someone, let alone use their cell phone. I figured, heck, since he knows I’m in porn, maybe he knows I’m blood tested every month.

  A year and a half later, Fetus was diagnosed with cancer. It was ironic, really, given her former name. Juniper and I spared no expense in treating her, but despite a successful surgery, the doctors couldn’t bring her out of anesthesia. The brave little rat fought for hours to stay alive but didn’t make it. And so, on a rainy summer afternoon in L.A., we drove to the hospital to have our beloved Fetus cremated and her remains placed in an urn that we could keep.

  And that’s when I realized that I wanted to have children with Juniper.

  I can’t really put my finger on what it was about that particular day. Maybe it was just the sadness of losing something that we both cared for. I don’t want to sound overly corny, but maybe it was the Celtic music playing on the radio as the rain battered against the car’s windows. But as I glanced over at Juniper and saw her sleeping, her tiny hands outstretched, I felt such a wave of love wash over me. I knew then and there that I wanted to be with Juniper for the rest of my life. And I wanted us to be something more to each other than just two friends who occasionally had sex.

  “Hey,” I whispered, giving her shoulder a tender nudge. “Wake up. I need to tell you something.”

  “No’ now, le’ me alone,” she said in that drowsy voice that just makes my heart ache.

  “I think it’s time,” I said, surprised by my own certainty. “I think we should be parents.”

  She shot upright in her seat. “What did you just say?” she asked, now very much awake.

  “I want to have a baby,” I said. “I want to have a baby with you.”

  We were mostly silent for the rest of the trip. Juniper didn’t say yes, at least not right away. She just wanted to sit with it for a while, maybe to wait to make sure that I wasn’t going to b
ack down over time.

  But I wouldn’t. I was serious. Over the past few months, I’d been having dreams about being a father. I dreamed that Juniper and I had an actual baby. And stranger still, when I woke up, I was sad to discover that it had been just a dream. I told my dad about these dreams, and he said, “Ronnie boy, that means something.”*

  Fathering instincts have a way of revealing themselves slowly. It may have continued a few years later, when I was on the British reality show The Farm.** Part of our duties involved attending to the ranch animals—milking and feeding them. During one of my first days at the farm, I helped deliver a baby lamb. She was born deformed, and even her own mother rejected her. Because I have a thing for outcasts, she became my favorite. I nursed her and took care of her for sixteen days until she was healthy enough to feed from her mommy. On some mornings, I’d jump out of bed and be in the barn before any of the other cast members were awake. I took to the role of nurturer like it was the most natural thing in the world for me.

  At one point, Flava Flav—one of the other celebrity cast members—walked by and saw me sitting in the hay, coddling the baby lamb and feeding her from a milk bottle. He just shook his head and laughed.

  “Dude,” he said, “you need kids.”***

  Juniper and I tried to get pregnant for almost six months, but it never worked, and we eventually gave up. Now, years later, I’d probably still want to give it a shot. But Juniper and I are best friends, not lovers, and I may have missed my chance.*

  For now.

  Where the hell am I?”

  I rub a hand across my swollen eyes. I must have drifted off again. I haven’t slept in days, so it’s no wonder. I squint into the fluorescent lighting and try to get my bearings. It looks as if I’m in another airport, but which airport is hard to say. It could be Chicago, or New York, or even Miami. It’s difficult to tell anymore. If you travel as much as I do, all airports start to look pretty much the same.