Pornstar

by Ian Gittler

  “I don’t think about it,” he says, then thinks about it.

  I suggest it may disconnect him from his partner to not have to rely on her wetness, which could be a barometer of whether she’s into it or not. Once again, the author, fully dressed, camera around his neck, imposes his own ideas about sex on a naked, six-foot-five-inch porn stud, while the actor lazily strokes his cock.

  Jon smiles.

  “It didn’t occur to me. I do it automatically,” he says, then, “It doesn’t help me if I know she’s not into it. But I guess I could try it sometime, without. That might be cool.”

  RON JEREMY OPENS THE DOOR IN A TOWEL. HIS FACE IS COVERED IN SHAVING CREAM. Even though he’s just showered, and presumably washed, his humid, dilapidated apartment is dank. The place, and Ron’s manicured but still hairy, fat body, make me feel icky all over.

  There’s a balcony with sliding glass doors, gray from months and months of grime, smog residue. Ron and his roommate use their balcony as storage space. The roommate shows up. He’s a rude, nerdish fellow in his forties with thick glasses and red, irritated skin. He curses Ron out, then dials a number and curses out someone over the phone, then leaves again. The roommate sleeps in the living room. Ron gets the bedroom, which looks like one of those hidden rooms some of the porn actresses have—it’s that out-of-control messy. Ron says, “Its never like this”—like some of the girls have—that it’s because he just got back from a swingers convention.

  RON JEREMY

  The greater part of the visit is spent waiting while Ron is on the phone ironing out details for his latest brainstorm, John Wayne Bobbit Un-Cut. He says the film is really going to happen, “next week,” but that the set will have to be closed—“for obvious reasons”—and goes on to explain that it’s a “gamble,” that the man whose severed penis was recovered from the front lawn of a 7-Eleven may not even be able to “perform.” As a consolation prize, Ron extends an invitation to the set of a “lesbian show” he’s filming out at Vince Neil’s house in Malibu.

  Debi Diamond said Ron has a million dollars in cash stashed away. Looking at this guy, wrapped in his towel, on the floor, working out of a tattered date book, the idea seems so ludicrous that it could actually be true.

  Ron does eventually pose and even gets out the devil’s scepter he mentioned two years ago when he first agreed to sit for a portrait. He’s a good sport. “Have you met Ron Jeremy?” is the first question most often asked by friends and acquaintances, by far, whenever the subject of this book comes up in conversation. There’s a feeling of having documented a legend as I pack up the camera equipment. A bright yellow T-shirt confirms this. An iron-on patch has pictures in bubbles that make Ron look like a seventies TV cop.

  RON JEREMY AN AMERICAN HERO A LIVING LEGEND.

  “Some UCLA kids did this,” Ron says, holding the shirt in front of his chest. “It’s the only one I have, or I’d give it to you. Can ya believe I don’t get anything for it? I hear it’s selling.”

  THE TRIP IS WINDING DOWN. A FRIEND WHO LIVES OUT HERE FORCES ME TO TAKE ONE night off and get together. We hit some bars and end up at Jones. It’s empty, but an attractive hostess still acts like we’re lucky she let us in.

  Jones fills up around us. There are a lot of hot girls. It’s mostly hot girls. A tall, blonde Texan in a micromini plops down between us, doesn’t mind the tight fit. She takes my twenty to the bar to get us a round, but ends up sitting in between two guys in business suits. She finally hands my friend two glasses of wine but doesn’t rejoin us. It’s OK : The amount of attention we receive over the course of a couple hours, from a number of different girls, is totally out of the ordinary, for us, anyway. Outrageous, really. We do feel lucky. Finally a nineteen-year-old who calls herself Wendy explains it this way:

  “I’m two thousand a night or five hundred an hour with a two-hour minimum.” “Go easy,” I tell her.

  “Have mercy on a poor boy”

  Wendy laughs, then goes on to say that a lot of high-priced hookers “don’t have representation anymore, since the whole Heidi Fleiss thing.” Meanwhile a guy who could be a fresh-faced Beverly Hills High senior is trying to negotiate a date between my friend and his, a giggling girl in a party dress. Jones is crawling with prostitutes that look like high school girls. Wendy names guys who’ve hired her on a regular basis; a couple are old-guard Hollywood royalty and a couple more are lions in the new generation of powerful record execs under thirty. So I know she’s not kidding.

  In years of hanging out in New York—even at MK at the height of the crazy eighties, Nell’s, any one of Keith or Brian McNally’s establishments—there was never a sense that prostitution was so openly woven into the social fabric of the city’s night life, not the way it is here. Jones is a Hollywood hot spot.

  JONES

  Ron Jeremy

  Actor Randy West’s dining room wall; Sarah Jane Hamilton’s refrigerator.

  The bar is crowded. When my friend returns from the bathroom, he has someone in tow. “Look who I found,” he says. It’s Pauly Shore. In the wake of Savannah’s suicide, Shore and I have spoken on the telephone. The comedian was once her boyfriend.

  Pauly squirms down into the banquet and shakes my hand.

  "Do you have two thousand dollars in cash?" I ask him.

  "Why?" he says, deadpan. “She doesn’t take credit cards?”

  NICK EAST LIVES LIKE A COLLEGE BUM IN A CONVERTED GARAGE BEHIND A HOUSE IN North Hollywood, right over the hill from the real Hollywood. There are psychedelic tapestries on the walls, acoustic and electric guitars lying around, a dusty computer on a desk in the corner. A stack of typed pages sits on his unmade bed: the twenty-four-year-old porn star’s first book.

  “It’s called A Guide to Living in the Fourth Dimension,” he says. “I’ve started two more: The Rise and Fall of Satan—that one’s really gonna flip people out—and Angel Training.”

  Nick demonstrates how the initials in his real name, when superimposed on each other a certain way, form a yin-yang symbol. Nick asks if I believe in guardian angels and claims he’ll be president in eight years.

  TRACH TECH VISUALS. MARIANNE WORKS ON DEBl’S FACE AND TEASES OUT HER HAIR into something wild, predictable. Debi talks nonstop. It’s the same kind of stuff as before. She swoops from innocent and lovelorn to hardened criminal, no illusions, the “I’m so fuckin’ horny I need to fuck a stranger” rap.

  “What do you really do when you’re horny?” I ask.

  “I work cheap.”

  I ask Debi about a guy she’s been seeing, if she doesn’t ever just want to be close, to be treated gently, loved.

  “Sure, but I’m gonna get hurt, y’know? It’s a given.”

  I stand close to her, really close, while she puts in her contact lenses. Debi says, “hmm” softly. She looks at my eyes for a split second, then something clicks. She looks down, maybe at her hands, or at nothing.

  “Love?” she says. “No way. People say they want love, but that’s bullshit. What they really want is power. They want power so they can control you, suck you in, so they can fuck you over, so they can split and leave you wasted. I’m not ready for that. [Breath.] Did I tell you I’m getting out of this business?”

  Debi brushes past me and changes into fluorescent-green spandex. Her transformation is kind of like the first time we met: cartoony sex armor. Debi looked prettier in her street clothes, but I guess that’s not the point.

  She swings the door open and dashes down the stairs. Debi is surrounded by the time she’s reached the tall picket-fenced-in area outside the entrance of the building, in the parking lot, where half-dressed actors go to smoke, hidden from the studio’s neighbors. No smoking inside.

  Debi is cornered, relents, chain-smokes, and riffs out, in her way, for the Playboy Channel documentary crew. She keeps Cass Paley’s frustrated AD at bay, answers questions, and gets videotaped sitting on a white plastic chair.

  She’s funny, charismatic. The other smokers, girls and guys, wat
ch her with curious expressions to see what she might do or say next; it could be anything is the general consensus. Debi doesn’t mention her fan club or touring—she’s the rare star who’s never tried it—and she doesn’t give personal details about her home or car—nothing that would make her life seem “ordinary.” She’s not at all ordinary. Debi doesn’t play the “sex star with an all American approach to everyday life I learned in the Girl Scouts” game.

  The people from Playboy set out to make a program that’ll prove porn stars are “just like us”—so says the director. The other stars don’t even think Debi is just like them. If the Playboy guy edits out all of Debi’s “fucks” and “shits” and evil stares and tiny pupils and naughty snarls, all they’ll be left with is piercings, meditation, tattoos, mud baths, pets—pets. That’s something. Maybe it will work.

  TRACH TECH VISUALS

  Previous pages: Debi on Cass Paley’s set.

  Debi stomps out her third cigarette, stands, heaves a deep, anticipatory gulp of air, holds it in with tight lips, and stares forward at some arbitrary point in her mind like she’s bracing herself for something. She takes a beat, then steps back inside through the glass door with black, drawn blinds. She’s a big talker, but Debi is about to get fucked by three guys.

  She ignores the AD, walks right past him onto the set, surveys the cheesy appointments, gets to know the bedroom, and just kind of nods, distracted, to any tech or actor who greets her.

  Al Goldstein, the notorious publisher of Screw, and his entourage—Mel Blanc Jr., the cartoon guy, Blanc’s centerfold wife, and Veronica Hart, a retired porn star who looks like a country-music singer—are upstairs eating lunch, but the dwarf from Twin Peaks is here now, looking like a swarthy, three-foot-tall French seaman. He’s with his obese, six-foot girlfriend. So there’s still a bit of celebrity commotion on the set.

  Kaitlyn Ashley recognizes him instantly, runs out of the building—home, presumably—and returns three or four minutes later with her point-and-shoot camera and Twin Peaks boxed set, and has the dwarf sign the videos. Jay Ashley, Kaitlyn’s husband and one of the guys about to fuck Debi Diamond, shoots the snapshot.

  Once that’s taken care of, Kaitlyn approaches Debi gingerly, but not to be ignored. She stands straight, facing Debi, close; then their bodies press together. Kaitlyn caresses Debi with hushed, romantic tones. For a minute the two actresses are oblivious to everything around them. Kaitlyn pets Debi’s hair, and the girls share a long kiss on the mouth. Whatever their history together may be, the moment isn’t dirty or about sex.

  Kaitlyn pulls herself away, still holding Debi’s hands. When they no longer reach she lets go, continues to back off, and finally starts up the stairs that lead off the set.

  “I love you Debi,” she says, waving, smiling, still ignoring everyone else. Debi smiles too, but weakly. She doesn’t say anything. Kaitlyn looks across the bedroom set as if it’s an afterthought and says, “See ya at home, honey,” to her husband, who seems preoccupied, like he has presex-scene jitters. Jay acts like a little kid who just wants his mom to go, doesn’t want his friends to see her fussing over him. He grunts a response, then ignores his wife.

  Cass Paley strides in, greets Debi gently, friendly, but unaware. Whatever just happened between Debi and Kaitlyn has evaporated, left no trace of itself. Cass sees his crew is ready, his cast is all here, and the dwarf and his girlfriend have found apple boxes to sit on out of the way. Cass gives the word to go.

  The other two guys in the scene are Jake Williams, a veteran, and Billy Rocket, a PA from one of Jay Shanahan’s shoots. Today is Rocket’s second or third chance in front of the camera.

  Jake is by far the most confident of the three. He knows what Debi responds to—rough treatment—and he gives it to her. His face twists up angrily as he rams four fingers in and out of her, setting the tone for the other guys.

  The sex is dark and sad, like the first time I saw Debi perform. She acts out her own private tragedy. She only smiles—it’s really a taunt—when she’s impressed by the abuse the boys are able to muster up; like “not bad ...” when one thrusts into her ass with particular vigor. The guys look like they’re just doing their best to hang on, to not get hurled off the bed in a gust of Debi’s adrenaline.

  During a break—she doesn’t need it, the guys do—Debi can’t slow down. She crawls around the set on all fours, thrashing her head from side to side, shouting, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She walks out. Cass follows. Now it’s his job to keep her cool until the scene is complete. He stands with her while she sucks a Marlboro in the doorway, her makeup smeared, green dress around her waist, bottomless, topless, barefoot.

  The guys are recongregated around the bed when Debi returns. They’re friendly, like before the scene began, naturally, like that’s them. They even get Debi to laugh, but it passes. What’s required of them by this actress is that they dig down deep into whatever source of rage they can find inside themselves, summon whatever hatred they can access, and give it up. Debi mugs for my camera, contorted, in the midst of horrifying aggression.

  This scene confirms what I felt the first time we met. Debi’s not the weird one. It’s the ones who walk through their sex scenes like emotional zombies who are whacked out. Debi’s trip rings true. Why shouldn’t this experience be gut-wrenching?

  The last guy comes on her chest. Cass Paley says, “Cut, thanks everyone,” and Debi is left hanging off the edge of the bed, her head on the floor, spent. It’s a dramatic pose, and she knows it. She could be hanging there a little longer because I’m here, seeing it, but that doesn’t make the pose any less accurate at all, any less real. It just means Debi is aware, again narrating her own existence with amazingly expressive body language.

  She’s just performed “Dance of the Tragic Life of a Porn Star” and still somehow managed to give her director what he needs.

  The guys sift through tangled sheets to find a pair of Jockey shorts, or a belt, or a sock, but none offers her his hand, like maybe now they really are pissed, all jacked up (even though they’ve each just come) and blame her for making them feel this way. Debi pulls herself up and storms off the set.

  She bounds up the stairs toward the dressing room.

  “Oh, fuck. That was bullshit. Bullshit. I’m so fucking horny ... I need to go fuck a stranger or something. That gave me nothing . . . shit. Nothing.”

  Debi keeps talking while she changes.

  “Those fucking guys have to come or they don’t even get paid. It doesn’t matter what I get out of it. Ugh. This is bullshit.”

  She scrubs her face, packs her bag. Debi says she has a mermaid costume in her trunk. I don’t give her much of a response. I’m numbering film canisters. She tries again, sounding hopeful.

  “Can I show you my mermaid costume? It’s really fuckin’ cool.”

  THERE ARE CHIPS and scratches on the roof of her silver Mercedes. Debi jiggles the key until the trunk pops open. There’s a dry-cleaning bag, thin plastic. Debi pulls it off. She holds the hanger up, proud. I’m expecting something realistic, or literal, but it’s not. The costume is made of iridescent hosiery material, transparent, in pale green hues, coral. It looks delicate, and Debi handles it like it is. She savors the chance to handle something delicately.

  It’s an awkward moment. I’m not good at giving her what she wants here, not sure what it is. I’m more interested in the scratches on her roof. Maybe I’m angry about the scene I just watched, angry at Debi for putting herself through it, and maybe a little shell-shocked myself, simply from having witnessed it at all. She seems to have left it behind.

  Debi examines the material of her mermaid costume lovingly, with childlike fascination. I can’t resist any longer. I break the moment by asking about the roof of her Mercedes.

  “Oh, that?” she says. “I know it’s fuckin’ crazy, so please don’t even say anything, OK?”

  Debi pauses, makes a “whaddya gonna do” kind of face, like she’s about to tell a story about some wild te
enager she knows, then she continues, softer, sounding wistful but focused.

  “Sometimes if it’s real late and I’m all amped up, and there’s nobody on the road that I can see, I climb out the sun roof and, y’know, just fuckin’ stand there with my arms out in the wind. For like thirty seconds I really move, y’know? . . . really fuckin’ move . . . until the car slows down.”

  I can almost feel what she feels as she describes it. I know she’s out of her fuckin’ mind. But I can picture Debi Diamond as the Silver Mercedes Surfer, in the middle of the night, or maybe as the sun is rising over the Santa Monica Freeway, and I imagine the freedom she might experience for those few seconds, even if it is a hard story to believe.

  Then, in a quicker, detached voice comes Debi’s coda: “When I do it in heels it fucks up the finish, y’know? Chips the paint. Other than that, I take pretty good care of this car.”

  JANUARY 1996

  LAS VEGAS. THERE ARE LINES EVERYWHERE. LONG LINES TO CHECK IN, LONG LINES TO check out. Long lines for taxis. The line to get into the Sahara Hotel and Casino’s ballroom, into the porn domain, is the longest one so far, a hundred fifty yards at least. It cuts across the dark and smoky, dingy casino, past coffee shops, cocktail lounges, and gift shops, each with its own line crisscrossing the big one.

  Who are all these people? Their CES ‘96 badges say they work for companies like “Alpha”-this and “Beta”-that. “Tek,” “Tech-,” “Techno,” “-systems,” “-tech,” “Technologies”: all popular. Then there are endless variations on the three-letter initial theme—CFX, ATI—all blurring together. The men wear leisure-type stuff, pale-yellow nylon golf shirts, light-blue terry cloth, Dockers, Rockports. The women—their peers—are in business suits: skirts, pumps, like for them it’s required, like the way they laugh along with the guys at all the “male” humor. These are people from all over the world. Most of them are carrying identical blue-and-white cardboard IBM briefcases—that company’s ingenious giveaway. Even the sprinkling of longhairs in jeans and black T-shirts with biker wallets chained to their belt loops are carrying the omnipresent promotion.