The Hedgehog at 50

I. His Luck is Our Luck

Ron Jeremy, who turned 50 this year, isn't performing in all that many porn movies these days, and you may be wondering how the most famous porn star ever, bar none, the ladies included, with 1,800-plus skin flicks to his name, is doing. He's doing good. Much of his time is spent on the road in places such as Tampa, Chicago and Kansas City, where clubs hire him to perform this comedy routine he's developed (strictly cornball stuff: "Hey, lady, do you like birds? You'll like this—it's just a swallow!"). Otherwise he can be found in Los Angeles, where he rises early, often before eight A.M. after going to bed late, often after three A.M., for days on end, until you think he may keel over. Inside his condo in a deluxe doorman building on a street just east of Sunset, he slips into a pair of Adidas sweats (one of three pairs in constant rotation), never mind the shirt, scratches his famously hairy, zeppelin-size chest, maybe greets his pet Russian box turtle, Cherry, maybe urges a visitor to kiss Cherry on Cherry's turtle lips, then pads around, yawning and trying not to stumble over the various mementos of his life, which are strewn everywhere and signify quite an illustrious past. There are Ron Jeremy posters, Ron Jeremy porn tapes, Ron Jeremy porn-organization hall-of-fame awards, copies of the recent Ron Jeremy documentary (Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy), copies of his music video, "Freak of the Week" (which spent 27 weeks on the Billboard charts), and about a billion dollars' worth of Ron Jeremy–branded merchandise, which has included rolling papers, cigars, watches, clocks and bibs for babies. As it happens, no one is a more avid fan of Ron Jeremy's career than Ron Jeremy. A hero to all the average guys in the country, he is the same hero to himself, as if he still can't believe that he, a hirsute Jewish doofus from Bayside, Queens, offspring of a physicist and a cryptographer, has made it so big in the world of porn, all on the strength of his oversize, never-fail penis, which measures 9.75 inches erect, with not a little help from his oversize, never-fail personality, which measures off the scale in terms of friendliness, volubility and self-promotion. Of course, he'd rather have made it as a legitimate screen actor, his original ambition. Still, he has a million "utterly fantastic" stories about his first 24 years in the trade, and if you've got the time, he'll tell them all in detail, prefacing each with the same pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming tagline: "True story!"

"True story!" he says. "Fifteen years ago Robin Williams, Stephen Stills, Sam Kinison and I are in a cab. You're going to think I'm full of it. I wouldn't blame you. But it was all of us, hanging out with this cabdriver, and all he wants is my autograph—nobody else's, right? So Robin's going, 'Oh, this is amazing!' And Sam's laughing. And Stephen Stills, I swear to god, says to the cabbie, 'There are a lot of lonely guys out there who really need Ron Jeremy to pull through.' I coulda died right then and there."

Just then the phone rings, cutting off Ron before he can launch into another of his true stories, such as the one about the time Nancy Sinatra said to him, "you know, you're very good at what you do," or the time Tony Curtis said to him, "I've enjoyed years and years of watching you make movies." It's a girl on the line, and she's apparently upset with Ron about some other girl of their acquaintance. Soon he's shouting, "I'm telling you, you're dreaming! I'm telling you now, the Lord as my witness, on my mother's grave, I didn't call her at five in the morning! I gave her a little hug good-bye but not even a kiss! I mean, is this a problem?" He hangs up, sighs and puts on a plus-size Hawaiian-print shirt. At 245 pounds he's a goodly porker, but under all that weight is a lot of surprisingly firm muscle, and to prove it, he'll make you touch it. That's the way it is with Ron: Almost everything needs proof. It's not enough that he tells you he's got a girl half his age in his bedroom; you've got to go in there and see for yourself.

She is a petite brunette named Jennifer, and she is indeed 25. Wrapped up in bedsheets she says, "I've been seeing Ron for three months now, and all the people I've told so far are like, 'Oh my god, you're sleeping with Ron Jeremy?' Well, it is big, but you get used to it." She props her head up on an elbow and says, cheerfully, "I've come to realize that size matters completely. I don't know if I can go back to a small guy now."

These are some of the things Ron is up to these days. He's doing good. But his life is not without complications, and these complications mostly have to do with two women, one a former porn star named Dalny Marga, the other a rather quiet veterinarian's assistant named Natalie. Ron thinks he may love Natalie. Ron thinks he may want Natalie to have his kids. Natalie, though, isn't sure about any of this, especially not if Ron is going to keep on living the life he's living.

•

The Hedgehog, as he is famously known, drives a dusty piece-of-crap Saturn sedan filled with junk, including a few french fries that appear to be about as old as he is. He sports the same jet-black push-broom mustache he's had since entering the business in 1979, only now the ratty thing is gray, or would be if he didn't vigilantly apply Just for Men dye gel to it. He says that despite appearances, he has tons of money stashed away, so don't worry about him. He is currently under contract for "a few grand a month" to Metro Studios, where his main obligation is to be the impresario on the box cover of such X-rated videos as Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Sunset Strip, Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Venice Beach and Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Viva Ron Vegas. He may appear in sex scenes in those movies, but it's not Ron having sex that sells. It's Ron acting as general porn clown prince that really moves the goods. "I don't fool myself," he says. "My value is in the fact that I'm recognizable." Over the years he's succeeded in this while sleeping with almost every porn actress worth sleeping with, including Traci Lords ("Terrific—and always sober!"), Christy Canyon ("Phenomenal, and I love natural double-Ds!") and Tabitha Stevens ("I did one of her first anal scenes"). During his peak years, in the so-called golden age of porn of the prevideo 1980s, he earned upwards of $1,000 a day for his labors and gave like no porn man had ever given before—six pop shots in a single day being his heroic record. His fans loved him then, and at porn conventions today he still gets more well-wishers than Jenna Jameson.

"Here is Ron Jeremy," one of them recently said. "He's fucking his way merrily through life, never gets sick, always happy, no hardships, have dick will travel, a mustache and a smile. His life is one long romp. No wife, no worries, nothing to keep him down, the ultimate free bird. Who has ever had it better? The point is, nothing will happen to America as long as Ron Jeremy lives in it. His luck will be our luck. I was in the same hotel as Ron once, and I felt as safe and secure as a baby in the womb. I was in the safest place on earth. I was in the proximity of Ron's luck. So don't worry about the terrorists. Let them worry about us."

Absolutely right. Yet no man's luck works against time, and Ron has begun to notice the grinding of the years. "Turning 50 was very depressing, and I still haven't quite gotten over it," he says. "I feel good. I can still outrun, outjump, outkick and outswim half the kids half my age. But I'm fat. I love the buffet too much. My cholesterol is not bad, but unfortunately my blood pressure is up, which is really a shame. Anyway, the thought that I'm 50 is killing me. I mean, I have to go get a colonoscopy." He is silent for a moment. Then he says, "I'll tell you the honest-to-god truth. I can still get a good whopping monster boner, but it takes a little more effort than it used to. Before, it was like, you know, I'd snap my fingers and it's hard. Now it takes a little more effort."

For the most part, though, he says he's still the same Ron he's always been—damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead, and let that jizz fly—which is all anybody really wants in a porn star anyway, for better or for worse.

II. A Night Out

Ron rarely spends an evening in his condo, curled up with a good book or maybe watching Seinfeld reruns on TV. His general philosophy seems to be, If you aren't on Sunset Boulevard, how can you get to Sunset Boulevard? Four or five nights a week, out he goes, often as the soberest man in town, since he doesn't do drugs and hardly ever drinks. Usually on his arm is Natalie, 26, with whom he's lived for the past three years. "We don't like to say it's love, because that gets a little corny," he says. "We say it's R and R, which stands for 'roommates with romance.'" Natalie is not around at the moment, so tonight he's got a date with Dalny Marga. "There's never going to be another Dalny Marga, I swear," Ron likes to say. She is 35, has been out of the business for three years and now wants back in. She and Ron are old friends, having done many sex scenes together back in the day, and she comes to him tonight dolled up porn-star perfect in a sheer white diaphanous pantsuit, with skyscraper heels on her feet and a voice that's pure spun sugar and morning dew.

Basically they spend the evening driving frantically from one West Hollywood party or event to another in Ron's shabby Saturn. At one point Dalny asks Ron if Natalie knows about her. "I never lie," he says. "But she wouldn't even care. We're open, you know?" Dalny says, "She wouldn't like it if I were with you—trust me." And Ron doesn't say anything. Then, after a Heidi Fleiss book signing, he gets a call on his cell phone from one of his agents, who wants a $1,500 commission Ron owes him for some work.

Afterward, Dalny says sweetly, "Tell him I've got his commission for him. I'll take care of it for you."

Blinking, Ron says, "Oh, Dalny, no need for that. I never ask for that kind of favor. you know that. Have I ever?"

"No, but it would be my little gift to you. I'll be your commission. We'll really go flying." She is silent for a while, then says, "Ron, I want to go back to die old times again, when we worked together. That was so fun, wasn't it? I wish we could do that again."

Ron doesn't say anything. He's chewing on his right thumb tip, gnawing at the skin until it's peeled back. Maybe he's thinking about what Dalny said, maybe he's thinking of something else. It's hard to tell, so engrossed does he seem in his thumb tip.

Then they go to the local Déjà Vu strip club. They drop by Musso & Frank's restaurant, where after eating his own food Ron eyeballs everyone else's ("Don't you want those shrimps?"). They listen to music at the Cat Club on Sunset, and as usual Slim Jim Phantom from the Stray Cats is on drums. Everywhere they go, Ron's luck holds: He is asked to pay for nothing, and everyone is glad to see him. The regular joes high-five him, the regular janes whisper and giggle. He gets offers to do porn movies. He takes down numbers and hands out his own (or one of his own—he has three). He is happy and a real man-about-town, with Dalny always somewhere nearby.

Back in the car, Dalny wants to know why the guys who asked Ron to be in their porn video didn't ask her, too.

Ron stares at her. "Well, they didn't know you were in the business."

"Oh, they don't?" Dalny nearly yells. "What do I look like, the Flying Nun?"

Chuckling, Ron says, "Isn't she adorable? She's also one of the best performers in the business. Does one of the best anals. Great anal. Dalny was a specialist at doing things other girls couldn't. She was queen of the double anals."

"Thank you!" Dalny says, happily.

Finally, after midnight, they wind up at the Hustler store on Sunset, drinking coffee with some friends. Ron is soliloquizing in his usual way. Of all his celebrity encounters, he says, fewer than a handful have gone sour. When he was introduced to Lisa Marie Presley, she looked him up and down and said, "Whatever." Rosanna Arquette didn't even acknowledge he was in the room. And when he proffered his hand to sitcom star Katey Sagal, she looked at it and then looked away. "That was the worst of them," he goes on. "I wanted to just throw a drink in her face. But all that is counterbalanced by the celebrities who have come up to me and (continued on page 144)Hedgehog At 50(continued from page 80) asked for autographs. Mandy Patinkin. Patti LuPone. Eddie Murphy had his bodyguards come over to say hello. Same with Richard Pryor. Then at a Manhattan restaurant, I get a tap on the back, and this guy goes, 'Love your work!' It's Billy Joel. I'll never forget that. Garth Brooks sent someone over to say hi to me once. The latest two? Sting and Sheryl Crow. I got the picture to go with it, too. Those two totally made my day—oh my god, such a thrill!—but I've got thousands and thousands of stories about different celebrities. I'm just touching on the highlights."

Suddenly, Dalny apparently decides she's about had it with Ron and his stories, even if they are the highlights.

"You are talking about people I cannot stand," she hisses. "In my opinion they're not even celebrities."

For a moment, not knowing where this outburst came from, Ron looks thoroughly disoriented. Finally he says, "You don't know them, though. I mean, I don't know them that much either...."

But Dalny is not to be placated, not even by Ron's rather sad parenthetical admission. "You guys are bugging the hell out of me," she continues, building up steam. "I'm Dalny Marga and you're treating me like I'm not. You don't think about anyone but yourself. You never tell anybody how beautiful I am. You never give me any connections."

"Dalny, I don't do that much porn anymore," Ron says bleakly. "I do one scene every two months. When do you see me doing porn? I hardly ever do it anymore. I don't even like porn. Porn is boring. I'm trying to do more mainstream stuff. you know that. But remember that day we did that little shoot for Hustler?"

"You gotta be kidding me!"

"Now, honey—"

"You know what? You're jealous of me, because you would have been referring me to Metro if you weren't, and when a man is jealous of a little girl named Dalny Marga, that's pathetic."

"You've never been this weird in your entire life," Ron says.

"I'm weird? Because I'm saying it like it is?"

"You're going a little too far," Ron says, getting up from his seat and heading out the front door. Pretty soon he and Dalny are standing in the middle of Sunset, with Dalny shrieking, "I want to be a movie star! What's so wrong with that? You don't ever think big, like, 'She's a movie star! She's got fans!' You're just using me. You're a user! You never mention Dalny Marga. You just cover me up. Just shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. I want you to get me work! Why don't you get me work?" she cries out miserably.

"I have no say in casting," Ron says to her, levelly. "Honey, with Metro, I have a contract. You make money without having to work. That's the whole idea with a contract—they pay you not to work. I have no say in casting. I go out with you because we get along and have fun, don't we? We hardly ever have sex. We go to great parties, see great people, go to fun events, have nice meals."

Dalny can hardly believe her ears. "So what!" she shouts. "So what! It is so pathetic!" And so the night goes, with Dalny telling it like it is from her point of view, in the middle of Ron's beloved Sunset Strip.

III. Macbeth with a Boner

John Holmes—some people consider him to be even more famous than Ron Jeremy—died of complications from AIDS in 1988. Harry Reems, another of the greats from the early days of modern porn, is now 56 and selling real estate to Mormons in Salt Lake City. Jamie Gillis, 60, and John Leslie, 58, are still in the business but mostly behind the camera, rarely in front. Ron is especially fond of these last two. "They were my heroes in the day, because they were the greatest," he says. 'Jamie could fuck a bed of calves' liver and make it look convincing. He dated New York magazine food critic Gael Greene, who took him all over the world on wine and jam tastings. To this day, he can tell you where a mouthful of jelly is from. And John Leslie was always a great actor, with a lot of charisma and a John Travolta look. Actually, they were both great performers in any genre." Even so, you rarely hear anything about those guys anymore. Ron, on the other hand, is ubiquitous: He's on Howard Stern and the Jerry Springer Show. He takes on Tommy Lee in a Celebrity Death Match cockfight on MTV. He's a running gag on Beavis and Butt-head. He's arrested for allegedly trying to boink a girl in a strip club (the charges are later dropped, though not before The New York Post splashes the story all over its gossip pages). He's arrested for pandering, twice, and is acquitted both times. He's accused by Rolling Stone of getting girls for rock stars—like rock stars really need his help getting girls. He's on The View with Barbara Walters, on Nightline with Ted Koppel and on Geraldo with Geraldo. He's on The Man Show, of course, but he's also on The Weakest Link.

You totally expect to see him in porn movies such as I'll Have Another Butt Light, Kid Sparkle's House of Freaks, Throbin Hood: Prince of Beaves, Super Hornio Brothers and You Said a Mouthful. But maybe you're just kicking back, savoring 9 1/2 Weeks or Boogie Nights, and there he is again, in the credits as a consultant. Okay, those are mainstream kink flicks. What about suburban mall fare such as Reindeer Games, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Ben Affleck? He's in that one, too, unmistakable as Prisoner #1. You can't even escape him on reruns of NewsRadio or Just Shoot Me.

In fact, no porn star short of the estimable Traci Lords has ever so crossed over into other areas of the entertainment business. And yet, following his final buffet, all that is likely to appear on his tombstone is He Got Laid.

This does not bother Ron, however, largely because he doesn't believe that such will be his fate.

"In some of my adult films I've done some really nice acting," he says. "Plus, I think I've helped make porn more fun and put a nice look on it. My sex was always fun, erotic, friendly, smiles. I mean, what's going to be on Cameron Diaz's tombstone? Did she make miracles? Did she do Shakespearean soliloquies? I've accomplished something. If I were going to be a dishwasher or a shoeshine man, I'd want to be the best dishwasher, the best shoeshiner. I was raised to believe that anything you do, you do the best. Let's see Richard Burton or Sir John Gielgud do Hamlet or Macbeth with a boner. Let's see those guys keep an erection and do memorized dialogue. Anyone who thinks porn doesn't involve some kind of skill is a blithering idiot. We are performers!"

Then again, so what if all the tombstone says is he got laid?

"I like the choices I've made," he goes on. "I've hang glided off mountains, ridden horses, sailed oceans, been with gorgeous women, made porn films in Spain, been on private Learjets. I've met famous people. I've been recognized. I mean, when I'm 90 years old, sitting in a rocking chair and smoking a pipe and have probably had a prostate operation and can't fuck anymore, I'm going to look back on all this shit and say, 'Damn! It's been kind of fun!' I think I've got a great life. I really do."

•

The year is 1968, the same year that 10,000 North Vietnamese die in the Tet Offensive, that Charlie Company massacres the villagers of My Lai, that Martin Luther King Jr. is murdered, that Robert Kennedy is murdered, that Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention release We're Only in It for the Money, that the Chicago cops kick much hippie ass at the Democratic National Convention, that nutty Richard Nixon becomes the 37th president of the United States and that Ron Jeremy, age 15, is at Ten Mile River Boy Scout Camp, in upstate New York, near Narrowsburg, with his own little world set to explode all around him. He is reaching down to tie his boots when it dawns on him that, without much additional effort, he could probably stick his penis in his mouth. He tries. He can. He tries it some more.

Later on, not knowing what to make of the mind-boggling discovery, he calls his dad. "Dad," he says. "I can kiss my own penis. Is this normal?"

"Is anybody in the room with you?"

"No."

"Well, may I suggest that you don't tell anybody but me that you can do this? They might laugh at you. There's nothing wrong with it, I guess, but it's not exactly normal. When you're 18, there will be girls who'll kiss it for you. So don't worry about it."

He didn't worry about it, but he didn't forget about it, either. So that's another thing Ron is famous for, in movies such as Inside Seka, The Lady Is a Tramp, Lips and Fresh Meat: taking the gifts that God gave him, using them to full advantage and blowing himself on film. You could say his ambition knows no bounds and he will do anything to stand out in a crowd, and you'd probably be right.

One day he is at the fabulous Sunset Marquis hotel, out by the pool, sitting in the shade under a cafe umbrella. He orders a steak salad and talks more about his early years: about his father, Arnold Hyatt, a physicist, and his mother, Sylvia, who was a cryptographer in the OSS during World War II and died of Parkinson's disease two years after Ron entered the business. He says that she never cared that he was in porn. She was a free spirit who understood that her middle child was a free spirit too, unlike her older son, Larry, who graduated from Harvard at the top of his class and was an executive at Marriott International, or her daughter, Susie, who is a substitute teacher. Or any of the family's other relatives, who were all doctors, lawyers, teachers, veterinarians and diplomats and had names like Barney Greengrass and were partners of the late gangster Bugsy Siegel.

Picking at his salad, he recalls how he was almost a prodigy on the piano as a kid; was the fastest runner in his elementary school; received numerous report cards while attending Benjamin Cardozo High in Queens that said, "If only Ronnie would apply himself"; graduated from Queens College with a bachelor of arts in theater and education; is one point shy of his master's in education; studied serious acting with the Dramatis Personis and La MaMa theater companies in Manhattan; waited tables in the Catskills on weekends; allowed his girlfriend Alice Schlehner to send a nude picture of him to Playgirl magazine in 1978; appeared in that October's Playgirl, with Three's Company star John Ritter on the cover; was sucked into the easymoney world of porn, his first film being Tigresses and Other Man-Eaters, for which he was paid $200 and in which you see only his body, never his face; changed his last name at his father's request; developed a love of James Taylor's music; also developed a love of oatmeal, Wheaties, shrimp and lobster, and every other food in the world except blue cheese dressing; joined Greenpeace; counts among his best friends Dennis Hoff from the Bunny Ranch, Al Goldstein of Screw and Mark Carrier, the beefy but shadowy head of Metro; and is now, at the age of 50, a porn star who is saying nutty, outrageous stuff he's never said before, such as, "I'm getting more monogamous. I'm not as wild and crazy. I once wanted different nooky every other day. Now it's once every week, and I'm okay," and "I want to have kids. As great as my life has been, they say all that simply disappears the minute you hear your kid say 'Daddy.'"

"It was with Natalie that I first realized I wanted kids," he continues. "True story. Natalie missed a period or two. Normally I'd go, 'Oh, fuck, here comes abortion time.' But we thought about it and decided to have it. It was like, 'Let's do it. Let's do the whole thing.' And then she got her period. I go to sleep at night sometimes and dream I had that kid. True story. I'm playing with my little baby boy, and then I wake up. It's a painful dream, and I'm miserable."

This gets him to thinking more about Natalie. "One of the problems me and Natalie have—it's a very sad thing, but you can love somebody, and the sex and the electricity can still wane a little bit. I can barrel through, but I'm often better with a new face. And being that I'm kind of famous and known for having a penis, a lot of girls want to check it out. But if a girl's 26, like Natalie is, she wants to have sex and not go too many days without it. I'm not the powerhouse lover I was before, and yet she doesn't seem to mind. She goes, 'I don't mind."'

While talking, he's still working on his steak salad, every once in a while looking around to see if anyone nearby is someone he should notice (no) or who should notice him (yes). Suddenly he turns silent, purses his lips, sticks a finger in the air as if testing for wind, moves his great big furry head to the right, leans over and vomits onto the pavement, twice.

Instantly all eyes are on him. A waiter rushes over.

"I'm fine," Ron says. "I'm okay. Sorry. That was weird. I haven't done that in my life. I haven't done that in years. Just fluid came out, that's all."

He sits there. He feels no need to clean up in the bathroom. He gets some horseradish onto a fork, eats it and then says, a little too loudly, "Phil Anselmo of Pantera? Nice guy. A fan of porn, too." And apparently all is right with Ron's world once again.

•

He's driving to Redondo Beach, to Burbank, to the cleaners, to the bank, to the AIDS clinic for his monthly test, to the Burbank Airport Hilton for one of those sci-fi conventions where all the old stars show up to sign autographs and it's a whole sad scene full of geeks and losers. He's driving, and while he's driving he's talking, and the talking never stops. You'd think that he would run out of things to say, but you'd be wrong.

What he likes to do after a good meal: "Burp, roll over, float a nice air biscuit, watch HBO and sleep till spring." What he thinks about while masturbating: nothing, because he doesn't masturbate, hasn't in years, can't remember the last time he did. Whom he sometimes fantasizes about while getting it up for a porn scene: Michelle Pfeiffer, when she turns into a bird in the movie Ladyhawke. How he would feel if a porn girl said she'd heard it was a bad career move to work with him: "That would bother me, that would infuriate me, because it's bull. Now, Jenna Jameson once said, 'He's a great guy. He's a friend of mine, but if you work with Ron Jeremy you should get an Academy Award as an actress.' I cracked up over that. Some girls just want to work with cute young boys. 'Ron Jeremy? No, he's heavy, he's hairy and he's old.' I've heard that, which is all right. But I would say more girls wanted to than didn't."

At the sci-fi convention he meets up with his friend Greg Watkins, who is a porn director. Ron is mobbed by fans, of course, which is great and all, but he's more interested in seeing the has-been stars in attendance. Why, there's Lorenzo Lamas and there's Lorenzo's ex!

One of the greatest moments in Ron's life was when director John Frankenheimer flew him to Paris to play a bit part in the Robert De Niro caper Ronin. One of the saddest moments was when Frankenheimer had to cut him from the film at the insistence of United Artists executives, even though the credit "Ron as Fishmonger" remains, as a kind of reminder of at least one area of his life in which his fabled luck has never held.

"I always wished I had gotten more breaks back in New York, off-Broadway, and gotten more legitimate work," he says while strolling around. "But look at the odds. The odds in mainstream are thousands to one. The odds in porn are one hundred to one. Because you pull your penis out—a lot of guys won't do that. None of your Broadway actors are going to do that. So I was able to get into porn, and I was accepted there."

A guy and his girlfriend interrupt him, shivering with excitement, the guy thrusting his camera at strangers and saying, "Please, can somebody snap a picture for us so I can get my girlfriend in the shot? How often do you get to stand next to Ron Jeremy?"

Standing back, his friend Greg Watkins says, "Ron would cut off his left nut to be a real actor. Actually, he'd settle for being a has-been actor over being a porn actor. Deep down, all he wants is to be taken seriously as an actor." While Greg's at it, he ticks off a few other things to know about his friend. "He's the cheapest man I know. When he flies, he uses garbage bags as his luggage. I saw him get a $90 parking ticket once, and tears, physical tears, came to his eyes. Oh my god, did he cry." Then he gets back to talking about Ron and the movies: "He was really good friends with Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer tried to squeeze him in whenever he could, and he did in Reindeer Games, 52 Pick-Up and Dead Bang. But where was Ron in Ronin? Cut. Frankenheimer was using Ron for the girls. He got laid, so he was happy. I mean, some people look at him like, 'Well, he's my connection to pussy. He gets me pussy, I'll put him in a movie.' I'd do it. But then if you get cut out, what are you gonna do? What recourse do you have?"

In another room Ron sees the guy who played Eddie Munster on the old Munsters TV show. He looks truly and deeply excited and can't wait to go up and say hello.

IV. Do Something, Change Something

Back on the road, Ron is thinking about Natalie. He's also thinking about Dalny Marga. "So what!" Dalny Marga had said about everything she and Ron did together, the food they ate, the people they met, the sex they didn't necessarily have. "So what! It is so pathetic!"

A moment later he gets Joe Wilson, director of production at Metro Studios, on the phone.

"Have you ever met Dalny Marga?" he asks Joe Wilson. "you know who I'm talking about, the blonde girl, old 1930s star type? Well, if you can ever find her work, she's really a great kid—does great anal scenes, double anal, the whole works, you know? You think maybe like the older sister or the mom or some part like that? That is so nice. Great. At least I've kept my word just saying this to you. Hey, Joe, thanks. Okay, man, bye-bye."

Then he calls Natalie.

Actually, when Ron said that he and Natalie were living together at his condo, that was a lie. They are no longer roommates with romance. She has been living with a girlfriend in the Valley for a while now, unhappy with Ron and his Ron's-luck, free-bird lifestyle. She doesn't want to see him tonight, but Ron is insistent.

"Natalie, we're already on our way," he says. "All right, honey? It won't kill you. I'll just say hello. All right, honey? All right? How's 20 minutes? All right, doll? Is that all right? I can't hear you. All right, I'll see you shortly. All right, doll, no sooner than 20 minutes. All right? Bye-bye, doll. Bye, honey."

•

The place where Natalie is staying is an actual house—clean, white, big and airy—in an actual suburb. It's the kind of place in which you could easily raise a couple of kids. Natalie has reddish hair, wears rose-tinted glasses, jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt. She looks sleepy and in appearance favors a hippie Sissy Spacek much more than, say, a Dalny Marga. A million years of guessing, probably, and you'd never guess that Ron Jeremy is her type. Or that she once went out with Ron. Or whatever the case currently is, because it's hard to tell.

For a while they sit on the floor in her bedroom, and she does most of the talking, her hair falling down in front of her eyes like a curtain. She says that Ron, for all of his experience with women, doesn't understand women at all. She says Ron believes that most women, like most men, are a ble to have sex outside a relationship and not have it mean anything. She says that's wrong. She also says that Ron's insistence on an open lifestyle wouldn't be so hurtful if he made love to her more often or even just spent more time with her.

"I'm just asking for something," she says. "Do something. Change something. I mean, we're so opposite, I don't even know how we lasted for three years. You'd think at a certain point you'd go, 'This girl likes me for who I am even if I do really stupid, off-the-wall things that normal people don't do. Maybe I should change for the better.' When you're in a relationship, you want to develop and change for the better. You're on this planet for only a short while, so why not?"

"Well," Ron says, "you have seen me go from a couple of extracurricular girls a week to once a month or something. I mean, my libido has dropped a little, but I also made it drop a little. And I did say that if we had a kid, maybe I would do total monogamy."

"You sit there and you convince people of your plans, but you don't do anything," Natalie says softly. "So who cares? I'm not going to have kids with you in the hopes that you will change. Hell no."

"Hell no," says Ron, laughing, thinking this is funny.

"You won't even change now," she says, and she's perfectly serious. "You can't do the simplest life things that normal people do. You're too involved with your own needs. I know how you are, Ron, and kids don't fix anything. They make it worse."

"Well, that's true to some extent."

"What do you know?" Natalie says sharply. "This is just typical. Girls will end the relationship long before guys do, and they're just trying to find the right time. Then the guy realizes it, and he tries to get her back, but she's already done and over with."

"Yeah, but you're not."

Her head snaps up at him. "How do you know?"

Ron chuckles. "Natalie, Natalie, who are you kidding?"

And she giggles too.

After dinner Ron drives back to his condo. On the way, he phones his 25-year-old, Jennifer, and asks her to be there when he arrives. He calls her doll, sweetie and honey. Coming off the 101 freeway onto Highland, he remarks on how good tonight's meal was and how full he is. While stopped at the Highland and Sunset stoplight, he cracks the car window to get some air, shakes his head to clear the cobwebs and rests his hands on his tummy. His hands rise and fall and rise and fall. Pretty soon, his eyes are shut and he's snoring gently, asleep at the wheel, and when the light in front of him changes, he is the last to know.

An Actor on his Craft

Bad Girls II (1983)

"I play a sheriff—it was shot at the same ranch where they shot The Dukes of Hazzard. It has car chases, a nice story line, lots of dialogue. There's a shot where a car goes off a cliff. We didn't buy stock footage—we shot it. That's something you don't see anymore."

High Heels'n Hot Wheels (2000)

"I co-wrote this movie with the owner of real automobile dealership. Goldstein and I did that scene from Rush Hour—I'm trying to put on rap music and he's trying to put on symphonic music, and we fight over the radio. There's a lot of self-deprecating humor."

Shrinkwrapped (2000)

"The girl is ruining my credibility in the movie within the movie, and the director is getting pissed at me because I'm supplying bad talent. I was using emotion memory from when I was real director and producer of porn to portray the producer in this movie."

San Fernando Jones & the Temple of Poon (2001)

"Porn in many ways is the ultimate test of Stanislavski acting. To be good at porn, an actor has to totally remove himself from the audience. You shut out the cameraman, the gaffer, the best boy, the makeup artist—well, you could look at her, maybe."

Ron Jeremy on the Loose: Viva Ron Vegas (2003)

"Part one is on the Sunset Strip, part two is the beaches. Number three is called Viva Ron Vegas. Part four is in San Francisco. We do a tour and show actual sights. We go through crowds of people, sign loads of autographs. It gets my personality into it."

When he was Introduced to Lisa Marie Presley, She Looked him Up and Down and said, "Whatever."