The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz (12 page)

“Sure,” I said. “Just tell me when you need it.”

The director and crew shook their heads in amazement. “Wow,” a gaffer muttered under his breath. “This guy is good.”

“Can you do it in one minute?” Jim asked.

“Yeah, no problem.” I glanced at my watch. “One minute and counting.”

Samantha laughed, which didn’t exactly help matters. Any contraction in her vagina was enough to make me cum ahead of schedule. But I managed to cling to what remained of my willpower and continue the scene.

Samantha was riding on top of me, grinding onto my cock with violent thrusts. Normally, this is a dangerous position for me; it’s when I have the least amount of control. When a guy is on top or doing doggy, he can control his strokes, slowing down or speeding up as needed to keep from exploding. But when the girl is on top, she has complete control. If she decided that she’s going to pound away at you at lightning speed, there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop her.

To make this work and cum on command, I would have to draw on some juju magic.

I was fighting an uphill battle, especially considering that I was working with a sexual hellcat like Samantha. She wouldn’t just fuck you, she’d rip you to shreds. She had incredible control of her pussy muscles. I didn’t think it was possible for an orifice to have such powerful suction. It was like putting your penis into the circulation pump of a swimming pool, but without the nuisance of spinning blades.

“Okay, let’s get the pop shot, please,” Jim announced.

Thank God, I thought. It’s about fucking time.

The set went eerily quiet as they awaited my orgasm. I pulled out of Samantha, and she jerked me off as I popped into the air. And let me tell you, I came
gallons
. The sperm came blasting out of me in a torrent, like somebody had replaced my penis with a hose and turned it up full blast.

Samantha continued to jerk my penis, squeezing out every last drop, then turned to the camera to deliver her final line: “Did you see that juice?” she asked. “Tigresses always get their milk.”

It was all I could do to keep from laughing. “Tigresses always get their milk?” Who
wrote
this stuff?

Jim called for the cameras to cut, and the entire crew burst into applause. I wasn’t sure if they were applauding me or Samantha, but I felt a surge of pride nonetheless.

“Holy shit, kid,” Samantha said with a wicked grin. “Where’d all that sperm come from?”

I smiled back at her, and with a completely straight face, I said, “Chicken soup.”

That’s right, chicken soup. When I was growing up, chicken soup was a medical necessity in our house. My grandmother used to call it “Jewish penicillin.” Whatever is ailing you, chicken soup will take care of it. I ate so much chicken soup during my youth that it was practically coming out of my ears. If chicken soup could cure any number of diseases, well, it was only logical that it could have other benefits, like increased semen production.

Of course, I didn’t really believe that. I knew it was bullshit. But it was less embarrassing than the truth.

The real reason that I came so hard was that I held back. When I learned that I had the job, I didn’t have sex for a week. I wanted to make a good first impression, and cumming like Niagara Falls seemed like the best way to do that.

“Chicken soup?” Jim asked. “Seriously?”

It was too late to change my story now. “Yeah,” I said. “A bowl of chicken soup two hours before sex. Works every time.”

Little did I know that I had inadvertently started one of the biggest insider myths in the New York porn world. Word spread quickly around the set, and by the time I returned upstairs to get dressed, two of the actors had already sent out PAs to get chicken soup.

“Thanks for the tip,” one of them told me.

Years later, chicken soup would become a common sight on porn sets. I’d show up for a shoot and find cans littering the dressing room. Even Samantha Fox’s boyfriend, porn actor Bobby Astyr, bought into the folklore. Whenever I’d see him, he’d invariably have a few bowls of soup heating nearby.

“Oh yeah,” he’d explain. “It makes you cum like a volcano. Chicken soup is very good for you.”

“Well, sure,” I’d say. “But not for
sperm
!”

When I left the set, I went straight over to my sister Susie’s apartment; she lived just a few blocks away. I burst inside and screamed, “I did it!”

“Oh my God,” Susie squealed. “You really went through with it?”

“I did! It was amazing! I popped and everything!”

Susie took a step away. “Okay, I probably didn’t need that last bit of information. But thanks for sharing.”

In just a few weeks, my feature-film debut was out in theaters. It was called
Tigresses…and Other Maneaters
, and I was one of the first in line to see it. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being a little disappointed. When they finally got to my scene, it took me a minute to recognize myself. You couldn’t even see my face! I was just a headless torso, and the top half of me was completely out of the frame.

“What the hell?” I grumbled, unaware that I was speaking out loud. “I spent an hour in makeup, and they didn’t even shoot my goddamn
face
!”

“Will you keep it down?” a man sitting nearby yelled at me.

I mumbled an apology and eased back into my seat. A part of me wanted to turn to him and say, “Listen, jerk, you see that huge pecker up there on the screen, shooting off like a fireworks show made entirely of viscous fluids? That’s
me
, asshole.”

But I didn’t.

I just sat there and watched myself in action, dreaming about the day when my face wouldn’t get second billing to my cock.

“Ron ‘The Hedgehog’ Jeremy. I think that has a nice ring to it.”

Victory shot. 1980. (Photograph by Len Tavares)

chapter 4

A STAR IS PORN

I knew I was in trouble
when it started to snow.

I’d been cast in a movie called
Olympic Fever
, which was being shot in the mountains of Southern California. It was my first trip to the West Coast, and I’d tried to pack accordingly. I brought a few pairs of shorts and linen shirts, everything I needed for the eighty-degree weather. What’s more, I had opted against renting a car, assuming I could get around just as easily with a motorcycle. Back in New York, a bike was my main mode of transportation. I owned a Honda Hawk that I used to commute between Queens and the city. During the winter months, it could be a major pain in the ass, especially when the roads were icy. But here in the Sunshine State, I thought, it was the perfect environment for motorcycle travel. Nothing but sun and warm weather. It was going to be glorious.

But I had been seriously misled about just how goddamn tropical this state was.

When I walked off the plane at the L.A. airport, the weather was pleasant, almost humid. So I jumped on my bike wearing the skimpiest outfit I owned and headed up to Lake Arrowhead. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour journey north of Los Angeles, up in the canyons near San Bernardino. I wasn’t thrilled about driving through unfamiliar mountains, but I had the luxury of taking my time, because I wasn’t needed on the set until later that afternoon. I planned on taking a long, leisurely trip, enjoying the views, and soaking up the rays of my first April day in California.

When it started to snow, I thought it must be some kind of sick joke. The snow turned into hail, and then just as quickly became a blinding blizzard. Before long, I wondered if I was going to die.

Up until that day, it had been a great couple of years for me. I’d worked steadily since
Tigresses
, making an average of six films per month. And best of all, I was even given
speaking
roles, where my face was seen about as often as my penis. I appeared in high-profile movies like
Mystique
,
Object of Desire
,
Blonde in Black Silk
,
The Good Girls of Godiva High
,
Pink Champagne
, and
Women in Love
, to name just a few. But it was a film called
Sizzle
that put me on the map. At long last, I was really able to
act
, showing off my comedic abilities with a goofy southern accent that was played more for laughs than authenticity.

It was because of
Sizzle
that I had caught the eye of Phil M., the director responsible for one of the most lauded big-budget pornos of the late 1970s, called
Lust at First Bite
. It starred all the major names in adult movies: John Holmes, Seka, Serena, and Jamie Gillis. I’d seen the movie when it opened in New York, and I was floored by it. It was by far the funniest comedy I’d ever seen in porn. Some of the dialogue was so smart you forgot that you were watching a skin flick. And what’s more, it featured some kinky scenes, from sex with vampires to mental patients with delusions of prepubescence. Gillis, who played Dracula, had anal sex with at least two of his female costars. I couldn’t believe what Phil had gotten away with for that time period, and I wanted to work with him. When he offered me a role in his second big feature, and free airfare to California for the shoot, I didn’t have to think twice.

Not that I needed it, but he gave me an advance copy of the script for
Olympic Fever
. I read it on the plane, and laughed like an idiot during the entire trip. It involved the U.S. Olympic swim team and a young swimmer with a protein deficiency that could be cured only by giving blow jobs. I was cast as a Russian spy, who, along with my partner (played by Seka) plotted to sabotage the swim team and stop them from winning gold at the summer games. We were basically doing versions of Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, only with less-believable Russian accents.

The snow was coming down in such thick sheets, I had no idea where the road ended and the cliff began. I could very well have plummeted to my death at any moment. And to add to my anxiety, the bitter cold had almost brought on the first stages of hypothermia. With nothing but a lightweight T-shirt and shorts to protect me from the elements, I was shivering so violently that I could barely steer my bike. There were icicles on my mustache. I fully expected to die of frostbite.

At long last, I saw the campgrounds in the distance. To re-create an Olympic training camp, the director had found an abandoned Boy Scout camp in the middle of the woods. I’d never been happier to see civilization, though I had a surge of panic when it occurred to me that there might not be running water or heat at this place. It was, after all, a fucking barracks.

I staggered toward the nearest bunkhouse and knocked weakly on the door.

“Good Lord! What happened to you?”

I almost collapsed into Bill Margold’s arms. He was an actor and cowriter on
Olympic Fever
, and large enough to drag my limp body inside. By the expression on his face, I thought it might already be too late for me.

“You drove a
motorcycle
up here?”

“I didn’t know,” I whimpered. “It’s California in the spring. What happened to the expression ‘sunny California’?”

“Ron, we’re up in the mountains. It’s cold.”

“Well, I didn’t fucking know that,” I shouted at him with my last burst of energy.

He took me into a back bathroom and pointed toward the shower. With what little strength I had left, I stumbled out of my clothes. “I have someone here who might be able to warm you up,” Margold said. He called over Connie Peterson, a beautiful blonde actress who’d been rehearsing with him before I arrived.

“Oh, you poor baby,” Connie said, giving me a sad look like I was a sick puppy. She stepped into the shower with me, turned on the hot water, and soaped down my ice-covered body. When my body temperature finally returned to something resembling normal, she asked if I wanted to fuck.

Well, sure, I thought. After a near-death experience, nothing makes you feel alive again like having sex in the shower with some big-boobed woman. Even if it was just a sympathy screw, I was happy for whatever I could get. I didn’t climax. I knew I had to save it for my scene with Seka later that day. But it was enough to get my blood circulating again, which is all I really needed.

When I walked out of the shower, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, Margold was waiting for me, along with Seka and a few of the other actors. He took one look at me and burst into laughter.

“What’s so goddamn funny?” I asked him.

“Will you look at this guy,” he said to the others. “He’s all pink and furry, like a little hedgehog.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I snapped.

“You look like one of those animals in
The Wind and the Willows
.”

The entire room was laughing, so I ran back into the bathroom to check my reflection in the mirror. He was right, the combination of extreme cold and heat had given my skin a pink hue. And the hairs on my body were standing on end, which did sort of resemble the furry bristles of a rodent. Although hedgehogs
are
kinda cute.