Me and Ron Jeremy

Legendary porn actor Ron Jeremy, aka “The Hedgehog,” has been in the news lately after suffering a heart aneurism from which he is currently recovering at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.  A former substitute teacher from New York, Ron Jeremy got into the porn business after his girlfriend sent his picture to Playgirl magazine in the late 70’s.  And thus a new life was started for Mr Jeremy, one that included having sex with thousands of women in front of the camera – he is currently listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Appearances in Adult Films,” having appeared in more than two thousand productions.

I met him once, back in the mid-90’s.

I had been in Los Angeles about three years doing comedy,  and was a member of a sketch group named Variety-Pak. We were preparing to do a show for some network execs, since sketch comedy was booming on TV back then.  In rehearsals, me and two other guys in the group, Ted and Lowell, had been working on a sketch called “Steve Kauffman Private Eye,”  which we thought was pretty good. Lowell suggested that me and Ted come over to his place on Saturday to finish it up before our audition the following Tuesday.

So on Saturday morning,  I drove up Laurel Canyon Blvd and then took a left and began winding through the Hollywood Hills looking for Lowell’s place. I keep getting lost on these little roads that lead into private driveways.  Lowell said he lived in a guesthouse behind a castle.  I laughed when he told me, thinking he was joking but sure enough, when I finally found the address, I realized that he did. It was a large hill top home whose owners had indeed adorned the place with many castle like trappings, including curtain walls topped with turrets and arrow slits. The driveway had even been designed to look like a drawbridge that had been lowered over a painted moat.

I parked my car  and walked around the side of the Castle, looking for Lowell’s guesthouse. As I entered the large backyard, I was struck by the sight of two completely naked young women posing for pictures against a cobblestone wall.  Wow. To the left was a group of another eight people, some of whom were setting up lights, while others were arranging what appeared to be a Medieval feast table complete with silverware, and pewter goblets and bowls of fruit, while a short pudgy guy with a black mustache looked on from a canvass director’s chair.

I didn’t see any sign of Lowell’s guest house so I walked over to the director. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Lowell, we’re supposed to write a sketch together,” I said.  The director looked me up and down and shook his head.

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” he said.  “Haven’t we worked together?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  “I don’t think so.”

“You look really familiar to me.”

I mentioned I had been doing comedy all over town for the past couple of years and maybe that’s where he recognized me.

The director quickly disregarded this suggestion, “Maybe that time on that boat? Out on Catalina?” the director asked me.

I laughed since I had no idea what he was talking about.  “I’m just looking for Lowell and the guesthouse,” I said.

The director pointed over his shoulder. “There’s a place over there, around the corner in the back.”

“Okay thanks,” I said, turning to look  at the naked girls one more time before I rounded the corner and walked to the guesthouse.

Entering, I found Lowell and Ted sitting inside. “Oh so you finally made it, huh? Great,” Lowell said.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “Hey what’s up with the naked girls out there posing for the camera? That was kind of nice.”

Ted’s eyes bulged in apparent excitement and he began to bounce his leg.

“The owners of the Castle are gone all the time but they rent the place out to film crews, “ Lowell explained.  “Mostly porno movies.”

Ted got up and walked to the window. “Mostly porn, huh? I couldn’t live here with that going on all the time.”  He peered through the blinds but his view was obstructed by bushes and trees.

“It’s really no big deal, you get used to it,” Lowell said. “Now can we try and write this sketch.”

So we tried to get to work.

But every five minutes Ted kept getting up to peek out the window again. Ted was one of the horniest guys I ever knew. He often mentioned his own penis in conversation, how big it was, and how women found it irresistible –  the time when a prostitute passing in the crosswalk at a red light came over to his car window, looked inside, reached down towards his lap and said, “Let me help you with that big meat, baby.” Or the time his penis popped out of his pants during a play in college and the audience gasped, or the other time in college when his professor confessed to him that she often looked up his shorts during class, or the time… well you get the idea.  At this moment, Ted was listening to his penis, which wanted to go check out the naked women in the backyard. “We should go see what’s going on. Maybe get some inspiration.”

Admittedly, my efforts to concentrate on Steve Kaufman Private Eye were now also being interrupted by thoughts of what might be happening outside.  The curiosity was killing us. Unlike Lowell, we were not yet jaded Angelenos who could ignore such temptations.

“Okay, fine, Ted,” Lowell relented. “Let’s go down, take a look so you guys can get this out of your system and come back up here and write this sketch.”

We left the guest house and made our way to the backyard again. Right before our eyes were two naked girls intertwined while the director looked on and the cameraman moved around to capture the action. After a minute of this, one of the girls said very loudly, “My tongue is getting tired, can we stop for a while?” The other girl made an exhausted noise in agreement.

The director shot back, “You’re going to keep licking until I tell you stop. You’re going to lick and lick and lick and lick.”

The girls resumed the action and continued for another five minutes, then ten minutes, then fifteen minutes, while other members of the crew ate Oreos and handfuls of pretzels from a craft service table that had been erected, no pun intended, and looked at their watches. Finally, Lowell grabbed Ted and I and took us back to the guest house. “These movies are the most boring things in the world. Now let’s go write that sketch.”

When we got back to the guest house, we tried to write, but Ted simply could not focus. He mentioned that the director was Ron Jeremy. I didn’t know who that was.

“Only like the most famous porn star of all time,” Ted said. “What a lucky bastard. He’s not even good looking. I could be that guy. I’m as hung as he is.” Ted went on and on, pacing the guesthouse, fantasizing about what Ron Jeremy’s life must have been like with all those girls.

Lowell starting smoking pot and listening to jazz records. “I think I have a bottle of scotch around here,” he said.

Our sketch show didn’t land a TV deal and our group soon disbanded. Steve Kaufman Private Eye never got the chance to solve a single case. I was never on a porn set again. I never saw Ron Jeremy in person again. I never even thought about him again until I saw that he was in the hospital and  then I sat down and wrote this article remembering when he asked me, “Hey, haven’t we worked together?”

Now, I guess we have.

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