In a perfect world, we’d all meet our perfect mates sometime around the age of consent, get married and have wonderful, monogamous sex lives till the day we die in a sticky grave. Or so the story goes, but most of humanity seems to have a different take on it, full of vices and stolen pleasures that start internally hustling not long after most of us become aware of our own free will.

The days of Sears catalogue and flashlight cocktails are long gone, save for retro fetishists. Love it or loath it, pornography is coming out from being hidden between the mattress buns into more and more bed- and living rooms. Porn is a megabusiness now and, despite a lot of folks’ denial, we’re out there buying it in record numbers, downloading it like smack addicts. Last year (1998), more than 6000 adult videos hit the shelves, which is something like ten times the output a decade back. It puts mainstream Hollywood to shame, at least in volume. This year’s figures have already passed that with what I like to call ‘gonzo pornos,’ amateur films made at home by anyone with a digital video camera and a gaping connection to the Net.

I had the rare pleasure of talking to RON JEREMY, 46, “a good Jewish boy who got lucky” in 1979 after a Playgirl appearance that showed off his, um, talents, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘built like a racehorse,’ even if the man looks more like a meatball.

Having been in so many fuck films himself, the New York-born Jeremy starts off musing on the loosening of North America’s values. "While Clinton was caught in his sex scandal, he was at his highest approval rating ever. Years ago, he would have been ousted so fast. People in America are getting a good attitude about sex, finally. We’re trying to catch up to you Canadians," he says, laughing. “In many ways, yes, the attitudes are getting better. People are starting to realize that censorship is bad, freedom of speech is good.”

It is with dubious joy that I pass on what Jeremy tells me: where porn is concerned, I know what I’m talking about thanks to years of – er – research. Seriously, though, I have read books on the subject, and if a map were to be drawn of every adult movie ever made, Jeremy’s face would appear on almost every peak and valley. He’s one of the most prolific porn stars on the planet, starring in no less than 1500 films over his 22-year career in the biz, and all signs are that he’s still going strong. His appeal is that of the everyman striking gold, wading through places luscious enough to make us lonely zeros strip down and fondle ourselves.

But where did this man - who openly makes fun of his own girth during a hilarious conversation from his home in Hollywood - get his start? How did he end up changing careers from being a teacher dealing with emotionally disturbed and special-needs children to being one of the least likely and most recognized porn stars? "I was a schoolteacher,” he chuckles. “I got a master’s degree in special ed. I went to Queen’s College and got a bachelor’s degree in theatre, a bachelor’s degree in education. I worked for a year and a half, then I quit to do theatre in New York.

"Then I was also a waiter in the Catskill mountains in upstate New York. Like every good Jewish boy, I worked through college being a waiter. Even the Christian boys would put yarmulkes on their heads and say they’re going to pre-med school so they’d get big tips from the old Jewish guys. I said I wanted to be an actor, so I didn’t get the big tips," he laughs.

The ‘79 Playgirl appearance changed all that. Certain of his attributes got him attention, and he started making sex films, back in the hirsute, yellow-toned days of yore. He slowly became an icon, thanks to his sense of humour and willingness to play the clown – the payoff being limitless sex, to quote GWAR’s Sexecutioner. Oh, the fleshy humanity! In rolled the days of crazed plots, dyke orgies, plumpers, ridiculously huge fake boobs, Asian schoolgirls, the anal wave and on and on and on. Now, with the spilling over of porn awareness into the mainstream, Jeremy’s finding success and public recognition in places he’d never dreamed of, and connects with strangers easily. He’s almost impossibly friendly, chatting for nearly an hour.

Though Jeremy and many other porn stars of his vintage refer to porn’s perfect era as having passed, sheer numbers illustrate otherwise. Last year, more than 6000 adult movies hit the shelves, and the numbers are higher in 1999. “The ‘80s was the Golden Age of porn. We had no famous viruses running around, if you know what I mean, no Viagra. You had to really be a porn star. That was a great era and it’ll never be the same."

The little dude who could says the biggest difference between porn back in the day and now is beautiful women, originally starting with Amber Lynn and Nina Hartley in the ‘80s. “Suddenly, we had this huge, huge influx of dancers coming from all over the world, coming to Los Angeles to get into the movies - and they’re breathtaking. And the competition is so severe, that there are a lot of good looking girls that can’t even get work! The business has dropped a little bit in quality of the actual story-lines, sets, you know, script development … but women are fucking sensational.

Jeremy says he stays away from Viagra, though its use is wide in the industry: “I don’t, I won’t.” As far as harder drugs go, coke, smack, and so on, “You see a little bit, but not like mainstream Hollywood. Remember, they’re the millionaires. People in porn are thousdandaires.” He says this is thanks to smaller and smaller budgets, as technology makes it so anyone can film a porn.

“Used to be you had to be a filmmaker, now anyone can do it.”

Jeremy, whose nickname is the Hedgehog thanks to his ability to curl over and slurp his own knob, doesn’t get too upset about piracy, which hasn’t really changed all that much since the days of bootlegged videos passed secretly at junior high lunch hours. “Even I did one of those warnings once: ‘Hey, you! If this tape doesn’t have the blue spool, you have a pirate video take it right back to the store.’ Some guy’s saying, ‘Hey fat boy, I paid my dollar, I don’t care.’ Hahaha!

“It’s a big headache for the guys I work for. How do you stop it? It reminds me of the cops on the highway, new devices keep being invented to stop speeders, new ones get built to stop cops. It’s a war. Now the Internet, everything is pirated. What can you do?”

The inevitable change, however, is how porn began to transcend the genre into the non-naked world. A revolution in admission. Mainstream movies like Boogie Nights, Howard Stern’s film Private Parts and The People Vs. Larry Flynt, as well as cameos by stars like Jeremy in Everclear’s The Boys Are Back in Town video are all becoming almost ubiquitous. Ashlyn Gere was even on an episode of The X-Files. Porn Star clothing was the first clothing label to catch on, and its ads in VICE magazine were some of the first to use nudity in an otherwise clothed publication. “Adult stars are suited for certain advertisements and not for others. I would never do a toothpaste commercial. Mostly because no one would ever hire me to do that.”

I had to ask Jeremy, who you might think might get oversaturated with it all, what turns him on. His answer doesn’t disappoint.

“Your girlfriend!” After a bit of completely unprintable madness bordering on flirtation into a threesome, Jeremy explains, “I’m not really into S&M or any of that. Where I won’t go is really abusive sex. It’s horrifying when people with high heels are stamping on little bugs. When a guy can a hard-on with that, he needs to see a doctor. But there’s something for everyone now. Really a three-ring circus. How far can we go? There’s no limit!”

Despite a lot of good arguments to the contrary, he’s cynical about people blaming excess porn for their problems. “Porno is healthy. It can keep couples together. The worst thing about porn is you get to close to the unit you electrocute yourself. If someone blames their fucked up marriage on it, they’re out of their minds. It’s the person that has the problem.

“It’s not how much you do porn in a day, it’s how much else you did. If all you do is watch it and you fail your midterm, well, you have to blame yourself.

“Too much of anything’ll kill you, brothers and sisters.”

- 1999.12.01