Out of Bondage (8 page)

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Authors: Linda Lovelace

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Linda Lovelace, #Retail, #Nonfiction

BOOK: Out of Bondage
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fourteen
There is no doubt that Victor Yannacone has left his mark on the history of our times. He may be one of the most worldly men I’ve known—but he can also be one of the most naive. On the one hand, I was very impressed by the way he stood up to giant corporations, as he did with the Agent Orange cases and his fight against DDT. On the other hand, he really knew very little about the street world I was fleeing, the world of pimps, prostitution and pornography.
Victor listened patiently to my story but he really wasn’t ready to hear it yet. He had trouble believing that people could treat each other so inhumanly. I sensed that Victor was embarrassed (understandably so) to be my attorney. Because he was obviously such a nice man, I spared him many of the uglier details at first. Then Victor told me he had to hear it all—that, in fact, he needed to be educated about the pornographic underworld.
“We plan to sue a lot of people,” he told me. “Before we go that far, before we go to that expense, we have to eliminate all doubts.”
Victor came up with a plan. He was going to set up “an inquisition.” He said that the original Inquisition was a harsh anything-goes trial run by the Catholic Church to determine whether a person had committed heresy or not. I had no idea then that my personal story could add up to any kind of heresy—but now I realize that that word may not be that far off base. And if my story was heresy, then maybe an inquisition wasn’t such a bad idea.
Victor didn’t tell me much about this inquisition. He just said that he was going to invite some friends over to question me about my past. He didn’t tell me when it would be or what it would cover. And he didn’t warn me that his “friends” would include some of the toughest prosecuting attorneys on Long Island.
The lawyers who participated did so at no fee. And they agreed to abide by Victor’s code of secrecy. While they were also invited to consider participating in any legal actions that came from all this, that wasn’t the real reason they went along with it. They saw it as a favor to Victor, part of an adult education program. They were close friends of his and they wanted to help him make up his mind as to whether he should get involved in trying to defend Linda Lovelace in a public courtroom.
Why was this such a big deal? It just was. The minute someone became associated with the name Linda Lovelace, there was a price to be paid. I think of the troubles my husband has had trying to persuade friends and even family that I was an innocent victim—and these are people who know me. Why would a stranger believe my story? And why would a prominent attorney want to get involved in such a thankless and seemingly hopeless cause?
The initial reaction from Victor’s lawyer friends was at best skeptical. Some confided to Victor that they felt sorry for him—he was such an innocent, such a babe in the wood. Still, they agreed to participate. As an act of friendship, they would help him to get to the truth of the story. (And maybe, just maybe, like so many others, they didn’t mind the opportunity of taking a good close look at a sexual celebrity.)
Since this was several years after I had escaped Traynor, several years since I had stepped off the sexual merry-go-round, how could I remember all that had happened to me in the bad old days? I could remember it because I’ve never been able to forget it. I’m afraid that’s the kind of memory I have—good times disappear in a kind of rosy blur; bad times stay with me forever. I had begun to feel those memories would always be bottled up, that I’d never be allowed to tell the outside world the truth about Linda Lovelace. Beyond that, I felt no one would ever believe me. After all, few had in the past.
Let me tell you a question that irritates me. People always ask why I didn’t tell my story sooner. Why did I wait five years before trying to set the record straight? The answer: Because no one would listen. I tried to tell the truth to a hundred different people on a hundred different occasions; it was shouting into the wind.
There was even an earlier book where I tried to tell the truth. That was entitled
The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace
and my co-author knew my story and tried to tell it. The publishers took one look at what he was doing and told him not to waste their time. They said the public didn’t want such a bleak story; it wouldn’t sell. The book they finally printed made the entire experience seem like fun and games and was, of course, just another packet of lies.
Occasionally I’d be interviewed by newspapermen and the minute I started talking truth was the minute they stopped taking notes. They explained to me that they could never tell my story because the truth presented major libel problems.
One time I even tried to tell the story on television. I was doing a morning show in California, cooking sweet-and-sour chicken, and the host said, “Ah-ha, I always wondered what you’d be like . . . in the kitchen.” It was just a harmless little ha-ha but I wasn’t in the mood for double entendres. And when the subject of
Deep Throat
came up, I plunged right in.
“Do you really want to know what that was like?” I asked.
“Yes, I really want to know.”
“Okay,” I said, “I was beaten and I was raped and I was forced—held at gunpoint—to do those things.”
“Oh, what’ve we got here, an exclusive? Is this the first time you’ve ever told this story in public?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.”
“Well, let’s get back to the chicken, shall we?”
Just that suddenly we both became very serious about cooking a chicken. But that’s the way the world had always responded to the truth. I had come to feel that it would never let me tell my side of the story. I had learned, the hard way, that the story couldn’t be told in books or in newspaper or on television—and so the only ones who learned the truth were those closest to me—husband, family, friends, a neighbor or two. My husband believed me and the others said they did.
One day—it was a Saturday—Victor invited us to stop by his father’s original law office in a three-story frame building on a back street of Patchogue. It looked more like a private home than a law office and Victor used it for confidential meetings. Whenever we visited Victor that winter, we also took care of another need. In fact, the first thing Larry and I did on this particular Saturday was dash upstairs and take hot showers. Our hot water never worked and this was, for us, a rare luxury.
A small crowd was waiting for us downstairs. Six lawyers and a psychiatrist were seated in the large main office. One of the attorneys, former Suffolk County prosecutor Jeff Waller, had just returned from a bar mitzvah and was dressed up. The others were wearing their Saturday loafing clothes.
“I told you some friends would be asking you a few questions,” Victor said. “Let me introduce them.”
Yes, Victor had warned us. He had said I was going to be asked some tough questions by some tough people, but I’d put it out of my mind. Now that the moment was here, I had qualms. I asked Victor if I could speak to him privately.
“Do I really have to go through this?” I asked.
“I thought you
wanted
this,” he said.
“You
told me you wanted people to know what happened to you. . . . There are two reasons you’ve got to do this. First, these people are experts-they’ll know whether you’re telling the truth or not. I want them to hear the story, the
whole
story. Secondly, we’re planning on going after some very big cases—we’re going after the doctors who mistreated you, the producers who made fortunes off your slave labor, the lawyers and others who had a hand in imprisoning you. The people here today may play a part in handling the legal side of your cases.”
I took a deep breath and straightened up. I resolved to answer any question they might have. Any conceivable question. And as the questions came at me, I did just that.
“Why don’t we start with that incident at the Holiday Inn?” Victor began. “That was really the beginning of everything—why don’t you tell us what happened that day and don’t leave anything out.”
“It was a hot day.” I closed my eyes, remembered, “Way up in the nineties. I can’t stand hot weather. I get the feeling I can’t breathe. I was wearing blue jeans, an Indian shirt and sandals. Chuck was wearing his favorite shirt, yellow and black.”
“This was
five
years ago,” a voice interrupted. “How can you be sure of what you were wearing?”
“I remember everything that happened some days,” I said. “On this day I remember it all. Chuck drove us out to the Holiday Inn, the big one near the University of Miami. There was a sign that said there was a buffet luncheon and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s lunchtime and he’s taking me to eat.’ I decided to ask him: ‘Where are we going? He said, ‘To see some people.’ All this meant to me: There’d be no buffet lunch because Chuck was meeting some businessmen to try to interest them in one of his deals.”
“Had this kind of thing happened to you before?” one of the lawyers asked.
“No, this was the first time. At that moment, I wasn’t worried about anything in particular. The night before, Chuck had beaten me up because I wouldn’t help run his prostitution business. But here I was in a Holiday Inn. I didn’t have a thing on my mind. We walked up to the second floor, all the way down to the last room, and knocked on the door.”
“You’re sure it was the second floor?”
“Yeah, the second floor. There was one of those little windows beside the door and a man opened the curtain and looked out. There were five men inside, all nicely dressed, all local businessmen, and I waited for Chuck to make his usual pitch. I had no idea what kind of a con Chuck was going to work on them. And then they all . . . they all took turns raping me while Chuck looked on.”
I tried to dismiss the whole ugly experience in one quick ugly sentence—but the lawyers were having none of it.
“Let’s go back a bit,” one of the lawyers said. “Why don’t you begin by describing the room?”
“It was a single large room.” Oh, God, once again I could see that motel room—I hadn’t realized it was going to be this bad. “It’s a single large room with two twin-sized beds and a small table in between the beds. At the end of the room, there’s a partitioned-off dressing room and bathroom. Right in front of the door there’s a small circular table. Two of the men are seated there at the table, having a drink. There are two other men sitting on the edge of the bed and there’s one who seems to be the spokesman for the group and he’s talking to Chuck.”
How was Larry taking this? I glanced at him. He was looking away; I could tell from the set of his jaw that he was angry and becoming angrier. To relieve the tension, he had opened a briefcase and was fingering his set of “noonchucks”—a wooden weapon used in the martial arts. He was playing with them now, clicking them against each other. One of the attorneys knew that they were a deadly weapon and he paused in mid-question for an aside to Larry.
“You know, just possessing those things is a felony,” he said.
“Yeah,” Larry said, “but I always figured I’d rather do a year in jail than be dumped in a gravesite.”
None of us were quite certain what that meant. But there was no misinterpreting the look in Larry’s eyes. He was glaring at the lawyers as though they were a bunch of peeping toms. And, I have to admit, it was difficult to conclude that they were on my side when you listened to their questions.
“Miss Lovelace,” one of them said, “I was just asking you . . .
“It’s
Marchiano,
not Lovelace,” Larry interrupted. “It’s Mrs. Marchiano.”
“Larry, you stay out of this,” Victor snapped at him. “I mean it. Stay out of it completely!”
“Mrs. Marchiano,” the lawyer tried again, “I was just asking you how the men were dressed.”
“The men are wearing ties and jackets.” I slipped into the present tense because it seemed to be happening all over again. “They all seem to know Chuck; they’re very friendly with him.”
As I talked to the lawyers, I could remember what each of the men looked like. My heart was pounding violently and my breath came in short bursts. I looked over at Larry; he was under the same kind of strain. Now all I wanted to do was answer the questions as quickly as possible and get out of there.
“What did the men say?” someone asked. “What did they say they were going to do?”
“Not much,” I said. “Chuck, he’s doing most of the talking. One of them asks me do I want a drink and then he pours me a ginger ale.
Two
ginger ales. Then I go off to the bathroom.”
“When did you get the idea that the men planned to . . . uh . . . abuse you sexually?”
“I come out of the bathroom and Chuck has closed off the partition to the rest of the room. He tells me that I’m going to have sex with the five men out there.”
“
That’s
what he told you?” I was asked. “That’s the language he used? He told you you were going ‘to have sex’ with—”
“No. You want to know exactly what he said? He says, ‘You know those five guys out there, you’ve got to fuck them all.’ I tell him he’s crazy and he says, ‘I already got their money—you got no choice.’ Then he tells me that’s my first lesson: ”The first thing you always do is get the money. I’ve taken care of that this time. Now take off your clothes.’

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