Out of Bondage (9 page)

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Authors: Linda Lovelace

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

BOOK: Out of Bondage
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“I tell him no, I’m not going to take off my clothes, and then he’s pointing his gun at my head and telling me he’s going to kill me.”
“You’re sure about that?” I was asked. “You’re sure that he said he would
kill
you? This is important.”
“What he said, exactly, is, ‘You’re going to take off your clothes, all of your clothes, and then you’re going to go out there and fuck those five men. If you don’t, I’m gonna shoot you.’ ”
“You can remember that?”
“I can’t forget it. I said he wouldn’t dare shoot me with five witnesses in the next room and he says, ‘Don’t kid yourself. These guys aren’t gonna say anything. These guys have wives and families, they’re
businessmen.
Do you think any of them are gonna say they were in a hotel room waiting for some prostitute?’ ”
“And you believed this threat?”
“Yes.”
“How did you feel when it was happening?”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do—” Larry began.
“
Larry
!” Victor silenced him.
“I’m scared, real scared,” I answered the question. “I feel dirty . . . lost . . . alone . . . degraded by what is happening. I want the ground to open up so I can fall in and disappear. I’m going through a lot of changes. I think of this time, this moment, and I know it was the turning point. What I should have done, no matter what he was saying, I should’ve just walked out. He might’ve shot me—I think he would have-but I should have taken my chances. But I was scared, I was petrified.”
How clearly it all returned. Almost, as though I were back there again. This phenomenon would repeat itself when I told the stories for the book and, later, for the interviewers. As the words are spoken, the scene comes alive. I do have a strange kind of memory; while I can’t remember things I read, I can remember what is said virtually word for word.
fifteen
The bad moments with Chuck—there’s never been a way to erase them from my mind. And as I was remembering, the lawyers became quieter. They asked occasional questions-did I remember the names of the five men, their occupations, their exact ages? The horror of that day, the way the five men looked, what they said, what they did—none of that will ever be erased from my mind.
 
Flashback to—
One man mauling my breasts, then getting on top of me and entering me, no preliminaries whatsoever. A second man, naked, coming over and putting himself into my mouth, just like that, no words, no explanations. Guiding himself into and out of my mouth mechanically. A third man coming over, saying, “Jerk me off, dear. ” And another man saying, “Don’t listen to him, let him jerk himself off—and go on sucking. ”
Playing musical chairs with my body, busying themselves for a while at one spot and then changing positions. One says, “Let’s make a sandwich” and he lies on his back. The others put me on top of him and another man is climbing on my backside. A human sandwich. Starting to whimper and cry, causing one of the men to say, “Oh, lookie here, we must have a new baby here.” Eyes tightly closed as they pick me up and move me here and there, spreading my legs this way and that, shoving themselves at me and into me, someone saying, “Hey, let’s try to get two in at once. ”
Going numb then, as if my body belongs to someone else. The voices—“Stick this in your mouth, darling”—come from a great distance. Then, finally, they’re gone and the only voice is Chuck’s: “You’re a fucking mess. Go take a shower.”
 
“After a while, I had no idea what they were doing to me,” I said to my inquisitors.
“Did you say anything to the men? Did you ask for help?”
“They
knew,
” I said. “I was crying all the time and one of the men wouldn’t do anything until the others kidded him into doing it. Another one didn’t want to pay because he said I wasn’t into it. I was filled with hate then. I was hating not just them but everything. I was wishing I could vanish from the room and from the face of the earth. And then it got to a point where there were no feelings left. Just numbness. My breasts were being mauled and I couldn’t even feel it. I felt so filthy, so dirty.”
The inquisition carried me from that day in the Holiday Inn to those first days when Chuck forced me into being a prostitute. And with the memories, all the emotions of that time—hatred, hostility, resentment, defeat . . . nothing.
I told them how Chuck made me have sex with his friends—and how badly he beat me when I tried to escape. I remembered the day he said he was going to reward me; we were going to take a little trip to the Bahamas. But, of course, there was no such thing as a boat trip without a payoff.
“Describe the boat to us?” one of the lawyers asked.
“It was a nice boat,” I said, then corrected myself. “I mean, it was a nice
looking
boat. It had an upstairs and a downstairs. Beds and couches and a radio. It had a bathroom and a kitchen, only they didn’t call it a kitchen, they called it a galley. Chuck took three girls with him. Me and then there was Sunshine, a girl who was into being a hooker, and a younger girl, she must’ve been about 15.
“Before we left, Chuck herded the three of us together in the back of the boat. He told us there was going to be a lot of guys on the trip and we should talk to them, and be friendly, but he didn’t want us partying. He didn’t want us fooling around with them until after we reached the Bahamas.
“But by the time we got out to sea, half of the guys aboard were blitzed. Chuck gave me a new assignment—now I was supposed to set things up. I mean, if a guy was looking over one of the girls, I was supposed to walk over to him and say, ‘Okay, if you’d like to be with her, it’ll cost you $40. And if you want something special, that’s a little extra.’
“On the way over, one of the guys on the boat grabbed me and hugged me. He was a young guy, about 27, black-haired—and suddenly Chuck got enraged. I had to wonder why he was so mad and then suddenly it dawned on me: He was jealous.
Jealous!
That’s why he always fixed me up with older guys, never anyone in their 20s or 30s. But no matter how mad Chuck got, he’d never threaten the young guy. No, I was the one he’d punch out later on.”
“Describe the kind of guy—be specific—that he’d fix you up with.”
“I don’t see why anyone has to know something like that,” Larry said.
“Larry, shut up!” Victor said.
I wasn’t looking at any of the lawyers now, I was staring out into space. But it didn’t matter where I looked; the tears in my eyes blurred my vision. I was trying very hard to concentrate on the questions but there was no stopping the memories that came with each answer, ugly memories. I didn’t look at the lawyers and I could no longer look at Larry. God, what was
he
feeling? Much of this information was new to him.
“There was one guy who weighed about 350 pounds,” I said. “He paid $150 every single week. That was for 30 minutes. He didn’t do anything too weird. Chuck made me do this one for two reasons. First, it was a lot of money, more than usual. Second, he knew I’d be revolted by it. But whenever someone was very old or very ugly or very weird, then he’d turn to me and say, ‘This one’s for you.’ ”
On and on the questions went. They really hammered at me. And if I was the least bit hazy, they became more intense. They went through it all. The first photo sessions. . . the prostitution . . . the endless beatings . . . the eight-millimeter movie sessions in New York . . . the making of
Deep Throat . . .
the time spent with Sammy Davis . . . with Hugh Hefner. They went through every aspect of my life. At one point I was asked about my role in
Deep Throat.
“Do you mean you didn’t enjoy that a little?” I was asked.
“Enjoy what?” I said. “Which part should I have enjoyed?”
“Well, you were certainly smiling often enough,” someone said. “You
looked
like you were happy.”
“If you looked a little closer,” I snapped, “you would have seen the big black-and-blue marks all over my legs.”
“Well, when you were making out with your co-star Harry Reems, you sure
looked
like you were having a good time.”
“Let me tell you something,” I said, “during the entire time I was Chuck’s prisoner—during two years of nothing but sex—I never felt any pleasure. Not one moment of pleasure. Never a single orgasm that whole time.”
“But—” the lawyer began.
“Oh, come on now,” Larry finally broke in, sounding unusually reasonable. “You people are picking on Linda now. She said she didn’t and she didn’t. Victor, I’m surprised at this. I don’t see where it’s necessary. I don’t see why she has to suffer this way.”
“They ask whatever they want,” Victor said. “That’s the deal. And listen, Larry, it doesn’t really matter what
you
think. We’re not running this little show for your benefit. We’re trying to do some very serious business here, but we need a little cooperation.”
“Serious business? It sounds to me like a bunch of voyeurs . . .”
“Out!” Victor suddenly yelled at Larry. “Larry, I want you out of this room and I want you to stay out of this room.”
In dealing with Larry, Victor always plays the role of a Dutch uncle—a very loud Dutch uncle. And Larry usually answers in a slightly louder voice. They can be having what they consider a normal conversation and I’ll wish I had volume-control knobs.
“Larry, I want you to stay away from here,” Victor was saying. “What’s going on here is just too important to screw up.”
“Don’t you think Linda has had enough abuse?”
“We’re only doing one thing,” Victor said. “We’re making sure she’s telling the truth. Otherwise, there’s no way we can help her. We’ve also got to know that she can stand up to this kind of questioning. We’re testing her memory and we’re also testing her credibility.”
“Don’t you know enough by now?”
“I
know enough,” he said, “but I don’t know whether
they
know enough . . .”
“Well, they better learn enough pretty quick.”
“—and that’s why we’re running roughshod over the rules of evidence. Larry, we’ve got to find what’s going on. There’s no judge to protect her here and there’s no one—except you—to object to any of the questions. That’s why I want you to get out.”
“I’m not leaving,” Larry said. “There’s no way I’m leaving Linda alone with these people.”
Larry stayed. I’m not sure that was such a good thing. I couldn’t stand seeing how shaken he was, how easily he became enraged. While I was remembering the details, I didn’t want to look over at his face. It was too much like that time in the Miami courtroom when we had to sit through
Deep Throat.
I knew there were things coming up that he didn’t know, things I didn’t want him to hear, not this way, not in front of a roomful of strangers. Although he knew most of my past, he hadn’t heard all the details. And that was all these lawyers wanted, details and more details. And although I could understand that they weren’t asking these questions to torture me, but to help me, Larry would never understand that.
Once again we went back to the questions. The meeting with Xaviera Hollander . . . the dealings with Florida lawyer Philip J. Mandina . . . the entire sordid story that was later to be told in the book
Ordeal.
Twice during the interrogation I broke down and cried. I just couldn’t help it. Whenever I’m asked about specific moments during those awful years of imprisonment, the tears rush to my eyes. Every time I’ve talked about that Holiday Inn incident with five men, I’ve known it was a major turning point in my life. If I had been smarter, I might have found a way to break away.
The other experience that always makes me cry was the incident with the dog, the other turning point, the other moment I should have said no and taken the punishment, whatever that punishment might be. It’s odd, but in both instances a gun was used to threaten me. That was the day they brought in an animal. In fact, I insisted that many of the details of that day be cut from
Ordeal,
simply because I didn’t want to tell any creeps out there just how it was done.
I still couldn’t tell that whole story. But I tried to tell everything else that happened to me. I didn’t realize then that I’d have to tell the stories again and again. To a writer. To a lie detector expert. To television cameras. I’d have to go over the same ugly incidents until it was almost like reciting a set piece in a school play.
I was asked why there had been a constant emphasis on oral sex.
“This is very hard to talk about,” I was near tears. “Very hard. Chuck would make me work parties—there might be as many as 15 men there. I was a virgin until I was almost 20 years old. I hadn’t had sex with many men at all. I found it very degrading when a man put himself inside of me. I had a choice what to do and I found it easier . . .”
This time I was interrupted by the psychiatrist who addressed his remarks to the attorneys.
“I think perhaps we should all calm down a little,” he said. “This is really not germane to the subject.”
The session went on for hours with only a couple of breaks. I sensed the lawyers were believing me. Why wouldn’t they? I was telling the truth. You could tell a little how they felt by the way the questions changed. At first they came hard and fast, almost brutal, but later they were softer, more sympathetic.
The oldest trial veteran in the room—I was told later he had the ability to make a jury weep on cue—at first assumed I was just a cheap little tramp. Later I was startled to see he was in tears.
There came a time, though, when it was finally too much for Larry to take.
“We’re leaving now,” he announced. “C’mon, Linda, they have enough information. We’re going now.”
This time no one protested. Perhaps they did, finally, have enough information. And it was not until late that night that Victor called us to give us the verdict.
“We came up with a consensus,” he said. “We’ve decided that you are either a woman who is telling the truth or you’re the world’s finest dramatic actress.”
Well, I’ve been called many things in my life, but never
that.
I guess they believed me after all.

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