Ordeal (6 page)

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Authors: Linda Lovelace

BOOK: Ordeal
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“I can’t. I couldn’t. Please don’t.”
“Linda, honey, I know how you feel, believe me. I know you’re not into being with another woman, not now, but there’s always a chance that you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
“If you do, you’ll know where to find me.”
There were a few encounters like this one, and they’re the reason that I don’t look back at Melody as a close friend—but at least she was a human being with me. She cared and that was enough. Maybe she was doing things for her own benefit. But whatever her motives were, she did manage to get Chuck Traynor off my back and out of my sight from time to time. Escape seemed a possibility.
And escape was all I was thinking about those days. Some of the people who know my story wonder about my inability to get away; they wonder whether I didn’t begin to enjoy my new life. They wonder whether it is possible to go through weeks and months of incredible sexual activity and receive no sensual pleasure at all.
Did I enjoy any of it? Did I ever have a moment’s pleasure? I want to state this as clearly as I can. There was no pleasure. There was no love, no affection, no normal sex with anyone from the day I met Chuck Traynor until the day I finally got away. I did not have a single orgasm for six or seven years. I never had any enjoyment from any of it at all.
In fact, the only trick I could ever have a decent conversation with was a mortician named Jason. The first time Jason came to the house he told he just wanted to talk to me, nothing more. He didn’t touch me that first day, but he still gave me a ten-dollar tip.
“My problem is that I’m an incurable romantic,” Jason told me. “I couldn’t stand the thought of going to bed with a prostitute, so I’m going to ask you for a favor. Whenever I come to see you, I want you to pretend that we’re lovers, that we’ve just fallen madly in love.”
“I’ve done stranger things.”
“Okay,” he said, “and next time around, we won’t just talk. But for today I just wanted to get to know you.”
And so Jason and I had what he called “our love affair.” He was extremely romantic, always calling me “lover” and “darling.” He was extremely upset when he learned that Chuck was spying on us and insisted that we meet at a motel. That was just fine with me.
Even though he was a paying customer, Jason never did a cruel thing to me. At first, the fact that he was a mortician gave me the willies but that feeling faded as I spent more and more time with him. Pleasure? No, it was never a pleasure—but it was a relief. He was a gentleman and he wasn’t into anything too weird, unless bringing me flowers and calling me “sweetheart” could be considered weird.
One day, as his hour of romance was coming to an end, Jason made the mistake of asking me a question I had already heard a dozen times.
“How’d a nice girl like you ever get involved in doing this?”
“You wouldn’t want to know.”
“Try me.”
“Okay,” I said. “In the first place, you should know I’m not here because I want to be. I’m here because I’m a prisoner of Chuck Traynor who just happens to be insane.”
I stopped there, allowed that to settle in, and watched for his reaction. He wasn’t pleased. I could tell that this was not the kind of thing he was paying to hear.
“Go on,” he said.
As the story poured out of me, his mood went from serious to sad to deeply concerned.
“Maybe I could help you,” he said.
“How could you help me?”
“I have a little cabin up in the woods,” he said. “You could go up there and hide out for a while.”
“Where in the woods? What woods?”
“It’s in southern Georgia,” he said. “Only about seven hours away. There’s just one thing. I wouldn’t want Chuck to know that I was connected with this at all. I’ll tell you the truth, he scares me. But you could stay up there in the cabin and later I’d join you.”
“I know how this might work.” My mind was going a mile a minute now. “You could arrange to meet me in a motel with a back way out. You’d just stay in your room, and I’d skip out the back. When Chuck came looking for me, you’d just tell him I never showed up. If you were still there in the room, he wouldn’t think that you were involved.”
“Yes, you could live in my cabin then,” Jason was saying. “And then when I joined you, we could become
real
lovers. We could be together all the time and really be in love.”
The way he was going on, my mind started to play tricks on me: Perhaps I was getting into something far worse? What kind of man pays $45.00 to rent a woman anyhow? What kind of man prefers make-believe love over real love? Then I thought about his being a mortician—maybe he was one of those guys who liked dead bodies; Chuck had told me about them. Maybe he was just another super-freak who wanted to get me up in the woods of Georgia so that he could kill me.
The bottom line: I chickened out.
“Jason, let’s think about this a little while,” I said.
When I
do
think about it how, when I go back to moments like that, I start to jam—my head gets all jammed up. Why didn’t I take my chances with Jason? Or with Melody? How could it possibly have been any worse than what happened to me? Was I so terrified that everything in life scared me?
Life with Chuck never improved. I learned to settle for the smallest imaginable triumphs, the absence of pain or the momentary lessening of terror.
In time, I learned to satisfy men like Chuck—men who got their kicks from pain. I learned how to do this without suffering too much pain myself. Chuck had taught me how to relax my throat muscles so that I wouldn’t gag during oral sex. I set about teaching all of my muscles to relax. It got so that I could relax any set of muscles at will.
So when Chuck started putting his fist inside of me, I was able to relax and cut back on the pain. And when he finally found a two-headed dildo of his very own—I was surprised to learn that it actually existed—I learned how to relax so that even that wouldn’t hurt too much.
But I wouldn’t tell Chuck that. On the contrary, I would scream for mercy, and he would become hard and ejaculate almost instantly; then he would leave me alone for a while. I was becoming quite a little actress. I learned that it was never enough to fake pain, you had to fake pleasure at the same time: “Oh, Chuck, that hurts . . . that hurts too much . . . but please don’t stop.” That kind of nonsense.
In a strange way, even the sword-swallowing, deep-throat techniques that Chuck had taught me could work to my advantage. There were times when Chuck would make me work parties with maybe fifteen men and two chicks. This is still difficult for me to talk about, and I apologize in advance for it, but I don’t know a more polite way to put it: I found it easier to suck a man’s cock than to let him put his thing inside of me. I was a virgin until I was almost twenty years old, and only a couple of men before Chuck had ever made love to me. What I found most degrading was when a man put his thing inside of me and came. The thought of fifteen men doing that in one night was more than I could tolerate. I had a choice of which was better for me to do, which made me feel more comfortable. And sucking cock made me feel more comfortable than being fucked.
Because of my ability to totally relax my throat muscles, I became very popular with men who were into oral sex. Over and over again I heard tricks say, “Nobody’s ever done that to me before.” And of course they would want to call a friend so that he could have it done to him, too.
Chuck was very pleased with this. He called it word-of-mouth advertising.
six
Often I’m asked why I didn’t escape. Behind that question there’s an attitude, a presumption. I can see it in the face asking the question. The questioner always has the sure knowledge that this could never have happened to him or to her. They would have been strong enough and smart enough and resourceful enough to have gotten away. In fact, if the truth be known, they would never have allowed themselves to get into this kind of predicament in the first place. Once, during a grand jury hearing in California, I was asked the question point-blank: “How come you never got away?”
And I answered point-blank: “Because it’s kind of hard to get away when there’s a gun pointed at your head.”
There was always a gun pointed at my head. Even when no gun could be seen, there was a gun pointed at my head. I can understand why some people have such trouble accepting this as the truth. When I was younger, when I heard about a woman being raped, my secret feeling was that that could never happen to me. I would never
permit
it to happen. Now I realize that can be about as meaningful as saying I won’t allow an earthquake or I won’t permit an avalanche.
It’s impossible for people to understand real terror unless they’ve felt it, lived it, tasted it. It’s impossible to picture your own death until that possibility is real, until the car is careening or the plane is falling or you are looking at a madman holding a loaded gun. Today, when I’m sitting home quietly with my husband and child, it’s again difficult to conceive of anyone forcing me into unspeakable perversions. But I know that it did happen once, and I know something else: It could happen again—to me or to you.
At first I was certain that God would help me escape but in time my faith was shaken. I became more and more frightened, scared of everything. The very thought of trying to escape was terrifying. I had been degraded every possible way, stripped of all dignity, reduced to an animal and then to a vegetable. Whatever strength I had began to disappear. Simple survival took everything; making it all the way to tomorrow was a victory.
The experience has enabled me to understand many events that others seem to find incomprehensible. I have no difficulty relating to what happened to Patty Hearst; I have the feeling that we could be the closet of friends. Recently when several Playboy bunnies in Great Gorge, New Jersey, were drugged, photographed and forced to work as whores, I could understand the process. I can even comprehend the Jonestown massacre, hundreds of people standing in line, waiting to drink their cyanide. I know what inhuman doses of fear and pain can do to any human being.
Still, there were several times when I did try to escape. My first opportunity came after I had been working as a hooker for almost a month.
The newest addition to Chuck’s stable was a twenty-year-old, a veteran hooker named Kitty. Kitty—blonde, thin, intense and streetwise—had worked for Chuck earlier and was now returning after a year out on the streets, returning and bringing her own string of steady customers with her.
Kitty was tough and independent. When she realized that I was working against my will, she seemed sympathetic.
“I think that’s terrible,” she said. “I don’t think anyone should
have
to do anything.”
One of Kitty’s private customers was a seventy-five-year-old retired druggist named Albert who lived with his sister in an apartment not far from the beach. Whenever his sister went away for a visit, Albert would get on the phone to Kitty. This time he asked Kitty whether she could bring “a second girl” and Chuck decided this would be an assignment for me.
Whenever I went to a new apartment building or hotel, I mentally charted the possible escape routes. This was a two-story, U-shaped building with only a single entranceway. You walked through a set of arches, then about fifteen feet into a lobby, then up one flight of stairs to the apartment. As Chuck parked the car in front of the building, I realized that I would be out of his range of vision for several moments both coming and going.
Sudden panic. I needed time, time to figure out a plan, but there was no time. There was only now. Kitty and I walked from the car toward the arches framing the entrance. I didn’t want anything to come as a surprise to Kitty.
“Kitty, you know I don’t want to do any of this. There’s only one reason I’m doing it at all—if I weren’t doing this, I’d be dead. Chuck says he’ll kill me if I ever try to get away but I’ve got to try anyway. If this keeps up, I’m going to be dead anyway.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just that I wanted to warn you. I’m going to try and get away here, and I don’t want you to be too surprised by anything that happens.”
“Oh, Chuck’s really going to be pissed,” she said.
By this time we were up at the top of the stairs and Albert was waving us into his apartment. He was a short man, thin with a protruding pot belly. His bald head was rimmed with black hair. Albert was wearing an undershirt and a pair of shapeless old-man trousers. His apartment reminded me of the set of an old movie. The lamps were covered with heavy fabric shades, and the overstuffed sofa had white doilies on the arm rests. The stink of cologne was everywhere: on Albert, on the furniture and in the air.
As we walked through the living room toward the bedroom, my eyes were darting everywhere looking for an exit. We followed Albert into his bedroom and he turned his back on us and lifted his undershirt over his head.
“The money’s on the bureau,” he said. “You girls just help yourself.”
“Just a minute,” I said. “Just a minute, Albert, I’ve got to speak to you.”
“No, you don’t,” Kitty tried to interrupt me. “Not now. We don’t have to say anything at all, not yet. We just have to make nice to my sweetie here.”
“No . . .”
“What’s the trouble, bubala?” Albert asked.
“I’m not a hooker.” I realized how absurd that sounded even as I said it. “There’s a guy out there in the car who has been forcing me to do these things. You’ve got to help me escape.”
“What’re you saying?” He turned to Kitty. “What’s this young girl saying?”
“Don’t mind her,” Kitty said. “She’s just kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” I said.
“She’s not kidding,” Albert informed Kitty.
“This is the truth,” I went on. “I’m a prisoner and I’m pleading with you to help me. There’s a man sitting out there right now, waiting for me, and he’s a killer. Is there a back way out of here?”
“Better you should use the front door,” Albert said. “Better you should use the front door right now.”
Kitty was glancing at the envelope of money left on top of the bureau. Should she or shouldn’t she? She knew as well as I did what Chuck would do if we came down without the money.
“I’m going to use your telephone,” I said. “I’m going to call the police.”
Albert moved pretty well for a senior citizen. I managed to dial 0 for Operator and then his hand came crushing down on the receiver.
“No, no, no!” His voice was shrill. “No coppers, absolutely no coppers here. Look, miss, you don’t know my sister. She don’t want no coppers, and no crazy people, in her house. You girls go and get out of here now and just leave bygones be bygones.”
As the two of us came up to the arches, I began to flip out. I have never been so scared. Then I saw that Chuck had moved his car and was parked about a hundred yards away from the entranceway. He seemed to be dozing behind the wheel. There was a chance and I took it. I felt that I had nothing to lose, there would be a beating no matter what.
“
Chuck!
Chuck, hurry up!” I could hear Kitty screaming. “Chuck, she’s trying to get away.
Hurry!
”
I might have made it. If Kitty had remained quiet just one minute more—even a half-minute more—I would have had a shot. But before I reached the corner, Chuck Traynor caught up with me and his grip burnt itself into my upper arm.
Once we were back in the car, Chuck asked me no questions. He didn’t have to. What I had done was self-explanatory. Besides, Kitty was only too anxious to fill in the details. She told Chuck what I had said on the way into the building, what I had told the old man, even how I had tried to call the police.
At first I gave Kitty the benefit of the doubt. I thought that it must be panic that made her talk, fear of Chuck’s anger. But that wasn’t the reason. She took too much relish in telling the full story. She was just making brownie points. She wanted to be
numero uno
with Chuck.
Later, when Melody heard this story, Kitty got a comeuppance of sorts. She was blacklisted by all the other hookers in the Miami area. It doesn’t seem like such a terrible punishment at this moment, but Kitty was drummed right out of the business.
My punishment was somewhat harsher. Chuck dropped Kitty off and then he took me home. I remember being icy with fear. However, whatever Chuck did to me that afternoon—the details—are gone from my memory. They’re completely blocked. I can’t remember a word that he said. I don’t remember him throwing a punch or kicking me, but I do know it was the worst beating I ever got. It was a day before I could walk again. And once I could walk, there was nowhere to go. What had been prison was now solitary confinement.

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