Authors: Linda Lovelace
Ordeal (19 page)
eighteen
And so I became a best-selling author. The way you become a best-selling author is this: Every night for two weeks you get a list of questions to answer; Chuck Traynor tells you how to answer these questions and you give those answers to a tape recorder; then a professional writer types it, arranges it, spells it right, and calls it
Inside Linda Lovelace
. The publisher adds a centerfold and a bunch of other near-naked pictures and then you have a best-selling book.
Inside Linda Lovelace
. The publisher adds a centerfold and a bunch of other near-naked pictures and then you have a best-selling book.
What happened during the writing of this book, and the next one written under my name, makes me doubt every book I read. Sometimes I wonder if the publisher of this book will find a way to change this story around. Of course this time I’m not being introduced to a publisher by a call girl, and this time I believe there will not be any naked centerfold pictures.
The only honesty in that first book was the accidental honesty of its dedication: “To Chuck Traynor—the creator.”
That’s certainly accurate enough, slightly more accurate than the message of the book, a message that was set down very clearly in the opening chapter:
I live for sex, will never get enough of it, and will continue to try every day to tune my physical mechanism to finer and finer perfection.
I live for sex, will never get enough of it, and will continue to try every day to tune my physical mechanism to finer and finer perfection.
The book is a pack of lies. My “thoughts” about masturbation:
Then, at age twelve, and now at age twenty-two, I’m an incorrigible masturbator.
And on teenage lesbianism:
I saw her naked body and tried not to show my interest, but you already know about me; I’m not exactly turned off by the female anatomy
. And about losing my virginity to the awesome Chuck Traynor:
The fat rocklike muscle tore into me like a battering ram, and I nearly fainted from the shock . . . I came in seconds.
Then, at age twelve, and now at age twenty-two, I’m an incorrigible masturbator.
And on teenage lesbianism:
I saw her naked body and tried not to show my interest, but you already know about me; I’m not exactly turned off by the female anatomy
. And about losing my virginity to the awesome Chuck Traynor:
The fat rocklike muscle tore into me like a battering ram, and I nearly fainted from the shock . . . I came in seconds.
If it wasn’t so awful I might laugh. I see that Chuck Traynor is described repeatedly as the world’s greatest lover. And I was his good student:
He didn’t bullwhip me into performing like a circus pony. I was the most willing pupil a teacher could ever have. Since I was so earnest, he devoted the time necessary to help me with my accomplishments.
He didn’t bullwhip me into performing like a circus pony. I was the most willing pupil a teacher could ever have. Since I was so earnest, he devoted the time necessary to help me with my accomplishments.
Reading the book now, I see Chuck’s fear that the truth would one day surface. Here are my feelings about
Deep Throat: If I didn’t love what I did, no money on earth could make me do it. Like my work? Friends, I love every second of it . . . on and off camera
. In a chapter about Michelle’s party:
I’ll admit I got a little excited by the bizarre carryings-on.
The reason I exposed myself in public:
I’m a compulsive flasher, if you know what that is
. And even an explanation of the horrible bruises on my body in
Deep Throat: Would you believe it that the day before we started shooting, I bumped against a stupid bedpost and ended up with a bruise on my hip that looked like I’d been in a scrimmage with the Los Angeles Rams.
Deep Throat: If I didn’t love what I did, no money on earth could make me do it. Like my work? Friends, I love every second of it . . . on and off camera
. In a chapter about Michelle’s party:
I’ll admit I got a little excited by the bizarre carryings-on.
The reason I exposed myself in public:
I’m a compulsive flasher, if you know what that is
. And even an explanation of the horrible bruises on my body in
Deep Throat: Would you believe it that the day before we started shooting, I bumped against a stupid bedpost and ended up with a bruise on my hip that looked like I’d been in a scrimmage with the Los Angeles Rams.
The book should have been called
Inside Chuck Traynor
. Even the sexual incidents they thought up for me—for example, making love to a mother-daughter combination—were things that had happened to Chuck. And, of course, the philosophy was pure Chuck:
We should worry more about real issues and less about what a few uptight fogeys
think
are issues. If this country is free, shouldn’t each person be given a choice to live as he wishes.
Inside Chuck Traynor
. Even the sexual incidents they thought up for me—for example, making love to a mother-daughter combination—were things that had happened to Chuck. And, of course, the philosophy was pure Chuck:
We should worry more about real issues and less about what a few uptight fogeys
think
are issues. If this country is free, shouldn’t each person be given a choice to live as he wishes.
I hate the thought that people today can still pick up that piece of trash and think it has anything to do with me or with my life. Which is why I’m so delighted that Chuck Traynor, in a 1976 interview with Leonard Lyons, told the truth: “I wrote the book
Inside Linda Lovelace
with another guy before Linda and I split up. I created all the sex situations in it just as I created Linda Lovelace.”
Inside Linda Lovelace
with another guy before Linda and I split up. I created all the sex situations in it just as I created Linda Lovelace.”
Now that we were branching out in so many directions, Chuck decided that we needed an office on Sunset Boulevard, the home office of Linda Lovelace Enterprises. Chuck put together the companies with the assistance of lawyer Phil Mandina. Anyway, now that we had a company and an office, we needed someone who knew how to type. Chuck mentioned this to Hugh Hefner one night.
“We’ve got to find a secretary,” he said.
“What kind of qualifications are you looking for?” Hefner asked.
“She should have big tits.”
“I think I know someone.”
The woman we hired, Dolores, was a former secretary of Hefner’s. She had been a starlet in those beach-blanket movies and more than met Chuck’s specifications. Dolores was also a Hollywood fixture and knew everyone there was to know in the entertainment world. On top of all this, Dolores proved to be a good friend to me and a source of strength when I needed strength most.
Although we continued to visit Hefner’s home, Chuck began to realize that the publisher was never going to be one of his pals, never going to share his wealth with him. And there had to be more to life than backgammon. It seemed a good time to accept an invitation from Sammy Davis Jr.
As we went to Sammy’s house that first night, Chuck went through the regular celebrity briefing. I was to lay down every hint I could think of and if anyone else hinted at anything, I was to pick up on it right away.
“If Sammy suggests anything—I mean anything at all—you just go along with it one-hundred percent.”
Our first night at Sammy’s house was a typical Hollywood social evening, dinner followed by a movie in the star’s private screening room. And then the four of us—Chuck and myself, Sammy and Altovise—sat around and talked. That night the conversation remained fairly general despite Chuck’s constant efforts to divert it into the gutter. Once, when Chuck was doing this, Sammy indicated surprise.
“Oh? Are you two into scenes?” he said.
To me, a “scene” was a sexual happening—an orgy, or a swap or practically anything outside the norm.
“We’re into anything at all,” Chuck said.
“Yeah?” Sammy seemed thoughtful. “Well, I can dig that.”
Then we let it slide. I can no longer remember the first time that a scene actually came down between Sammy and myself but once it did happen, it happened almost every night. Sammy would start a movie going in the screening room and then he and I would wander off to another part of the house, leaving Chuck and Altovise together.
It wasn’t all scenes with Sammy. Every night we were together, we’d spend hours just talking and sometimes we’d spend the whole night just rapping about his past. Sammy loved to remember his days as a child performer, part of a group that featured his father and his uncle. He told me about traveling arcoss the country in those days and what would happen when their old car broke down. He talked about his marriages and kids. And he particularly loved talking about his songs. He’d play tapes of himself singing as a youngster and as a star. “Hey, listen to this,” he’d say, “you’ll see how my voice has changed.”
Sammy never asked me much about my past, about my growing up, but that would have seemed as ordinary to him as it does to me. He was interested in now, in what I was doing with my career at the moment. For a time he seemed intrigued by the thought of my becoming part of his show, but that never came about. He did suggest that I put together a big Las Vegas act. He had advice for every part of my career except movies; he knew he wasn’t the world’s greatest movie actor and he wasn’t getting many film roles.
Sammy looked like a savior to me. Just being in his company kept me out of other situations. And I liked him as a person. He wasn’t constantly molesting me and I enjoyed just being with him, listening to his music and his words.
There were scenes with Sammy, but he wasn’t beating me or hurting me. He had his own code of marital fidelity—he explained to me that he could do anything except have normal intercourse because that, the act of making love, would be cheating on his wife. What he wanted me to do, then, was to deep-throat him. Because that would not be an act of infidelity.
Chuck and Sammy seemed to have an understanding with each other. Whenever Sammy led me away for the evening, Chuck never said a word or came looking for us. This was because Chuck was sure that Sammy would do what Hefner had never done, fix him up with a lot of far-out chicks. It would have been easy for Sammy to keep Chuck happy. He would have just had to say that he was going to introduce him to a chick who liked to be whipped until she bled. If you told Chuck something like that—and you could promise it at some indefinite date—he’d do anything for you. However, Sammy never did make that effort.
While there were scenes between Chuck and Altovise, she couldn’t stand Chuck. According to Sammy, Altovise despised Chuck and wanted her husband to find someone else for her.
To this day, I have trouble understanding Altovise. If you’ve ever seen her, you know what a truly beautiful woman she is. And while all this was going on around her, she remained silent. She never really participated in the conversation. She was just there. I could see that Altovise wasn’t into scenes any more than I was. She went along with it because it was what Sammy wanted.
I always felt a kinship with Altovise. We were alike in many ways but not alike in motivation. She did things to keep her man happy; I did things to keep my man from killing me. More than once Sammy said that he thought Altovise and I were the same kind of person; we were both “beautiful people.” The one big difference, as he saw it, was that Altovise wasn’t super-freaky and I was. He said that she would go along with things but she never really got into it. I, on the other hand, was really into it.
Why didn’t I tell Sammy the truth? Because there was another side to him. When he was talking with me he would often describe things that he wanted to do to me. He would like to tie me down on a bed, then have other women come in and make love to me while he watched. That other side of Sammy could be scary. But even when talking about it, he would speak in a gentle voice and he never actually did anything. But I always wondered. And I was afraid that if he found out the truth, that I was not a super-freak then he’d have no more to do with me and I’d be back with Chuck all the time.
Only occasionally did Sammy’s far-out ideas become reality. There were times when the two men had Altovise and myself go through a “scene” together while they watched. But I’m as sure now, as I was then, that they were the only two in the room to get any pleasure from that at all.
The four of us were always together. Every night, most of the night. And when Sammy felt like a little golfing vacation in Hawaii, we all packed up and went along. When Sammy got a suite at the Kahala Hilton, we just moved in.
During our stay in Hawaii, a change came over Sammy. One night at a private party, he and I were talking together and he said that his feelings about me were getting serious. He said that he had fought it but it was no use; he was falling in love and he wanted me with him the rest of his life. Altovise happened to overhear some of this and, naturally, she was hurt and angry. Sammy tried to calm her down but she left the party.
“She’s gone back to the hotel,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Sammy—you should be with her.”
“No,” he said. “I’m right where I should be, right where I want to be.”
After that, things became even more intense. In a way, I was using him; he was the only one on earth who could prevent Chuck from doing what he wanted to do to me. But Sammy was a romantic man and the word “love” came into our conversations more and more often.
One night we were going to a nightclub opening and I decided to dress all in white: a white gown and a white fox wrap that a shop in Beverly Hills let me borrow for the evening. Sammy took one look at me, then dashed upstairs. When he came down, he was also dressed in white—a white tuxedo, white top hat, and white gloves.
He was always making romantic gestures. He put me on a pedestal and he bought me gifts, a gold bracelet, one of the early Polaroid cameras, and many trinkets. I always wondered how Altovise reacted when he catered to me. Or how she reacted when we all were out in public—Sammy and I would be creating a stir, signing autographs, while Chuck and Altovise remained in the background.
Often Sammy would talk about marriage but it was strictly what-if talk. What if I left Chuck and what if he left Altovise and what if we decided to get married and what if. . . . I didn’t want him to divorce anyone to marry me. Because I didn’t see where my life would get any better. What was happening between us wasn’t all that terrific. All that was happening, really, was that he was keeping me out of worse scenes, away from sadism and freakishness.
Sammy Davis Jr. gave me many gifts but the biggest present of all was one moment of revenge. I sense that this will not sound like much revenge to any reader who is aware of all that Chuck did to me. However, it was the only time I saw Chuck get a taste of his own medicine.
On this particular night Altovise had managed to find something else to do. The three of us—Chuck, Sammy, myself—were in the screening room watching a porno movie. Or, rather, the two men were watching the movie. I was on my knees in front of Sammy, deep-throating him while he watched the movie.
“I really dig that,” Sammy was whispering. “I’d like to know how you do it. When are you going to teach me? When’re you going to show me how you do that?”
Sammy often talked like that, asking me when I was going to teach him how to deep-throat someone. Sometimes I thought he was just joking and sometimes I wasn’t so sure. On this particular night, Sammy suddenly looked over at Chuck sitting a few seats away. Chuck was staring at the movie screen.
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