Ordeal

by Linda Lovelace

  Since Chuck was not letting me out of his sight, I accompanied him on all his visits to his lawyer, Phil Mandina. Mandina seemed as slick as Chuck was crude—always immaculately dressed, flashy and glib. Mandina and Chuck had once been partners in a tiny airline that made daily runs to the Bahamas. Despite their many surface differences, the two men had much in common, as I was to learn.

  “What’re you doing for bread these days?” The lawyer looked over at me, then up and down. “Back in the old business?”

  “Back at the same old stand,” Chuck said.

  I disliked Phil Mandina at first sight. And, as time went on, this dislike was to ripen into hate. This was also my introduction to the legal system, and I didn’t find much to like there either. We all knew, of course, that Chuck was guilty.

  “Well, now,” Mandina said, “what we’re going to need here is a nice solid story. Fortunately, there’s that one fellow who got away, this mysterious ‘Mister X.’ There’s no doubt in our minds that he was there to get the contraband material. So, naturally, we’ll do whatever is possible to make sure that Mister X gets the full blame.”

  I sat in on seven or eight meetings in Mandina’s office. I was just another piece of furniture to them, part of the couch in the background, ignored, never part of the conversation, but always listening. Chuck was working out his alibi.

  “Well, I believe I can tell you what we were doing out there on that day,” Chuck said.

  “I’m all ears,” Mandina said.

  “We were forming a sky-diving club,” Chuck said. “You know, parachutes. And we were out there checking the fields to find a place for the sky-diving club to jump, a target area, you dig?”

  “I dig,” Mandina said. “That’s not bad at all. A sky-diving club. Hmmm, not bad at all.”

  “Yeah, we were checking for a drop zone,” Chuck said.

  “I like it,” Mandina said. “I like it. However, a sky-diving club would have to have members. You’ll have to locate a few people who will testify that they were going to help you form your sky-diving club. Do you think you can swing that?”

  “I don’t see why not. Let me speak to a few guys.”

  “Right,” Mandina said. “You speak to a few other charter members of this sky-diving club. Let’s go over this again, Chuck. What were you doing out there in those fields?”

  “We were checking it out.”

  “That’s right,” the lawyer said.

  “We were walking over the terrain,” Chuck said. “We wanted to be sure it was open enough, level enough, for a drop zone. We didn’t want any of our members to break a leg.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Mandina said. “But when you were seen, you were carrying a bale of marijuana. Did you know that was marijuana?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Chuck said. “The thing is, we thought we better turn it right into the authorities.”

  “An excellent notion,” Mandina said.

  “Yeah, we had seen kids out there playing,” Chuck said. “When we saw the stuff, just laying on the ground there, we decided we’d better turn it in before some of those kids found it.”

  During one of these meetings with the lawyer, Worth Devore—Mister X—came in for his briefing. When he was told that full blame for the operation was going to be placed on his shoulders, Worth had a few bad moments. He made them promise that he’d never be identified. At this point, Mandina seemed to notice my presence for the first time. He cupped his hand over Chuck’s ear and whispered something.

  “She stays,” Chuck said. “She don’t go nowhere without me.”

  “Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” Mandina said.

  Most of Chuck’s energy these days went toward finding a friend who would go to court and say he was a charter member of Chuck’s sky-diving club. Although few of them were willing to risk a perjury charge, one friend, a fireman named Bob Phillips, went along with the story. This same Bob Phillips was later given a bit part in Deep Throat.

  I couldn’t imagine how Chuck was planning to pay his legal fees. I should have known better. Chuck never paid for anything himself. He and Mandina worked out a deal where I wound up paying for Chuck’s defense. As a result of my automobile accident, I still had a case pending in New York and the lawyer who had been representing me was already receiving settlement offers. As payment for his case, Chuck gave Mandina the right to handle my case. The eventual settlement was more than $40,000 and was later used by Chuck and Mandina to form L. L. Enterprises. I never received any of the settlement money myself.

  In their last meetings before the trial, Mandina and Chuck went over all the details. Worth Devore had been instructed not to go near the courthouse under any circumstances. Bob Phillips was ready to testify about the sky-diving club. And then Mandina put Chuck through his dress rehearsal, firing one question after another at him. When they were all through, I couldn’t resist a comment.

  “You’re really going to tell the jury all that?” I asked. “You really think they’re going to believe that?”

  Mandina looked at me for a long moment.

  “She knows a lot,” he said.

  “So?” Chuck said.

  “She knows too much.”

  “So what can we do about that?”

  “I’m not recommending anything,” Mandina said. “I just think you should be aware of the fact that the D.A. would love to know what she knows. Incidentally, that’s not entirely farfetched. Since she’s not your wife, she could be called to testify against you.”

  Chuck thought about that but didn’t respond immediately. It was not until the next day that I received my first serious proposal of marriage.

  Marriage has always been important to me, perhaps too important. From when I was a small girl I had imagined what marriage would be like. That was all I ever expected from life—to get married to a good man, to have children, and to someday have a home of my own. When I got married, that was going to be it. Marriage is so important to me that I used to fantasize about all aspects of it—the proposal, the wedding night, the honeymoon. I had even imagined a man on his knees, asking for my hand. That’s not quite the way it worked out.

  “We’re getting married tomorrow,” Chuck said.

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Yeah, we are,” Chuck said. “Only it’s a long drive so you’ll have to get your ass in gear early in the A.M.”

  “Chuck, no. We’re not getting married.”

  “Did you say ‘no’ to me? Did I hear you say ‘no’ to me? Linda, I can’t believe you’d be that reckless. I thought we had agreed that you’d never say ‘no’ to me.”

  “I’m not marrying you.”

  He hit me then and I cried out in pain. Then he started to choke me, and he didn’t let go until I fell to the floor. Then the kicks started. This time I had the feeling that he wasn’t going to stop in time, that he was going to go all the way and kill me.

  The following morning we were married. Maybe. The reason I can’t be sure is that I’ve tried to get my marriage certificate, but I’ve been told that the records for that month were destroyed. At this point I can’t even be sure there was a genuine marriage.

  If you ask me what date we were married, I couldn’t tell you. There was no reason to remember the date; I knew that no anniversary would ever be celebrated. The only reason I know it was September is because it was shortly before Chuck’s trial.

  Chuck woke me up that day before dawn. It was a six-hour drive to the small town of Valdosta, Georgia, a long drive made longer still by being locked in a car with Chuck. Chuck was no longer content to get into a car and just drive somewhere. Now he had invented little games that helped him pass the time. One of his favorite games was to make me bare my breasts so that he could watch the reaction of passing truck drivers. And there was another game. Before stopping for gas, he would hike my skirt up above my hips and make me spread my legs. Then he’d ask the gas station attendant to please clean the windshield. This was all part of my day-by-da
y life and things didn’t change just because it was my wedding day.

  Chuck Traynor is surely one of the few men in the world who wouldn’t consider going to a jewelry store to purchase his wedding ring. He went to a novelty shop. The ring he selected was plastic, one of those interlocking puzzle rings made from a dozen strangely shaped pieces. It set him back two dollars and change. For some reason, the ring did not seem at all inappropriate to the occasion.

  When we arrived in Valdosta, we went to the town hall. We were ushered into the office of a Justice of the Peace. The office had high ceilings, narrow windows, a wall of legal books. The ceremony itself was the simple economy model: some quick “I do’s” and no “Kiss the bride.”

  The only departure from form came when the Justice asked for the ring.

  “What this?” he asked.

  “It’s a puzzle ring,” Chuck explained.

  “That’s very cute,” he said. “I’ve never seen one of these before.”

  As he handed the man the ring, Chuck dropped it, breaking it into its component parts. The justice spent several minutes trying to get the pieces back together but had to give up. I put it together and Chuck slipped it on my finger while the justice used the incident to make a point: “Well, I guess if you kids can keep this ring together, you’ll be able to keep a marriage together.”

  Immediately after the ceremony, if that’s the right word, Chuck drove me to a hotel in Valdosta. Just outside the hotel he asked a stranger if he would mind taking a photograph of us.

  “Smile, babe,” he said, “it’s your wedding day.”

  He was having a grand old time. And he wouldn’t let up. Once we were in the hotel room, he called his mother in North Carolina and told her that we had just tied the knot. She asked to speak to the bride.

  “Best wishes!” she said. “I’m sure you’ll both be as happy forever as you are now.”

  Although I was hoping for slightly more than that out of life, I did nothing to diminish her enthusiasm. Her excitement was transmitted very clearly over the phone and I didn’t have the heart to ruin her day. Yes, I was certainly a lucky girl to “catch” her son. Yes, it had been a beautiful ceremony. Yes, I was sure we’d be very happy together.

  When Chuck asked me whether I wanted to call my parents and share the good news with them, I declined the invitation.

  The reality of my marriage, needless to say, fell somewhat short of my girlhood daydreams. That’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from this entire experience: Never depend on fantasy. All my life I had a fantasy of a wedding day, a wedding night, a honeymoon, a handsome prince charming, a happy-ever-after.

  Our wedding dinner? We went out to the local greasy spoon and had two cheeseburgers. Our wedding night? We came back to the room, turned on the television set and fell asleep. Sweet talk? This: “Now you’ll never be able to testify against me. A wife can never testify against her husband. And another thing, you can never have me arrested—a wife can never charge her husband with a crime.”

  How could that be true? I’ve since discovered that there’s no truth to it at all. But then—and this is just another indication of my gullibility—I accepted whatever Chuck said as the final word on the matter.

  Our honeymoon was of a piece with the rest of the marriage. Needing some quick cash before his trial, Chuck decided to go to work for a few days. His cousin’s husband, the owner of a large construction firm, offered Chuck work putting up sheetrock. As you might guess, that presented Chuck with a problem: How do you spend your days spackling sheetrock when you’ve got a brand new bride who wants to run away?

  Chuck solved the problem in his own inimitable way. He asked his boss if he would mind guarding me while Chuck was working. In exchange for that, the boss could have sex with me whenever he wanted it. And that’s how I spent my honeymoon, running my husband’s house of prostitution while having periodic sex with his cousin’s husband.

  I was placing all of my hope in Chuck’s upcoming trial. My freedom would surely come with Chuck’s imprisonment, and that imprisonment seemed a certainty. The jury certainly would see through their little sky-diving story. And if someone is convicted of importing 400 pounds of pot, he doesn’t get a slap on the wrist.

  The trial lasted a week and, until Chuck took the stand, it went much the way I expected. Still, Chuck didn’t seem overly worried as he sat there wearing his only decent clothes, a three-piece brown suit with a bright orange necktie.

  Then Chuck took over—and I do mean took over. He has to be the greatest conman who ever lived. He had been caught red-handed with a bale of marijuana, and he told the jury he was just getting the stuff away from kids in the area. By the time he was through testifying about his sky-diving club, even I was looking for his parachute. After the not-guilty verdict, one of the jurors came over to Chuck.

  “There just wasn’t enough evidence against you,” the juror said. “We couldn’t be 100 percent sure you were guilty. But if you ever get into hot water again, we’ll know.”

  Now they know.

  As we were leaving the courtroom, I reached out and took a handful of Exhibit A—the marijuana—and stuck it in Chuck’s jacket pocket. I know how irrational I was but I was half-hoping they’d search him on the way out of the courtroom, find the stuff, and try him all over again.

  Chuck was on top of the world that afternoon, as up as I was down. He kept telling me about his glorious career as a high school debater, kept bragging about how he had turned a district attorney into a monkey.

  I was depressed for several reasons. I was still not free of Chuck and, beyond that fact, I had just seen how easy it was for an accomplished liar to defeat the legal system in this country. It had been so easy for Chuck Traynor to manipulate the jury, the judge, the whole system. I had the feeling that there was nothing that could stop him now.

  I was overcome with a feeling of hopelessness … of absolute depresion … of futility. Then, one more escape attempt. My older sister Jean had come with her little boy to Florida and they were staying at my parents’ home.

  Chuck arranged for a social outing, a day at the beach. But Jean must have picked up bad vibrations. We had been at the beach only a few minutes when she suddenly decided to go back to my parents’ house. Chuck was angry but he went along with Jean.

  Our first stop was Chuck’s house. As Jean put on her clothes, I started rummaging through a bureau drawer. I saw something that sent chills through me. Photographs. Photograps of myself with another girl. Oh, God, what was her name again? Chicklet! Dozens of photos shot from every conceivable angle. Without saying a word, I swept all the photos into my purse and they remained there during the drive north to my parents’ home. When we pulled up, I could see my father waiting for us beside the front door. Jean got out of the car and started walking toward the front door. I did the same.

  “Where are you going?” Chuck said.

  “Just a minute,” I said. “You stay here.”

  Even as I stepped from the car, I had no clear idea of what I was doing. I turned away from Chuck and ignored what he was saying. My hands were trembling but once I started, there was no stopping. I followed my father and my sister into the house and the voice behind me, Chuck’s voice, took on a pleading note.

  “Yon can’t leave me,” he said. “You’re my wife.”

  Until he said that, I didn’t fully realize that I was leaving him. Not until I closed the front door of my father’s house did it hit me. I was on one side of a closed door, and Chuck Traynor was on the other. As I leaned against the door, resting my back against it, my strength drained out of me. Was it going to be this simple then? Was that even remotely possible? After everything, was I just going to be able to walk away from him? ,

  “Oh?” My father noticed my presence. “Is something the matter?”

  “Yes, everything’s the matter. I’ve got to get away from Chuck. I don’t ever want anything to do with him again.”

  “What’s the matter, Linda?
”

  “I wouldn’t even know how to tell you,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t believe any of it. There’s just something wrong with Chuck. He’s a very sick man. I don’t ever want to go back to his house.”

  “How do you mean, sick?”

  “He makes me do things. He makes me do things that aren’t right. Sexual things.”

  I couldn’t tell my father any more than that. I just couldn’t. I didn’t even know how to put it into words. And as I realized there was a closed door between the two worlds—two worlds that would never, ever understand each other—I felt a flood of emotions.

  That afternoon my father took my sister and myself out to another beach. We were stretched out in the sun, just tanning ourselves, but I couldn’t relax inside. I told myself that this was freedom and that I should enjoy it, but I kept opening my eyes and looking around. I expected to see Chuck coming for me. My father is a big man, well over six feet tall, but even his presence didn’t reassure me. Chuck would come for me. I knew that. There was no way he would let me get away this easily. But when?

  The next morning Jean opened up my purse and saw all those photographs. She woke me up.

  “Linda, what’re these?”

  “That’s my life with Chuck.”

  Jean went through the pictures methodically, stopping to study each one of them. I could see that she was going through changes.

  “These pictures are awful!” she said. “You’ve got to get rid of them. If Mommy ever sees these pictures, she’ll die.”

  We tore the photographs into small pieces and took turns flushing them down the toilet. I felt better, much better, as I watched the pieces swirl away. But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get Chuck out of my life and out of my mind that easily.

  Later, as both my folks went off to work, Jean and I stayed home together. I had to make plans. Chuck knew where I was. Therefore, I had to go somewhere else. I had to get out of Chuck’s range. But where? I was stumped. This was the only place I seemed to have any protection at all. And how could I even get away from there? I imagined Chuck outside, still in the neighborhood, hiding behind a bush or a telephone pole, just waiting for me to try and slip away.