“You’re lying!” I said. “How could a donkey do anything with a woman?”
“Oh, he gets a little fucking help,” Chuck said, obviously pleased that I was finally reacting. “They’ve got to point him right, you dig? Sometimes the chick gets ripped up a little—I’m telling you, you haven’t lived ‘till you’ve seen one of those donkey dongs. Those suckers are huge! And the guys are all bidding like they’re at some fucking auction—‘I’ll bet a thousand on the redhead,’ like that.”
“That would kill a woman.”
“Nah, they got the medicos right there,” Chuck said. “If the bleeding gets too bad, they unstrap the chicks and give them medical assistance right on the spot. Some of those chicks are really hemorrhaging, too.”
I couldn’t tell when Chuck was telling the truth. But I was scared. As the miles piled up, he got more and more graphic. He seemed to like the word “hemorrhage” because he used it a lot. At night I went to sleep dreaming about women bleeding. I also dreamt about animals making love to women—but those images were fuzzy. How could they do it? Could they do it?
Maybe all of this was one of Chuck’s inventions but I have never prayed so hard in my life: Dear God, please don’t let us get to Juarez, Mexico; please stop us from going to Juarez.
And God answered my prayers one night outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. All of a sudden Chuck’s little Volkswagen just took off. It had been hit from behind by a station wagon driven by a drunk. We swerved to the right, then to the left, then off into a ditch and over onto our side. The next thing I knew, truck drivers were crawling all over the car, looking for a way to lift us out. I heard one of them say, “Well, that little car has had it.”
Thank God! I knew that God had done it. The automobile accident was definitely God answering my prayers. Maybe not verbatim, maybe not giving me everything that I wanted, but at least protecting me.
From what?
From being fucked by a donkey in Juarez, Mexico.
eight
Juarez was now out of the question, and Little Rock definitely was not Chuck’s kind of a town. So we got a ride to New York which definitely was Chuck’s kind of town.
We couldn’t afford an apartment in the city itself, but Chuck found us a place on the other side of the Hudson—in Jersey City, New Jersey. After putting up a month’s security and a month’s rent, Chuck had less than $50.00 left. He invested some of this in purchasing every sex tabloid published in New York City.
Once he had the newspapers, Chuck went through the classified ads, looking for suitable employment for me. These were not your ordinary Help Wanted ads. In fact, I read the same classified ads that Chuck was reading, and I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. They were written in some kind of code. They used phrases like “English Leather Fanciers” and “French Instruction” and “Greek Spoken Here” and “TV Specialists.” Chuck knew exactly what they all meant.
“This is some town!” he said. “They get away with stuff here they haven’t even thought of back in Miami.”
As he went through the newspaper ads, Chuck circled telephone numbers. His first calls were all to S&M—sadism and masochism—numbers, but these calls were for his own general information. When he began looking for employment for me, he called the numbers in the “Models Wanted” columns.
“Well, Babe, we’re back in business,” he said. “Your old man has everything under control.”
It was not all that simple. My career as a topless dancer, for example, lasted less than one night. We were racing from one address to another in the midtown area of New York City, and one of our stops was a small bar off 42nd Street. It was like a little auditorium with thirty or forty seats. There were girls dancing, and, between sets, they hustled drinks from the customers.
After speaking to the club manager for a few minutes, Chuck told me to go upstairs and put on a G-string.
“This could be easy money,” Chuck said. “So you’re up on a stage bare-assed for a couple of hours every night, so what’s the big deal? This way you’ll be able to work with photographers during the day and dance topless at night. Just until we find something more steady.”
That prospect—“something more steady”—sent a small shudder through me. But, in truth, the whole topless bar scene was as embarrassing as anything I’ve ever done. I went into a small room, took off my clothes and put on the G-string while one of the dancers was giving me advice.
“Listen, honey, there’s nothing to this,” she was saying. “Just dance up close to the end of the stage and let your tits hang down so the creeps can almost reach them. Then, when you’re spreading your legs, just lift your G-string a little, you know what I’m saying?”
Waiting to go down the stairs and onto the stage, I could hear the manager introducing me.
“What we got here—for your entertainment and enjoyment—a brand new star, fresh from Florida and points west, about to grace our stage here for the first time …”
There had been no chance to watch the other dancers, so I had no idea what was expected of me. Suddenly, in front of dozens of glittering eyes, I was on a stage—wearing a piece of string and feeling as stupid as I’ve ever felt—doing some regular disco dancing. And the customers made no attempt to conceal their feelings. Those who weren’t yawning, were hooting at me. I finished a couple of numbers, then made a dash for the upstairs dressing room. Followed by Chuck. Followed by the manager.
“What’re you two trying to do, put all my customers to sleep?”
The upshot was that the brand new star, fresh from Florida and points west, got no pay at all for her show-business debut. Chuck was quick to assure me that there’d be many other opportunities in the near future, and he was right. New York City was truly the land of opportunity for Chuck.
There were hundreds of people who made their livings by peddling sex in New York. What was amazing to me was how quickly one got to know them all. They were all links on the same chain; you met one person, and he passed you along to the others. The still photographers knew the club owners who knew the madams who knew the eight-millimeter directors who knew the peep-show kingpins who knew the adult book store owners and so on. I swear, before that first week was out, Chuck Traynor managed to meet almost every prominent pervert in New York. My life was a succession of job interviews.
One of those first interviews was with a whore named Xaviera Hollander.
Although Xaviera was not yet famous as “the happy hooker,” hers was no nickel-and-dime operation. The uniformed doorman at her East Side apartment building informed us that Miss Hollander would be detained for a few moments and asked us to be good enough to wait in the lobby.
And this is where I met Xaviera Hollander. My first reaction to her was that New York City must be pretty hard up if someone who looked like her could become a successful madam. She was fat. Her hair was dirty, all caked with grease. She had piled the makeup on a face that needed more than mere makeup. We followed her to the elevator and on up to her apartment.
“Tom sent us over,” Chuck said. “He thought that maybe you could use my old lady here in your operation.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Xaviera looked me over like a butcher inspecting a side of beef. “She’s too skinny. She’s not my type at all.”
“She’s a good hooker …”
“I’ve already got enough brown-haired girls,” Xaviera said. “Maybe if she was a redhead …”
“She could be a redhead,” Chuck said. “No problem.”
Before responding, Xaviera went to pick up a ringing telephone. The call was from a publisher and they were talking about some book that was about to come out under Xaviera’s name. While she was talking, Chuck whispered to me.
“Come on with her a little.”
“No way.”
“Tell her you’d like to give her a little free sample of what you can do,” he said. “It won’t kill you. And ask her if she’s got any dildoes around. Tell her you can show her some new t
hings with dildoes.”
“No.”
Xaviera returned. She was looking at our clothes and was more amused than impressed. We were in our usual outfits: blue jeans, waterproof boots, and army jackets.
“Those clothes are awful,” Xaviera said. “You know, my clients are astronauts and judges. They take my girls to formal parties. They don’t want girls who look like hippies, they want nice girls.”
I began to wonder what kind of a hooker ever dressed the way I was dressed. Chuck, realizing that this prospect was slipping away from us, went to his hard sell.
“Linda’s not a typical hooker,” he said. “She could show you—why don’t you let her give you a little sample.”
“I’m not talking about what she does,” Xaviera said. “I’m talking about the way she looks. My girls have nice clothes, a lot of class. They’re able to sit down and have dinner with the mayor or the governor.”
“Yeah, but not all your tricks are big shots,” Chuck said. “You must get your share of freaks and guys who go for the far-out stuff. Linda could do them.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
All the way to our next appointment, this one with a Swedish madam named Milka, Chuck yelled at me. He said that Xaviera was right, I was too skinny. He could never make up his mind about that. One day he’d yell at me for being too skinny, the next for being too fat. Then he went back to his favorite theme: I wasn’t freaky enough. If I had been more freaky, I would have come on with Xaviera Hollander and gotten the job that way. I crept into my shell and closed it tightly behind me.
Xaviera’s rejection didn’t bother me in the least. In fact, being turned down by her was a compliment in a way.
The second madam, Milka, was at least nice looking. She was with a friend, Martin, and they both scrutinized me, much the way Xaviera had, but they didn’t come to a quick decision. Chuck decided to help them make up their minds: “Why doesn’t Linda give Martin a free sample, see what he thinks.”
Martin led me over to a double bed in the far corner of the room. Fish netting, draped like curtains over the bed, was all the privacy we had. Something that I can’t explain hit me then. While the act was happening, while his thing was in my mouth, I started crying. It was as if my whole life had come down to this moment and this act—sucking off a stranger—and I couldn’t hold back the sadness. Martin eased away from me.
“You don’t really want to do this?” he whispered.
“No.”
“Then cool it,” he said. “You’re not into this kind of thing; you shouldn’t be doing it. Come on, Linda, calm down now, nothing is going to happen. We’ll wait here a few minutes and then we’ll go back out there.”
There was no more conversation. Martin rubbed my back soothingly while we waited for the proper amount of time to pass, then we went back to Chuck and the madam.
“She’s really fantastic,” Martin said. “She’s the greatest. Chuck was right.”
“What’d I tell you?” Chuck said.
“Yeah,” Martin said, “I never had a blow job like that.”
Somehow, although he was saying just what Chuck wanted to hear, he was also letting Milka know that something was not quite right here. She listened to him and then turned to us.
“Well, Linda, if we can use you, we’ll get in touch with you.”
In other words: Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Which was fine with me, but not so fine with Chuck.
About this same time, one of Chuck’s former hookers in Miami showed up and moved in with us. Brandy, a still fresh-looking eighteen-year-old girl with long brown hair, had only worked as a prostitute for five or six weeks. In fact, she was still involved in a mental debate: Should she become a full-time hooker or should she give it up and marry her high-school sweetheart and start a family? I told her she was crazy to come back to Chuck and the business, but she only laughed at that.
Brandy and I had done several tricks together in Florida, and our first job in New York was for a still photographer. This was in a studio that was used exclusively for sadomasochistic photos: chains hanging from walls, strange medieval torture devices, a full selection of whips, a jumbo-sized bottle of Heinz ketchup.
Brandy and I stripped down, then took turns pretending to whip and torture each other. It was all so absurd. What kind of a man would get turned on by seeing a picture of a naked woman with ketchup smeared across her back?
From still photographs it was a short distance to the world of movies. Just across the street, as a matter of fact, to a studio where they shot eight-millimeter movies for the peep-show trade. The thought of making a movie really bothered me. When they were taking still photographs, you could always stop whatever you were doing and take a breather. You didn’t have to act as through you were enjoying every minute of it. I had no idea how I was going to fake it long enough for them to shoot a movie.
“We’ll just give it a try,” Brandy said. “What’s the big deal? We’ve done plenty of tricks for twenty—why not do a movie for a hundred?”
“It’s no big deal,” Chuck said. “When we get there, you two just do like the man tells you. Tonight, we’ll have a little dress rehearsal.”
Chuck’s idea of a dress rehearsal was for Brandy and myself to have sex together while he watched. He was always trying to push the two of us together. He would get the three of us in bed together, and he’d begin by taking my hand and putting it on Brandy’s breast. Then he would take Brandy’s hand and put it inside of me. Brandy got no more pleasure from any of this than I did. But she was like me in one crucial respect: She went along with it.
While Chuck was brutal to me, he was nice with Brandy. In fact, I never saw him rough up another woman. Maybe because other women would not have taken it. The way I see things now, I was still a baby. He had taken me directly from the cradle to the whorehouse, and brutality was the only thing that kept me there.
Well, I had been involved with Brandy for the benefit of tricks, and I didn’t see anything in the movie that was going to be any different. So I went along with it.
Those first eight-millimeter movies were shot in a loft near 48th Street and Broadway by a man named Tom. The bathroom sink was filthy. The rooms were filled with odd pieces of furniture covered by sheets. The floors had never been mopped and your feet turned black just walking on them. The people who made filthy movies always seemed to live in filth.
Tom introduced us to our co-star for the day, a nice-looking young man named Rob. I wound up making a half-dozen of the eight-millimeter movies with Rob, including some with his wife, Cathy. The first time I met Rob, I wondered how this could be. Here’s this real doll—he was adorable!—tall and blond and cute. How could a guy who looked like that do what he did for a living? What problems did he have to get into something like this? I will never understand that.
The director, Tom, told Brandy and me to take off our clothes and lie on the bed. He told us to lie there naked and be laughing and talking together and then to start kissing each other.
All right, I had to kiss her. Instead of moving right along, as the director wanted, I kind of hesitated at this point. I hated to move right along, even though that was the only way to get through these jobs. Then, when Brandy and I were supposedly getting into it, a guy appeared in the scene.
This was Rob. Brandy and I pretended to be surprised to see him: First we feigned embarrassment, then we pretended to be happy to have a fresh body. This was the whole story of the movie. Rob took off his clothes, and then, while the two of us kissed him all over, he got sexually aroused. Oh, God, it seemed so absurd while we were doing it; even more absurd now when I’m remembering it.
Maybe I should’ve been used to all this by now. But I wasn’t. Whenever it happened—whenever something like this was coming down—I felt disgusted all over again. That never changed. There were always tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, and if Chuck saw that—if he even saw me looking moody—there would be a certain punishment.
In
time I learned a thing or two. I learned a false smile was a lot better than a real beating, so I’d just paste that smile on my face no matter what was happening. I also learned that if I didn’t get into it quickly, then I’d have to be at it longer. So I got right into it, did it quickly, smiled all the time and got it over with. Later, in the shower, I would tell myself that it hadn’t really happened.
Tom and Rob introduced Chuck to the other people who were making eight-millimeter movies. The first film was actually a fairly straight one, if you can believe that. Tom did relatively normal films, but the same couldn’t be said for my next director, Bob Wolf. That first film was plenty disgusting, but at least no one was urinating on anyone.
I’m being serious about this. Bob Wolf referred to one of our eight-millimeter epics as “the piss movie.” This is one that I made with Rob and his wife, Cathy. The movie began with what I suppose is a fairly traditional porn opening—the old girl-meets-girl-meets-boy formula. At any rate, the three of us were in bed together and after we had done everything that three people could do to each other sexually, the director decided that the movie would come to a socko finish with the actors urinating on each other.
You may wonder how they introduced this scene smoothly into the movie, or how they explained it in terms of character motivation. Well, that kind of thought never occurred to anyone working on an eight-millimeter movie. All I know is that the director had about five minutes of film left to shoot when the inspiration hit him.
“All right, Rob,” Bob Wolf said, “you lie down over there on that rubber sheet. And Cathy, you and Linda come over here and piss on him.”
I blinked at that. But I wasn’t all that surprised. That was a measure of how far I had gone in less than a year. Piss on him? Sure, why not? But as it turned out, it was not that easy to do. Cathy was the first to try.
“I can’t do it,” she said.
“Oh you can’t?” Wolf seemed upset by her lack of professionalism. “Well, fine, if you can’t be the pisser, you can be the pissee. Cathy, you lie down, and Rob, you and Linda piss on her.”
Ordeal Page 9
