Ordeal

  My father had retired from the police force and was now working as a security guard for an airline. My mother worked as a waitress at a local golf club. When she wasn’t working, she spent much of her time worrying about my getting home by eleven o’clock.

  She was serious about that, dead serious. If I was just fifteen minutes late, she’d greet me at the door with a hard slap across the face or a rap with a broomstick. My father managed never to be around to see this. The one time he walked into the room while she was hitting me, he turned on his heels and went the other way. When I was sixteen, my father had told me we’d just have to take my mother’s behavior in stride: “Your mother’s going through change of life.” Well, that change of life had become her way of life.

  One night my mother really let me have it. It was the last time she ever hit me, and the last time she ever will hit me. The next day I was quiet and moody and Chuck guessed what had gone down.

  “Mothers never realize that their little girls grow up,” he said.

  “You know what kills me the most?” I said. “That’s when I’m watching television and I see some kind of show like Father Knows Best. That kind of family. Whoever had a family like that?”

  “That’s just television,” Chuck said. “But you don’t have to put up with your folks any more. You’re a big girl now.”

  “I wish I had a choice.”

  “You do,” Chuck said. “Here’s what you do—you pack up your stuff and you move in with me.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” I said. “But I’ve got to get away from my mother.”

  “You could do it,” Chuck said. “At least think about it. I’m serious.”

  I did think about it. I thought about nothing else all the while Chuck was driving us south toward Coral Gables. There was no real reason not to go with him. It would be a chance to be free, to come and go as I pleased.

  But what did I really know about Chuck? At that time I didn’t know that he had a police record, that he’d been found guilty of assault and battery. I didn’t know that he was facing charges for smuggling drugs into this country. I didn’t know that he had run a house of prostitution. I didn’t know that he would one day brag to me about the people he had killed. I only knew one thing: He was giving me a chance to get away from my parents.

  Chuck was pulling up in front of Worth Devore’s apartment in Coral Gables. This meant just one thing: Chuck was running low on pot. Whenever he started to run out of marijuana, it was time to visit Worth. Worth was a pilot for a private company and he flew all over the world; he had a beautiful apartment decorated with African artifacts; he had a new Camaro; he had plenty of money, and he had an apparently endless supply of Colombian pot.

  The two of them looked over some weavings that Worth had just brought back with him, then Chuck turned to me.

  “Linda, why don’t you just make up your mind and do it. You could move in with me tonight.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ve got to get away from my folks … except I hate the thought of calling them. What can I say to them?”

  “Nothing,” Chuck said. “Why bother to call them at all?”

  “I’ve got to. I’ve got to tell them something.”

  “Don’t call them tonight.” His voice took on a sharpness I hadn’t heard before. “They’ll just con you into coming home, and you don’t want that.”

  “You don’t know my mother. If I don’t call, she’ll have every cop in town out looking for me.”

  “The only place they’d look for you is my place,” Chuck said. “But we’ll be spending the night right here with Worth. If that’s okay with you, Worth.”

  “Help yourself,” Worth said. “You guys can have my room, and I’ll take the couch.”

  We were in the bedroom then, sitting on the edge of Worth’s bed, but the argument was still going on inside of me. I should call, I shouldn’t call… .

  “You don’t have to call.” Chuck’s voice had taken on a soothing quality by this time. “I’m telling you, you speak to them tonight and you’re letting yourself in for all kinds of aggravation.”

  I was crying then, really letting out the blues, and Chuck gave me a shoulder to lean against. I would cry for a while, then stop, then get mad—mad at my mother for being able to have this kind of effect on me. Chuck was very gentle with me. He seemed to know what I was going through and just what to say. He seemed to have only my welfare at heart. Worth was playing Beethoven on his stereo in the other room and the music seemed to float in from some quiet and peaceful world.

  This was the first time I had ever taken a stand against my parents, the first time I had done something directly against them. My feelings were all mixed up. One minute it seemed right and then it was wrong; one minute I was strong and then I was weak.

  Chuck was being gentle and comforting, stroking my hair, occasionally lighting up a joint and passing it over to me.

  “Chuck, I don’t know what’s the right thing to do.”

  “Sure you do,” he said. “This is the right thing. The right thing is to do nothing.”

  The argument was settled finally by the clock, by the lateness of the hour. It was too late to go home, then too late to call, finally too late to make sense of anything.

  “Let’s go to bed,” Chuck said. He watched me as I took off my clothes and put them over a chair. I came to bed wearing my bra and panties. “Well, I didn’t know I was with a virgin tonight.”

  “I’m not.”

  Not a virgin, but still an innocent. I hadn’t even thought about making love with Chuck or whether that would be part of the package. It didn’t seem all that important. The only thing that seemed important that night was getting away from my parents. I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but compared to the drama of leaving home, sex with Chuck seemed like a small thing.

  Chuck made love to me that night, but not really. I didn’t know what to expect from a man, and I had no way of knowing whether or not there was anything wrong with Chuck. I realize now that he couldn’t achieve a full erection.

  “Don’t worry about anything,” he told me. “I’ll be taking care of you from now on.”

  I guess that was what I wanted to hear more than anything else. While he was trying to make love to me, there was no talk about love or anything of that sort. But he did say he would take care of me. And then he said something that really surprised me.

  “Linda, why don’t you suck me?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Then he tried something else. I didn’t know then what he was trying, but I didn’t let that happen either. I now know that he was trying to go down on me, but at that time it just seemed weird. In a few minutes he was finished.

  You have to remember, I was not Linda Lovelace then. I was Linda Boreman, the daughter of a policeman. I was Linda Boreman who was raised in Yonkers, New York, and attended Catholic schools—St. John the Baptist in Yonkers and Maria Regina High School in Hartsdale. During grade school my ambition was to be a nun. In ninth grade I was elected vice-president of my class and I enjoyed playing basketball more than anything else.

  When I was very young, my mother would sometimes ask me what I wanted from life. I never had to think before answering her. I knew. When I was twenty-one, I was going to get married and have a family. I was going to have a house that I would keep very clean, and there would be a garden with flowers. That was my whole dream—marrying someone and living happily with a family of my own.

  But now I was twenty-one, and I was sharing a bed with a man I didn’t love. The few other times I had made love there had always been a nice feeling afterwards. There was no nice feeling this time. Possibly because the act had been done without any real emotion on either his part or mine. Afterwards there was just a question in my mind: Why did I let him do it?

  three

  I slept well that night, extremely well, and would have slept through the next morning except that Chuck woke me early. He explained that he was a chronic ear
ly riser and I might as well get used to it. That bit of information made me realize just how little I knew about the man I was planning to live with.

  Still, that first morning nothing could dispel my feeling of well being. I wasn’t even nervous when I telephoned my father at work.

  “Where’ve you been, Linda?” he said. “Your mother’s been—”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m with Chuck. I’m going to be staying with Chuck for a while. I can’t come home anymore.”

  “Your mother’s going to be very upset.”

  My father wasn’t at all disturbed, but that didn’t surprise me. He never reacts to things. He’s a perfect Aquarius; you could put him in the middle of an earthquake and he’d go right on doing whatever he had been doing.

  “Dad, I’m going to have to get some of my clothes,” I said. “I’d like to come by when Mom’s at work.”

  “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I do. Don’t worry.”

  “Well, Linda, just be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “Your mother’s sure going to be mad,” he said. “You’re leaving me with some mess on my hands.”

  “Goodbye, Dad.”

  Chuck had been listening to the entire conversation and now he was smiling.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You handled that very well.”

  I thought so, too. Those first feelings of freedom were wonderful while they lasted. It’s odd, but I look back at that moment now and my memory reads Chuck’s smile in a different way. Then I thought he was sharing my joy. Now, I realize that I had just lived up to his fondest expectations; I had just taken that first blind step into his trap.

  Not that it seemed like a trap at first. It seemed anything but. That first day, even before we got back to his place, Chuck took me out and bought me a couple of new blouses and a change of underwear. Those first few days were days of incredible freedom. Being able to come in later than eleven o’clock at night and not get smacked across the face—what a luxury!

  Life became a day-to-day affair, casual and unplanned. The simple pleasure of being away from my parents was enough; there was no need to think beyond the moment. In my mind there was some vague picture of returning to New York and getting back into the boutique business—but this was just a daydream, and there are no schedules in daydreams. Whenever I thought about actually going out and getting a job, Chuck was there to dissuade me.

  “You don’t worry about that, not yet,” he said. “This way we can be together all day. You want a job? I’ll tell you what, you can help me out with the bar.”

  “But I’ve got to make some money.”

  “Sure you do, and you will,” he said. “But there’s more than enough time for that later on. What you should be doing now is just taking it easy.”

  My new life revolved around the Vegas Inn. The first thing in the morning, after waking up, we’d go down and clean up the bar. Then we’d stop at a fast-food place that specialized in hamburgers and waffles and we’d have one or the other, depending on our mood and the time of day.

  Then it was back to the bar to check the beer supply and to make sure all the deliveries had been received. If the bar was running low on wine, we’d go down to the Seven-Eleven store for refills. Then Chuck would get together the start-up money, the right amount of change and bills, put that in the cash register, and check in the barmaid.

  In the afternoons we’d drive around, hang out, and stop back at the bar whenever anything needed doing. At night there was always the movies. We practically lived in movie theaters; the movies changed on Sundays and by the time Friday came around, we’d have seen all the new ones.

  Somewhere along the line, we’d grab something to eat, watch a little television, doze off, and then wake up in time to close the bar late at night. It was what you might call a relationship. At times Chuck was even complimentary to me. He’d say I was good-looking or he’d say I should be in movies. Oh, Lord!

  I was getting to know Chuck—but slowly. The information came to me in dribs and drabs. One of the first things I learned was that he liked to eat all of his meals out, generally at fast-food stands. His refrigerator was always empty, except for milk and Coke. During all the time I was with him, I cooked no more than a couple of meals at home.

  Chuck wouldn’t tell me much about himself so I had to learn from other sources. The way I learned that he was a diabetic was typical. One morning he had a seizure, and I had no idea what was happening. I woke up and he was lying on the floor, gasping and thrashing around. I called an ambulance. Later Chuck told me about the diabetes and what to do if he ever had another attack.

  Next I learned that he was facing a big criminal trial. I read about this in the newspapers; a certain Charles (Chuck) Traynor had been caught carrying away a bale of marijuana that an airplane had dropped in a field south of Miami. At first Chuck told me that he had just stumbled across the stash but later he told me the truth. Whatever Chuck chose to tell me, he was convincing. He could tell me the sky was green and I’d believe him, even though I was looking right up into a blue sky.

  Gradually I learned about some of the things that upset him. My smoking, for example. I was up to about two packs a day and every time I lit up, he gave me one of those looks.

  “Why don’t you just quit?” he asked me.

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can,” he said. “I could help you quit. I’ve helped dozens of people to quit smoking. By hypnotism. I could hypnotize you out of smoking.”

  “How do you know you could hypnotize me?”

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “You’d be a snap. You wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. I learned how to hypnotize people when I was down in Honduras.”

  “I don’t know if I like the idea.”

  “Then you might as well forget it. It won’t work unless you want me to do it, unless you trust me completely. It’s just that I hate to see you hurting yourself. Hypnotism could help you in a dozen different ways. You’re always saying how tired you are, how you never get enough sleep. You’re feeling tired right now, aren’t you? Listen to me, Linda, I could put you under right now—just for a few minutes—and when you woke up it’d be like you had eight hours sleep.”

  He had me lie down on the rug and stare at something bright around his neck while he talked. I don’t remember what he said, but in a couple of minutes I was sound asleep. When he snapped me out of it, I was fully rested. All as advertised.

  We went through this a half-dozen times before he even started with the cigarettes. He told me that before he could get me to give up cigarettes he had to have my complete trust. Well, he already had me trusting him and a few days later he did, in fact, persuade me to give up cigarettes. I’m not sure whether it was the hypnotism or just that I didn’t want Chuck to feel that he had failed. Whatever the reason, I no longer smoked.

  Once he had done these two things—gotten me to rest and to give up cigarettes—he started in on something else. It hurts to dredge up some of these old memories, but they’re too important a part of the story to ignore. I’m talking about our love life—if “love life” is even the right phrase. It was never much, really, half-hearted attempts maybe once a week, if that.

  He kept asking me to take him in my mouth but that was still very difficult for me to do. I wanted to please him, but not that way. He told me that was the only way he could become fully aroused, and I told him that it just made me too uncomfortable. However, my “no” never quite ended a discussion.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why do you make such a big deal out of it? Everyone does it.”

  “Chuck, you know something? Before I met you, I never even heard of that before.”

  “Well, just touch it then,” he said. “See, it’s not going to bite you.”

  “Chuck, please …”

  “Pet it,” he said. “It likes to be petted.”

  This is very embarrassing to me, embarrassing two ways—b
oth remembering it and putting it down here. He made me feel naive, silly, and dumb for not doing it; then amateurish when I tried to do it. It was a major hurdle for me to just hold it in my hands, and let my mouth get near it. A couple of times he held my head tightly with his hands and forced it into my mouth.

  “You know why you don’t like it,” he said. “It’s the gagging mechanism. Well, I can cure you of the gagging mechanism the same way I cured you of cigarette smoking. It’s just a conditioned reflex and you can control it. You can learn to relax your throat muscles completely.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Oh, yeah, it is,” he said. “That’s something I learned in the Orient—there were a lot of chicks there who could swallow it, the whole thing. Their whole philosophy was to completely satisfy their man and they sure knew how to do that.”

  “Chuck, I don’t like the taste.”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s the whole thing—that’s another reason to learn how to swallow it. If the man is all the way in, you don’t taste a thing. In a way, you’d be helping yourself.”

  “Why do we have to keep talking about this?”

  “Because this is what I happen to like,” he said. “It all comes down to whether or not you want to make me happy.”

  “I want you to be happy.”

  “Well?”

  I went along with him. As I say these words, I realize that I went along with too much in those days. But I was sure that all of this was just temporary. I was biding my time, healing my wounds, getting ready to go back up to New York and start a new life. Little did I know that my new life had already started.

  Chuck had learned hypnotism in Honduras and he had learned exotic sexual practices from the Japanese. Sometimes I have to wonder what my life would have been like if Chuck Traynor had not been a traveling man.

  Still, no one was twisting my arm, not yet. Everything was mild and gradual, one small step and then another. This wasn’t something we did—or even talked about—every day. And always Chuck would say that it was “no big deal” or “no big thing.” But it was.