Ordeal

  This kind of stuff didn’t bother Rob and Cathy too much. They had made so many eight-millimeter movies, both with each other and with other people, that life held no surprises for them. So now Cathy was lying down on the rubber sheet and she was told to act ecstatic, as though this was bringing her much more satisfaction than regular love-making. However, neither Rob nor I were able to play our parts properly.

  “Cut!” Now Wolf was livid. “All right, all right, let’s send out for some beer.”

  I’ve heard how some Method actors prepare for their big scenes, concentrating intensely on character motivation, drawing on a reservoir of past experiences and so on. The three of us prepared for our big scene by chug-a-lugging six-packs of beer.

  It was so insane. Even when my mind was numb to everything, my body seemed to know it was insane. When it came my turn to urinate on Cathy, I couldn’t do it. Even with a bellyful of beer, I couldn’t urinate on another human being.

  “Cut!” Wolf said. “All right, Linda, you’re having such trouble, you get down there on the sheet and they’ll piss on you.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Give me another chance.”

  All of a sudden it became easier. I was standing there, still aware of the sheer insanity of it all, but doing it nonetheless. I guess I was still strong enough so that I would rather piss on than be pissed upon.

  And that was the whole movie. Really disgusting. People are so sick; they actually sit back, watching and enjoying these things. I still don’t understand it. And whenever I think of Rob and Cathy, it seems even sicker. I cannot understand being married and having a nice apartment and going out every day to make porno films. I cannot comprehend that—let alone comprehend why you would let yourself get pissed on.

  nine

  I suppose my rise in the film world might accurately be described as meteoric. One day I was making photographs with ketchup smeared on my back, and three weeks later I was asked to play the lead in what was to become one of the biggest money-making films of all time. I had known Chuck Traynor less than a year and he had driven me into depths I hadn’t known were there. However, all things considered, I shouldn’t have been surprised when one porno director put the question to me one morning.

  “We’ve been thinking of making a dog movie,” he said. “Would that interest you?”

  “No.”

  On those few occasions when I was asked to participate, my quick and natural response was, “No.” I said no before I even considered the question. A dog movie? A dog movie? A dog movie? I knew they weren’t thinking about Rin Tin Tin or Lassie Come Home. They were undoubtedly considering a girl-meets-dog movie.

  “There’d be a lot of money in it,” he said. “A lot more than usual.”

  “I’m not interested,” I said. “I’m afraid of dogs.”

  Chuck overheard the conversation and accurately judged my feelings on the subject. I’m not sure whether that was what intrigued him or whether it was just the prospect of making a little more money than usual, but that night back in our Jersey City apartment he informed Brandy and myself that the following morning we would be making a movie with a dog.

  “No dice,” Brandy said. “I won’t do anything like that.”

  “Sure you will,” Chuck said. “It’s no big deal. There’s nothing to it, you’ll see.”

  “I’m not doing anything with a dog,” Brandy said, “except maybe walk it or feed it.”

  “Oh, yeah, you are.” This was the first time I ever saw Chuck talk tough to Brandy. “I promised them two chicks, and I’m going to fucking deliver two. They’re paying $150 each—hey, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

  “They can shove their bread,” Brandy said.

  “Well, we’ll just see about that,” Chuck said. “We’ll see who shoves what where tomorrow morning first thing.”

  I was behind Brandy 100 percent but I couldn’t say a word. If I had told Chuck what Brandy just did, I’d be near dead from the beating. In New York, Chuck had been as brutal as ever with me. I see now that he didn’t always hit me out of genuine anger; it was his way of keeping me scared and under control. But when he was angry, it was far worse.

  That night Chuck was taking me over to Manhattan to meet another moviemaker. Before we left, Brandy and I had a little talk.

  “Linda, I’ve got to tell you something. I’m not going to be around here for any dog tomorrow.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m splitting,” she said. “By the time you guys get back from the city, I’ll be long gone.”

  “Please don’t do that,” I said. “If there’s two of us there tomorrow, we don’t have to do anything. If it’s just me—”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Brandy said, “but I’m not hanging around for some goddamned dog. I wasn’t sure whether or not I even wanted this life, but now I’m pretty sure. This ain’t for me. Your old man is really far out.”

  “I need you.”

  “Linda, honey,” she said, “I’ve got to split.”

  And split she did. When we got back to the apartment that night, Brandy was gone and all of her clothes were gone, too. There was no note of explanation. Chuck was furious. He went banging from one end of the apartment to the other, turning over furniture, emptying drawers, shouting what he was going to do to Brandy when he found her.

  I didn’t say a word, just tried to keep out of his way. I particularly did not say anything about the dog movie the next morning. But that night I dreamed about dogs. When Chuck had told me about the donkey, I was never sure whether he was goofing or not. This time I knew he was serious.

  There had only been one dog in my family. When I was eleven years old, I had a puppy that I used to take for walks on a leash. Whenever we went for a walk, the other dogs in the neighborhood would come and pick on the two of us. I can still see them growling and barking and baring their teeth. That’s the way I was seeing them in my dreams that night. As for a dog having sex with a woman, that seemed impossible. There was no way—just no way—that I was going to let one of them near me.

  The following morning I didn’t say anything to Chuck. I knew the only time to tell him was when other people were around. Witnesses. There would be a beating, I knew that much, but it would be easier on me if other people were nearby. For once, the prospect of a beating was not the worst alternative. Any beating, no matter how severe; would be better than being raped by a dog.

  Our destination that morning was a studio down in the East Village. A large room … the usual clutter … the double bed … the movie lights … the cameras … the director, Robert Wolf—fat and greasy and black-haired.

  “You said two chicks,” he said to Chuck. “Where’s the other one.”

  “She split,” Chuck explained.

  “Jesus Christ! Well, we’ll just have to make do.” As he turned toward me, he tried to strike an ingratiating note. “Well, you’re looking good this morning, Linda. And I want you to know how much I appreciate your going through with this.”

  It was time to speak up. “I’m not going to do it.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not letting any dog near me.”

  “What is this bullshit?” He stared at Chuck who was glaring at me. “Chuck, I can’t bring this joker all the way down here again and tell him it’s not going to come off. I can’t have that kind of bullshit. This guy is coming all the way down here with this dog—and I’m supposed to tell him to forget it? Do you know how many times I’ve had him come down here with his fucking dog?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” Chuck said. “Linda’ll be okay. I’ll speak to her.”

  As Chuck led me out of the studio to the hallway, I began to brace myself for the beating that was surely going to come.

  “You can’t do this to me,” he said quietly.

  “What about me? You can’t do this to me!”

  “You’re just a whole bunch of surprises this morning, aren’t you?” His voice remained quiet and,
in a way, that was more menacing than the yelling would have been. “Listen, cunt, you’re going to make this movie. You are going to do it!”

  “I’d rather take the beating.”

  “We’re not talking about any beating,” Chuck said. “This is direct disobedience to a fucking order. You know the only choice you’ve got? You make this movie or you’re going to die. That’s your big choice.”

  Chuck led me back into the main room. Wolf and his assistant were sitting behind a small table. Chuck joined them on their side of the table.

  “Okay, Linda,” Wolf said, “why don’t you get undressed and we’ll get on with this.”

  “No.”

  “I’d advise you to think that over pretty carefully,” Wolf said.

  “You better think about it,” the assistant piped up.

  I looked at the three men. And then I noticed that on the small table directly in front of them there was a gun, a revolver. This was a gun I had never seen before, and I assumed that it belonged to either Wolf or his assistant.

  “Now are you sure you don’t want to make this movie?” Wolf said.

  “You better be sure,” his assistant said.

  “Take off your clothes, cunt,” Chuck said.

  All I could see was the gun—the gun and the odds. They were three to one—three men and one gun against me. As I reached up to unbutton my blouse, I knew I was surrendering. If I could have foreseen how bad it was going to be, I wouldn’t have surrendered. I would have chosen the possibility of death. I am able to handle almost everything that has happened to me in my life—even the Holiday Inn gang bang—but I’m still not able to handle that day. A dog. An animal. I’ve been raped by men who were no better than animals, but this was an actual animal and that represented a huge dividing line.

  Wolf had worked out a little story for his movie. When the film began I was to be in bed with Rob who would stay with me for just a few minutes, just long enough to seem to get me aroused, and then leave me. At that point, I was supposed to look frustrated, unsatisfied.

  As Wolf directed the action, he said, “Now look around the room. Slowly, slowly. Now you see your dog and you go ‘Oooooh!’ and now you look excited. Make it look like all of a sudden you’re coming up with a brilliant idea. That’s right, now snap your fingers.”

  When Rob completed his part and left, they brought in the animal. I don’t know one breed of dog from another. This was a tan-colored dog with short hair, taller and skinnier than a German Shepherd. The dog’s owner, a young man in his mid-twenties, sat down beside the table with the gun.

  “You sure this baby knows what to do?” Wolf said.

  “Oh, yeah, don’t worry about old Norman,” he said. “We tried him out last night and you don’t have to worry about Norm. He knows the score.”

  “You tried him out last night?” Wolf said. “You sure that was a smart thing to do?”

  “This old fellow can go all day and all night,” the owner said. “Don’t sweat it. Last night was just to remind him what to do. Him and my old lady got it on last night.”

  “He got it on with your old lady?” Even Wolf was having difficulty following that one.

  “Yeah, and he was fantastic,” the young man said. “It’s a good thing I’m not the jealous type.”

  My mind was jumping all over the place. If his old lady was so good with the dog, why didn’t they just let her do the movie? Then I looked at the dog and I was afraid of him—more than anything else, I was afraid he was going to bite me. The names of the men suddenly struck me as ironic: Wolf, as in animal, and Traynor, as in Trainer! I still couldn’t accept what was going to happen.

  They put me over on the mattress, turned on the lights and called for the dog. The dog was looking at me beady-eyed, and I had the eerie sensation that he knew more about what was going to happen than I did.

  “Okay, Linda, now pet the dog,” Wolf said. “That’s right, pet the dog. Now get him to lie down.”

  When I touched the dog, he pulled back. Fortunately, the animal didn’t seem interested in human perversions.

  “Tell me something,” the director asked the owner, “did Norman here let your old lady go down on him?”

  “What do you mean?” The young man took offense at that thought. “You think I’d let her do something like that?”

  Since the dog did not want to be touched directly, we faked that part of it. Then they had the dog stand upright and put his paws on my shoulders, just like he was giving me a hug. Each time the dog did what was wanted, his owner slipped him a dog biscuit.

  “Okay,” Wolf said, “now we’ll try a little foreplay. Hey, how’s your dog with foreplay?”

  “Just sensational is all,” the owner said.

  They had the dog lick me. All that time they were telling me to smile and to laugh. I was supposed to look very excited. I was feeling nothing but acute revulsion. Even as this was happening to me, I had trouble believing it.

  I tried thinking something else, anything else, but there was no escaping the dog. How long did this last? How much time was I actually with the dog? Maybe an hour or two but there seemed no end to it. I felt sure he would bite me. I was in a fog of fear.

  “Okay, Linda, get down on your hands and knees. No, down on all fours. That’s right …”

  It went on and on, without end, until Wolf’s voice came through the fog.

  “Okay, we got enough,” he said. “Wow, far out!”

  “I never thought we’d get this,” his assistant said.

  When they pulled the dog away from me, I was in the deepest valley I’d ever been in, devastated, wanting only to die. I looked up and saw Chuck. The missing finger.

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t bring that other broad,” Wolf said. “This fuckin’ dog is game for more. Lookit him—we got a real winner here. Hey, nice dog, good dog.”

  “He could’ve handled two easy,” the dog’s owner said.

  The men went on that way, talking about the dog and what a winner he was. They sounded as excited as little boys. I suppose they had finally succeeded in doing something they wanted to do for a long time.

  Chuck wasn’t joining in the talk. He was staring at me, studying me, measuring my reaction. He had to realize this was the worst moment of my life. And he would use it against me forever. From then on if I didn’t do something he wanted, he’d bring me a pet, a dog.

  Did this give me the strength to kill him or to make a new escape attempt? No. For some reason, it had an opposite effect on me. Every new degradation made me weaker and more docile. Now I felt totally defeated. There were no greater humiliations left for me. The memory of that day and that dog does not fade the way other memories do. The overwhelming sadness that I felt on that day is with me at this moment, stronger than ever.

  It was a bad day, such a bad day.

  ten

  Like many other American high-school girls, I worshipped the movie stars. The faces of Clint Eastwood and Elvis and Clark Gable looked down at me from my bedroom walls. There was no way I would miss a Susan Hayward movie. I hungrily read the fan magazine legends and fables. I believed them. I just knew that Lana Turner was discovered while sitting on a soda-fountain stool in Hollywood.

  My own movie career didn’t follow the typical Hollywood patterns. Consider, for example, the way I was discovered. Not at some soda-fountain. I was spotted in one of those miserable eight-millimeter porno epics.

  My discoverer was Gerard Damiano, later notorious as the director of Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones. Damiano had seen me in an eight-millimeter movie and then hired me to be in some of his own. Believe it or not, this was a giant step up. Compared to men like Bob Wolf, Gerry Damiano was Cecil B. De Mille.

  Both Wolf and Damiano made porn, but there was a difference. While Wolf worked with one other man, Damiano used a crew of six. Damiano paid Chuck $75.00 for my services, as opposed to the $50.00 that the other eight-millimeter moguls offered. The major difference: I had the feeling that Damian
o might actually have film in his camera.

  More often than not, people like Wolf began and ended their movies in the same bed. With them there was never such a thing as a change of costume or even, for that matter, a costume. With Damiano the actors began fully clothed and slowly got undressed; they might even move from one room to another. After that, however, they all followed the same basic script. It all came down to the same stuff, but the mood was different. At least no one was urinating on anyone.

  Since this was the Christmas season—the Christmas just before my twenty-second birthday—Gerard Damiano was using a holiday backdrop for his movies. They were shot with Christmas trees and Christmas gifts, and there was one scene where we carried Christmas candles. All very sentimental.

  My new co-star, Harry Reems, the man who became the porn superstar, was a close friend of Damiano’s. Before sharing the billing in Deep Throat, Harry and I had already done one eight-millimeter together. Harry was playing a very sick man, and I was portraying a nurse in a mini-uniform. Whenever I bent over to give him his medicine, my backside was sticking out. Then when I took the covers away from Harry, his thing was all wrapped up in bandages and gauze. That was the way it began. It ended, of course, with a miracle cure. This short film clip was later inserted, without much logic or explanation, into the middle of Deep Throat.

  Chuck didn’t like Harry Reems at all. I assumed this was because Harry was young and good-looking. When I saw how upset Chuck was, I decided I would pretend to enjoy it with Harry. When Damiano was through filming, Chuck could hardly wait to get me alone.

  “What the fuck do you call that?” he snapped.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t try and tell me you weren’t really into that,” he said. “You were too fucking into it, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chuck.” All innocence. “You’re always going around telling me that I’m not freaky enough and that I should get into it more. What do you want from me?”

  After that first film, Harry Reems became an ally. Harry has a very good sense of humor—but he was really interested in only one thing, making dirty movies. He was always taking me to one side and telling me that I could make a fortune in porno; he told me that he could arrange a whole lot of eight-millimeter work. All this attention was driving Chuck crazy.