Ordeal

  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, dee
p-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.

  “Hey, you think Chuck would mind?”

  “Mind?” I whispered back. “No, that’s the kind of thing he’d go for in a big way. But let me set it up for you.”

  Of course, this was definitely not the kind of thing Chuck would go for in a big way. In fact, that may have been his greatest fear, the one possibility he dreaded most. Whenever he was going to put down another man, he would call him “that fag.”

  A psychiatrist could probably explain this. All I have are suspicions. Chuck existed in a very narrow sexual area. Probably because of his experiences with his mother, he hated all women and could never just have straight sex with a woman. But he was also a former Marine and a gun nut; in that super-macho world, there was no room for gays. So where did that leave him? That left him with cruelty and animals and whatever other bizarre possibility he could dream up.

  The room was pitch black except for a flickering light bouncing off a movie screen. Since Chuck was only a couple of feet away from us, he knew full well what I had just done with Sammy. He didn’t move at all—his eyes never left the movie screen—as I went over to him and reached out to unzip his trousers.

  “Hey, you can’t just sit there and watch,” I said to Chuck. “You can’t just sit there.”

  As I was talking to Chuck, I signaled for Sammy to come on over. Chuck grunted at me and shifted his weight, making it easier for me to do the job. He must have been really into the dirty movie because he didn’t realize what was happening until it happened. I was the one who unzipped his trousers, but I wasn’t the one who knelt in front of him.

  A minute or two went by before Chuck realized that something was different. Then, although Chuck didn’t utter a sound, his eyes were screaming for help. He looked back at me, boiling mad now, and with his right hand gestured for me to come over and free him.

  I just shrugged my shoulders and laughed. Perhaps this won’t seem like much revenge to the reader, but, finally, after all the awful things Chuck had done to me, I was able to put him through an ordeal, a sexual ordeal at that. You may not think he was suffering much. But that’s only because you weren’t there to see the agony on his face.

  I was sure that Chuck would say something and end the little experiment but he didn’t say a word. That was so typical. He had such unnatural respect for anyone in a position of power that he didn’t dare complain. He let the scene go on and on without interrupting it.

  Each time that Sammy showed signs of slowing down, I kept him going with instructional encouragement. It was, ironically enough, the same instruction that Chuck had once given me.

  “No, no, Sammy,” I said, “push down a little more—he’ll like that. Yeah, that’s right. Keep going. You’re doing fine.”

  Chuck was glaring at me but he didn’t utter a word. He would put up with anything rather than risk losing the friendship of Sammy Davis, Jr. He would rather have a heart attack than say no to a celebrity. The fact that Chuck was not responding didn’t seem to bother Sammy.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “It’s better when you do it nice and slowly. That’s right, slow it down … yes, that’s right, that’s very good.”

  In time, Sammy finally gave up on Chuck. I knew that I’d be punished, but this time it was worth it. The expression on Chuck’s face that night will be with me always.

  The experience revealed something about Chuck that I hadn’t known. His cowardice. There he was, in pain and scared, but unable to speak up. He didn’t know how to handle it, didn’t know what to do. He expected me to save him. And this was really nothing at all, nothing at all compared to the things he made me do. And he couldn’t handle that. He couldn’t handle the littlest thing. It was really nothing and he flipped out!

  My time with Sammy was almost at an end. One night soon after, to my great surprise, he wanted normal sex with me. It was the first time we ever had intercourse; the first time he ever made love to me. In effect, he was choosing me over Altovise. However, the first time we ever made love was also the last time. In a few days I would be free of Chuck and that whole way of life would be behind me.

  nineteen

  Living in Hollywood, you begin to forget that outside there is still a normal world with normal people. California is the land of the super-freaks and they all seem to come to Hollywood sooner or later. And when they were in Hollywood, they looked us up.

  That’s why Chuck loved California. It was easy for him to find people as sick as himself. Remembering the kind of people he’d bring home still grosses me out.

  Just one example, no more. But one example should be enough.

  One day Chuck had a photographer taking pictures of me and the photographer showed Chuck some other pictures he had recently taken. Pictures of a blonde with empty eyes and a full chest.

  “Yeah,” Chuck decided, “she looks like a freaky chick. What’s her phone number?”

  The photographer looked up the girl’s telephone number in his appointment book. He said that her name was Brigit. While we were still there talking, Chuck picked up the phone and dialed her number. He introduced himself as Linda Lovelace’s manager and said that he had just been admiring her photographs.

  “Nice body, honey,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling we may be able to help you out. Why don’t you come down here right now?”

  Within ten minutes, Brigit was there. And Chuck had it right; she was a freak. I don’t know how someone can tell that by just looking at a photograph but Chuck had an instinct. The two of them talked for just a few minutes and the next thing I knew, we were all on our way home together. Brigit told us that she was just starting out as a model. Later she would be featured in many girlie magazines and even a pornographic movie or two, but then she was unknown.

  For once, Chuck didn’t have to push a thing. As soon as the car was moving toward home, I felt a hand on my thigh. Glancing down, I saw that Brigit had one hand on me and the other hand on Chuck. Besides being ambidextrous, she was a non-stop talker. She was just thrilled to meet me; she was just crazy about dildoes; her special favorite was giving and receiving enemas.

  “Oh yeah?” That interested Chuck. “Far out!”

  Once we got home, Brigit was all over me. The more I looked at her, the more I saw Chuck. She was a strange mirror image of him, a woman as perverted as he was. Chuck supplied the dildoes and she supplied the imagination. For a long time, Chuck contented himself with watching her work on me. And then—it must have been four o’clock in the morning—she had a suggestion for him.

  “If you’ve got a douche bag,” she said, “I really feel like an enema.”

  “We’ve got a douche bag,” Chuck said.

  “Wow, I’m really sleepy,” I said. “I’ve just got to get some sleep.”

  “You just stay there,” Chuck said. “I want you to watch this.”

  Well, watching was better than doing. And so, while I became the observer, Chuck became a participant. What happened next was enough to make me feel physically sick, but I didn’t dare leave the bathroom.

  The scene came down in the bathtub. Chuck was lying down flat in the bathtub and Brigit was squatting over him. She bent over so that he could give her an enema. She kept it in her as long as she could and even then she was saying, “More, more!” When it was impossible for her to take any more, she squatted directly over his face. He pulled out the plug and the stuff was all over his face and his shoulders. Then she sat down in that mess. The next thing, Chuck was taking his fingers and rubbing it through the stuff and then he was wip
ing it over her face and into her mouth. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up. They were so wrapped up in what was coming down, they forgot all about me.

  Okay, that was Brigit. And to me, that will always be California.

  I have to admit that California was also the land of opportunity. If the people were easy, so was the money. Sometimes it looked to me as though people were trying to force money on Chuck.

  We were there for just a few weeks and Chuck found himself working on a dozen different deals. Head Shampoo was talking about my doing commercials; another guy was printing posters; someone wanted to back a Las Vegas act; there was talk of record albums, movies, books, you name it.

  Not that the money ever became part of my life. Whatever money came in went right to Chuck and his bank accounts. If I needed money, say, to have a tooth fixed, he’d delay it as long as he could. First he’d have to see if I was covered by any insurance; then he’d want to know whether it was something that really had to be fixed; and then maybe —just maybe—he’d have it fixed legitimately. Trying to get Chuck to part with my money was never easy.

  And whenever an offer came up that genuinely interested me, Chuck managed to ruin it. The country-and-western album was just the first of many busted balloons. One deal that really excited me was a movie that Buck Henry wanted to make with Milos Forman. They wanted me to star in it. This would have been legitimate, quality, the big time. Even Chuck was impressed. In fact, Chuck was so impressed that he made the two film-makers a counter offer.

  “If you guys really want to make a movie with Linda,” he said, “then you could have her for a week.”

  That took care of that little deal. I didn’t know much about Buck Henry or Milos Forman then, but I could tell they were serious people. I also knew that I could be in any movie they might make without embarrassment. When the deals did fall through, it was generally because Chuck did not know how to operate in the straight world. He never realized that someone somewhere might do something without expecting a sexual payoff.