Ordeal (7 page)
Authors: Linda Lovelace
seven
And so we got married.
Maybe.
I’m still not sure. It was that kind of a marriage. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
Chuck Traynor spent much of that summer preparing for his upcoming trial on drug-smuggling charges. It seems that 400 pounds of marijuana—bales of pot wrapped around coke, hash, speed, LSD and assorted pills—had been dropped in a wooded area south of Miami, not far from the town of Homestead. Chuck and a friend had been caught carrying their bales to their cars, and a third confederate—this was Worth Devore—had gotten away uncaptured. The newspapers were all calling Worth “Mister X.”
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?”
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
.
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-day 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.
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