One leading publisher told Mike not to “bother me with any more of these peripheral little projects.” Two of the publishers decided that the story was “depressing” and “downbeat.” However, they might be interested if I would try my hand at a how-to book, as in
How to Please a Man.
I guess even publishers can miss the point. But this didn’t surprise me as much as it did Mike. I already knew that publishers, like the rest of the world, were so anxious to buy the lie—to believe that Linda Lovelace was a willing participant and sexual freak—that they couldn’t hear the truth. And the few publishers who did understand the premise were too scared. Either people would find it “unbelievable” or it would prove “libelous.”
About this time, I began to wonder how anyone ever managed to get the truth told in this country. I still do. It isn’t easy.
By this time, the agent had given up on the book. Mike decided to take it to an old friend, publisher Lyle Stuart. Lyle is the gadfly of the publishing world, a courageous maverick who believes in his own judgment, and always does things his way. Mike and Lyle had done one book together previously—the best—selling spoof,
Naked Came The Stranger.
Lyle immediately recognized the possibilities in my story and agreed to publish it
if
it was true. He gave it the name
Ordeal.
So finally we had a publisher, and we were able to go over the story in fine detail one last time. Mike looked upon this as the final test. By comparing the original tapes with the later tapes, he was able to compare my recollections. He found that while my wording changed, none of the details varied from one telling to the next. It wasn’t memorized and it wasn’t fabricated. He was sure I was telling the truth.
And along the way, Mike learned what kind of a person I am—really am—not at all the kind of person the world saw. He learned that I’m not the kind of person who would willingly sit through
Deep Throat,
let alone star in it.
I guess I’m the kind of person you would expect from the daughter of a cop, a graduate of Catholic schools, a person who once wanted to be a nun, and now only wanted a happy family. The kind of person who liked nothing better than sitting around the house on a Saturday afternoon, having a few beers and watching the football game with her husband.
And later Mike was able to put that person-Linda Marchiano, not Linda Lovelace—into a book.
And Lyle Stuart put a cover on it.
We were ready.
Now, the test.
Could we change the world’s mind?
nineteen
Thank God for time. Eight years had passed since the making of
Deep Throat.
At least five years had passed since I escaped Chuck Traynor. It had been three years since I last saw a Hollywood producer. And now, at long last, after all this time, a few people believed me.
Victor Yannacone believed me, as did the other lawyers who had met to quiz me. A writer believed me and a publisher believed me. That just left the rest of the world.
How could I convince the rest of the world? What would you do if it were desperately important to convince people that you were telling the truth? Often people will say, “If you don’t believe me, I’ll take a lie-detector test.” Of course, not many people are prepared to go that far. I was. It was something I’d talked about in the past, something I’d thought about and something I was prepared to do.
When the idea of a lie-detector test first came up it didn’t bother me in the least. After all,
I
knew I was telling the truth. And I realized that an official lie-detector test might put a lot of other minds to rest. After all, some fairly important people were risking their reputations and a great many dollars on the assumption that I was telling the truth.
Our deal with Lyle Stuart required that I pass the test and pay for it. The lie detector expert that the lawyers recommended was Natale—“Nat”—Laurendi. He was going to be expensive, but everyone said he was the best. Newspaperman Jimmy Breslin has described him as “the top name in the field in this town.” A policeman for 24 years, Nat Laurendi was New York City’s Chief Polygraphist from 1961 to 1975. Famous for his work in the gory Wylie-Hoffert “career girls” murder case, he’s the one they call on in the biggest murder cases.
After two grueling days in Nat Laurendi’s offices in lower Manhattan, I trusted him completely. He is big and gruff with a strong New York accent. He still looks like the cop he once was, and I knew he was nobody’s pushover. When we met he told me he’d read my manuscript over the weekend. He didn’t say whether he liked it or not or whether he believed it or not—but we both knew that his opinion wasn’t really important. What mattered now,
all
that mattered, was whether his machine believed me or not.
It seemed so strange that my fate would rest in the hands of a machine. Actually, not the hands so much as the arms—mechanical arms that held pens that traced patterns over graph paper. As Laurendi introduced me to the equipment, he described it in technical detail, calling in a four-pen Stoelting 22695 desk model polygraph. To me it was just another machine.
Laurendi had gone through the galleys of the book and had then familiarized himself with 114 questions supplied by my co-author. Those questions were designed to cover every potentially libelous point in the book. There were also 12 general questions designed to determine whether I had been honest in my overall view of the story.
As Laurendi strapped me into the chair and carefully wired my fingers to the machine, he carried on a conversation about the book. I couldn’t tell whether he was striving for information or just trying to put me at ease.
“Your co-author, this Mike McGrady, did you lie to him?” he asked.
“I didn’t lie to him.”
“Not one little teensy bit? Everything you say here is the . . .”
“. . . the absolute truth.”
“Not even one little tiny white lie?”
“No.”
“Before we go into detail on certain situations, I want to make sure there is no evidence contrary to what you state here. Now remember, I read the book.”
“No, it’s all true.”
“You didn’t draw on your . . . ah . . . creative writing abilities to . . . ah . . . embellish certain scenes?”
“No.”
“You didn’t use a little imagination?”
“No.”
“This is the simple truth then? I want you to know we’re going into every page of the book.”
“That’s all right. I’m ready for it.”
That was my only lie to Nat Laurendi. The truth was this: I was
more
than ready, I was
anxious.
This was my chance to clear my reputation. This was the story I had been trying to tell for the better part of a decade. If the only way I could get my story told was to tell it to a machine, then so be it; that’s what I would do.
How anxious was I? Reaching Laurendi’s office cost me personally a total of $2,500—$1,300 for him and $1,200 in lawyer’s fees. That added up to half of my advance for the book. Now, several years later, I consider the money that went to Laurendi one of the best investments I’ve ever made.
Although a lie detector test is not considered hard evidence in a court of law, it has its uses. When a man is as well known and trusted as Nat Laurendi, he is often called as an expert witness and he testifies about his opinions. And, in fact, Nat Laurendi has already been summoned to give testimony about the polygraph test we took during those two days.
No one is more aware of the machine’s limitations than Laurendi himself. He gave me a printed statement of his that sums it up: “The polygraph is an excellent interrogative and investigative tool. It is not an automatic, modern, technical shortcut to determine truth or deception. It is not the final arbiter as to guilt or innocence. It does not give a printout like a computer card. No one ‘passes’ or ‘flunks’ a lie detector test. . . . When the results are made known to the public or to the press that a person ‘passed’ a lie detector test, it must be made known to what specific questions was the person being truthful. Sometimes a person ‘passes’ a test without any relevant questions being asked. This is called skirting the issue. A person can ‘pass’ certain questions and ‘flunk’ other questions on the same test.”
There was no way for us to skirt the issue or to limit ourselves just to safe questions. There were too many people concerned about the outcome of this test and they all suggested questions. These included the lawyers, the publisher and a co-author who was about to learn whether he’d just thrown away a year’s work or not. I think they were all surprised by my own lack of nervousness. I have to wonder whether they really believed me as completely as they claimed to.
And so the official questions began, questions that all referred to specific sections of the book.
“Were you known as ‘Miss Holy Holy’ in grade school and did you really want to be a nun?”
And: “Did Chuck Traynor urge you to help him run his prostitution business?”
And: “Did beating you excite Chuck sexually?”
And: “Did Chuck Traynor point a gun at you and force you to have sex with five men in a motel room?”
And: “Did you see a gun on the set of the dog movie?”
Through most of it, I remained cool and collected. I had been able to consider the questions calmly and answer them in a steady voice. Why does this particular subject have to keep coming up and why do I always have to respond the way that I do? Suddenly I was in tears. Nat Laurendi took a break for a few minutes, then proceeded. Except for softening his tone of voice slightly, he showed no reaction to my tears.
To him the test was everything. His eyes seldom left the different needles scratching out lines on sheets of paper. As he moved on to the primary questions, his voice became a monotone.
“Did all the things you describe in your manuscript actually happen to you?”
“Yes,” I said.
A pause. Then—
“Were you forced by Chuck Traynor to have sex with five guys in South Miami, Florida in 1971?”
“Yes.”
Another pause. And then again, two questions about dogs—first the dog in the 8-millimeter movie, then the dog that
Playboy
publisher Hugh Hefner wanted me to have sex with.
“Did you tell the truth about the incidents involving the two dogs?”
Oh,
God!
I could hardly talk. Did they think I was making
that
up? Why would anyone lie about an experience like that? Waves of disgust passed over me, silencing any response I might have made to the question, but registering small peaks of emotion on the charts.
How that moment would be analyzed! In the final polygraphic report Laurendi prepared for the lawyers, he described it this way: “There were highly emotional reactions following the question [about the dogs], specifically a blood pressure rise, sweat gland activity and in the breathing patterns. During the asking of the question . . . there were strong reactions in both pneumographic reading tracings and a violent and dramatic blood pressure rise to that question.
“It is my professional opinion that Subject was answering truthfully [but] because of the dramatic reaction to question number four which was followed by Subject crying, no opinion could be given.
“However, writer is convinced that Subject was not attempting deception. Since she broke down and cried, writer did not deem it proper or wise to examine her further on the polygraph.”
Of the 114 less important questions, only one gave me trouble. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why. Part of my manuscript described a long-standing sexual relationship with a Hollywood star. At one point in the book I off-handedly mentioned that the Hollywood star’s wife would then have sex with Chuck Traynor. When I was asked whether that was true, I said “Yes.” But the needles must have registered something out of the ordinary because suddenly Laurendi was pressing me on it.
His additional questions led to the explanation. The truth is that I would wander off with the Hollywood star, leaving his wife to entertain Chuck. And while I
assumed
they had sex together, I had never actually witnessed it. And since I didn’t
know
it to be a fact, the needles registered my uncertainty. As a result, the whole section about her was removed from the book.
Of the 114 questions, that was the only one to raise a small flag of doubt.
But it was by no means my only bad moment. There were many times when Laurendi had to guide me through sudden squalls of tears. Still, he never gave up, never lost sight of his goal. He always managed to get back to the questions and hammer away at them until he was satisfied that he had an accurate reading.
Once I cried after an innocuous question, this time a question that had to do with my father’s relationship with my mother. This time I came near breaking down altogether and this time Laurendi assumed an almost fatherly tone in talking to me.
“Hey, take it easy now,” he said. “Pretty soon it will be all over.”
“I know, I know. I was just thinking of something else. I’m pretty emotional because last night I was watching a movie on Home Box Office,
Hard Core,
where George C. Scott searches and searches for his daughter. Why didn’t my father look for me?”
“Your father didn’t go lookin for you?”
“No. And he saw the movie,
Deep Throat.
He should’ve known.”
“And so you wanted your father to come looking for you, just like George C. Scott did in
Hard Core?
”
“Yeah. Sure. He should’ve done something. Anything.”