Throughout the Canadian tour we were able to ignore the idiocies of my professional life—they were lost in something that was really crucial and important to me. I was enjoying being with a man. Finally. And just as Larry was learning about me, I was learning about him.
One incident in Toronto should have revealed more about Larry than I cared to know. A television appearance ran longer than expected and we were a half-hour late getting back to the hotel for a scheduled press conference. Now, in those days the press wasn’t liking Linda Lovelace very much. And when we kept them waiting they became a pack of snarling animals. Rude, obnoxious, totally negative. I began the conference by mispronouncing a word and one of the reporters made fun of that. A minute later they all started to gang up on me.
In his own world, Larry would have known how to handle this incident. He would have taken direct action. Because back there in the real world, no one (not even a syndicated columnist) has the right to publically make vicious fun of a not-too-well-educated woman (even a movie star).
Larry was filled with anger and frustration at having to sit back and do nothing while the press had a field day. Finally, we were able to leave. Just after entering the elevator, Larry suddenly punched out at the wall.
Thwaaack!
I could tell from the sound that he had punched too hard and, in fact, he did break three bones in his right hand. Maybe he released some frustration that way—but we wound up spending the rest of the afternoon in a hospital emergency room watching Larry’s broken hand being encased in a cast.
Finally the tour was over and we—by this time we were a unit, not two individuals—went back to California.
“Did you learn anything?” I asked Larry.
“I learned something about you,” he said. “That movie was a piece of trash, and you were asked to do some ridiculous things. And even though everyone knows you for things that are even more ridiculous, you came off with such style—I was amazed.”
“You didn’t mind all that nonsense, all those questions?”
“I can understand it,” he said. “Meeting a sports figure, you’ve got to talk sports. So they meet you, they talk about . . . what they talk about.”
“You didn’t mind some of the creeps?”
“I’ve seen creeps before.”
“And you didn’t mind . . .”
“Hey, I love you.”
In other words, the tour was a fantastic success.
six
When Larry Marchiano came into my life, I began to look at things from his point of view. It was a point of view I could trust. Primarily because it was real and so was he. I mean by that that he came from the part of the world—and of my life—that I thought of as real. What attracted me most to Larry when I first met him? It was just that—his reality. In the land of whackos and weirdos, the normal human being shines like a beacon.
Unsurprisingly, Larry had trouble adjusting to life in Hollywood. During those first weeks, as we were falling more deeply in love, he also fell deeper and deeper into my world of lawyers, accountants and business managers.
There was such a contrast between Larry and these men dressed in stripes and monogrammed shirts. However, if he was intimidated by all that polish and sophistication, he didn’t show it. I’ve since learned there’s not much that intimidates Larry. He started doing what I should have done from the beginning. Instead of being intimidated, he started asking questions, and waiting for answers.
It had been easier for me not to dwell on such things, to let others take care of business. My energy had gone into escaping Chuck Traynor. Now it was going into starting a new life. I never bothered dealing with the nuts-and-bolts side of the movie star business. It was much easier to float away on a cloud far above such crass matters as collecting debts and paying bills.
But if Larry is anything, he’s a nuts-and-bolts person and that’s what I needed. Not that this was a one-way street. Just as Larry was able to fill some of my needs, I was able to fill some of his. The kind of work he was now doing was a big step up from being a plumber’s apprentice.
Larry asked hard questions of my advisers. How come a former boyfriend had been given a check for $11,000? Why was a publisher allowed to pay only a percentage of the royalties owed me? Why was a river of money flowing toward me and only a trickle reaching my hands. How was it possible to make a six-figure income and have nothing more to show for it than a rented car, a rented house and a peek-a-boo wardrobe? I was embarrassed by how little I knew.
“The thing is this,” he told me one night, “you’re up to your neck in debt. Just how much I don’t know yet.”
“But I was told everything had been paid.”
“You were told a lot of things.”
Larry was not really cut out to be a personal manager. He was too excitable, too easily angered. You can’t be that emotional. Especially with lawyers and accountants and reporters—you can’t call them names. Larry spent the day talking to the experts and then we spent the evenings trying to make sense out of what they told him. Every hour we spent together made me love him more. There was a force between us, as strong as gravity, always drawing us closer together.
Whenever a new movie offer came in, we would try to make sense of it. But before too long we would realize that it was
Return of Deep Throat or Deep Throat Revisited
, or
Deep Throat, Part Three.
In other words, more of the same. And so, for a period of time, I did nothing to make money. Then, one night, after weeks of adding up columns of numbers, Larry had an announcement.
“Do you want to know how much you’re worth,” he said.
“Why not?”
I was sitting back, relaxed, while Larry paced the floor nervously; I always figured he was worried enough for the two of us.
“Taking everything into consideration,” he said, “the money you’re owed and the money you still owe, you’re worth nothing. Less than nothing. I don’t know yet how big the debt is, but it’s not small.”
This was a conclusion that shocked Larry. He was fresh from that other world, the normal world, a world where people paid bills and saved money and scrambled to stay out of debt. People wonder why I’m so bad with money, why I spend it as soon as I get it. It’s because if it stays in one place too long, someone else always takes it away.
Always.
Lawyers are the worst. Some lawyers can’t stand the idea of clients accumulating money; when they see that, they figure they’re not doing their jobs.
The truth is this: I can’t afford to earn money. No wonder I’ve always hated money and refuse to worry about it. That doesn’t matter anyway. Other people worry on my behalf.
Larry helped bring reality back into my life. How did I return the favor? By trying to inject unreality into his. He hadn’t been in Hollywood for a month before I was taking him to Gene Shacove for $25 haircuts. But although he joined me on my appointed rounds, Larry remained very much a visitor to Hollywood, never one of its players.
I could tell he didn’t much care for my world. And when I saw it through his eyes, I didn’t much care for it either. For example, there was a roast for comedian Marty Allen, and Larry was forced to suffer while I went through the endless double-entendres written for the occasion, such as, “Marty called me this afternoon and asked whether I wanted to come and entertain 800 men. My first reaction was, ‘Gee, Marty, that’s a hard thing to swallow.’ ”
Possibly because even I was treating my past lightly now, Larry never fully understood just how much I’d gone through. Even when I told him that I had been beaten and threatened, it didn’t seem to fully register.
Sometimes, of course, he would notice something amiss. For example, I always try to keep my legs covered up. That’s because my legs look like the legs of a very old person or someone suffering from varicose veins. One night Larry asked me what had happened to the veins on my legs.
“Oh, those,” I tried to be off-handed about it. “They’re going to have to be removed someday.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“The thing is, I used to protect myself with my legs. I used to try and protect my chest and stomach by curling up in a ball; then my legs would be the target.”
“But how could anyone do this kind of damage?”
“It wasn’t easy,” I said. “But he was usually wearing those Frye boots. And once he got me down on the floor, he’d kick me or punch me. He would punch me on my legs instead of my face because my legs would be covered up. When he gave me a black eye, people would know. Sometimes he would slap me or choke me, but mostly he would kick my legs because no one would see the marks there.”
“God, I had no idea—”
“The choking was the worst,” I said. “I still have this feeling about my throat—I can’t wear a chain that’s too tight or a tutleneck sweater. All I have to do is wear a turtleneck sweater and I begin to feel like I’m passing out. So many times when he was choking me—I would black out. I know it’s hard for you to understand all these things, but they—that was my life.”
It’s one thing to hear a story, quite something else to experience it. I’ll give you an example. Just the other day I got a telephone call from a neighbor who had been hearing about pornographic movies for years—but she had never seen one. In her mind a pornographic film would just show two people having sex. That’s all she thought pornography was, two adults taking their clothes off and making love to each other. And so she saw nothing so bad about going to her local video-rental shop and taking home three of their X-rated cassettes.
For the first time my friend finally saw—finally
experienced
—pornographic movies. Two of the films starred women who had bruises all over their bodies, just as I had in
Deep Throat.
The third was a so-called “snuff” movie, one where the female star was sexually abused, then apparently killed in a bloody and graphic way.
My friend was in shock when she took the three films back to the store. How could this kind of thing be allowed to go on? She asked the store owner what kind of people would want to see films this violent, this disgusting.
He told her his customers were normal, everyday people and that the “snuff” film happened to be his most popular current offering: “A newspaper said that the woman was actually murdered in that movie and most people can’t wait to see that.”
My friend will never get over the experience, but now it is just that—an experience—not just something she heard about.
Something like this was going on with Larry. I told him what had happened to me. He listened; he nodded his head in the right places; he agreed that it was a terrible thing; but he was not really
experiencing
it. He was not
feeling
my pain and humiliation and degredation.
At this time I was asked to appear in Florida to be a witness in a trial. A young man named Henry Justice had been accidentally filmed playing Ping-Pong in
Deep Throat.
Justice was suing, claiming that he had been publicly humiliated by his unwitting cameo role in the movie. Since that film had also been a humiliation for me, I felt a kind of kinship with him and agreed to come to the courtroom and testify on his behalf. Justice had sued for a million dollars and was finally awarded $5,000.
If I had known what awaited me in that Miami courtroom I would never have gone. With no warning, the judge ruled that the entire movie,
Deep Throat,
must be screened for the jury. Then he made a second decision. He also decided it was important that I stay in the courtroom and verify that this was, indeed, the film. This meant that Larry—the man I loved, the man I was thinking about spending my life with—would sit there and watch the movie with me. The film he had never seen.
seven
Larry knew a little of what to expect; he knew that he would be watching a film of the woman he loved involved in sex with other men. But he didn’t realize he was going to watch the woman he loved performing sexual acrobatics with several strangers.
There was such a risk to this, such a terrible risk. I realized I might lose Larry forever. Some men would never have been able to look me in the eye again. But total honesty has always been important to me. What good is a love if it’s built on a lie? In a strange way I wanted—needed—Larry beside me; I couldn’t sit in that crowded courtroom totally unprotected.
There was still one other thing in my mind. I wanted Larry to understand. I wanted him to go with me into the very depths of my life, I wanted him to
feel
it.
This happened to be the first time I sat through the entire movie myself. I had been in other places—like Hefner’s mansion in California—where the movie was being shown but always, in the past, I would get up and walk out of the room as soon as the lights went off. What I had seen in the past seemed to me incomprehensible, disgusting, embarrassing, smelly.
When it was learned that
Deep Throat
was being screened, that Florida courtroom suddenly filled with people. Every lawyer and judge and legal secretary in the building suddenly found an excuse to visit the courtroom. Although I tried to brace myself, the pain was acute. I sat there, suffering, as once again the rape went on. It was worse than I remembered, worse than I imagined it might be.
I couldn’t look at Larry directly. From the corners of my eyes, I could see that he, too, was avoiding looking at the screen. His eyes remained on the floor. However, there was no way to block his ears, no way for him to avoid hearing it.
A few times I tried to make light of it by whispering something to Larry. I tried to adopt an oh-it’s-not-all-that-bad attitude but it didn’t work. There could never be a way this part of my life could be turned into a joke. Larry seemed tense, frozen in position as if braced against some unseen assault. What was he thinking? What could he be thinking? Was he tough enough for this, tough enough to trust me despite this?
I couldn’t guess the answer. As the action on the screen moved on relentlessly, I began to feel spaced out. This should not be happening—but there was no way to stop it.
Unfortunately, Larry was seeing this movie—this dismal chapter of my life—out of context. He, like millions of others, had no idea what was going on when the movie camera was turned off. He hadn’t read director Damiano’s description of my appearance (“Many times she’d come on the set and be completely black and blue.”)
Flashback to—
A Florida motel room, the first day of shooting Deep Throat, the entire movie crew partying it up in the next room, drinking, smoking pot, carrying on. Chuck turning on me—“You cunt!”—and hitting me. What had I done now? What was wrong? “Your smile,” he said. “That fucking smile of yours. You were so busy smiling all day—well, let’s see how you smile now. Why don’t you smile for me now?” And me knowing the crew can hear every word, can come to my rescue: “First you yell at me because I look too sad, and now you yell at me because I’m smiling too much! Smiling too much! You ought to see a doctor, Chuck, you really ought to. Because you’re crazy.” Him coming at me then: “I’m not the one who’s gonna need a doctor.”
Then the beating. Next door, where the crew is partying, it has gotten as quiet as a tomb. They can hear everything. The first punch sends me crashing onto the bed. Chuck is beserk now, picking me off the bed and throwing me against the wall. I fall to the floor, rolling myself into a tight ball, protecting my stomach and breasts from his boots, screaming, “Stop! Please stop! You’re hurting me!” Screaming, “Help! Oh, God, please help me! Someone help me!”
But help does not come and the beating goes on. Why is there no help? Why do the men stay in the next room?
Larry didn’t know about this, about the beatings. And there was no way to say anything as the movie played on in that crowded courtroom. We were hemmed in by other people—first the voyeurs who filled the courtroom and then the press vultures who snapped our photographs as we left the courthouse.
Afterwards, finally, quiet.
Neither one of us was able to say anything. Larry had taken everything else so well but this was just too much. There was a long aimless, silent walk along a beach in Key Biscayne, such a beautiful beach, a chance to let the offshore breeze blow away the clouds, but it wasn’t working. Nothing helped. Although we were walking hand in hand, I could feel the wall between us. When we returned to our hotel room, I tried rubbing his back. It was all knotted up, as stiff as sheet metal, and it didn’t relax as I messaged it. The tension just wouldn’t end and the talk wouldn’t begin. Somehow, finally, Larry managed to fall asleep. And late that night, when he woke up, I was still staring into his face.
Our eyes met and we smiled. We held each other and we both cried. I started to tell Larry what had really happened and he told me I didn’t have to say anything.
We were both realizing the same thing. It wasn’t Larry who carried Linda or Linda who carried Larry. It was just Linda and Larry sharing the burden and going on with each other.
Only much, much later were we able to talk about what happened that afternoon.
“Upset?” Larry’s voice was as sober as I’ve ever heard it. “Upset wouldn’t describe it.”
“You
are
upset.”
“Confused,” he said. “I’ve only known you for a short period of my life but that’s not you. I was having trouble understanding how anyone could possibly be in that spot. That wasn’t you.”
And then Larry became angry. Angry with the film-makers, angry with the other actors, angry with the men who bought tickets to watch it, angry with me for letting it happen. And his anger made me angry.
Finally I was able to tell him everything. The beatings, the kickings, the rapings, the animals. I told him what it was like being passed around to truck drivers and salesmen; what it was like having to perform as mechanically as a robot on whomever and whatever; I tried to tell him what caused the fear, the terror of those years.
“You didn’t tell me this before,” he said.
“I couldn’t. I was afraid that you wouldn’t understand. I’ve been telling you a lot—you just haven’t been hearing it.”
“I can’t believe people get away with these things.”
Quiet again, much thought. “You know what really bothers me now? That judge, what right did he have to show that film? And all those people, what right did they have to be there? Tell me why that courtroom went from empty to full. Why? I feel like they’ve all violated our privacy.”
“Tell me about it. What do you think I’ve been feeling these past few years?”
“I really haven’t understood,” he said. “Until now.”
“I didn’t think you even looked at the screen.”
“I tried not to. You know what I was doing? I was playing chess on the floor tiles. I was trying to concentrate on playing chess on floor tiles. But every now and then I would see something, just a glimpse, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. God, how awful!”
The anger didn’t leave him but it wasn’t directed at me. It was directed at the man who had caused the pain.
“I just want to know one thing,” he said. “Where’s that son of a bitch now?”
“He’s still out there somewhere,” I told him, “and he’s still doing what he’s always done. Now he has a new victim, but he’s back at the same old stand.”
“What can we do?”
“We can’t do anything,” I told him. “Avoid him, stay away from him.”
That was easier said than done. When we returned to California, Larry went looking for Chuck. He learned that Chuck hung out at Schwab’s drugstore. He stationed himself there and waited. Thank God they didn’t meet. It would have been Larry’s sense of outrage against a pistol or even a submachine gun, and that’s an unequal battle at best.
Larry’s outrage came from his basic decency. I knew Larry Marchiano was the man with whom I could spend the rest of my life.