fifteen
The beginnings of fame. A few customers said they had seen me in a movie up in New York. And occasionally a trick would ask me to “deep-throat” him. Then, one day in late summer of 1972, we got a telephone call from Lou Perry. He said that he would pay all travel expenses if we would come up to New York and be interviewed.
However, before we took that trip, Chuck decided to buy a little present for me. A dog.
On a terribly hot day toward the end of summer, Chuck took me to the Humane Society so I could help him pick out a proper pet. He asked me to select one that I liked. I chose a cute little female Cocker Spaniel, but this was not what Chuck had in mind. Not at all. What Chuck had in mind was Rufus, a two-year-old mix of Bloodhound and Great Dane, an oversized, sad-faced mutt.
Chuck, of course, was into perversions, not pets. While he kept Rufus chained out in the backyard, he spent a great deal of time telling me exactly why he had gotten me a dog like Rufus. It was, as you’ve guessed, to expand my sexual horizons in what was, to me, the most painful possible way.
“Now take off your clothes while I get the dog,” he said. “It’s important that you two get to know each other.”
I was scared to death. But I was resolved that this encounter with a dog would not turn out like the last one. And this time I had some help, some expert advice. A hooker who had specialized in making love to dogs told me just what to do to make it work—and, at the same time, just what
not
to do.
“The whole thing is this,” she had told me, “you’ve got to wait for the animal to come to you. Stay in just one spot and let him take all the time in the world. If you move at all, he may get scared off. A dog doesn’t like it when you back away or make any moves toward it.”
“Really?” I had said.
“Oh, yeah, never do that. And whatever else you do, don’t touch it directly. You’ll scare the dog to death.”
Clearly, all I had to do was reverse her instructions. I imagine both Rufus and Chuck were befuddled when I came on like gangbusters. Rufus was interested, but only to a point. The minute I made a move toward him, he backed off.
Chuck watched all this unbelievingly. He couldn’t complain about my performance—there I was, aggressive to a fault, looking like I wanted nothing else on earth but to make love to this dog. And Rufus looked like an out-and-out quitter.
“There must be something really wrong with you,” Chuck decided. “You are so fucking ugly that even a fucking animal won’t fuck you.”
Another small victory. Anyway, as we left for New York and the first round of interviews, I was in an up mood. Neither Chuck nor I could imagine why any newspaper would want to interview someone who had been in a hard core porno movie. But neither of us knew that
Deep Throat
was being treated as something more than a routine dirty movie. We had no idea that
Screw
, the sex newspaper, had called it “the very best porno ever made”. And we didn’t know that customers were lining up around the World Theatre on Manhattan’s West 49th Street to see the most talked-about film of the year.
Chuck had a prediction: We would be interviewed by a couple of the sex papers and then, in a week or so, it would all blow away.
“I don’t want to use the name ‘Traynor’ in any interviews,” he said. “We don’t want the whole fucking family down on our asses. From now on you use the name from the movie, Lovelace. You are Linda Lovelace. And I am J.R., your husband and manager.”
“J.R.?”
“Right, you got it. I am not Traynor and I am not Chuck. From now on, it is J.R.”
On the flight to New York, Chuck made up complete new identities for us. I was twenty-one years old, not twenty-three. He was a New York City photographer, and he discovered me in my home town of Bryan, Texas. He chose Bryan, Texas, because he had once worked there and he knew how many stores there were, and where the nearest movie theater was. He said it was a flat little town; you could stand in the center of town and see everything there was to see by just turning slowly around.
“If they ask you what your parents think about what you’re doing, you say that doesn’t matter—you’re doing this because you want to do it. That’s the key thing: You
want
to do it; you
like
doing it. Get this.straight, Linda. These people think you’re the turn-on Queen of all time. Just this once, start acting it. Anyone asks you why you suck cock, you love it. That’s what turns you on.”
Chuck went over every question I might be asked and then he told me the answers I was supposed to give. If someone asked me a question we hadn’t gone over, I was supposed to wait until Chuck chimed in with the right answer.
Sample question:
Does it bother you to suck cock in front of so many people?
Sample answer:
Oh, no, I love it. I guess I’m what you might call an exhibitionist.
Sample question:
Do you think you could take twelve inches?
Sample answer:
Oh, sure, no problem.
Sample question:
Which is better, sex with men or sex with women?
Sample answer:
Sex with both—I can never get enough of either one.
I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the one who really enjoyed the interviews was Chuck. He loved stepping in and answering all the questions. He finally had a chance to tell the world everything he felt about life. He could talk about Nixon politics (bad) and prudes (bad) and far-out sex (good). He even gave me a whole speech to memorize about censorship (very bad). And now I became his puppet, mouthing everything he wanted the world to hear.
“People should be free to do whatever they want to do,” I said at least a million times. “They should be free, unrestricted, uninhibited, and open-minded.”
The only thing that upset Chuck was when I was asked a question that didn’t focus in on my sexual talent or, worse, a question totally unrelated to sex. Then I was supposed to turn the question around: “Do you always ask such boring questions?” or “Can’t you think of something more exciting to ask?”
“Any newspaper guy hints at anything,” Chuck said, “or if he asks you to do anything, you just do it, and right away.”
That was Chuck’s complete thinking on the subject of public relations. An effective publicity program, like everything else in life, was built around sexual activity.
“But why do they want to talk with me?” I asked Chuck.
“Search me,” he said.
The producers knew why. But then the producers had the weekly box office receipts. They knew that in just the World Theater the picture would gross nearly a million-and-a-half dollars before being closed down by the authorities. They also had the accumulating interview requests, not just from sleaze-sheets like
Screw
but from newspapers like the
New York Daily News
. They knew of the magazines that were doing articles and the fact that
Playboy
was anxious for a photo spread.
I began to sense what was happening the first time we saw producer Lou Perry. Suddenly it was, “You’re looking well, Linda” and “How’s life been treating you, Linda?” It was hard to believe that this was the same man who wanted me fired off the set because I was “ruining” his movie.
Our first official interview was with
Screw
and we had been told that since that publication was largely responsible for
Deep Throat
’s success, we were to be very cooperative. Whatever
Screw
wanted,
Screw
was to get. And the two men responsible for
Screw
, editor Al Goldstein and publisher Jim Buckley, were both going to be there for the interview.
When I put on my regular clothes, blue jeans and a blouse, Chuck decided that wasn’t good enough for the editors of
Screw
. Chuck had recently purchased three or four transparent blouses, and I wore one of them whenever he wanted to demonstrate the wonders of silicone. And so for
Screw
it was a transparent blouse, no bra.
I was immediately struck by the contrast between the two men. You could tell that Goldstein was a cheap guy—loud, crude, rude, infantile, obnoxious, and dirty. His partner Buckley seemed a contrast: neat and clean, sensitive, and quiet. Buckley observed me closely. Just from the way he looked at me, I got the feeling that he knew what was happening.
The interview itself was filthy and silly:
“What’s the largest cock you’ve ever sucked?” I was asked. “Is it the guy in the film, or has there been somebody so large that you couldn’t get it all in?”
“No,” I said. “That’s never happened. Nobody has ever been too large or too wide or anything.”
“Once your throat opens, your esophagus gets quite large, like a sword-swallower’s.”
Chuck was right there to offer the full scientific explanation.
“You’ve seen some sword-swallowers putting threefoot swords down. It’s the same thing.”
“Do you breathe through your nose?”
I was asked.
“You have to breathe through your mouth,” I said, “so whoever’s going in my throat has to work in and out. As they come out I take a breath.”
“Do you come even though your clit isn’t being worked on?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I have an orgasm every time I get screwed in the throat.”
I could tell by Chuck’s smile that I was doing all right. I was amazed that they would be asking me the same kind of questions that Chuck had rehearsed with me. The same questions would be asked by reporters from many sleazy publications, and my answers never varied at all.
“Do you enjoy the taste of sperm?”
Goldstein asked me.
“Oh, yeah, I do. I love it. It’s caviar to me. I can’t understand why other chicks get so totally turned off by it. I never spit it out.”
“How would you describe the taste?”
“I really couldn’t describe the taste . . . you’d have to taste it. Try it.”
Goldstein was asking more and more questions about the act itself—how did it taste and how did it feel and how did I think it made a man feel and so on. Since I wasn’t taking the hint, Chuck did.
“Well, why don’t you find out for yourself?” Chuck said. “You want a free sample, help yourself.”
The editor of Screw almost tripped over his own feet racing over to the bed. As I did it to Goldstein, I could hear Chuck ask Buckley whether he’d like a sample, too.
“No, thanks,” Buckley said.
Although Goldstein was a pig, I could numb myself to that experience. But it was harder to numb myself to the new phenomenon of being interviewed. At first I thought it wouldn’t matter what I said. So what if I spouted Chuck’s words and thoughts? Who would believe that stuff anyway? And those words weren’t mine. They were words being delivered by the Linda Lovelace doll. That was the first I’d thought of myself as the Linda Lovelace doll and it might have been the result of a joke I had just heard (“Did you hear about the Linda Lovelace doll? Wind it up and it swallows the key”).
During the next few days, Chuck wound up the Linda Lovelace doll and she gave interviews. Although there was one more scene like the scene with Goldstein, most interviewers were decent people and would not respond to Chuck’s hints or invitations. I realized that interviews didn’t all have to be bad. As long as I was answering questions, I didn’t have to be a hooker. And as long as I was being interviewed, I was able to eat in restaurants that Chuck would never have otherwise entered. The
New York Daily News
interview the next day was in a fancy Manhattan restaurant where the food was so tasty, I couldn’t keep my mind on the questions.
Nothing else really changed that much, not at first anyway. Chuck explained that Lou Perry was negotiating for another movie, a sequel, and that I should be taking care of the producer as long as we were in New York. So I did. It was no longer a curt, “Lock the door.” Now it was, “Oh, Linda, would you mind locking the door behind you?” The general attitude toward me had changed but everything else was the same.
The movie was breaking records everywhere, so we spent a lot of time in Lou Perry’s office talking about the next one,
Deep Throat, Part II
. One day while we were there, Lou’s office phone rang. His secretary told him that the caller was Sammy Davis, Jr.
At first I thought it was a joke. What would a big star like Sammy Davis have to say to someone like Lou? But judging from Lou’s side of the conversation, the two of them —the superstar and the producer of dirty movies—were old friends. Stranger still, Sammy Davis was talking to Lou about
Deep Throat
. Apparently he had enjoyed the movie so much that he wanted to borrow a print to show in his home.
“Sure, Sammy, we can take care of that,” Lou said. There was a pause in Lou’s side of the conversation and he swiveled around and looked at me. I gathered that my name had just entered the talk. “Yeah, sure, I know her. As a matter of fact, I know her very well. Hey, you want to know where she is right now? Two feet away. That’s right. Listening to every word. Sammy, would I kid you?”