Free Ordeal by Linda Lovelace

almost twenty years old, and only a couple of men before Chuck had ever made love to me. What I found most degrading was when a man put his thing inside of me and came. The thought of fifteen men doing that in one night was more than I could tolerate. I had a choice of which was better for me to do, which made me feel more comfortable. And sucking cock made me feel more comfortable than being fucked.
    Because of my ability to totally relax my throat muscles, I became very popular with men who were into oral sex. Over and over again I heard tricks say, “Nobody’s ever done that to me before.” And of course they would want to call a friend so that he could have it done to him, too.
    Chuck was very pleased with this. He called it word-of-mouth advertising.

six
    Often I’m asked why I didn’t escape. Behind that question there’s an attitude, a presumption. I can see it in the face asking the question. The questioner always has the sure knowledge that this could never have happened to him or to her. They would have been strong enough and smart enough and resourceful enough to have gotten away. In fact, if the truth be known, they would never have allowed themselves to get into this kind of predicament in the first place. Once, during a grand jury hearing in California, I was asked the question point-blank: “How come you never got away?”
    And I answered point-blank: “Because it’s kind of hard to get away when there’s a gun pointed at your head.”
    There was always a gun pointed at my head. Even when no gun could be seen, there was a gun pointed at my head. I can understand why some people have such trouble accepting this as the truth. When I was younger, when I heard about a woman being raped, my secret feeling was that that could never happen to me. I would never permit it to happen. Now I realize that can be about as meaningful as saying I won’t allow an earthquake or I won’t permit an avalanche.
    It’s impossible for people to understand real terror unless they’ve felt it, lived it, tasted it. It’s impossible to picture your own death until that possibility is real, until the car is careening or the plane is falling or you are looking at a madman holding a loaded gun. Today, when I’m sitting home quietly with my husband and child, it’s again difficult to conceive of anyone forcing me into unspeakable perversions. But I know that it did happen once, and I know something else: It could happen again—to me or to you.
    At first I was certain that God would help me escape but in time my faith was shaken. I became more and more frightened, scared of everything. The very thought of trying to escape was terrifying. I had been degraded every possible way, stripped of all dignity, reduced to an animal and then to a vegetable. Whatever strength I had began to disappear. Simple survival took everything; making it all the way to tomorrow was a victory.
    The experience has enabled me to understand many events that others seem to find incomprehensible. I have no difficulty relating to what happened to Patty Hearst; I have the feeling that we could be the closet of friends. Recently when several Playboy bunnies in Great Gorge, New Jersey, were drugged, photographed and forced to work as whores, I could understand the process. I can even comprehend the Jonestown massacre, hundreds of people standing in line, waiting to drink their cyanide. I know what inhuman doses of fear and pain can do to any human being.
    Still, there were several times when I did try to escape. My first opportunity came after I had been working as a hooker for almost a month.
    The newest addition to Chuck’s stable was a twenty-year-old, a veteran hooker named Kitty. Kitty—blonde, thin, intense and streetwise—had worked for Chuck earlier and was now returning after a year out on the streets, returning and bringing her own string of steady customers with her.
    Kitty was tough and independent. When she realized that I was working against