Out of Bondage by Linda Lovelace

room at that moment because my voice suddenly interrupts his chaotic thoughts with: “ What are you saying?”
    Victor, meanwhile, was considering a series of legal actions on my behalf. He learned the identity of the men behind Deep Throat —they were either mobsters or men with mob connections—and he warned us that our lives could now be in real danger. Warnings like these added to Larry’s burden. We became as secretive as people in a spy movie, always checking to see whether we were being followed, worried that our phone (when we could afford a phone) might be tapped.
    Sometimes all of this seemed silly to me. But I figured Victor knew things we didn’t. I knew those mob ties were not at all make-believe. When the FBI ran a nationwide sweep of pornographers, they arrested Lou Peraino, the producer of Deep Throat, and one of the men Chuck forced me to have sex with regularly. The FBI identified him at that time as a member of the Colombo mob family.
    At the time we were getting calls from a Larry Parrish in Memphis; Parrish was an Assistant US Attorney who was prosecuting the producers of Deep Throat for transporting obscene materials across state lines. He wanted us to come to Memphis for the trial and my husband called him in Memphis.
    “If Chuck Traynor will be there, Linda will not be there,” he said.
    “I want Linda here,” the prosecutor said. “And if I want her here bad enough, there are always ways we can find her.”
    That, too, became a cause for concern, someone else to hide out from. There was quite a list by now. It was Victor’s notion to launch lawsuits against all those who imprisoned me, had a hand in imprisoning me or profited from my imprisonment. While he prepared these cases, Victor wanted us out of the public eye, out of harm’s way.
    We went into hiding. We spent two weeks in one dingy motel room, two weeks in another that was even dingier. And then, as the last of our money ran out, we shared the living room of a friend, then the basement of Larry’s brother’s apartment, finally a rented cottage out in Montauk and a second one in the former whaling village of Port Jefferson.
    The very act of going into hiding made the dangers seem real. Today I don’t know whether we were in jeopardy from anyone. But it felt as though we were. How reclusive were we? We lived in our Port Jefferson home for four months before I first saw the road leading out of town.
    The real risk was being recognized. There was always the chance that I would be noticed by the countergirl in the deli, the boy collecting for the newspaper, the fan at a high school basketball game. Recognition—the raised eyebrow, the sudden smile, the sideways glance, the stage whisper-was enought to cause us to pack our bags and run.
    Why did we have to move? Let me tell you what would happen after being recognized. Within hours, the first visitors arrive. They might be creeps or degenerates or just curiosity-seekers. But they would drive slowly past the house, stop 50 or 100 feet up the road, sit there with their motors growling, mustering up courage and then . . . finally . . . doing it. Walking up to the front door, knocking timidly, and when they got no response, knocking more loudly, as if somehow it was their right to be there.
    Then would come the cars with the reporters and the photographers, maybe even a television van or two, circling the block, taking pictures of the house, knocking before going on and speaking to the next-door neighbors, the man in the deli, the bartender at the tavern. Asking—and, at the same time, telling—all about Linda Lovelace.
    And so we would have to move. Again. Larry would have to give up his job. Again. And we would be forced to go down to the welfare office. Again.
    The pressure on Larry was incredible. And of course it changed him. He was becoming a Larry I had never seen before, one I never want to see again. At times it reminded me of one of those science-fiction movies where someone