Out of Bondage by Linda Lovelace Page A

from another planet inhabits the body of the person you love. He was no longer the Larry I had fallen in love with.
    I can still play his diary-cassette today and hear the pain in his voice back then:
    “We’re here for one month. Near the end of September we’re supposed to be needed in Florida for litigation. Financial security has been established for our needs through October. November comes time of payment. Which also comes time of new bills. Which also comes time of new lawyers. And a whole lot of other things. I’m back in New York and I’m reminded that I hate it.”

twelve
    Victor’s heart was in the right place but everything was far too secretive, too protective. Now Larry took to vanishing for long hours every day. The man who had always been with me when I needed him was gone. And what we had now was not at all the relationship we had before.
    One of the saddest aspect of this chapter of our life—let’s call it Escape From Hollyweird —was that Larry had to take so much abuse, simply because he was married to the woman who was once known as Linda Lovelace. Marchiano has always been a respected name on Eastern Long Island. Once it became known that Larry Marchiano had married the notorious Linda Lovelace, he couldn’t walk into a neighborhood bar without taking a ribbing—some of it good-natured, some of it not so good-natured. I had seen my husband’s temper in the past. The night he came home with a broken arm after a bar fight, I didn’t have to ask whose honor he was defending.
    The more serious injuries were internal. The strain of our situation had begun to tell. No longer were we enjoying shrimp and champagne in the grand hotels of Canada; no longer were we hopping to Rome for fun and games. And no longer could we keep the crowds at bay.
    Let me tell you how famous people hide out. They hide behind walls of money. Without the money there are no walls, no protection. You are naked and your only defense then is to run. It would have taken a superman to adjust to our new life without some measure of resentment.
    What was happening to Larry went beyond resentment. I don’t know the exact scientific terms. But I know things weren’t at all right with him. Before long, I hated Long Island. I remember the day that it struck me—at this time we were awaiting the birth of our first child—that my entire adult life had been spent behind prison bars. For years I had been the prisoner of a sadistic pimp. And now I was the prisoner of circumstance.
    During the final months of my pregnancy with our first child, Dominic, we rented a cottage in Montauk on the eastern tip of Long Island. During the summer months, this tourist and fishing village is crowded with the beautiful people who spill over from the Hamptons onto beaches that are a little less manicured. During the winter months there were seagulls and ocean storms and deserted straight highways and loneliness as we hid out, awaiting the birth.
    Larry would leave early in the morning and spend the day looking for work or hobnobbing with friends from high-school days. Since we couldn’t risk my being recognized, I stayed home. It was then I started drinking. Just beer and wine. That’s what I would say to myself: Oh, it’s just beer and wine. However, I’ve never been a half-way person about anything, a person who can do something a little bit and just taper off.
    There came a time when I didn’t feel the day had begun until I had that first cold beer. The beer became my companion, a friend who would help me block out all the things that made me unhappy. It may have been a measure of my unhappiness. But, whatever the reason, I was able, on occasion, to drink a whole case of beer or a gallon of wine before making dinner. Which is why I finally had to stop cold. I don’t drink today and will never drink again.
    My only real company those days was my guard dog, Alice, a German Shepherd. Since I had to do something with my time, I taught myself how