Her Troubled Life

By Linda Moore

For some reason or another, author Linda Moore always ended up with bad people throughout her journey. She had a strange, unexplainable resistance to anything good that came her way. In Her Troubled Life, she shares her story of living a wild and tormented life.

In this memoir, she candidly and honestly tells in flashbacks how being abused by her father at tender age set a dark tone for the rest of her life. Moore narrates how rapes, attempted suicides, abuse, character assassinations, infidelity, want, misery, and pain were some of her closest companions. Her Troubled Life details how Moore was blessed with musical talent, but for many years she did not take advantage of her opportunities. She met a Swiss man who helped turn her life around.

A story that could be a study of humanity, Her Troubled Life discusses how one womans lifelong development was affected by an anguished childhood. It reveals Moore fullya real woman who bears the effect of what others have done to her and what she has done to herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496959775

Linda Moore

Linda Moore is an author, traveler, and recovering gallery owner. Her gallery featured contemporary artists from Latin American, Spain, and the United States and she has exhibited at numerous art fairs, including in Bogotá, Buenos Aires, and Madrid. Attribution, her debut novel was an IBPA finalist in Ben Franklin Awards for General Fiction, Eric Hoffer honorable mention winner in General Fiction, on the 2022 Sarton Book Awards Short List in Contemporary Fiction, winner of Somerset Award in Literary and Contemporary Fiction and a 2022 International Book Awards Finalist in Best New Fiction, among other distinctions. She has published award-winning exhibition catalogs and her writing has appeared in art journals and anthologies. She resides with her book-collecting husband in San Diego and is working hard on her next novel in their vacation cottage on Kauai.

Book preview

HER TROUBLED LIFE

LINDA MOORE

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© 2015 LINDA MOORE. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   08/13/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5978-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5977-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

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CHAPTER ONE

Paris 1964

Linda checked into a cheap hotel in the heart of Paris where she paid ten francs a day. It took her a few days to absorb the shock of being asked to leave. One night Linda went to a very famous discotheque where a well-known, French rock singer, was performing. The setting of the discotheque was a sharp contrast to anything that she knew before. It looks like a place that has a lot of innocent young looking men and women. At least, that was the way Linda saw them at that time.

Time, they say, is the enemy of everything. Later, Linda got to know that a lot of the so-called innocent-looking people there they were, homosexuals, queers, gigolos, drug pushers, and prostitutes.

Inside the discotheque, Linda saw a baby-faced innocent-looking blonde who smiled at her when their eyes met. Linda smiled back at him. She always felt attracted to blond boys, perhaps because Linda had an olive skin complexion, and, in the state she was in, Linda did look for a boyfriend, Linda thought maybe they would live together. Linda was just a very naïve young woman. She joined him where he was sitting. He asked her if she would come home with him. Linda agreed without any hesitation. They went to his house where he took Linda straight to his bedroom. He stripped her and made love to her. After making love, he went into another room and made several telephone calls, speaking in French. The telephone calls continued as Linda lay glassy-eyed on the bed.

Linda must have slept for a while before she was awakened by the sound of voices. She opened her eyes to look at a man she had never seen before walking toward her. Linda was frightened to death. From another room, Linda could hear the voice of the blond man who had brought her to the house. Linda called his name, but he did not answer. A roar of laughter suggested they were in a jocular mood. Grinning from ear to ear, the man took his clothes off than grabbed Linda by the shoulders and leant his weight on her. Linda was in a moribund state. She could not shout she seemed to have lost her voice.

Linda was helpless as he raped her. When he finished, another man came in and raped her too, then another. They were six in number. The sixth man appeared to be a very violent man. Linda tears were flowing like water from a tap as she was screaming in her head, afraid to screams loud. Linda was just lying there like a piece of meat. The man made jest as he raped Linda by saying her crying meant it must have felt good, what was happening to her.

Linda was full of self-pity and hatred for the men, especially the blonde man who had brought her to his house. If she had a gun, she would not have had any compunction about shooting them.

At the break of dawn, Linda heard the men speak excitedly in French until one of them came in and gesticulated it was time to go. Linda was mentally saying to herself they would be sorry for what they had done to her. She would go to the police and make a report. They went downstairs through a white, enclosed, narrow staircase and then into a black car. As they drove along, Linda tried to memorize the names of the streets, but it seemed a futile exercise. Linda only knew how to read Hebrew which was from right to left. Applying the same principle to the French words made them unintelligible to her. Linda gave up trying to memorize the street names after a few minutes.

After about three or four miles’ drive, they stopped the car outside an underground station and asked Linda to get out of the car. Linda felt awful, trashed, and depressed as she walked into the underground station.

Linda remembered thinking to herself what a cruel world it was. Life had no meaning for her. She had nothing to aspire toward. She had no self-respect. The men must have been very mean and unscrupulous.

When Linda got back to the hotel she was staying at, she overheard someone say there was a cheaper hotel not far away which cost seven francs, three less than Linda was paying. Since she had no sources of income, and the money she had was running out, Linda checked out and moved into the new hotel. The room she had in the new hotel was in a ramshackle state. Linda felt like a horse living in a filthy stable.

Life became a drag for her. Linda sat idly doing nothing. One day, she was engaged in conversation with a few youngsters who told her they knew a café where she could meet people who didn’t speak French, and some English and Americans used it as a rendezvous. Anything was better than idling away in the hotel, so she decided to go to this café. It turned out to be a place where drugs were taken. As the youngsters had said, there were a few English and Americans there. Linda was introduced to a drug called Mexitone by a group of American youngsters she met there. The Mexitone was dissolved in a glass of water and taken. It was a stimulant that made one feel high and awake in contrast to the effect of hashish which made one sexy lazy and sleepy. As time went on, Linda circle of acquaintances widened. In this circle were two American girls who were junkies. One was a model with black, shoulder-length hair, and the other was blonde who wore spectacles. In a conversation that took place in the café one day, they mentioned the fact that their friend’s artist a painter would be released from a mental home that day. He had been taken there because of his suicidal tendencies. To celebrate his release, they invited Linda to an empty house in the company of that painter who Linda gathered was the blonde’s boyfriend. In the kitchen on a chip chairs and a chip table there was no furniture in the other rooms. They started injecting themselves with a syringe. Linda was not a junkie in the real sense of the word. Linda accompanied them to the house because anywhere Linda could stay was like a home to her in her homeless state.

Linda found herself participating with them in their trip to a world of fantasy where the junkie reigned supreme. A rubber band was tied around Linda’s arm before she was injected. Linda was very nervous having injected with heroin, they led her to an empty room where some of them lying on the floor Linda guessed tripping or sleeping. Linda lay down on the floor like them. She became drowsy after a few minutes, and then she must have relapsed into a deep sleep in which her powers of consciousness must have been at their lowest ebb, because Linda couldn’t remember anything that happened. Immediately, Linda’s drowsiness engulfed her. When Linda began to regain consciousness, she felt as if she was lying in a coffin, buried a life in a shallow grave and she was struggling to get out of the coffin, but Linda could not muster enough strength and courage. That feeling of utter helplessness persisted for a long time before she relapsed into another deep sleep. When next she opened her eyes, it was well into the afternoon. Linda told the blond girl how bad she felt; the blond said that Linda was giving the bad trip, that there is a better trip.

Linda started to pay frequent visits to several jazz nightclubs; notable among them was one called Blue Knot where famous musicians used to play. Back in her country, when Linda used to mix with musicians and listen to records, Kenny Clarke used to be admired a great deal by musicians and non-musicians alike. Before Linda left her country, Linda met a friend of his who was also a drummer. He told Linda if she ever ran into him in Paris, she should give him his very deepest regards. When Linda met him in the jazz club, Linda told him that she was a singer. He asked her to sing something and Linda sang Blue Moon, Summer Time, and Embraceable You which were the only English songs Linda knew then.

The other musicians liked Linda singing and ridiculed the resident singer there, an American girl who tried to model her style of singing on Billy Holiday and assumed the mannerisms of a whore.

One of the piano players, a French man in the club, wanted to befriend Linda, but she wasn’t interested in him. Linda didn’t know why. For some reason or another, Linda was always ended up with the bad people. Looking back how her life would have been different if she did go with that piano player. Linda met a saxophone player who took her to the Blue Knot quite often. One day, they went to popular club called Bade Cup run by a big, black, American woman who was the wife of the late Bade Powell. A lot of black Americans from the American bases at that time were always at the club. The music there was of very high quality. They played danceable jazz. Linda approached the band and told them that she could sing. Linda sang a few songs that impressed everyone. The fat, black, American woman urged Linda to sing; to put it in her own words, she kept saying, Sing in Israelite, and repeated sing in Israelite. Linda had a very good backing from the band. The piano player was particularly good. They jazzed every Israeli folk song Linda sang, and of course, the songs Linda sang were Nardi compositions that were a combination of Middle Eastern and classical sounds. While singing, Linda felt she was fluting in the air like going on to a completely another world. Linda was so high; her soul came out of her, and it was flying in the thick smoky nightclub. Each one of the musicians took his solo as though they new the songs by heart. After Linda left the stage and sat with other fellow musicians, they were smoking grass and marijuana, which made the club foul of smoke. The other musicians kept asking her to come outside. In an excited mood, the drummer asked Linda, Do you know you made history? Linda was wondering what he was trying to tell her, and he said, Listen to this as he played the recording he made during the time Linda was on the stage, singing those Israeli songs. You were making Israeli jazz. Nobody ever thought of doing that before. With Linda, it was just natural; Linda was just singing. It was something new and seemed to have swept them off their feet. All the songs were recorded on cassette.

They advised Linda to take her music very seriously. That night, the black drummer took them to his house. On the way, they stopped by a bakery; they bought about three dozen hot croissants. They ate and smoked hashish until about four in the morning when they just fell asleep.

Linda used to keep in touch with Bubush in times of trouble, and he sometimes helped her financially.

One day, Linda received a phone call from a French man who claimed to be a producer and own a record company. He told Linda to come and meet with him at his recording studio.

At that time, Linda’s head, her mind, her being, and her whole existence were above a big sea, floating in a smoke, foul of grays and darkness; Linda was running away, escaping from herself. She was flying between clouds with her soul. Linda just did not know how to take care of herself; no one lectured her about dignity, about the need of education, or about the important need of being ambitious understanding the very important thing of making money by using her natural talent. Linda had a strange an explainable resistance to anything good that came her way, thinking it would harm or hurt her in one way or another. Linda was frightened by life itself. She could not believe that something good could come her way, so Linda decided not to take risks reacting negatively to every issue. Linda did not practically pay any attention or feel excited when the French producer called her; Linda did not care, it did not enter into Linda’s disturbed mind, the question of any future. Linda did not know the meaning of future.

Entering his office, he showed Linda’s his recording studio, were she saw a new grand piano. Linda felt that all this was a lie, and it was not happening to her. She could not comprehend the idea that someone could be sincerely interested in someone like her who is dirty, homeless, useless, and an ugly creature.

The French producer was short and round; he spoke English. He told Linda that he wanted to record her, and that he liked Linda’s voice. Linda asked him how he knew that she could sing, he replied that he had heard her, and that he was very impressed. He wanted Linda to sing in French. I don’t know French, Linda replied.

Never mind, I will teach you to sing in French, he said. I’m a jazz singer. (Linda only knew three or four American standard songs at that time, and she was like a stupid young woman bragging about it.) Linda started to walk away when he shouted at her, asking Linda to think about it.

On her way out, taking the Metro, Linda returned to the dirty, cheap motel, not having enough money to pay for that night.

If Linda was a normal young woman, she would have desperately agreed with the French producer, who had practically offered her a job, and that would have been the best thing that had happen to her. The only thing Linda had to do was very simple; it was to ask him to provide her with food and accommodation. Linda was desperate and did not realize the circumstances she was in. It was sure he would have gladly provided for her. They had never come as far in their conversation to discuss the financial side of it. Without a manager who would have jumped on the offer, encouraging Linda to accept it, pushing her to become a professional singer, Linda was just lost, too blind and timid to understand that here she had the big break of a lifetime, and she was throwing it away.

Instead of a musical career, Linda become a prostitute to her shame, desperation, and misery, lack of money, and of course, lack of knowledge of the French language. Linda knew very well how to hurt herself without realizing it.

Linda met a black man who had light skin, freckled, with ginger hair in the Bade Cup nightclub. He told Linda he came from Detroit. Like him, all his friends were soldiers and belonged to the American bases about twenty miles away from Paris. He was a very vulgar man who was always swearing shit man while he was driving with other soldiers. Listening to a French radio, he complained that the French could not sing pop, rock-n-roll, or soul. Linda went out with him a few times. During one of those times, he took her to the American base, where, for the first time in Linda’s life, she had an American hamburger and French fries. Linda thought that this food was made in heaven. He used to steal boxes of cigarettes from his base and sell them to civilians on the black market.

Linda slept with him few times in his base, and he had a habit of hitting her. But one day, he hit Linda so hard, and as always, for no apparent reason so Linda hide ran away and did not want to see him ever again.

During one of her visits to the café Sent, Linda met a blonde man called Dudley. He was typically English looking; hansom, about six foot inches tall, slim, and wore glasses. His big, blue eyes made him quite attractive to Linda. He had a friend with him called Nigel, an averagely built man, average looking, with broad, thick-rimmed glasses. As they chatted together, Dudley excused himself to go to the toilet. He must have been there for over two hours, it seemed very weird to Linda that he should spend such a long time in there; it was like he was hiding. However, when he came out, they had some Jambo, Linda’s favorite sandwich combine with ham and lettuce on a French bread. While they were there, Linda flirted with him as she hadn’t anywhere to live. He told Linda he did not have a place of his own and that Nigel and he were living with an English friend called Brian who worked during the day and studied French in the evenings.

Both of them spent a few minutes discussing what Brain’s reaction would be if they took Linda back to his place. They were only visitors in his place. Dudley seemed to maintain a neutral stance, neither rejecting nor accepting the idea.

In the end, Dudley said he would take Linda there, but he was not making any promises. The onus of deciding whether Linda would be able to stay would rest with Bryan, who rented the house. Linda told Dudley that she was going to share the same bed with him so that Brayan should not be worried about the extra problem of providing accommodation facilities.

They passed the time together. Every now and then, Linda impressed on Dudley how serious she was in wanting to move in with him in Bryan’s place. At about 2:00 a.m., they took a cab to Linda hotel that was in the center of Paris and only about twenty-five minutes’ drive from the café Sent. Linda collected her few belongings and gladly checked out of the hotel.

Bryan’s house was situated in an industrial area. He didn’t seem to mind Linda moving into his house, so