CARNAL NATION

Porn publisher Larry Flynt had been traveling around the country in 1978—this was after his conversion to born-again Christianity and hiring me as publisher of the new Hustler—but he happened to be back at the Los Angeles office at the same time that my old friend, spiritual leader Ram Dass, was visiting, so I had the unique pleasure of introducing them.

Larry, his wife Althea, Ram Dass, and I went to a health-food restaurant, where we discovered that we shared something in common: we were all practicing celibacy—Larry at the suggestion of black-comedian/health-activist Dick Gregory, Althea by extension, Ram Dass for spiritual purposes, and me just for the sheer perversity of it.

There was Jesus, a generic barbershop-calendar Jesus, looking reverently toward the sky as he covered up the prone Adulteress. Her head was bleeding from the stones that had been cast upon her. And she was showing pink. Sweet, shocking, vulnerable pink.

Over lunch, Larry told me that I should “take more power.” He said he was actually bored with pornography, but felt so strongly about his right to publish it that he had gone to Atlanta to defy a ban and sell Hustler personally. He got arrested for that, but first he had to stand trial for obscenity in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

The next week, he called me from Lawrenceville. “Now I know why you introduced me to Ram Dass,” he said. “Is his name one word or two?” I told him it was two words, and he continued: “Ram Dass really helped me to get rid of my hang-up about labeling myself as a 'celibate.' I can just say that I'm not having sex.”

“And you don't have to worry about the label 'fasting' either. You can just say that you're not eating food.”

“Oh, listen, Paul—you know those ads for guns we have in Hustler—well, you know, I'm against violence, but I'm also against censorship, so just move 'em to the back of the magazine, okay?”

A few days later, while walking on the sidewalk in Lawrenceville during a lunch break in the obscenity trial, an American flag pin on his lapel, Larry Flynt was shot twice in the abdomen. The .44-caliber magnum bullets came from across the street, one lodging near Larry's spine. His local attorney was also wounded.

According to the doctors, if Larry hadn't taken an enema the day he was shot, he would not have lived, because the contents of his intestines would've caused a fatal infection. He'd had only grapefruit juice for lunch. His spleen and several feet of his intestine were removed. The Hustler staff was in a state of shock. A group of employees donated blood for Larry.

I flew to Atlanta on the Thursday before Easter and went directly to Emory University Hospital. Althea brought me to Larry's room. It was extremely unsettling to see such a powerful personality lying there so helpless, being kept alive by medical technology, with one tube feeding him and another tube breathing for him. He appeared bug-eyed with painkiller. Althea lifted the sheet and showed me his gaping wounds, a truly awesome sight.

“Oh, God, Althea—he's showing pink.”

“I'm arranging for a photographer to come in here,” she said. “We're gonna publish Larry's wounds in Hustler. I want people to see what they did to him.”

I sat down in a chair by Larry's bed. I didn't know what to say. We simply clasped hands for a while.  Finally I broke the silence. “Larry, tomorrow is Good Friday,” I said. “So, uh, you don't have to go to work.” I glanced toward Althea to reassure myself that I hadn't indulged in irreverence that was too inappropriate.

But she said, “Oh, Paul, look”—gesturing toward Larry—“he wants to show you something.” Above the oxygen mask, Larry was blinking his eyes over and over again in rapid succession. “He's laughing,” Althea said. It was a moment of unspeakable intimacy for the three of us.