Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (11 page)

“Richie,” he began, after calling me in to his office for a serious discussion. “You were the most qualified person on that ballot for any office. Do you know why you didn’t get it?”

I was upset. Where was this headed? “Um, because Mark Parker got more votes than I did?”

“This! This…sarcasm…this know-it-all attitude you have sometimes…is exactly what I’m talking about, Richie! No one likes that, and do you know why?” He paused, but it was clear I was not to say anything. I’m not sure what I would have said at this point to anyone. I was stunned.

“Because you’ve gotten to be too arrogant. You’re a smart aleck. You come across like you think you’re better than everyone else.”

My emotions were like a typhoon. I wanted to throw something, to storm out of the room, to shout and to cry, all at the same time.
And this was a teacher who actually
liked
me!

“I don’t know what to say,” was all I could manage. “I’m…I’m…I’d say it’s the opposite…I really don’t think I’m good enough…as good as everyone else. If that’s what they think, they’re…about as wrong as they could be.”

Without hesitating, I stood up and left the office. Now I did have to go home and cry.

I got talked to a lot by teachers and once even the principal. It wasn’t over the usual high school stuff, like causing trouble, bad grades, or skipping classes. The principal was concerned that I didn’t seem happy, although he didn’t call it depression. The American history teacher was angry with me because she said I demonstrated a lack of respect for other students. My Spanish teacher said I should be getting better grades (I was getting a B+) because she knew my IQ.

Mr. Monroe was also upset because there seemed to be a budget deficit for my literary society. The problem was that I had a let a friend, Lucas, talk me into overspending for soccer uniforms. Our uniforms looked the best, but now we were in the red. And we’d had to forge a signature to get the invoice approval.

How was all this happening?
I wondered. High school students weren’t supposed to be worrying about budget deficits and accusations of being “power hungry.” Yet this was my life. I continued battling the sadness, too, but was determined not to let my mind go back to suicide. That just seemed too…too final. And what if…what if…I wasn’t ready to go to heaven? That would suck. Kill myself and then go to hell for eternity. No thanks.

In the face of all of these problems, I turned to God. He would take care of me.

Each year religion became more and more central to my life. I never missed my daily devotional period—a personal time of quiet prayer, Bible reading, and meditation. People began to notice the improvement in my attitude. I was a very good kid and people were starting to have very high expectations of me that I wanted to live up to. That meant being very religious: going to church, going to Sunday school, keeping all the rules. I read the Bible cover-to-cover, Genesis to Revelation five times. I never used bad language. If I had a negative thought I would immediately ask God to forgive me.

I was trying to cleanse myself, to use God’s power to cleanse me, and it was a constant process. Once they get you started on this you pick it up yourself—they teach you that. They tell you everything to believe, but then they add, “We can’t tell you what to believe. You’ve got to do that yourself.” Once that seed gets planted it just grows like wildfire.

Not all my male teachers were against me. Even though I really sucked at almost all sports, Coach Lawrence saw that I had physical potential. Each year I did the most pull-ups in my class and track was the only sport at which I excelled.

“I tell ya, Merritt, I’m going to teach you to have hand-eye coordination yet!” Coach would send the other boys to do basketball drills leaving my jock classmate, Chuck Suthers, in charge. He’d take me aside and try to teach me basketball skills. I knew it was hopeless, but I appreciated his effort.

Coach also had unique insights into gay men.

“Don’t be calling these faggots names, now. They’re not the limp-wristed milquetoasts like they used to be,” said Coach to our gym class of eleventh-grade boys. “No, these queers have been working out! They’re strong and fit and they’ll kill ya if ya call ’em names. No, leave the fags alone.”

A
t last it was time for the junior-senior banquet. Every minute of my free time—and many minutes when I should have been studying or in class—went into planning this play. The closer we got to the evening of the performance, the more and more classes I skipped to work on all aspects of the show. The adviser gave me a permission note, of course. I had never skipped classes in my life as that was strictly forbidden. Working on this production had been the most exciting thing I’d ever done, so I didn’t mind.

I rewarded my friends with the lead roles. I also insisted that all of the Rockefellers be blond and all the Vanderbilts have dark hair. My tall, blond, handsome buddy Frank played the romantic lead part of Ronnie Rockefeller. His mother was played by my good friend Melanie Runyan.

I fully intended to “get away with murder” as I liked to think of it, but my plan was a secret. The plan had come to me while watching the movie
Deathtrap
with Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine on the Movie Channel. I’m not certain my parents realized that the Movie Channel had been part of the package they purchased when they signed us up for cable, but once it was in the house, Jimmy and I protested when my mom threatened to cancel it.

Deathtrap
involves a has-been playwright (Caine) who drinks too much and is on the verge of ruin. He goes to his country house to be with his wife. He also teaches writing at a small college near the country house. A student (Reeve), who has written a brilliant play, better than anything Caine’s character ever wrote, shows up late one evening. As it turns out, the two men are lovers and Reeve is there to try to scare Caine’s wife to death. The first time I ever saw two men kiss was Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve in that 1982 movie.

I watched the movie over and over. The movie was fascinating in a train wreck sort of way. It was a negative portrayal of gay men, but at least it was a portrayal. I craved the image of two men in any relationship, especially watching them kiss—even if the image involved a coupling as awkward and odd as Reeve and Caine, and even though I was unable to admit the nature of my craving.

The first time I watched
Deathtrap
I was confused by the ending and drew a mistaken conclusion about it:
Ah-ha! That will be my ending and I can still have my murder.
I rewrote my script based on my error and got it approved by the powers that be.

On the evening of the show, the BJU Concert Center was filled with eleventh and twelfth graders, their dates, and the academy’s faculty. Dr. Bob Jones III, our guest for the evening, was also present. I felt sorry for him—his son should have been sharing the glory with me for writing this play. But I didn’t feel
too
bad for him—I wasn’t the one who had poured the beer down Bobby’s throat.

The cast performed the play flawlessly. Frank and Amber were convincing as Ronnie and Julie, two lovestruck teenagers from feuding billionaire families in Manhattan. They went to the same high school and were cast as the leading characters in their school play. The play?
Romeo and Juliet
, of course. Their cousins and brothers and sisters fought throughout the show and the hostile action between the two wealthy families culminated at the dress rehearsal.

One of the Vanderbilts murdered Ronnie. As he lay on the floor dying, Julie delivered a moving final soliloquy. The play ended with her plea, “When will it all end?”

At least, that’s when everyone thought the play ended. After Julie’s line, the entire cast froze in their positions around the corpse of Ronnie for five seconds. Just as the audience began to grow restless, wondering what was going on, I leapt up onto the stage from my seat on the front row of the concert center.

“Cut! Cut!” I shouted, as if this were a Hollywood filming and not a stage presentation. I grabbed the resurrected Ronnie by the hand and helped him as he jumped to his feet. “Very good dress rehearsal, everyone! Very good performance, Frank, Amber!” I shouted other things making it obvious to everyone in the concert center that what they had just witnessed was a play, in a play, in a play.

For the
real
ending, I turned to the juniors, seniors, guests, faculty, and Dr. Bob and said, “Shakespeare said it best when he wrote, ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts.’ This has been our stage of life.” The End.

I thought my play, the presentation, and everything about the evening was brilliant. The audience cheered and in my memory they gave me a standing ovation, although that memory may be a creation to enhance a night of what was for me pure ecstasy.

On the walk from the concert center to the dining commons, where we would have our formal banquet, I received accolades from many, including Miss Denham.

“Wonderful! Wonderful! Bravo!” she said, clapping as she walked. “And I just love how you were able to make yourself the star…and have the last word at the same time!”

“Yes, Richie, fantastic,” said her friend, our junior English teacher. She had always frightened me, but I was glad to receive her compliments. “It sets up the theme of this year’s junior-senior so nicely!”

I had also come up with the theme for the evening. To fit the play, I suggested “Life is a Stage” as a workable theme that the class officers could use to design the banquet. I chose “Life is a Stage” rather than “All the World’s a Stage” because I thought it was more concise and “theme-worthy” and besides, it looked better on the programs. They loved it. So did I.

As part of the program, the adviser announced the class officers for our senior year. Although being senior class president was viewed as a figurehead post and a consolation prize for the guy who hadn’t been elected student body president or selected as the yearbook editor, it made my evening complete when they announced I had been elected president. At least I would be president of something. This was my night. I felt redeemed after my transgressions earlier in the semester.

No event at Bob Jones would be complete without a sermon and to end the evening, Dr. Bob Jones III got up to say a few words. In what to me was icing on the cake, he began, “I thoroughly enjoyed the play, and Richie, let me commend you for a job well done in writing it!”

If only he had stopped there, the night would have been perfect. But he added, “But young people, life is
not
a stage! Life is real! And you must make real choices…”

How dare he?!
I was livid. Dr. Bob Jones III had directly contradicted me and undermined my entire theme.
Why did he have to say that life wasn’t a stage?
The words “Life is a Stage” were plastered all over the room, and for one night, the man couldn’t keep his opinions to himself.

“That’s such a crock of shit!” said Melanie, twenty years later as she and I discussed that evening. “Everything about life at that school was a stage…an act! Those of us who played our parts well, like me, survived and those of us who didn’t, like Bobby, and um, well, we-know-who, didn’t survive there.”

“I don’t know, Melanie, I wasn’t playing a part…I was really
trying
as hard as I could to
be
a fundamentalist…”

“And look what happened!” We both laughed. “Your problem was that you were trying hard to actually
be
something you were never capable of being…that
no one
is really capable of being. I, on the other hand, was merely acting the part. And very well, too,” said the woman who would go on to graduate as salutatorian of Bob Jones Academy and number one in her class at Bob Jones University.

But Melanie hadn’t been acting all that well in front of me that year. She had a birthday party the summer before our senior year and I found it disturbing that, in a major about-face, she had become friends with Amber, a girl that our group had previously regarded as the enemy.

Amber had allowed herself to get an unpredictable reputation and one time styled her hair just like Madonna had in one of the Material Girl’s darker looks of 1984. Melanie explained to me many years later that Amber was what is known as a “tease.” She enjoyed making guys think she could be had just to get them to chase her, but never went through with anything. She certainly couldn’t have survived at Bob Jones Academy if she
had
gone through with anything.

But I was clueless about all that dating and sex stuff and was fascinated with Amber because of her reputation. For Melanie’s sake, I had cast her in the play, but I didn’t consider myself cool enough to be in Amber’s inner circle. That made it easier for me to dismiss her as a potential rule-breaker who toed the line of acceptable behavior. I didn’t think Melanie should he hanging with her; obviously, Melanie didn’t care what I thought about that.

The party was a fun and harmless afternoon event at Melanie’s house, which by my family’s standards was thoroughly modern and expansive. We had cake and cookies and ice cream, and she opened presents. I had brought a handsome friend from out of town who I was working with at a Christian summer camp called the Wilds. After the party he made an interesting observation to me in private.

“No one talked about the Lord, about how good God has been in their life. I just can’t believe that your friends are the cream of the crop at the number one fundamentalist Christian high school in America, and you really don’t act like you care much about God at all.”

That really stung. I blamed it partly on Melanie’s new friendship with Amber. I wrote a nasty letter to Melanie telling her all the things my friend had said to me. Before I mailed it, I showed it to him, hoping to convince him of my piety. Melanie claims she still has that letter but that she can’t locate it, else she’d give it back to me. For someone who still has every note every boyfriend passed to her in class, I find that doubtful.

The Wilds was located high in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. The location was beautiful and remote. Creative real estate guides might call the facilities at the camp “rustic.” They were primitive but I loved it there. The camp had several large ball fields, a creek that encircled the property leading to four giant waterfalls, and a lodge on a hilltop. There was also a metal building housing an activity center, where weary young people received marathon lectures and sermons about God in the hot summer months. The Wilds became my summer home.

I had been a camper there every year since the sixth grade. There were many things I liked about the Wilds, but what I liked most was that I was able to befriend older men in a safe and relaxed environment, without the constant pressure to be good at a sport, although athletics were certainly a big part. But these athletics were more creative and they didn’t require so much skill and I was pretty good at them. Also, the shower room was a small open area where dozens of boys crowded each evening to get clean. I didn’t know why, but I got a secret thrill from those showers.

When I was a counselor-in-training, I requested to be assigned to a senior counselor named Bill Christopher. I was in love with Bill. He was twenty-one years old and I was fifteen. He became the big brother I never had. He was very manly but also a gentleman, with a soft-spoken voice and defined features. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He looked at me like I wanted a man his age to look at me—like he had so much he wanted to teach me and share with me.

Bill became my band director the following year and our relationship grew. It was a difficult one because of the potential that existed we might be accused of fraternization, but we did a good job of staying within proper boundaries, even though I wouldn’t have minded straying beyond those bounds.

I went to Bill’s mother’s house with him on the weekends and washed her car and did other errands for her. I became insanely jealous when Bill turned down things to do with me to go out with his girlfriend. I thought she was whiny and annoying and that there was so much more I would do for him than she could. If only he could see that. But he never did. As I grew older and more rebellious, it put a strain on our friendship and we lost touch.

“Yeah, that was kind of weird,” said Melanie about my friendship with Bill. “Now that I know
all
about you, it makes sense, but we all thought it was…well, an
unusual
friendship.”

All my best attempts at total purity couldn’t stop the unstoppable. Sexual desire, gay or straight, is the strongest urge in a person and I was really no exception. I might not have been having sex, but I was doing homoerotic things. I developed a routine of inviting my handsome friends to our house out in “the country.” On hot summer days I almost always succeeded in getting them to go skinny-dipping with me in the river. Daddy had put up a rope swing so we could swing from the shore halfway across. Usually I had to stay under the muddy water so my friends couldn’t see my erection while I watched them sail over my head into the water.

I remember the idea of being best friends with a guy gave me this feeling that I know now was a sexual attraction. I didn’t call it that then. But I remember that in my high school years it was getting to the point where I was almost ready to name it.

My first summer working at the Wilds, one of the junior counselors there, who I knew from high school, invited me to go inner-tubing with him. His name was Mitch Harmon.

A few weeks earlier, while all the guys at the camp were swimming at the bottom of the huge waterfall deep in the woods on the far edge of the camp property, Mitch had climbed up on some rocks and mooned the crowd of guys below. The camp director, Dr. Bartley, had scolded Mitch for this and had stated that mooning other guys was a sign of latent homosexual tendencies. Everyone laughed when Mitch repeated this. Secretly I wish I had seen the mooning incident; Mitch’s bubble butt was obvious through his jeans.

Mitch and I hopped into the creek at the main part of the camp and began our float toward the more dangerous area where the waterfalls were. It was a blast! After heavy rains, the creek was flowing swiftly like white water rapids. At a treacherous spot, we lost our inner tubes and managed to pull ourselves to the shore.