Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (23 page)

“Hey, are there any
other
bars around here?”

The Marine grinned. “You mean other
gay
bars?”

I was relieved. “Oh, good. But why is everyone watching these women performers…don’t get it.”

He laughed aloud. “Um. You might want to take another look at the…women.”

I still couldn’t see it. The singers
had
to be women! They were attractive and elegant. During a break, however, one of the members of the “Dream Girls Revue” walked over and hugged the guy I was talking to.

“Hi, honey, so glad you could make it tonight. And who’s your friend?” asked a man with the deepest voice I’d ever heard.

At first I had been afraid of hanging out in gay areas so close to the military bases, but I soon overcame my fears. I also quickly overcame my self-imposed ban on going out with gay enlisted men and went out a couple of times with the guy I’d talked to at the Brass Rail. Rather than being a “power play” where the senior officer lords his rank over his “subordinate” as the media was portraying it, I found young gay enlisted men to be very bold at the bars and hook-up joints, and many of them seemed to enjoy pursuing and scoring with higher-ranking men. One Marine corporal even kept one rank insignia for each rank he’d fucked affixed to his bedpost. He had everything except a general’s stars or a sergeant major’s chevrons. He claimed to know a gay general and said that someday he hoped to “earn a star.” I offered to give him one of my lieutenant’s bars but he said he already had enough of those.

“Lose some weight,” said Major Willis. “Do I need to say anything else?”

I knew what I wanted to say.
Fuck you. Sir.
But I didn’t.

This was my welcome to the Third Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion. Third LAAD, we called ourselves. As much as I hated to admit it, the battalion executive officer was right. I had put on weight in Okinawa. Too many drunken nights at the officers’ club, eating cheeseburgers and fries, and not enough exercise. I was determined to show him and get in the best shape of my life. Southern California seemed the perfect place for that.

Weeks after checking in at my battalion at Camp Pendleton, I was sent to the Yuma desert for six weeks of training. We had a weekend off in the middle of training and one of the Marines invited me to join him for dinner along with his wife and another Marine who’d driven in from California. I went, had a good time, and didn’t think anything more of it. When I got back to the base camp, however, “Skipper,” the captain I worked, for called me into his tent. (Company-level commanders in the Marines are called “Skipper.”)

After listening to him for a few minutes I realized Skipper was giving me a lecture. The crux of his reprimand was, “We don’t socialize with the enlisted men.” That seemed like a strange complaint. Everyone had been doing a little socializing here and there, and the fact that I had dinner with a Marine, his wife, and a friend didn’t seem so out of the ordinary. After thinking it over I suspected there was something more to the Skipper’s reprimand, but I didn’t know what.

By “coming out” to myself, I had admitted to myself that I was different. I couldn’t stick to the belief any longer—which was really just a form of denial—that all men felt about each other the way I felt about other men. I had to be more careful about guarding and monitoring my behavior.

“Fine,” I said to Skipper, contritely. I hardly talked to younger enlisted guys after that, except in an official capacity. As the battery’s executive officer, I didn’t need to communicate with them anyway. There were platoon commanders and platoon sergeants for that. But the rumors didn’t stop.

In the middle of the field operation, Skipper and I had to drive back to Camp Pendleton to appear before what is known as an “officer retention board.” Most officers on active duty joined up as part of the reserve corps, and we would have to “augment” into the regular officer corps. In other words you have to kick ass, get great evaluations, then you go before this board and they select you to be retained permanently in the regulars. The economy was still tough in 1993, few officers were leaving the corps voluntarily, and the competition for regular officer slots was fierce.

The board that Skipper and I appeared before was comprised of all the executive officers—the majors—in our air group. It’s a commonly known fact that all company grade officers—lieutenants and captains—despise majors. As young officers, we felt like we’d arrived, that we should give orders and that we shouldn’t have to take orders from anyone. The majors reminded us that
everyone
in the military takes orders, even us.

There were eight or nine of them, including one woman if I recall correctly, and an African-American man who would later become my own battalion commander. I entered the room crisply, stood at attention, and reported to the senior officer of the board. He told me to be seated. I sat, but remained bolt upright anticipating the barrage of questions about to come my way. Major Kern, the African American, asked me a current events question. As an avid news junkie, I thought I would be ready. I wasn’t. He asked about the recent uprising in Africa and the name of the tribe involved. I had read this, but like most white Americans, my interest in foreign affairs is somewhat skewed toward Europe and the Middle East, not Africa. I could not recall the name “Hutus.”

Someone asked me what my favorite book was from the commandant’s reading list. We were all prepared for this question because it was pretty standard. Then came the question I hadn’t prepared for.

“Lieutenant Merritt,” said one major, “what leadership problems do you see arising from President Clinton’s promise to let homosexuals into the Marine Corps and how do you plan to solve those problems?”

I didn’t have time to think. I had to respond immediately under fire just like I’d been trained to do. All I could do was react according to instinct.

“Sir, I honestly don’t think there will be an overabundance of leadership problems, I think that’s been hyped too much in the press lately. I have faith in the Corps’ leadership and in our current problem-solving abilities…I don’t think anything really needs to change in how we do things. But if the law does change, we, as officers, need to let the Marines know that we support the president.”

Damn, I’m going
to make a good politician someday,
I thought.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the answer the majors were looking for. That board ranked me second-to-last among the thirty or so officers they interviewed. My own major told me it was because they knew I still had a shot at getting augmented the following year, and the officers who were on their last chance were ranked the highest. They were “gaming” the system. He said if I kicked ass all year, I’d be a shoo-in the following year. I didn’t buy it for a minute. My honest answer about the gays-in-the-military issue might have cost me my career.

When we got back to Camp Pendleton a few weeks later, my friend Ross, another lieutenant who was the same rank as me, approached me after work one evening.

“When people were calling you a ‘Clinton Marine,’ I thought it was because you were one of the few Democrats around, like me.”

I looked at him wondering where this was headed. “I’m not a Democrat,” I said.

“But that’s not why. People are calling you a ‘Clinton Marine’ because they’re saying you’re a meat-gazer.”

“Why would they think that?” I asked, trying to sound blasé.

“Because of what happened in the Philippines,” he said. He was talking about the night I spent some time in a room with a bunch of prostitutes with the group of enlisted guys. The fact that I had been more of a voyeur, videotaping the event rather than participating, fueled the rumors.

“I’m not a meat-gazer,” I said emphatically. I impulsively told Ross I had a girlfriend back in South Carolina and that was the reason I didn’t go out chasing women with the guys.

A few years later I told Jennifer Egan from the
New York Times
that story and she tried to include the term “meat-gazer” in the magazine, but the
Times
absolutely refused.

But that people were starting to talk about me really troubled me. It also pissed me off. So these fuckers I worked with were spreading rumors about me. Only Ross had the balls to confront me about it.

I had been getting better and better at running. I ran almost every day. One day Skipper was away and it fell to me to lead the men in the battery on a formation run. I ran them harder and longer than our usual three miles. If they wanted to call me a “meat-gazer,” so be it. They were going to pay.

“Army, Army, don’t be blue!” shouted Sergeant Orasco, one of the best—and most homophobic—Marines in the battery.

“Army, Army, don’t be blue!” the men shouted in response as they ran.

I knew where this cadence was headed. I looked back at Sergeant Orasco. He was glaring at me with a smirk on his handsome face.
Why does my best-looking Marine have to be the most homophobic? Usually it’s the ugliest and fattest,
I thought.

“’Cause the Navy and the Air Force are
faggots
, too!”

“’Cause the Navy and the Air Force are faggots, too!”

I glanced back at Sergeant Orasco.
Okay, if that’s the way you want it, BRING IT ON!

I kicked my speed into high gear just as we turned left on the gravel road up a steep hill. One mile later, at the top of the hill, only Sergeant Orasco had kept pace with me.

“I thought you were supposed to go only as fast as the slowest man, sir.” he said, pausing to catch his breath only when I did.

“I set the pace, Sergeant. It’s your job to make sure all the men keep up. Looks like you failed. See if you can make sure everyone gets back to the battery headquarters building okay.”

Desperate to squelch the rumors about me, I called my friend Tami, Gary’s now ex-girlfriend. Their last breakup had apparently been just that—their final breakup. I was relieved and felt I could now be friends with both of them.

Over two years earlier, I had denied to her that anything had happened that night between Ian and me. Now I would have to tell her the truth about myself.

“I’m gay,” I said. She was totally sympathetic and understanding. She probably had suspicions by now anyway. We had spent too many nights in the same bed when I hadn’t made any moves on her, including one drunken night when I had fallen from her bunk at Clemson and had broken my nose. Any straight guy would have tried to have sex with her.

I explained to her about the brewing rumors about me. “You’ve got to get out here and pretend to be my girlfriend,” I pleaded. She could tell that I was really distressed and agreed to come for a visit in May.

Gary transferred to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in early May, a couple of weeks before Tami’s visit. El Toro was a close forty-mile drive from Oceanside. We met for dinner at the air station officers’ club his first night in town. I was excited that the Corps had made it easy and convenient to stay friends.

“Damn, those look good on you!” I exclaimed referring to the new “wings” pinned to his khaki uniform shirt. I had had to miss his “winging” ceremony at the end of his flight school training because of the mandatory desert exercises I had been to in Yuma.

We ordered drinks and he caught me up on his life, telling me that he and his new girlfriend, Angie Sawyer, were getting more serious. She would be visiting in a few months from Texas and I could meet her then.

I had been nervously looking for a segue. “Gary, um, speaking of your girlfriends, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” I said looking directly in the eye.

He furrowed his brow slightly, reacting to my serious tone.

“Tami is going to be visiting me in a couple of weeks…” I said.

“I knew it!” he said, smiling. “I thought you two might get together. Rich, I’m okay with that. Believe me.”

Fuck
.
This was going to be more difficult than I had anticipated. I might just as well spit it out.

“Actually, no. She’s visiting me because…well, I’m gay, and I needed her to fly out here and pretend to be my girlfriend to quiet down some rumors. I bought her a ticket. She agreed to do it.”

This was a lot to digest so I shut up and let it sink in. Gary’s expression didn’t change. He continued to smile and said, “Well. This doesn’t change anything between us as far as I’m concerned.”

Whew, just what I had wanted to hear.
Be confident in our friendship
, Gary had said a few years earlier, and that’s what I had done. I had not doubted Gary, but we both lived in this supermacho homophobic military culture, and you never know how that’s going to play out in friendships.

“When…what made you…how did you decide…realize…this?” he asked. I appreciated that he was trying so hard to use the right words. Hell, I didn’t even know what the right words were.

“This is something that I just finally admitted to myself about six months ago, when I was still in Okinawa.” I omitted the references to my sexual experiences. That might be pushing the limit of what Gary could handle. But there was something related to all this I also felt the need to address.

“Gary,” I began. Now it was my turn to choose my words carefully. “I know that if our situations were reversed, I’d be curious about how you felt…felt about me. Personally, I mean. Let me just say, I think you’re an awesome guy and when I first met you, I probably did have…probably did
like
you. But I wasn’t admitting what I was feeling to myself back then. Now…it’s different. Now that I’ve finally admitted to myself what’s really been going on inside my head all these years, it’s…it’s…I can’t really
like
someone who isn’t capable of liking me back the same way. Does that make sense?”

He thought for a second then said, “Yeah, I think I do. I mean, that makes sense. I mean all these guys are worried about fa——, sorry, I mean, gay guys coming on to them, but I know if a woman isn’t attracted to me, that’s a pretty big turnoff. So it makes sense that if a guy isn’t attracted to you, that would be a turnoff to you, too.”