Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (30 page)

Next David got down to business, asking if I’d be available to shoot a three-way scene in a movie he was directing called
Bad Moon Rising
. He said it would be filming on location in May. “Location” sounded so cool. Working on a film on “location” sounded totally professional. In this case “location” was up at the Russian River in the foothills of northern California. I explained to him that I was only available on the weekends because I had a day job during the week.

“Have you ever considered doing this for a career?” he asked me earnestly. I just looked at him. This? For a career? For five hundred dollars a video? I didn’t think so. For a few hours of work it was a nice way to make some extra cash and have a bit of fun, but unless someone could guarantee me a lot of videos I couldn’t see myself doing it full time.

“So you’re not going to the White Party?”

“No. After the pre-party John and I are just going bar hopping.”

Damn
. I thought the whole reason for coming out to Palm Springs had been to go to the White Party. It was Easter weekend and the White Party was all anyone had talked about for months.

“You can come with us if you want,” Jim offered.

“I already bought a ticket.”

“I can sell it for you,” said another friend. “Can’t believe you wasted forty dollars for a fucking party.”

“Neither can I,” I said.
Why
had
I done this
, I wondered. Maybe it was just to see what all the buzz was about.

Our friend has gotten us on “the list” for an invitation-only party at a large suite at the Wyndham Hotel just before the White Party. In 1995 the White Party was held in the Wyndham Ballroom. A few more years would pass before the flagship event of the gay party circuit would grow into the Palm Springs Convention Center.

Sure enough, there was a guard or bouncer standing outside the door of the suite checking for party invitations. The main room was a large two-story open space with stairs leading up to the guest rooms.

“This is the biggest hotel room I’ve ever seen,” I said.

“I bet this cost a little more than the Vagabond Inn,” Jim replied.

Within minutes the suite filled with hundreds of the best-looking men I’d ever seen in one place. It was too crowded to move without squeezing between hot men, just as the host intended. Most were wearing the white attire they intended to wear to the party, although I didn’t spot any outlandish costumes, the over-the-top kind that would inevitably appear at the main event. These men were the cream of the crop, so to speak, the best-looking men in southern California.

“Does this mean we’re on the A-list?” John asked sarcastically.

“How the hell did we get in here?” I asked. I had never thought of my friends and me as unattractive, but in this room, we didn’t fit in. Even the bartenders and bar backs looked like models. Hell, they probably
were
models.

“Corey’s on the A-list,” Jim answered, referring to our friend who had gotten us the invitations. “We’re just A minus.”

“I’ll settle for A minus,” I replied truthfully. After all, A minus was a long way from BJU and Piedmont, South Carolina.

One handsome young stud I spoke to had a red maple leaf tattooed to his chest, which was visible because of the small tank top he had pulled over his muscular torso. He said his name was JT and that he was an entertainer. I wondered what kind.

We were tired of the invitation-only pre-party in an hour and left. Jim and John left to go barhopping, and I joined the queue to enter the ballroom for the White Party I’d heard so much about since my visit to Palm Springs a year earlier.

Halfway down the long hallway to the party, I heard the bass of the dance music. It was deafening, even from a distance. The temperature grew hotter and hotter as I approached the doors to the large room. Lights flashed in varying colors. What I remember most, though, was the crowd. Hundreds and hundreds of young shirtless men, all dancing and laughing and having the time of their lives. They were pressed flesh to flesh from one wall to the other. Their sweaty bodies rubbed against each other as they jumped up and down in apparent ecstasy.

I just didn’t get it. I didn’t like the heat and I didn’t like not being able to move around freely. I didn’t like being touched. In 1995, the lines at the bar were still long, as many attendees, especially early in the night like myself, were drinkers. Getting a drink took at least twenty minutes. And the drinks were outrageously priced.

This sucks. I just don’t get it. What’s so fucking fun about this?

I was back at the hotel room, in bed by myself before midnight. I’d have to write off the forty dollars to a lesson learned.
I’ll never go to another White Party, that’s for sure!
I promised myself.

What was really totally ironic about shooting a gay sex scene on a weekend in May was that my battalion at Camp Pendleton was sending me to the naval base in San Diego for a legal officers’ course. This was a monthlong course where I would learn how to be a legal officer for a battalion or a squadron. I couldn’t stop thinking about it—on the first of May I reported to this class, and a few days later I would be going up to the Russian River to make a porn movie. One of the things we discussed in this class was Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the article making sodomy a crime for anyone in the military.

I took a look at the UCMJ and for the crime of sodomy the penalty was one year in prison. That was bad enough, but aggravated sodomy could be three to five years. One of the circumstances for aggravation was sodomy in public or on video or for money.
Oh my God
, I screamed to myself,
I’ve done all of them
. I had done three videos; I figured that was three counts. It was kind of terrifying but at the same time it made it all the more exciting:
Look at what I’m getting away with! How ironic.

I was taking the legal officers’ course even while I was breaking all the rules.

I was also promoted to captain during this period. That only added to my sense of “what am I doing?” mixed with that familiar, exciting, tingling feeling that I got from really getting away with something. Homosexuality is incompatible with military service; that’s what the creators of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” meant. Well, getting in shape for these videos had also significantly improved my performance evaluations in the Marines. Two of the fourteen evaluated categories are “personal appearance” and “military presence.” Basically, how good-looking you are. The better I was in the gay world, the better I was in the Marine world. Sounded very compatible to me.

It’s a tradition in the Marines that, when an officer is promoted, he spends his first month’s raise on a “wetdown” party attended by all the other officers in his unit. The difference in pay from lieutenant to captain was pretty substantial, and I opened a tab at a bar near Oceanside. Most of the officers in my battalion and a few I had worked with in Okinawa attended. By the end of the evening, there were only two of us still able to hold our liquor. Of course I was still going, as was my friend from Okinawa, Jack, the one I had gotten the tattoo with.

My friend decided he wanted to go to the nearby strip club. I’d had fun there before, getting drunk and hamming it up like I was really enthralled by topless women. We went and, between lap dances, I decided to confide in my friend.

“I’m a homo,” I announced in my drunken state.

He didn’t look at me. He was as drunk as I was, but his message was clear. “Rich, I’m an intel officer and I get questioned with a lie detector tied to me all the time. I never know what I might get asked. I’m going to assume that you’re joking because you’re drunk.”

His comment sobered me up and quieted me down.

David Babbitt sent me a plane ticket to fly up to San Francisco and from there up to Santa Rosa, the destination being the Russian River where we would film
Bad Moon Rising
. I arrived at the little airport in Santa Rosa, where David sent someone to meet us. While I waited, I looked around the crowd trying to pick out who else was going to be in the video with me. I spotted a really hot blond guy and, sure enough, it turned out he would be my costar. As we stood around waiting for our ride, the blond told me he was straight. Our ride eventually showed up and he gathered up me, the “straight” blond, and the other guys he was taking up the river where the rest of the cast had already begun shooting.

We arrived at the house on location that night, and I met some of the talent who had taped a scene earlier in the day. One guy, Marc Brodey, was really hot, and I couldn’t stop myself from telling David Babbitt I found this guy supersexy in the hopes he might put us together at one point. Later, a randy bunch of porn models, me included, got naked in the Jacuzzi. A dream come true? Sure thing. Yet, I was really tense wondering,
What’s going to happen here? Are we allowed to have sex with each other off camera?
Someone started passing a joint around. I had never smoked pot in my life. “No, I don’t smoke,” I said. “I’m in the military, I get drug-tested.” That knocked them for a loop. “You’re in the military—and doing this? You’re crazy!”
Hmm
, I thought,
if a bunch of porn stars are telling me I’m crazy, maybe I need to rethink this.

The following day we reported to the location. This shoot was the way I had always envisioned what a porn set would be like, complete with production assistants, a table of food for the models (so we could eat as our schedules allowed), and lots of hot males lolling about. But the shoot for my scene ended up being a disaster. The straight blond guy said he was sick and he couldn’t give blow jobs, even though after much coaxing he did. But just the fact that he was being a prima donna created a tension in the air.

Meanwhile, even though David had praised my technique as a bottom, he decided that I was going to top some guy in this scene. This time, I started having problems. I was too anxious. Too nervous with the camera. I got too excited, too easily. I was afraid I was going to come too quickly. Which is exactly what happened. And they didn’t get it on tape. Recently I reread an article in
The Advocate
about my porn performances and they quoted a director saying, “One did not think of him as an actor. He never pretended to have sex. He truly got excited…we had to work fast to catch what was happening.” That was his way of saying that I came too fast. The truth is, I really liked what I was doing—but I guess that doesn’t always make for good porn production.

After we completed the day’s shooting, David Babbitt called each of us in separately and told us—because they couldn’t use any footage—they could only pay us half of what they promised. I was paid $250. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. I eventually heard that the scene was indeed used in a different movie called
Reflections in the Wild
. But what could I do? Sue Dirk Yates?

A
fter the disappointing weekend, I went back to San Diego feeling dejected. It was like the time I was stripping, feeling very much the peacock, and later finding out the ladies at the bachelorette party didn’t like my dancing. Once again I was telling myself,
I’m not going to do this again. This is crazy
. If you count the jerk off session taped by Dirk, which I’m sure he used somewhere, the two studio shoots—
Bad Moon Rising
would have been my fourth porn.
That’s it, I’m done!
I said to myself. But, hey, I’d be the first one to admit I’m fickle, and, just like Cher, Barbra Streisand and Michael Jordan, I was very easily talked out of retirement.

A couple of weeks later another porn producer, Michael Zen, called. He had heard from David Babbitt that I’m easy to work with and that I do as I’m told. I guess David didn’t mention my cum-to-soon mishap because Michael said he wanted to use me in a new video he was putting together called
Bullseye
. It would be shooting in LA. What was interesting to me about this one is that I would have a speaking role.

“I’ll send you the script,” said Michael.

“Um, whoa…just make sure it’s in a concealed package and don’t put any identifying return address.”

“Sure, no problem.”

The script for
Bullseye
arrived discreetly in the mail, just as I’d requested. Although Raul had been cool with everything so far, I knew gay porn would push him beyond his limit. In another month, Raul would be going to sea for a six-month deployment. Although I enjoyed his company, I was looking forward to the time alone. My porn activities were increasing my anxieties and making me paranoid about everything.

I immediately read the script. I thought it was interesting because it was the first time I would be involved in a porn video where there was actually an attempt at a plot—mixed in with the sex scenes was a story involving “passion and murder” (as the video jacket would later explain). I would be playing a horny sailor, on leave, who gets picked up at a local gay bar. Suddenly my film career was re-activated.

No sooner had I put down the script, when David Babbit called and informed me they were going to re-make
Bad Moon Rising
. None of the tape from the first shoot was usable, or so he said, but they wanted me in the re-make. This time, he told me, I would bottom. To sweeten the deal he said I would be in the scene with Marc Brodey, the guy I had told him I thought was so hot.

After agreeing to appear in these two movies, I went by Dirk’s studio in San Diego to pick up a sailor uniform for
Bullseye
which I promptly deposited in my car trunk. My brother, Jimmy, who was in the Marine reserves, just happened to be doing his two-week annual training in Twentynine Palms. I drove out to the desert to see him, forgetting that I had this sailor suit in the trunk of my car. We were planning on spending a few hours hanging out at a little makeshift club they have out there. When I saw Jimmy out in the desert, I opened my trunk to take out my knapsack and there was the sailor uniform. Why would a Marine officer have an enlisted sailor suit in his trunk? It seemed like the universe was setting me up. Someone, some way, somehow was going to find out I was doing porn films. But if Jimmy thought the sailor suit was unusual, he didn’t say a word about it and I certainly wasn’t about to volunteer any explanations so we just went on with the day as planned.

A few days later I drove up to LA to film my fifth porn scene in
Bullseye
. This was a whole-day shoot and it was even more professional then the ill-fated taping of
Bad Moon Rising
. They had a makeup artist there and lots of assistants bustling all around.
Bullseye
was a dark porno film with style, an intriguing plot, interesting lighting, and excellent production values. It had a horror-flick feel to it. I would be performing my scene with Chad Knight, a very attractive, sexy, muscular, blond guy, who had a mammoth penis—nicely shaped and always hard, as if it was carved from rock. He was another one who was straight—supposedly. He had a wife and two kids and even showed me their pictures. Chad was an All-American hunk from Atlanta—they had flown him out to do one scene with me in
Bullseye
. Then he was slated to be the main actor in the remake of
Bad Moon Rising
which we were filming the following week back at the Russian River. In this scene he was going to top me. They said that was rare. “Chad only gets fucked,” they informed me, as if I had been the chosen one.

I put on my sailor suit and walked onto the set. We pretend he had picked me up at a bar and that I would go home with him for the night. He asks me if I want a beer. “Nah,” I reply in my first porn dialogue, “I had enough at the bar. If I drink anything else, neither one of us is gonna have any fun.” Chad starts rubbing my cock through my white pants. Now it is my turn to play straight. When he tries to kiss me I inform him that everything from the neck up is strictly for the ladies, anything from the neck down is for him.

My only concern about anything from the neck down was that my tattoo would be seen. “It doesn’t make any sense for me to be wearing a sailor suit and have a Marine tattoo,” I told Michael Zen. He agreed, but in reality I just didn’t want the tattoo to be displayed because it would be one more telltale sign of my identity, as if it still mattered at this stage of the game. So there we were on the leather couch, Chad fucking me in different positions, making sure my arm was up against the back of the sofa. But it didn’t hinder our enthusiasm. The scene took about five hours to film. But, I must say, it was a lot of fun. I liked working with Michael Zen; he was very flattering. And Chad was incredible.

After a long, intense fuck session, toward the end of the scene—with me all fours on the couch—Chad pulled out of my ass and shot a giant load of cum on my back. The segment ended with my shooting my own huge wad onto my stomach and massaging it in. It definitely was an exceptional scene.

I recognized the main star of
Bullseye
as JT, the guy I’d met at the preparty in Palm Springs. He walked around the house completely nude saying that was the best way to stay in the mood for his scene. He had an incredible bod and a very nice dick.

What a small world!
I thought.

A week later I went back to the Russian River to reshoot
Bad Moon Rising
. They totally reworked the cast. I was in the outdoor scene with a blond stud and Marc Brodey—the hot, dark-haired guy I had noticed during the first taping. We flew up in the evening and they put Marc and me in a hotel room together. What were they thinking? Marc and I were just settling in when he looked at me and asked, “You want to go for a swim?” I did. At first we were the only people at the pool area. We got naked, got in the Jacuzzi, and started playing with each other. Some old guy came out of his room and lurked there leering. Marc suggested we go back to the room. We did and had passionate sex all night. We were supposed to do this the next day! It was sweet, though, and after we were done we cuddled up. I kind of fell for the guy.

The next day we did the scene and this time all went well, even though Marc and I had enjoyed an all night fuck-fest just hours before. The segment we were in was a sex romp between three rowdy guys camping in the woods. The scene opens with my two buddies watching each other jerk off—Marc lounging in the hammock, and the ripped, blond guy on the sleeping bag, working their meat. By popping out of my tent, hard-on first, and sucking Marc in the hammock, I initiate some steamy three-way action which eventually includes sucking dick, rimming, and of course, hot fucking.

The problem was they wanted me to top the blond stud in the hammock. I couldn’t do that because I was afraid that I would come too quickly again. So Marc, ever the gentleman, fucked him instead. Then we went over to where the sleeping bag was and Marc fucked me while I was giving the blond guy head. This is my favorite video because I had this thing for Marc and the scene went without a hitch. I got really good reviews for that film. Later, I think it was
Freshman
that said something like, “Danny Orlis is the real thing—an authentic marine butch bottom who likes to get fucked.”

That was my sixth porn movie. This takes us up to June.

My porn career was moving along at such a flatteringly nice clip—and I was enjoying the business so much—I actually called a porn agent. Over the telephone I told him about the scenes I had recently been in. “You’ve already done six videos in three months,” he said. “It doesn’t really sound to me like you need an agent.”

I said, “I was wondering if I could do more.”

“You know,” he said, “I do more than just porn.” He made it clear that he could put me in touch with people who wanted to hire a prostitute.

“Let me think about it,” I replied, “and I’ll get back to you.” Apparently most male porn stars also hustle on the side. The porn movies work as a vehicle for them to get hired by high-paying johns, and the call boy aspects of the business can be much more lucrative than the actual movies.

A few months earlier, about the same time I did my first interview with Dirk Yates, I had gone to a photographer in San Diego—an older, grandfatherly-looking guy whose real name was David Hubert. You would see his photographs in almost any gay porno magazine, such as
Freshmen, Unzipped
, or
Torso
. The credit usually said “Photos by David” or “Photos by David Lloyd.” He had a studio in downtown San Diego, and he advertised in all the military papers: the Marine paper, the navy paper, the base newspaper. It said, “Male physique models wanted, no porn” and it had his number. I called it, my philosophy being,
If I’m going to do this, I might as well make as much money as I can.

So I went to David’s studio. He was this cantankerous, crotchety old man. He snapped some photos of me, put down the camera, and said, “You know, you’re about a week too old.” I was twenty-seven. Frankly, it stung a bit. I hadn’t thought much about my age at this point.
Well, that’s unfortunate
, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. He also said, “You should work out more—you need more muscles. Work out really hard and come back in a month.” I started to leave. “And work on your tan!” he shouted as I walked out the door.

The whole episode only increased my determination to make myself more desirable, and I came back to David a month later, sometime in June. I had been working out a lot, tanning more, and felt weeks younger. It must have been working because he photographed me again; this time he sent my pictures to some other porn producers besides All Worlds.

David also mentioned to me that he had a banker friend who would pay five thousand dollars for me to go with him to Hawaii for a week. According to David, this banker would go with another friend who would hire his own male prostitute, and they would spend a lot of the time watching the two younger guys have sex together. I told David, “No, I don’t do that.” But I was definitely headed in that direction.

In late spring, Raul departed on his six-month Western Pacific deployment. Not long after, Philip took off on a six-month deployment to Iwakuni, Japan. I felt a huge sense of relief. With Raul gone, I had my living space all to myself and with Philip out of the country, I lulled myself into a false sense of security that he wouldn’t find out about the porn. If, or rather when, word started leaking out about my porn activities, Philip would be on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The fact that he would be back in six months didn’t faze me in the least. I knew he’d go ballistic when he found out. I was adept at procrastinating worry.

Based on the photos that David Hubert took, porn producer Sam Abdul agreed to put me in
Leather Obsession 2
. He told me to drive up to Los Angeles on a Friday night and he would put me up at the Holloway Hotel for a Saturday morning shoot.

Everyone I had met in the porn industry so far had been really nice. Michael Zen. David Babbitt. Dirk Yates. I mean, Dirk is a nice guy. Some people say he’s a little shady; I say, “He’s a porn producer, what do you expect?” Sam Abdul was different. As a director he was very abrupt. Very short-tempered. It was sort of disconcerting to me. The whole “
Leather Obsession
” thing in general was freaking me out. My ever-interfering conscience was shrieking, “
I can’t believe I’m in a leather video. What next?
”

I filmed
Leather Obsession 2
on a Saturday morning, July 22nd. It was in this old building in Hollywood. There were maybe seven or eight guys milling around in the back. We were all wearing leather: chaps, harnesses. Sam had told me he wanted me to wear boots. Well, I had some hiking boots, which I wore to the shoot. Sam took one look at me and barked, “Oh no, you’re not gonna wear
those
little booties. I want leather boots!” And he stormed off to find some.

Right away, after he found me the appropriate footwear, I filmed a scene, getting down and dirty with a compact, sexy, tattooed, bald guy, but unfortunately I came right away. That really pissed Sam off.

“Just wait,” I assured him, “I can come again.” At least they got it on tape.

Consequently I was just hanging out in the back with some of the other guys, waiting to be ready to come again. Some were naked. Some were not. We were all chatting. It was a friendly atmosphere, I thought, in spite of Sam’s brusque demeanor. There was this one really big, beefy guy who was extremely hot. But as soon as he talked he was so effeminate. Which is fine, I don’t want to offend anyone, but it wasn’t the image he was projecting at all. I noticed that, whenever he was in front of the camera, he never said a word.

Finally Sam came back to me and said, “I want you in the sling.”

“That sounds fine,” I replied. “I’ve never been in a sling before.”

So there I was, a captain in the Marines filming a sling scene in a porn movie whose subtitle was
The Sex Pit
. Once again it was a three-way. A tall, thin, good-looking guy fucked me in the sling while a very handsome, sculpted stud stood in front of me beating off—J. T. Sloan, the same guy I’d met in Palm Springs who had also starred in
Bullseye
. He had a maple-leaf tattoo on his chest. Here I was, in a sling, blowing his delicious cock.