Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (39 page)

Other than watching my cousin graduate from West Point, the highlight of my trip was my visit with Rob “Bobby” Jones IV at his home in Washington, DC. Brandon and I had met Rob last December in Las Vegas while he was doing a story for his magazine. Brandon’s good-natured personality had made him a hit with all of my friends and Rob was no exception. Our old classmate, Julian, lived in Vegas and we had our own little mini-reunion—we called ourselves the “shipmates,” the three of us all having been expelled from Bob Jones.

Rob and I quickly caught up on the latest news. I had told him a little about the
New York Times Magazine
. I knew that as a journalist, he would be especially impressed.

“The
LA Times
has a Sunday magazine but I’ve never read it,” I said. “And I read everything. I had
no idea
how big the
New York Times Magazine
was!”

He laughed. “Um, yeah! This is the East Coast, Rich; people actually read over here, remember? Or have you been in California too long? I still can’t believe you scored this piece. I have a feeling that someday I’ll be doing a story on you.”

“That’s a scary thought. Be kind…well, as kind as you can.”

Rob was eager to introduce me to a new friend, Paul Cappuccio. On the metro, Rob quickly recounted Paul’s history.

“Number two in his class at Harvard Law. Was a law clerk for Kozinski on the Ninth Circuit then he clerked for Scalia and Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Figured he could give you some pointers on the law school and practice and all that.”

“Right. This guy sounds a little out of my league.”

Rob continued reciting the facts. Paul had been Deputy Solicitor General under Kenneth Starr in the George H. W. Bush administration. He was now a law partner at Kirkland and Ellis with Ken Starr.

Paul would later tell me, “Ken Starr’s really a very good man. One time someone at the office told an off-color joke and the punchline involved a circle jerk. Ken had this blank look on his face. I had to explain to him what a circle jerk was! That’s just how naive he is.”

Rob introduced Paul and he offered us drinks from the downstairs bar located near his pool. His Adams Morgan house backed up to a wooded hill, creating a luxurious and private atmosphere. I was very impressed.

After we had a short summer afternoon swim, Rob went upstairs to shower and change. Paul and I chatted a bit and he mentioned a woman he sometimes dated, Laura Ingraham, a conservative commentator whose name I recognized.

In one of life’s bizarre coincidences, Paul added, “She was on the cover of the
New York Times Magazine
wearing a leopard-skin miniskirt. They did a cover story about all the young conservatives in DC now.” Paul pulled a copy of the magazine out to show me. She was the very long-legged and beautiful woman whom I recognized from the television. I was more interested, however, in the young handsome man standing away from the group in the photo.

“Is that David Brock?” I asked. Brock had written the book slamming Anita Hill. I was aware that his recently released
The Seduction of Hillary Clinton
had not been well-received in conservative circles. It hadn’t made Hillary look like Satan’s mistress.

“Yes,” Paul answered brusquely. “I was supposed to have been on the cover with them, but I was out of town when the picture was taken.”

Ever since Paul had brought up the subject of the
New York Times Magazine
, I had been biting my tongue, waiting for the perfect moment to interject my experience. This was it. “I’m going to be on the cover of the
New York Times Magazine
,” I said.

Paul quickly looked up from the magazine with a puzzled expression. “When?” he asked incredulously.

“Three weeks from tomorrow.” Apparently Rob hadn’t mentioned it to him.

“What…why would…”

“It’s an issue about gays in the military. What life is like under ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Paul smiled. “I see,” he said nodding his head. “You know, Justice Kozinski said it well when that issue came up before the Ninth Circuit…‘If you say you are, you’re likely gonna do it.’ I mean, come on. Gay nineteen-year-old men are going to have sex with other men.”

Later that evening, I met up with some gay military friends who had told me that DC had some of the only clubs in the country where men could dance completely nude.

There were several bars where hot guys stood on the bars and danced with it all hanging out, hard and everything! I had been drinking since the visit to Paul’s house that afternoon. By the time I got to the dick bar, I was feeling no pain.

I observed a very hot, young, blond, buff guy dancing on a small bar by himself near the corner. My friends, preferring beefier, older guys left me alone. I began rubbing the young guy’s muscular calves and put a dollar in his sock.

He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “I go on break in just a minute. Meet me just outside the front door.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, I walked outside and waited no more than a minute for the young guy. He appeared and said, “Follow me; we don’t have a whole lot of time.”

We went into the adjacent adult bookstore. He glanced at the clerk and, when he wasn’t looking, the young dancer grabbed me and pulled me into a video booth with him. He quickly unzipped my jeans and pulled down my underwear and started blowing me. I wanted to reciprocate, but he said no, that he had to be able to get it up for the rest of the night. He didn’t want to come, but he wanted me to.

Then, the hot young man turned around and dropped his own pants. He leaned against the wall with his left hand and spit into his right hand. He reached around behind his ass and lubed my dick with his spit. Then, he inserted my rock-hard penis into his ass. For almost a minute I fucked him as hard as I could. That’s all it took. I pulled out and came all over his ass cheeks.

Just as quickly, we dressed and returned to the dick bar. My friends didn’t even know I had gone and come.

I didn’t know it, or admit it, but I was spiraling downward. The first time I’d cheated, I had the luxury of “confusion” to assuage my guilt. The second time I had been blitzed-out-of-my-mind drunk. Now, I was kind of drunk, but I still knew what I was doing. And neither of the first two times had involved anal sex. I didn’t use protection while fucking this guy and now I was going to go home to Brandon and have sex with him, without protection. As I walked back into the dick bar, I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds, the guilt was so heavy.

What is wrong with me? Why am I doing this?
This had all happened so quickly I honestly had not had time to think about it. But that made it even worse. It had been a purely reflexive action. But this isn’t what I wanted my reflexes to be. I wanted my immediate response in this situation to be “No, I am happily married.” Instead, I just said okay and did what felt good at the moment.

At least I didn’t get fucked without a condom
, I thought, finding the only way I could to make myself feel better about what I had done.

As the boy jumped on the bar and started dancing again, he looked across the room and winked at me. Just then the guilt shot through me all over again like a thousand volts of electricity. What made it especially painful was that the young man looked just like Brandon.

I was getting desperate. While all the tumult was taking place with the fallout from the
Times
cover story, I still hadn’t been accepted to law school. Maybe I had set my hopes too high by applying only to top-rated schools.

Tim Carter introduced me to a law partner who was an influential alumnus of the University of Southern California Law School. At the end of the lunch, we told him about the
Times
article. A month later, two weeks before classes began and the week I got out of the Marines, I was accepted into law school at USC in Los Angeles.

“Sir, we’ve got something for you,” said Lieutenant Reyes, my executive officer. My battery’s first sergeant had organized a farewell party for me at Carl’s Tavern in Vista, the bar used in the filming of Clint Eastwood’s
Heartbreak Ridge
. As the Marines of the battery gathered around, the first sergeant presented me with a large gold frame containing the “guidon” or official military flag representing the battery I had commanded for the previous year.

After leaving Carl’s, Reyes and I went to the Sandbar, a Carlsbad hangout frequented by surfers and surfer types. I was pretty drunk and when Reyes and I took our seats at the bar, I blurted out, “I’m gay.”

“I know,” he said. “Pretty much we all do. It was something I was concerned about at first, sir, because I didn’t know you before, and I had heard the rumors.”

I chugged half my beer. “‘Pretty much we all do,’ you say.”

“Yes, sir. But once I saw that you weren’t…how should we say it…improper with the men…and then how much mutual respect you genuinely have, it didn’t bother me.”

“Townsend hates me, doesn’t he?” I said referring to one of the lieutenants who served a platoon commander in my battery.

“I wouldn’t say he hates you, no, sir, not at all.”

But Townsend had problems with the gay thing. Still, there hadn’t been any problems between us, and I wouldn’t be the first…or last…captain who was disliked by a lieutenant.

“He’s a good lieutenant,” I said. “But he just needs to learn that not everyone who outranks him is a complete idiot.”

Reyes laughed. “When are you going to learn that lesson, sir?”

“NEVER!” I shouted as I slammed my beer. “That’s why I’m getting out.”

An agent from International Creative Management, or ICM, one of the biggest talent agencies in the world, contacted me through Jennifer Egan. We met at a restaurant called Kate Mantilini’s, in Beverly Hills, to discuss the possibility of doing a film or television movie based on my story. She wanted to know how dramatic the whole thing had been. I told her that the colonel had confronted me, but that I had gotten out with an honorable discharge.

She shook her head. “The problem as I see it, Rich, is that there’s just no conflict in your story. Everything’s turned out fine.” She decided that it would be too hard to sell and we parted company.

Shit, if only I could tell her the whole story
, I thought.

The change of command ceremony where I handed command of the battery over to another captain was unremarkable. Generals and colonels had attended my previous ceremony; now, even my own group commander boycotted, sending a lame excuse that “something came up” at El Toro. This was the same colonel who had forbidden my battalion commander from giving me an award. He would not dignify an event honoring the Marine who had betrayed the Corps in the
New York Times Magazine.
I hadn’t really expected him to.

I didn’t care. In my mind I was already in law school.

Although colonels and generals stayed away, Melanie and Carla flew to California from North Carolina for the change-of-command ceremony. Brandon was there, of course, as well as Bossy and a few other friends. It meant much more to have people close to me there than the officers who had attended last year only to impress the general.

I had a party in Laguna that weekend. Gary couldn’t make it as he was in Iwakuni, Japan, but his ex-girlfriend, Angie, and her new boyfriend were there. I was glad they both couldn’t make it as I didn’t want a confrontation. Lieutenant Reyes and his wife were there along with Melanie and Carla. To my surprise, Rob Jones was able to make it as he was in California covering some of the close congressional races for his magazine.

Brandon walked up to me as I was talking to Reyes and his wife.

“Thanks, baby!” I said to Brandon as he handed me a drink.

“Ooh, sir, please, baby steps, baby steps!” shouted Reyes.

“Sorry,” I said as Allison Reyes and I laughed at her husband’s discomfort. “But you don’t have to call me ‘sir’ anymore.”

“I don’t know if I can get used to that, sir!”

A week later I attended law school orientation. By one of those random chances in life, I happened to sit by a member of the administration who was gay. It was surreal; not only did I no longer have to hide, I was in a place where gays and lesbians could openly hold positions of authority. I had driven less than a hundred miles from Camp Pendleton, but I felt like I had entered another universe.

During Gay Pride week the gay and lesbian student group hung large rainbow flags along the USC student plaza, the same plaza where the ROTC units stood in formation every morning. As I walked by their formation on my way to class, it looked like the future military leaders of American were saluting the gay pride flag. Surreal.

I attended every gay and lesbian student function I could. At the first event, I met a very handsome third-year law student. Alan Gurd had been a professional triathlete until his knee had blown. He still ran triathlons and had an incredibly well-defined muscular body. He was also brilliant, kind, and generous. He offered to critique my legal writing assignments and acted as my mentor, giving me important advice about classes and professors. I quickly developed a brotherly love for this kind man. At one point after I had been pestering him endlessly for advice, he joked, “Rich, you think I’m older than you, don’t you?” He was several years my junior.

“Aren’t you?” I asked. He was my law school model.

Soon after the semester started, a headline popped up on my AOL news account.

“Bob Jones University Has a Message for Gay Alumni—Stay Away!” Once again, my old school was back in the national news in full force. A recently out gay minister had attempted to visit the campus and had been barred. I called Rob about it.

“You notice the article says that gay and lesbian alumni are still allowed to attend the art gallery.” Rob was correct, there was an exception to the ban. “That’s because I persuaded my dad he couldn’t do that, otherwise he’d have to pay taxes on millions of dollars of art.”

“Now how am I supposed to get to the art gallery without crossing the rest of the campus? Get dropped in by helicopter?” I was laughing by this point, however. It always helped diffuse my anger to have an outlet like Rob.