Читать книгу Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star - Rich Merritt - Страница 14

At 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.

After rolling around on the wet leaves, laughing at our misfortune, Mitch looked at the sky. “It’s going to get dark if we don’t hurry back to the campsite.”

I agreed. He was older and in charge.

Mitch stood up. “You know what we should do that would help us move faster?”

I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that we had quite a hike to get back to camp.

“We should take these wet clothes off and carry them. That way we can move more quickly.” Mitch leaned against a tree and began untying the laces to his sneakers.

“That’s a good idea!” I said, quickly following my leader’s example. Within minutes we were both naked, except for our tennis shoes, walking through the woods to find our way back to camp.

Mitch walked in front. “Now, aren’t you glad we did this? This is a lot more comfortable, isn’t it?” He turned his head and looked at me.

We had been walking for about five minutes and the whole time I had been mere yards behind Mitch’s hot bubble butt. I had a noticeable semi-erection at this point. Mitch looked at me and smiled. I was petrified until I saw that he was in the same…situation.

Had either of us known what to do, I’m sure we would have acted on it. Instead, we continued our walk for another twenty minutes. We put our clothes on when we hit the main trail and made it safely back to camp.

Just like the Hardy Boys! I thought. Finally, I was having my adventures.

Not everything about my first summer at the Wilds was a real-life homoerotic fantasy come true. I was sixteen years old and had signed up to wash dishes for seven hundred people three times a day for eleven weeks. The first two weeks were torture. I told Dr. Bartley I wanted to quit.

He wasn’t loud, but he made up for it with intensity. Dr. Bartley had a bald head and a gut that protruded from his six-foot-five frame. He intimidated me beyond belief. I thought I might urinate on myself.

“Richie,” he said quickly and directly, “if you quit now, you will never be able to persevere with anything the Lord calls you to do again, do you understand me?”

I looked at the floor. Why had I agreed to do this? This job was miserable, but I said I would do it.

“Well,” he said, “I’m going to call your parents to come get you…”

“Um, you don’t have to do that, my dad gave me an old car to drive…”

“Well, I’m going to call them and tell them that you’ve decided to quit…”

As Dr. Bartley reached for the phone, it rang. He excused me for a few minutes while he took the call.

I can’t quit! I can’t be known as a quitter! Dr. Bartley was right.

“I’m staying,” I said resolutely as he finished his call. And for twenty-five dollars a week, I persevered through nine more hot summer weeks washing dishes in the Appalachian Mountains.

My proudest moment that summer came unexpectedly one rainy day. The other guys on the staff and I were sitting around our room when the door opened and a counselor came in. The guy was my brother Jimmy’s counselor.

“Richie,” he said, “There’s someone here who has something to say to you.”

Jimmy popped out from behind him, crying. His counselor said, “What was it you wanted to say to Richie?”

Jimmy looked at the floor. Oh boy, I wondered, what has happened now?

“I…I…I got saved this morning,” he said quietly.

I was stunned. This was the last thing I had expected. I jumped up off the floor and grabbed Jimmy around the neck. I started crying. “I’m so happy! You gotta go call Momma and Daddy.” He smiled at me and nodded and his counselor took him up the hill to the telephones.

Jimmy made a plaque for our mom in the craft shop that had the Twenty-third Psalm, the one that goes “The Lord Is My Shepherd” on it. Momma still has this plaque, but Jimmy and I never again discussed this moment.

The Wilds was that kind of place—there was no television, no telephone without approval, no radio, no stereo—nothing that wasn’t approved by the camp administration. Teens were freed from every possible distraction, giving the staff a chance to get through to them. Emotions ran high and tears flowed freely. For one week, even the hardest hearts melted upon hearing the message of the Lord.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about Mitch Harmon. Every time I went on the trail to the falls, I recalled our naked venture through the woods. I started fantasizing about him. Naked fantasies. They were only fantasies because nothing like the inner-tubing incident ever happened again. But fantasies were enough for now. I’d think about us being nude again, this time our bodies touching. I couldn’t help but think how awesome that would be. These thoughts were more tender than overtly sexual. I fantasized about us curling up naked in a blanket under the stars—the more we’d touch each other the further we’d go, first with our hands, then with our mouths. Guilt always snapped me out of it before it went any further and I would catch myself and pull away. I’d suddenly realize what I was doing. I would stop the fantasy and ask God to forgive me.

Then I remember this one friend who I had worked with at the summer camp, named Nick. He was blond-haired, blue-eyed, just an adorable guy. We worked together very closely the entire summer, we became good buds, and it was a great feeling.

The following summer I wouldn’t be working the Wilds, I was going to summer school instead. Nick, however, was on his way up to the mountains to work at camp again. “Hey,” I said to Nick, “stop by and spend the night with me at my parents’ house.” He agreed to come over for a visit. We were in the den where we had this pullout sleeper sofa. We watched a movie and when it ended we went to sleep. He was asleep and I remember getting as close as I could to him. I couldn’t stop myself. I could feel the heat from his body. I could smell his clean, soapy scent.

The next morning he woke up and just left. I guess he realized what I was doing. He never spoke to me after that. A year or so later, I went to the camp. Nick was there and he was still very distant. A mutual friend of ours asked, “Did you guys have a falling out?” It was that noticeable. I replied, “Not that I’m aware of.” Yet, I knew what he was feeling toward me and I was ashamed for causing it. I had made the plan, put it into action, and even made an attempt at the seduction. But I was still not calling it “gay.” I still was not labeling it “homosexual.” It was just something that happened that was unpleasant.

Yet there was no denying it. More and more frequently, my thoughts drifted to unspeakable, erotic images of me and my friends. I imagined us rubbing our naked bodies against each other and kissing. I began to fear that I might be a sodomite. But I hadn’t done anything yet, so I was still okay.

Adults involved in religious ministries to young people preach a lot about the “thought-life.” Thoughts inevitably led to actions. That was a frequent sermon and, after hearing it again, I decided to seek help. I was halfway across campus to talk to Mr. O’Leary, a dean I trusted, about my homosexual thought-life. I was halfway across the “Bridge of Nations” on the front of the BJU campus when I stopped. I was standing right next to a sacred place. In the middle of the fountains, in a tiny island, lies the burial site of Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.

“Do right!”

I looked at the sky. Where was his voice coming from? I heard the raspy voice of the founder—I had heard that tape a hundred times at least.

“Do right till the stars fall!” There it was again.

But isn’t the right thing for me to seek help with my wicked thoughts?

“The two biggest little words in the English language are the two little words ‘Do Right.’”

But what is “right?”

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.’s pithy sayings were ubiquitous around the university. Preachers repeated them in sermons, they were published in the school’s textbooks and every classroom had at least one saying attributed to the founder plastered over the chalk-board. Standing here beside his grave, it was as if he were speaking directly to me. I was at a crossroads. I didn’t know what to do. But I could hear Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.’s sayings.

“GOD WILL NOT DO FOR YOU WHAT HE HAS GIVEN YOU STRENGTH TO DO FOR YOURSELF.”

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

I turned around and returned to my locker, got my books, and went home. God had given me all the strength I needed. I could take care of this myself. Nowadays I refer to my decision to turn around and not tell the dean as my “higher power” looking out for me. Had I proceeded across that bridge, my life would have been unpredictably different. No doubt I would have been sent off to some reeducation camp run by an Exodus program designed to turn gays into happy heterosexuals.

Thank you, God!

“Back to what?” Rambo asked. “My friends died here…part of me died here.”

“John, the war, everything that happened here may have been wrong,” said Trautman, “but dammit, John, you can’t hate your country for it.”

“Hate? I’d die for it.”

“Ha-ha! Woo-hoo!” shouted Chuck and Frank. The audience erupted in applause at their hero Stallone’s brilliant comeback. Nothing could undo Sly’s patriotism!

The movie continued. “Then what do you want?” Trautman asked John Rambo.

“What do I want?” asked Rambo rhetorically. “I want what they want.” Stallone’s character pointed to some POWs. “And what every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had wants…for our country to love us as much as we love it…That’s what I want.”

I couldn’t believe I was sitting in an actual movie theater! And with Chuck, of all people! Chuck, the same kid who used to torment me on the soccer field. Now we were practically best buddies.

Being at the movie was scary. Never mind that we were five hundred miles from Greenville. You never knew who might find out. But the movie had been a good one. And besides, Frank had convinced me that the rules of Bob Jones no longer applied to us. We had graduated from Bob Jones Academy a week ago and we wouldn’t be enrolling in Bob Jones University until August. Technically, we weren’t breaking any rules. Jurisdiction is a threshold issue, as I would learn much later in law school, and from the way Chuck, Frank, and I saw it, no fundamentalist school had jurisdiction over us. We were now exempt from getting into trouble.

“What you saw, young man, was an R-rated movie,” said Mr. O’Leary. The Bob Jones disciplinarian hadn’t bought my jurisdictional argument. Apparently fundamentalist universities aren’t bound by the strict technicalities of the federal judiciary.

I knew better than to say anything right now. This was Mr. O’Leary’s turn to speak. “Do you know what ‘R-rated’ means, Richie?”

Am I supposed to answer this? He’s pausing an awfully long time. “Re…re…” My throat was dry. I cleared it. “Restricted.”

“I don’t mean, what does the ‘R’ stand for,” he said, disgusted that I had missed his point. He sat down and looked at me directly. “Richie, a movie that has a rating like this…what that means is that sinners are telling sinners ‘Beware of this movie!’ Do you think any Christian has any business seeing a movie that sinners think might be problematic?”

His point was clear to me now. We were supposed to be better than the best, our standards higher than the highest. Chuck, Frank, and I had messed things up, big time. Frank had decided to sit the year out and make some money, rather than face the music. Chuck had to live in the dorms if he wanted to enroll in the university. That way they could keep an eye on him.

Frank had warned me a day earlier. We had been ambushed!

“Richie,” Frank said, apologetically. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you. It’s going to take some explaining.” I had been toiling away at the Wilds all summer, being a super-good Christian. I had no idea that our little escapade at the beginning of the summer would get us in so much trouble.

Frank continued. “Remember last year, I told you that the study hall monitor, Tim McMaster, used to always give us lectures about masturbation, and we called him Tim McMasterbater?”

“Vaguely, yes.” Where could this be headed?

“Well, when we were visiting your aunt and uncle and lying out by the pool and your Uncle made you go take the SAT a second time, remember that?”

“Yes, yes I definitely remember that.”

“Well…Chuck and I used to always joke about masturbating, on account of Tim McMasterbater.”

“Okay, just tell me this has nothing to do with my aunt and uncle.”

“No! No, this has nothing to do with your aunt and uncle.”

“Okay,” I said. Then what is this about? I was getting more and more nervous.

“Okay, well, Chuck wrote a letter to Dan…” Dan was our friend in Pennsylvania who wasn’t able to take the mid-Atlantic road trip with us after graduation. “And, well, Chuck made up a bunch of things…you know how Chuck and Dan always kid around…”

“Yes,” I said, nodding my head impatiently.

“Chuck wrote Dan that while you were away taking the SAT, that what he and I did was lie around your aunt and uncle’s swimming pool and, and, well…masturbate the whole time.”

“I see,” I said. I kind of did. Actually, I still didn’t have a clue what masturbating was, but I knew it was an expulsion offense. “Did you?”

“No, no, Richie, that’s just it! It was all a joke!”

“So…why aren’t you coming back to school? Why does Chuck have to move into the dorms? Why do I have a note to come see Mr. O’Leary as soon as I get back to campus?”

Frank looked at the ground and scratched the back of his head. He let out a nervous laugh. “Heh-heh, that’s the funny part. Well, well, crazy old Dan! He left the letter that Chuck wrote him lying around the house. And you know what a…what a…bitch Dan’s mom is!”

“No! No! He didn’t!” I couldn’t believe it! Dan was usually the smart one in the group. How could he have been so stupid as to let his mother read a letter from Chuck, a letter that joked about…about masturbating, whatever that meant.

“Do you think it’s a joke?” Mr. O’Leary’s question jolted me back from the memory of my conversation with Frank a day or two earlier.

“No! No, it’s not,” I said. I hadn’t been paying attention to Mr. O’Leary.

A shocked expression crossed his face. “You mean…do you think they were actually…”

“Oh! No NO NO!” I exclaimed. “It’s definitely a joke! I thought you meant…I thought you were asking if I thought it was a joking matter!”

Mr. O’Leary almost cracked a smile. He was actually one of my favorite people in the administration. We students suspected there was a real human underneath the cloak of righteousness these guys had to wear, something we doubted about the others.

I didn’t get into any trouble. What spared me was that in his letter, Chuck had told Dan that I was a stick-in-the-mud, a party pooper, and a goody-two-shoes who didn’t want to do anything to get in trouble.

“To your credit,” Mr. O’Leary said, “you were a ‘wet blanket’ on their party.”

The only thing I had done with them was see Rambo II. I felt worse than if I had gotten in trouble. Chuck didn’t think I was cool at all. He thought I was a prude. No matter what I did, I was never going to be a part of the group.

The week after my automobile trip to Maryland with Chuck and Frank, I returned to work at the Wilds. This summer I had been selected to run the concession stand on the ball field, a much more desirable position than washing dishes.

In my spare time, I played a piano solo before a chapel sermon. Dr. Bob Jones III was the guest speaker. When I finished and walked away from the stage, I heard him say my name and that I had been president of my senior class at Bob Jones Academy. He called me a “model Christian school student.” I got goose bumps and almost cried from the pride I felt in myself. Dr. Bob remembered my name! Not only that, now he thought I was a model Christian school student! He had told over five hundred people! This was the pinnacle of my days as a fundamentalist.

All my life people would ask me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” But by this point they were serious about it. I would say, “Oh, Christian school teacher, or Christian band director.” Secretly I thought it might be fun to be a televangelist. Hell, I already had the hair for it! Yet, I really wouldn’t mean it. I would think about it and say to myself, I don’t want to do that. And then my uncle gave me this idea—apply to the United States Naval Academy. He even paid the exorbitant last-minute late fee for me to the SAT so I could score higher than I had before. Really there was nothing else for me at that point. For years, I harbored a secret desire to join the military. I wasn’t sure exactly why, but the thought of it excited me.

In retrospect, I feel certain that my budding gay feelings played a lot into my decision to go into the military. A friend of mine had recently joined the army. He went to take the physical and when he came back he gave me a full report on what had happened. About how they all had to strip naked and they all stood there buck naked—all fifty of them—and the doctor came around and felt their balls and stuck something up their butts and I’m saying to myself, Wow, that’s hot.

It started me thinking: When you’re in the military, you’re around a bunch of guys and you’re always doing things together. At this point what I wanted is what I never had. When I was younger I didn’t mind not being part of the soccer team or playing with the other boys. But as I got on up into my high school years, I longed for that. I wanted to be closer to other guys. I wanted the camaraderie. That’s when my Uncle suggested I go to the Naval Academy. Some people at Bob Jones understood that. Some people, like my parents, didn’t. They were dead set against it. But it was an honorable thing to do, it was a gentlemanly thing to do. I wanted to go to the Naval Academy because I loved my country, the country that allowed me and my family to worship God so freely. This would be my chance to pay America back. I also liked the prestige. But most of all, I was thinking, Wow, for once I’ll be a part of a group of men.

During my trip with Chuck and Frank, we had visited the Naval Academy so I could get an idea of what a military base looks like. It was awesome! More than ever, I wanted to be a part of it. Despite the fact that Chuck had almost gotten us all into a fight by calling a high-ranking officer an “asshole,” the visit convinced me I wanted to belong to the military.

I didn’t get into the Naval Academy, but that didn’t stop me. I could become a Marine officer by going to Officer Candidate School in the summer while I attended Bob Jones University.

In the meantime, to see if I really wanted to be a military officer, I came up with a brilliant plan. I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserves.