Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (24 page)

Good, he understood. But I had met plenty of gay guys who seemed attracted
only
to straight guys, so I was aware of a major hole in my logical reasoning. As far as I was concerned, however, I could not be attracted to someone long term who was not attracted to me. That much I knew already, so when it came to Gary and me, the reasoning applied.

“Damn, Rich, I really thought you were going to tell me that you and Tami had started dating.”

“Well, in a couple of weeks, that’s the story.”

Tami is a beautiful woman and it boosted my ego—and my sense of machismo—tremendously to be seen with her. When she arrived, Gary and I greeted her at the San Diego airport. I was excited to bring my old friends into my new life, so I took them both to the gay dance club in San Diego that I liked. It was called West Coast Production Company, or WCPC, and it had an outdoor rooftop patio that was pretty mellow, or so I thought.

The Marines I had met at the Brass Rail were there, along with a woman they called their “fag hag.” Unfortunately, the summer was just beginning and it was a beautiful warm night. The rooftop patio was packed with tons of drunk queens and their women. The Marine I had met was dancing provocatively with his fag hag and kept hitting on Gary. It was a nightmare and I got us out of there as quickly as I could. Okay, so Gary was cool with me, but I was
not
taking him to any more gay bars.

I took some leave to spend time with Tami. At the same time, I made sure she was introduced to everyone. She and I went all over the place. Hollywood. Vegas. I have to admit my plan worked, that Tami’s visit quieted the rumors. We generated such a sparkling chemistry together that everyone completely believed we were a couple.

Finding gay Marines became my obsession. I went to the bars looking for the unusual haircut. Marine Corps “regs” require that men’s hair be no longer than three inches on top, fading to a perfect “zero” along the back and sides. Marines rarely actually approached the three inches on top; that was a sign of a sure “slacker.” However, few non-Marine haircuts ever had the extreme fade-to-zero inches along the sides. I had assumed that would be an obvious sign of a Marine.

I was sadly mistaken. In San Diego and Oceanside, there is a large community of gay men obsessed with military men, especially Marines. My friend Steven Zeeland even wrote a book about these “chasers,” called
Military Trade
. These men understand that Marines are brainwashed into trusting only other Marines, so if they want to infiltrate this tight-knit brotherhood, they have to pass themselves off as current or former Marines. Many of them will go as far as getting a Marine tattoo to fool unsuspecting devil dogs just off the bus. Not coincidentally, the gay bar in downtown Oceanside is adjacent to a barbershop catering to Marines.

My search for other gay Marines took me to some unusual places. The personal ads in the
San Diego Union-Tribune
contained a section called “Just Seeking a Friend.” It occurred to me that this was a stupid category; who would go to the trouble to place an ad in the paper…then I realized, this was the “code” I had been looking for! Sure enough, the “codes” were easily decipherable.

He was an enlisted Marine, very cute, blond, and a bottom who had never had anal sex before. Well, except for once at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. And then another time in Rota, Spain. It’s easy to tell a real Marine from a fake Marine once you are five minutes into a conversation with the guy. It’s impossible to fake the language that Marines have drilled into them during three months at boot camp and during their time on active duty.

“What’s your MOS?” asked a disbelieving chaser the first time I went to WCPC.

“Seventy-two oh four,” I replied.

“What’s that? I never heard of it. What area of the base do you work at?”

“The Thirty-two Area.” I knew he’d never heard of that. Most people hadn’t. It was pretty obscure.

“Never heard of that, either! I don’t think you’re a real Marine!”

I was pissed at this little asshole. How dare a civilian question my credentials as a real Marine! “Well, you need to study up on your Marine Corps terminology before you go giving guys the third degree. You look pretty stupid if you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was also pretty drunk at this point.

“Listen here, fucker,” the guy said, “I don’t know who you think you are…”

“It’s not my fault if your boyfriend’s been hitting on me,” I said. It was true. His boyfriend, apparently a drunk Marine, had been sticking his hand down the back of my jeans for the last fifteen minutes.

The guy set his beer down I swore he was going to take a swing at me. In all the years I had been going to straight bars, enlisted clubs, and other places, I’d never been in a fight. Now, my first month at San Diego’s largest gay club, I was going to duke out with someone.

Fortunately the guy’s boyfriend grabbed him and dragged him downstairs into the club.

Through the newspaper, I met a thirty-something professional who had a preference for military men. His name was Dana Copeland and he lived near the base. We met for dinner in Carlsbad. I told him about my experience in Okinawa that had propelled me out of the closet.

“The other officer. He’s not Greek, is he?”

Oh my God! I had said too much.
My expression gave away the answer.

“I bet it’s the same guy. I have a friend who just went to Okinawa who met a gay officer who’s Greek. It’s gotta be him.”

“Who…who’s your friend?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t want to give him away,” Dana said, “let’s just say he’s a TED.”

“What’s a TED?” I asked.

“Typical Enlisted Dude.” Dana laughed. It was a pretty elitist thing to say, but I had to laugh, too. In a way, I understood what Dana meant.

“One thing you’re going to learn,” Dana said giving me a prescient piece of advice, “is what a small, incestuous gay world there is.”

I later learned that I was a “TOD,” a Typical Officer Dickhead. Dana and I didn’t hook up, as his preference was for TEDs, not TODs. The only officers Dana liked were pilots. I liked Dana, however, and wanted Gary to meet him, to see what a cool world this was that I had found. Dana and a friend and I had brunch with Gary one weekend.

“You’re in 101?” Dana said, referring the designation of Gary’s training squadron at El Toro. “My ex-boyfriend is a flight instructor in that squadron. But he’s in the Navy.”

“Um, Dana,” said Dana’s friend, “you…might want to be careful…”

“Oh, shoot, Gary, you won’t say anything, will you?”

“No, of course not,” Gary said.

I called Philip. “You better tell your enlisted friend to be careful who he talks to!” I screamed into the phone. “He’s telling all these blabber-mouthed civilians about you.”

“Calm down, Rich, I’ll talk to him,” said Philip. “Oh, and I’ve got orders. I’ll be coming to southern California in a few months! Don’t wear the town out, okay, slut? Leave some for me.”

If Philip wasn’t worried, neither was I. Besides, now I couldn’t wait for him to get here! My little gay military family was growing. Finally, I would have a group of people I could fit in with. At last, a family I could belong to.

Tami had such a wonderful time in California that she wanted to come out for another visit in August. This time she wanted to bring her friend, Jill.

“That’s fine,” I said. I figured the more time I spent with Tami, the more we were seen together, the better it would be for feeding into my heterosexual reputation, and at the same time we could have some fun.

But by the time she came to visit me in August, things had changed a bit. I had moved in with a roommate—another lieutenant that I had known in Okinawa—who was straight, or at least he said he was. Suddenly in my own apartment I had to hide my being gay. As much as I didn’t like the idea, it was necessary because I needed money. I was still having financial problems, trying to pay for a car I had bought. And credit card bills. Spending every weekend night at bars in southern California gets expensive.

I was living in the two-bedroom apartment when Tami and Jill came out to stay with me. The main problem was that this time, Tami wasn’t in town exclusively to masquerade as my girlfriend. She had seen firsthand what southern California had to offer and now she wanted to cut loose and party with her friend Jill.

I had arranged for us all to go up to Newport Beach and meet with Gary and some of his pilot friends from El Toro. I also brought Dana and his friend along. Stupid, stupid idea.

Well, the way I was looking at it, Tami was out there to be my girlfriend. In Tami’s eyes, she was there to whoop it up and have a great time. As the evening wore on, she got drunk and started hitting on a really good-looking fighter pilot. Dana and his friends were openly ogling the fighter pilots. I was mortified at Tami’s behavior. Everyone was whispering, “What the hell is with Rich’s girlfriend? Why is she hitting on this guy?”

I was pissed because the deal we had agreed to earlier in the evening was that later Tami, Jill, and I were going to cut out and go to a gay bar called Newport Station with Dana and his friend. Suddenly Tami didn’t want to leave. To save face, I pulled her aside and said, “Okay, Tami, listen, I’ll pretend I’m mad at you and I’ll walk out. It will be like we’re in the middle of an argument.” That was fine with her. She just wanted to be left to her own devices.

Putting my plan into action I gave a performance worthy of an Academy Award nomination. I almost got into a fight with the fighter pilot who could have easily beaten the shit out of me. Then I stormed out of the bar like a drama queen and went to Newport Station to kill a couple of hours. Afterward, I went back to pick Tami and Jill up. I felt sort of betrayed by Tami, probably unjustly, but it was a really weird, uncomfortable night.

Later Gary told me that everyone in Newport Beach was wondering what the hell was going on. Tami’s first visit had gone really well. I had fooled everyone. The second visit created confusion. Tami was acting flirtatious and available, as she had the right to do, so I kind of went with that, pretending on this visit that things weren’t okay between us—that she and I were having romantic problems. I hammed up that angle.

People were also wondering about Dana and his friend. Something just hadn’t seemed right to them about two thirty-something guys hanging out with a group of twenty-something military officers and their women. I was getting some brutal lessons about the strict rules of military socialization. Any deviation from those rules raised eyebrows. I couldn’t afford any more raised eyebrows.

But back at my military unit, everybody was totally fooled and was led to believe that I was having trouble with my girlfriend. One female friend, who was a fellow officer’s fiancée, was a very sophisticated woman. She grew up in San Francisco and had really good “gaydar.” She was also a screenwriter for MGM. Later, when I came out to her, she said, “You fooled me, and I don’t fool easily. I thought all that drama between you and Tami was very real.”

I couldn’t be angry with Tami for the way things had gone; it wasn’t her fault. It was just that, by trying to build on the original deception, things had grown complicated and gone badly. The whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth. I was still going to great lengths to hide who I was.

And the hiding had just begun.

B
y late 1993, no one knew for sure what was going to happen with President Clinton’s failing proposal to lift the ban on gays in the military, but it sure didn’t look like they were going to let us serve openly. The phrase “Don’t ask, don’t tell” hadn’t been coined yet, but from what we heard in the news, we could tell what the gist of the new law was going to be.

Philip transferred from Okinawa to a squadron at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, the same base in nearby Orange County where Gary was stationed. Although Philip and I didn’t become lovers as I had secretly hoped, we became close friends and despite all the controversy with the “gays in the military issue” and the visibility it created in the media, we went to gay bars and hot spots all over the place—Hillcrest in San Diego, West Hollywood in LA, West Street Beach and the Boom Boom Room in Laguna, Cathedral City near Palm Springs, even in San Francisco.

Marines continued to talk about gays in the military until I was sick of their ill-informed homophobic comments. At first, I’d remain silent. Then, I learned to use wit to diffuse their attacks. At an officers’ happy hour, an overweight, unattractive captain commented that a fag had been cruising him at the mall.

“Poor guy must have been desperate!” I exclaimed. All the officers laughed at the expense of our chubby companion. I felt a perverse sense of pleasure.

Sometimes, though, it wasn’t so humorous.

“Skipper,” asked one of the other lieutenants in our air defense battery, “what
would
you do if you saw one of the men bashing a gay Marine?”

“I’d go right ahead and let ’em. That’s between two Marines, ain’t nothing I can do about that.”

One senior enlisted Marine, Gunnery Sergeant Green, was mouthing off in the battery office space about how California was such a fag-loving state because there was a chance gays might be allowed to join and work in the Boy Scouts. I was especially offended because Gunny Green was a notorious rule-breaker.

I felt the steam rise up inside and I lost control of my tongue. “It would be better for a Boy Scout leader to be gay than to be a drunk-driving, cheating spouse abuser!” Those were Gunny Green’s well-known crimes.

Gunny Green lost his temper with me and another senior enlisted man had to stop our confrontation from escalating. These episodes were unprofessional and I knew I had to avoid them. While I could have had Gunny written up for disrespect to an officer, my charge likely would have gone nowhere and would only have raised the level of attention. My reputation couldn’t afford too many run-ins with the senior enlisted men.

My life seemed more and more one big game. Or more like several overlapping games. At first it was fun. Philip taught me the “code-speak” and, before long, he and I could carry on an entire conversation in front of our straight officer buddies about our social lives without giving ourselves away. We had feminized names for our male friends and used feminine pronouns when referring to them. We were even so bold as to send e-mails through the military’s Local Area Network. We felt like the resistance fighters thwarting the Nazis from behind enemy lines. Just by being who we were, we were being brave, fearless, and noble. That’s how I felt, and it felt very good.

My parents visited in late September for my twenty-sixth birthday. My mom had lost a lot of weight by dieting and exercise and, at the age of forty-eight, looked great. I had also been losing weight following my battalion commander’s order to do so nine months earlier and I was looking better than I had since my days as a stripper at Clemson. My desire to get in shape to be more marketable as a gay man had the fringe benefit of helping my career as a Marine. Who said homosexuality wasn’t compatible with military service? What a crock!

Every day I ran six miles through the Camp Pendleton wilderness. It was a rigorous course concluding up a mile-long, steep hill. That didn’t stop my dad from running with me. He ran the entire route, something most of my Marines couldn’t do. I was so proud of him, and used him as an example to motivate my men.

“My dad—a fifty-year-old civilian—can make it up this hill without even breathing hard…and you—a Marine lance corporal—can’t even go the first hundred yards!” I’d shout when one of my men lagged behind.

I staged a dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Carlsbad with Philip, his current boyfriend, a handsome blond with chiseled features, from Finland, and a woman I had recently met named Sandra. Sandra’s fiancé had recently gone to Okinawa for six months and hanging out with a gay guy was a perfect cure for her loneliness. It also helped me because with Tami out of the picture, I needed a pretty “beard.”

My mom adored Philip and his boyfriend, even though she never knew the true nature of their relationship. She seemed to like Sandra, although I couldn’t tell. My mom had always viewed the women I had dated suspiciously. I never understood it. Maybe all moms do that.

“Your dad reminds me of Bill Clinton,” Philip said after my parents returned to South Carolina.

“Oh fuck, I’m glad you didn’t tell him that,” I replied. But my dad
was
like Bill Clinton—Southern, friendly, good-natured, all the good stuff about Bill Clinton. My dad pictured himself more like Robert Redford, however, and in some ways I suppose he did look like the movie star, but he definitely had Clinton’s charisma.

I read that even though Bill Clinton had a wonderful outward persona, no one really got to know him very well, not even his closest aides. In that respect my dad was exactly like Bill Clinton. He smiled a lot and genuinely loved people, but at the end of the day, I really don’t think I knew him very well. We never talked and I always communicated with him through my mother. There were no hard feelings between us, just a lot of distance.

Early one Sunday morning several months later, I crawled out of a trick’s bed and went to the refrigerator to get a bottle of water. There, stuck to the freezer part of the metal, was a magnet with “South Carolina” on it in bright yellow letters. There was also a photo of the distinctive state bird—the Carolina Wren.

“You said you and your new roommate just moved into this apartment?” I asked, returning to the bed with a couple of bottles of water. “Is he a Marine corporal named Brady Werner?”

“Yeah! How’d you know?”

“You know that South Carolina refrigerator magnet you’ve got? That’s from my mom. Brady drove my folks to the airport as a favor to me because they wouldn’t fit in my two-seater MR2.”

“So…your mom sent him a refrigerator magnet…with her state on it?”

“It was inside a thank-you card. I’m from a good Southern family!” I said. “Okay, my turn. Roll over!”

My parents’ visit had been pleasant and I hadn’t minded the games of secrecy and deceit. I felt it was something I had to do to make sure everything went as it was supposed to and that everyone was happy.

After my parents left, I threw a small birthday party for myself attended by the growing group of gay military guys I knew and a few others. I had met two enlisted guys at the mall who also happened to know Dana; one was Brady Werner, a sexy young corporal. They, Dana, and Dana’s friend attended. Gary also came down from El Toro.

After everyone else left, Gary said, “I think I figured out who Dana’s ex-boyfriend is. His name’s Jim. He also seems to know who you are as well.”

“I’m sure Dana told him, I mean if he told us about Jim, then what’s to stop him from telling Jim about me?”

“Just be careful. Okay, Rich? I’m starting to worry about you. This isn’t a game.”

But I
had
to think of it as a game. Games were fun; I could play a game. To think otherwise—that I was living a dangerous life and messing with a serious issue—was unsustainable. The stress and the adrenaline would wipe me out. So I thought of it as a game.

The truth was, however, no matter how I thought of it, game or otherwise, the stress was there. Living the many secret compartmentalized lives I was living was a constant source of anxiety and I was dealing with it by drinking more and having more sex.

There was my straight Marine Corps life. Also I had my gay civilian life. Those two lives could absolutely not mix at all. Then there was the middle life—the gay military friends I was making. We were the only ones who understood each other. Gary was the exception—the only person I allowed into all of these lives because he was also from my past life—the life I’d had at Clemson.

As if this weren’t enough lives to deal with, one day out of the blue I received a letter from my Bob Jones and Tabernacle classmate, Melanie Runyan. Melanie wrote that her mom, who I also knew, was visiting San Diego for a convention one weekend and would love to see me again. “Don’t worry,” Melanie’s letter said, “she’s way cool.”

I knew Carla Runyan had been divorced, but I still saw her as a typical Bob Jones–style fundamentalist Christian mother. Hence my shock when I arrived at her hotel in Emerald Plaza in downtown San Diego—she was sipping a glass of Chardonnay and wearing pants! Definitely not the Bob Jones person I remembered.

We caught up briefly with friendly chitchat, then she lowered the boom. “Melanie and Roger are getting divorced,” she said.

I studied Carla’s face for a second. Seeing no remorse, I said, “Yes, he wasn’t good enough for her.”

“Yeah, everyone seems to be saying that…now.”

All throughout school, Melanie and I had fought like brother and sister. We knew we liked each other, and everyone teased us that we were going to get married someday. Even Carla…
Oh shit!
I thought.
What if Carla wants Melanie and me to get together?

Carla and I spent the rest of the evening in each other’s company and I couldn’t shake the notion that perhaps she had a hidden agenda. The following evening, I decided to tell her the news.

“I’m gay,” I said. The first person from my Bob Jones life now knew for certain that I was a homosexual.

“Really?” she said. Carla didn’t show any expression, positive or negative for a moment, and then she said, “Well, you know that’s not an issue with me. In fact, I have a friend at my convention here who I think might be gay. You think you could help me figure it out?” Just like that, a friendship was born.

“You know, Rich,” Carla said, a few hours later, “there’s something else I’ve got to tell you.” We had been laughing and joking over pizza.

“Shoot!” I said.

“You know I work at the hospital in Greenville. Well, your high school classmate, Melody Newell, is a nurse now…”

“Oh really, I didn’t know that. She was always so sweet, I can see that.”

“Well,” continued Carla, looking me over to see whether I was ready for the news she had, “Melody told me that Wanda Harmon…”

“Oh shit, I know where this is going!” I said, smiling.

“Oh really?” Carla asked. She looked relieved. “Well, Wanda told Melanie that you…that you are a go-go dancer! Had you heard that rumor?”

We both laughed at the idea, then I stopped laughing and scratched my head. “Well, Carla, it’s not exactly just a rumor…I kind of did…a little stripping…not much, but a little.”

I told her the story and she said, “Well…I told Melody that didn’t sound like you, but it just goes to show, you never know!” Carla seemed to get a kick out of the whole story. This definitely was not the woman I had remembered from elementary school. Carla became like a surrogate mother to me over the next few years.

I came out to Melanie over the phone a few days later. As it turns out, going through her divorce was for her like my own “coming out” experience had been for me. It had caused her to question and reevaluate everything she believed. In fundamentalism, divorce and homosexuality are both evil, although I suspect homosexuality is probably a little more evil. Still, she and I both knew what it was like to be scorned by the people of our past, and the bond between us was forged forever.

The results of the officer retention board came out in October. I hadn’t expected anything because of my low ranking after my pro-gay answer. Competition was especially intense and, while I didn’t get augmented, I was given a three-year extension on my reserve contract. Somehow my performance evaluations had helped me surmount my low board ranking. Because of the extension of my time, I could now take another assignment.

I had been at my battalion for a year and was growing restless already. Plus, the mistrust that had come up because of the rumors about me being gay and the bad experience with Tami had embittered me to the point where I volunteered to go to sea for six months the following year. I would lead a Stinger platoon as part of an attachment to the squadron on ship.

The problems at my battalion weren’t the only ones I had. The stress of the many conflicting lives I was leading was starting to get to me. I knew I had to keep these worlds separate, but I longed to bring them together. This tension grew and was taking its toll. I was drinking too much and hooking up with too many guys for one night anonymous flings. While there’s not anything wrong with that per se, my motivation was pure escapism. That had also been my motivation for going out to sea—a literal escape to the far corners of the earth.

Everything gets political sooner or later, and our little twenty-seven-man detachment of air controllers and missile shooters was no exception. The captain I reported to wanted me to be the number two officer in our detachment because I was already responsible for the most Marines. However, the air support officer, Darrin, was a lieutenant with more seniority than me. Darrin had a reputation for being a complete asshole of an officer who was egocentric and his only concern was salvaging what was left of his career. He had already failed promotion to captain once. He raised hell when he found out I would be the executive officer. He got his colonel involved and my colonel got involved and it became a big stink right from the beginning.

One of my personality traits is that I despise confrontation and controversy, which, of course, is the adverse of what people expect of a Marine. I do what I can to assist all the parties in the hopes of reaching an amicable agreement. That’s why I eventually (and naively) wanted to become a lawyer.