Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (28 page)

The California coastline had never looked so beautiful as it did that chilly December morning in 1994. After six months away, I was back at my adopted home, ready to get back into the gay life I had left behind.

W
hy?

It’s a deceptively simple question with an inversely complex answer. When people ask this question, especially gay men, I’ve learned that they really aren’t asking why I appeared in gay porn. Having sex with hot guys is something most gay men crave. Getting paid is merely a fringe benefit. The reason a young gay man, newly in shape, recently out of the closet, living in Southern California might
want
to be in porn films is pretty obvious. Like Bill Clinton said about his affair with Monica Lewinski, “I did it for the worst of all possible reasons—because I could.”

The question really being asked is more involved. Even though people might not say it aloud, what they are thinking is, “Knowing the way society looks down its nose at porn actors, why subject yourself to the shame, guilt, degradation and embarrassment?” In my case it was worse than that. “Why risk losing the professional military career you’ve worked so hard for just so you can be in gay porn?”

I’m an adrenaline junkie. That’s a reality I wasn’t aware of at the time, but I’m aware of it now. When I think about my motivations to be in porn, I can still recall the rush I got from the thought of being in those videos. I would spend hours daydreaming about what the next video would be like and it made me feel almost high, or what I thought being high might feel like. I knew “drunk” but at this point in my life, the only drugs I had tried were alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. Drug-induced euphoria was still a mystery. But when the phone rang and a porn producer asked me to be in another video, I could feel my neurotransmitters humming feverishly across my synapses. The danger of getting caught made the excitement all the more electrifying.

I crave validation. The money was hard evidence that someone wanted me, that I was desirable. It might not be love, but it was the next best thing. I was worth something and I had the extra dollars to prove it.

I’ve had clinical depression most of my life, another fact I wouldn’t realize until much later. When I made the decision to be in porn, I was in one of those deep, dark periods. The adrenaline rush I got from the thought of making the next video coupled with the validation was a temporary salve to my depression.

I was perpetually broke because I am completely undisciplined when it comes to money. The pay wasn’t great, but it was a lot for the short amount of time spent in the effort.

Most of all, though, I was angry. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was now the law of the land telling me that homosexuality was incompatible with military service. My country was telling my friends and me that we didn’t belong where we were and that we had no right to be who we were.

To hell with all of them
, I thought. But because the policy requires silence, there was no outlet for my rage. I couldn’t call my congressman and I couldn’t march on Washington. The videos provided me with a powerful outlet for my emotion. I would show them! I resolved to be the best Marine I could possibly be. But I was also going to be as gay as I could possibly be, and I was going to do it where the whole world could see.

In December of ’94, I got back from being at sea for six months. While I was away, I had developed this fantasy of how wonderful my life had been before I left. I completely wiped out of my memory how tough it actually was. All I remembered was how much fun I had—going to the West Coast dance club and bar with Philip, Wes, Roy, Jim, John and the other guys I’d befriended. Meeting guys for dating and sex. Doing other things with my friends. I had this idealized notion that when I got back life would be even better than before.

When I got back, however, I was in for a very rude and abrupt awakening when I discovered firsthand how much things had changed in the time I’d been gone. The social life I had embellished in my mind no longer existed.

To my dismay, West Coast Production Company was not the place people went anymore. West Coast, the place that had become my first real gay social outlet, the place where I’d met most of my new friends—guys I now considered to be family—was no longer in vogue, and would soon close its doors. Even though that’s just the way it is in “the scene”—clubs come in and out of fashion all the time—I didn’t want any more change in my life. I wanted stability, and that club, as sad as it sounds to me now, had provided me with a little bit of consistency.

The new trendy place was Rich’s which I disliked immediately. The layout was much smaller and you had to stand in line waiting to get in. For military people, standing in line to get into a gay bar along University Avenue in Hillcrest was not only inconvenient—it was dangerous. When you finally gained entrance, Rich’s was very dark, smoky, and cramped—there was no outdoor area. There was no place you could go to talk. So there was no place I could go where I felt comfortable enough to hang out and meet people.

Along with my social life problems, I was working for a new battalion commander who was a jerk. My new position was the battalion adjutant, which in the military means I was a glorified secretary—handling personnel, dealing with lots of paperwork. It’s the kind of job that other Marines looked down on. Marine officers look down on staff positions in general because they’re just not manly. You’re not a platoon commander or a company commander, you’re not out there in the dirt manning the troops. But it’s not a volunteer position; you’re assigned to it. I had been lucky in the past—for three years I had great jobs: I had been a platoon commander, a battery executive officer, and at sea a platoon commander again. I guess it was my time to do the inane staff job.

In addition to being a jerk, the colonel I worked for was very detached. He was almost absentee. He was rarely there, which was nice, but when he was there he would give gratuitous orders, almost as if he had to prove to himself that he was an officer who could give an order and have it followed. All the subordinate officers, me included, got into the habit of nodding our heads saying “yes, sir,” and then when he would leave we would go back to doing what needed to be done anyway. Day after tedious day, I felt like I was just putting in time.

Because of the DUI that I got back in ’93, everyone was telling me that my career in the military was over. Yet I was committed to the Marines for two more years and I couldn’t get out early. I felt like I was stuck in this limbo until I was forced out, because of this blot on my record. The only bright light at the end of the tunnel was, I knew I wanted to go to law school, so I figured I’d save up money for when I got out and could then begin again.

There was also the loneliness. I was trying to meet guys in San Diego but wasn’t having luck. Sure I was hooking up but, by now, I was craving more than that. I was starting to want a relationship. Maybe “disaster” is too strong a word to use to describe my romantic experiences at the time, but they were most certainly not pleasant. Dating didn’t come easy to me and I had a lot of bad starts. I went out with three hot, young Marines in a row, and each relationship ended badly. I would date one for two or three weeks and then it would just collapse. We’d go out a few times and have a great time, then we’d go to bed and the sex would be hot. But I would fall really hard. I attached myself to these guys too quickly, too easily, romanticizing the entire situation, only to realize they were just after a one-night stand. Of course they would stop calling. They’d give excuses. One guy, the second time we went on a date, told me he didn’t want to have sex again but he wanted to continue seeing me. What the hell was that about? These confusing relationships had been difficult for me and it intensified my depression.

By March I was feeling really glum and down in the dumps. Things got so bad that I took a couple of days leave just to have some time alone. Raul was at sea for ten days so I had the apartment to myself. On one of my free days I was sitting on the sofa flipping through
the San Diego Gay and Lesbian Times
, and in the back pages I saw an ad for a “male model.” I knew, of course, that they were looking for guys to appear in porn films. I started daydreaming about it—wondering if it was something that I could do. It was the same feeling, the same challenge I had when I decided to try stripping. “I’m in shape again,” I thought, “In fact, I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been in before. I wonder if this is a possibility.”

I called the number and some guy answered, “Yeah, come on down, let’s interview,” he said in a very automatic way. It sounded like he’d received hundreds of calls over a period of time. He said I would have to make a tape. I said “okay.” That’s what it was all about, right? Preserving myself having sex on videotape for the masses to watch.

A week later I went down to San Diego to the guy’s condominium. It turns out that this was Rick Ford, famously known in the porn industry as Dirk Yates, owner and operator of “All Worlds Videos,” one of the most successful producers of gay porn. It was the middle of the week. I was sober and very aware of what I was doing. I walked into his apartment and looked around. The place was hideously decorated. Not in a sleazy way, but in a very tacky, ostentatious kind of a way. I mean, I could see his taste. It reminded me of Versailles—over the top with supposed lavishness, festooned with velvet drapes and gaudy objets-d’art. But I thought that, perhaps, this wasn’t the time for doing condo makeovers in my mind.

He told me to strip down. I did it.

It was strictly business. Dirk never came on to me. I’d heard he’d come on to a few models in the past. For example, at the time, I had heard of this Marine whose porn name was Axel Garrett. I remember I mentioned something derogatory about this particular Marine and I thought Dirk was going to slice my head off.

Axel was a Marine that Dirk had picked up and fell head over heels for. The two actually did have sex, from what I heard, and Dirk took on a “sugar daddy” role in the relationship. Axel, however, was a Mormon and he apparently quit doing porn, got out of the Marines, and went back to Oregon to marry his childhood sweetheart. But he couldn’t afford a ring, so he got the money for his fiancée’s wedding band from Dirk Yates. Apparently Axel has recently returned and made some more videos for All Worlds. That must have made Dirk happy. While he was telling me the story of Axel, he had tears in his eyes. I was thinking,
What a freak.
But, hey, who was I to judge? Here I was, a lieutenant, stripped naked, in a condo that looked like a Liberace reject, waiting to be videotaped while I jerked myself off.

Then he asked, “Do you want to watch straight porn or gay porn to get excited, to get an erection?” I told him I’d rather watch guys. He put on a gay porn tape. He gave me some lube. I got hard.

It wasn’t the least bit erotic as far as I was concerned. The atmosphere was so sterile. I was lying completely nude on a bed, but it was like your grandmother’s bed. My friend Steven Zeeland makes fun of these videos, commenting that the room is so quiet and devoid of any real emotion or genuine activity, you can hear the mechanisms in the camera whirling.

I started jerking off while he stood there watching me with the camcorder. Luckily, I’ve never had any difficulty with that sort of thing. I could strip down and get hard any place, any time. Which is a definite plus in that business.

I worked away on myself and came pretty quickly (something that would later become a problem). Dirk handed me a towel and told me he had to send this tape off. I got the impression that this was like a screen test, that he had to send my performance to some porn industry bigwig to see if I made the grade. All very Hollywood, superstardom bullshit. Looking back, I realize that basically this is how he got models to do a scene for practically nothing, which he later edited together in a series called The Few, the Proud, the Naked.

As I was zippering up, Dirk said that he would be in touch with me. “You know,” he told me, “you don’t get to choose who you do the scenes with—that’s what the producer or director does. But we get really hot-looking guys—and you being a gay guy, these are guys that you’d be interested in anyway.” That sounded good to me. As a parting shot he said, “Listen, you don’t want these queens here in Hillcrest to know what you’re doing because they really look down on people in this business, even though everyone watches my videos all the time.”

While I was getting in my car there was that familiar feeling of “what have I just done?” Yet, I knew perfectly well what I had done. I regretted it. I was excited by it. And I knew I would do it again if asked.

It’s funny, it was after I left Dirk’s apartment that I met Steven Zeeland, an author who would become a good friend. He was doing a book reading for a title that had just been published,
Sailors and Sexual Identity
. After he signed some books I introduced myself and told him I was writing a novel about gays in the military. I was thinking that maybe he had some connections to help me get published. We went for coffee.

I really liked Steve. We talked very easily and, to my surprise, he got on the subject of Dirk Yates. Steve told me that he had sent Dirk a copy of his previous book,
Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers
, about gay guys in the army in Germany. Steve never heard back from him. I don’t know what he was expecting to hear from Dirk, but the next thing he knew, there was a porn video called
Barracks Buddies
. So Steve was a little upset because he felt that Dirk had stolen his title without acknowledging him.

I said, “Holy shit, I just met with Dirk.” I told him about the masturbation scene I just filmed and the career I was thinking of embarking on. Steve was nonjudgmental but I could tell his interest was piqued. We agreed to stay in touch. He said he was working on another book about Marines. I told him he could interview me if he wanted to. He said he would like to and that at some point we would get together to interview for his next book.

Dirk Yates wasn’t the only one to take Zeeland’s ideas and anecdotes. Several years later, when Jennifer Egan came to town to interview us for the
New York Times Magazine
piece, I introduced her to Steven Zeeland and they talked for several hours. Jennifer failed to credit Steve in her article, however, even though she had used a line she had learned from him. While writing his book about sailors, Steve had heard the phrase, “It ain’t queer unless it’s tied to the pier” to describe the unspoken navy rule that “conditional homosexuality” during long periods at sea when women aren’t available is, if not condoned, at least ignored.