Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (49 page)

For a reason unknown to me, I decided to bare my soul to this handsome stranger. He seemed sincere and trustworthy. “I tried to kill myself earlier this year,” I shared. “A large part of it was the guilt I felt over the times I had cheated on my partner of seven years. I want to know why I would cheat on someone I love so much.”

Troy gave me an intense but knowing stare. “Ah, that’s why I was drawn to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I call it the ‘psychic limp.’”

I’m sure I looked as perplexed as I felt.

“You know how someone who’s been injured in the leg limps and someone else who has the same injury can spot it because of the same limp. Well, with emotional issues it’s like that. Our unconscious minds spot the same limp. You and I have suffered a similar emotional injury, albeit on opposite sides.”

I was silent, letting this information sink in. He told me what he was doing about his problem and his next announcement caught me off guard. “I vowed to be celibate this year while I figure it out.”

“Hmm,” I replied. “I’ve been celibate, too…although it wasn’t because of any vow!”

Troy laughed again and we talked for several more hours. It was one of those amazing conversations where a total stranger tells you your past, that what you’ve gone through is similar to what others have gone through, and there is hope. Things will get better. But you have to be the one to pull yourself out of the darkness. No one else can do that for you.

“I call those people Angels,” said my co-worker and friend, Kali, the following day at the office. “Usually I find them on airplane trips. I’m glad you met your Angel.”

“For all I know he could be a serial child molester with hacked-up bodies buried in his backyard and stored in his freezer,” I replied sarcastically, trying to minimize the three-hour beach conversation I had enjoyed the day before.

Kali gave me an exasperated look. “So what if he is? To you, he was an Angel.”

Meeting Troy on Laguna Beach was a life-changing event. Or rather, a continuation of the life-changing process that had begun with Buster’s death. Partially because a hot man had paid attention to me, but mostly because he had said—and I had heard—exactly what I needed to hear.

Things do get better.

But only I can make that happen.

Kali also had her own piece of advice for me. “Rich. Why do gay men always think that normal rules don’t apply to them?
You’ve got to get away from Brandon or you won’t even begin to heal!
”

I knew she was right. “But the lease…”

“Forget the lease! Just get away from him.
Leave!
Or make him leave. When people split up, they have to separate, or they don’t get over the other person. Even gay men.”

Kali was right. Brandon had no intention of leaving, so that meant I had to move out. But where would I go?

When I had been in Laguna Beach, I had visited the law office of my friend, Derrick. Derrick had his own practice in a quaint, tastefully decorated office three blocks from the ocean. The office consisted of one large open space with a high ceiling. That’s where the attorney and paralegal worked. There was a loft where the files were kept and the part-time office administrator worked. A small conference room and makeshift kitchenette underneath the loft completed the space. I had casually mentioned to Derrick that I’d like to work in a place like that, doing mostly plaintiffs’ work. I liked the thought of suing the big bad evil corporations like R. J. Reynolds and Exxon Mobil, rather than representing them as my big firm in LA did. I assumed, however, that Derrick had no use for a second-year associate.

In October he sent me a short e-mail. “Were you serious? I’ve got two trials and a half dozen mediations coming up and I need some help.”

The question caught me off guard.
Was
I serious? How could I be serious? I couldn’t leave the security of this big law firm, with my huge salary. I had too many student loans from law school, and too many credit card debts from my days of partying on the circuit. So what if I was miserable here at this firm. I suspected I’d be much happier working in the comfortable environment I had seen in Laguna, but there was no way Derrick could pay me nearly as much as I was making now.

What was more frightening was that, if I worked for Derrick, I’d have to leave LA, meaning I’d have to move away from Brandon. And moving away from Brandon would mean that it was definitely over with him. Forever. Derrick’s offer made me realize that I was holding out hope—faint hope, but still hope—that there was a possibility that Brandon and I could get back together.

My choice was clear. I could continue earning a huge salary but I would have to continue living in a city I didn’t care for and working at a firm I didn’t like. Or I could go to a place I loved, working with supportive friends who cared deeply for me, and I’d be doing a job that was more meaningful to me. But I’d have to admit that Brandon and I were over forever.

I didn’t respond to Derrick right away. As I drove out of the garage under the fifty-story building and turned onto the busy downtown LA street, all I could think about was this choice I had to make. After the last few years, my judgment no longer seemed solid to me. I couldn’t trust myself to make the right decision on my own.
How was I going to make such a monumental decision with judgment as flawed as mine has proven to be?

My thoughts took me back to a lunch a few days earlier, where many of my law school classmates had expressed how unhappy they were in their new profession. How working at these big downtown law firms was lonely, impersonal and grueling. What
would
make me happy? I tried to think of friends who were happy being lawyers. Only one name popped into my head, and he was working at a small plaintiffs’ firm in Orange County, just as I would be doing if I went to work for Derrick. Casey was the only one I knew who sincerely seemed to love his work.

The light at Fifth and Grand turned red. I stopped and instinctively resorted to an age-old tool I hadn’t used in years. I closed my eyes and prayed, “God, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Because I sure as hell don’t know.
I need a sign.
” The driver behind me blew his horn. Startled, I opened my eyes and saw that the left-turn arrow was green.

I spun my steering wheel to the left while still thinking about how Casey had told me how much he loved representing his clients, working in a small office, playing David versus the corporate Goliaths. I liked that idea. But I needed a sign.

The car in front of me hit his brakes and I hit mine. To my immediate right was a sign in front of a restaurant I had visited for lunch a couple of times.

CASEY’S BAR AND GRILL

Only Casey seems genuinely happy with his law work.

It has to be just a coincidence. But I had prayed for a sign. Not only had God given me a figurative sign, it was in the form of something that was—well, literally a
sign!

I recalled the first time I had at eaten at Casey’s Bar and Grill. When I was a summer associate, some of the senior partners at my firm had taken all the summer associates to Casey’s for a two-hour lunch one Friday. It was supposed to be an enjoyable “get-to-know-each-other” type of affair. Unfortunately, I had been trapped next to a summer associate from Stanford who had already declared both her dislike of this firm and her desire to go to work for the liberal activist lawyer, Gloria Allred. To my right was the unpleasant and gruff head of the firm’s litigation group, who also happened to be one of the top donors to the California Republican Party. Neither person was shy about expressing their views on anything. It was one of the more miserable and uncomfortable moments of my life and it had given me my first negative impression of the firm I eventually went to work for.

Still, I wasn’t going to allow this “coincidence” or this “sign,” depending on how I wanted to look at it, determine my fate. Okay, I decided, I’d ask Derrick how much he could afford to pay me. After doing my budget, I decided on an amount. If he offered me at least this much, I would go to work for him. I didn’t expect that his offer would be this high, but if I could negotiate up to this amount, I’d be okay.

Three days later, Derrick sent me an e-mail with the same number I had decided would be my minimum “automatic accept” number. Plus I would make a percentage of the contingency cases that I brought to the firm.

“I can’t believe it,” I told Kali. “While it’s not nearly what we make here, this is a lot more than junior associates are paid at plaintiff’s firms.”

“He must be serious about bringing you to work for him.”

It felt very good to know that I was wanted. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

I accepted Derrick’s offer and gave notice at my firm. Brandon was angry that I would be breaking our lease but I drafted what I felt was a reasonable compromise agreement for our “separation.” Grudgingly, he agreed. I also mailed in the form “de-registering” us as domestic partners.

I saw my therapist in Santa Monica for the last time. I wasn’t sure how much help he had been, although at my very first visit he had observed the need I have to find a God I could love.

I recalled that visit clearly. “With your background,” he said, “it may not be an option for you to believe in nothing. But the God of your parents and of Bob Jones doesn’t work for you. So you will have to find your own God, or some sort of Higher Power to believe in.” I had thought about this observation while walking to my car after that first session. As I started my ignition, the license plate of the car in front of me caught my attention.

2
ND CMNG

What the hell could that mean?
I wondered. Then I noticed. The license plate guard had text on top that read “Are You Ready for the” and on the bottom it read “of Jesus Christ?” With the vanity number on the plate it asked drivers behind it, “Are You Ready for the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ?”

Fuck.
So much for a God I can love. Or maybe this was a joke? I thought about it a bit. The God I would love HAD to have a good sense of humor. Maybe this was His—or Her—way of playing some cosmic metaphysical joke on me. That’s the way I chose to interpret it. The God of my present—the God with the bitchy sarcastic sense of humor like mine, was playing a joke on me by invoking a memory of the awful humorless insensitive God of my past.

Leaving this therapist for the last time, I thought, “Okay, God, if you’re real, I want to see that same license plate on the car in front of me again.” I chuckled at the thought of mortal me testing the Almighty this way. Just by the improvement in my attitude, I had to admit this therapist probably had helped me out a lot. But it would be nice to have a third sign that I was making the right decision. The first had been the Casey’s sign, the second had been Derrick’s offer. This would have nothing to do with the move, but I would view it as God’s way of letting me know I was doing the right thing.

I arrived at my car, a little nervous. What if…? I looked at the license plate of the car parked by the one-hour metered spot in front of mine. Nope, it wasn’t the personalized plate I recalled from nine months earlier. I was disappointed, but my newfound faith remained unshaken. At some point, I reasoned, we have to learn to go it on our own, deciding what the right thing to do is without the benefit of signs.

The street was narrow and with my limited steering radius and bad driving, a three-point turn was required to turn the car around to get back to Olympic Boulevard. I turned my wheel to the left as far as I could and made a sharp turn out of the space I was in. I stopped with the front of my car inches away from the rear of the car parked across the street.

A chill went up and down my spine.

ARE YOU READY FOR THE
2
ND CMNG
OF JESUS CHRIST
?

This was the exact same car I had seen nine months earlier, on the same street. Maybe this driver had an appointment at the same time as mine. No, I recalled, I had changed appointment times since then. What are the odds that the one fundamentalist Christian in West Los Angeles would be parked in the vicinity of my car, and at this time? These were timed spaces, after all, and cars parked here all day would be ticketed. There was no explanation.

Quit rationalizing and fucking accept it already
, said the voice.

I laughed aloud as I drove home, more confident than ever that I had made the right choice.

“H
ow’s your grandma doing, Manuel? Has she shot any more husbands yet?”

“Kind of. She shot at her boyfriend, but missed. I think her eyes are goin’ bad. Either that or she was just drunk.”

Manuel had become a close friend and confidante as well as co-worker. His Louisiana family was arguably more drama-prone than my own. We often traded stories from our past…or present.

“Here’s to 2003!” said Derrick, raising a glass of champagne. “Let’s hope it’s better than 2002.”

“Amen to that,” said Manuel, Derrick’s paralegal and close friend. It was December 31, 2002, and the four of us at Derrick’s law firm—as far we know, Orange County’s first all-gay law firm—were celebrating New Year’s Eve at the Sundried Tomato Café.

“I had a pretty good 2002,” said Joel, another of Derrick’s employees. “How about you, Rich, how was your year?”

“Let’s see. My husband divorced me, my dog died, and I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. Other than that, it was okay.”

“Ha-ha, you win,” said Derrick.

My New Year’s toast had been with iced tea. I was back in one of my frequent periods of not drinking or drugging. I had had too much to drink at Thanksgiving and had devolved into a depressive drunken mess. Despite my stubbornness, it was getting harder and harder for me to deny the link between alcohol and other drugs, and depression. I cut out the booze and other “party favors.” So far, so good and I was getting back into shape. I celebrated New Year’s Day 2003 with a nice long run on the beach.

The move to Laguna had turned out to be a great transition for me. I had been lonely at first in an apartment of my own. After so many years of living with Brandon, it was painful to come home each evening to an empty place. Slowly, however, I learned to enjoy the peace and tranquility offered by Laguna’s isolation from the rest of the world.

Most people think of Laguna Beach, California, as a tiny congested beach town with bad traffic and crowds. But that’s pretty much limited to the summer. In the winter, it is relatively deserted, and even in the summer months, not many out-of-town visitors venture to the magnificent hilltops overlooking the town, beach, and ocean. I visited the place called Top of the World frequently, for both meditation and jogging.

I lived three blocks from our office, which was also three blocks from the ocean. Every morning I would walk to work, dressed in my blue jeans and sweatshirt, stopping by the beach. There I would pray. This was my morning ritual. I’d stop at Starbucks and get my coffee and walk to the office, where Derrick would be burning incense and playing comforting New Age tunes on Internet radio. My depression was beginning to heal.

One weekend at the end of January, I had been looking forward to getting out of town seeing my old group of friends in the Long Beach area. After Jim and John had broken up years earlier, I had developed a separate friendship with John. Fortunately for our tight-knit group, Jim and John remained good friends and now we had all expanded our group of friends by adding Jim’s new boyfriend and his friends.

John and I had grown a lot as individuals in the eight years since I had vainly tried to pick him up at the now-defunct West Coast Production Company in San Diego. We had both been so harsh and judgmental back then. Not only on everyone else, but also on ourselves. Together, we had learned to let go of a lot of the resentful and critical shit that drags a person down in life. We laughed frequently about how ironic it was that John had spurned me for Philip but that now, years later, John and I were such good friends.

None of us had a clue what had happened to Philip.

A couple of years ago, John had met a guy in Florida and, after doing the long distance thing for a couple of years, his boyfriend had just moved in with him. We were going to surprise him with a party for his fortieth birthday. Unfortunately, John called that afternoon to say that Mickey had been having violent stomach pains. We would have to postpone the celebration.

That sounds strange
, I thought. I was really disappointed because I had been looking forward to this, and I don’t like having my plans changed at the last minute. I felt myself beginning to pout.

This isn’t about you, shithead
, said an inner voice.
Your friend isn’t feeling well, and you’re just upset because now you have no plans on a Saturday night. Get over it
.

These voices of sanity were starting to happen more frequently. At first it had been a little unsettling, but now I was getting used to it. It seemed…normal. And it always put things in perspective. Not surprisingly, this voice of sanity sounded just like John.

Late one Thursday afternoon, my cell phone rang. It was my parents’ number. Although one of my resolutions had been to reconnect with my parents and my extended family, it was six weeks into the New Year and I still hadn’t written or spoken to them. I let the phone go to voicemail. A minute or so later the indicator light signaled that I had a new message.

I pressed the button. Upon hearing my dad’s voice, I felt a shock. My dad never called. What if something had happened to my mom? How could I have been so insensitive over the last year not to call them?

“Hey, son,” said my dad’s, slow, soothing voice. “Your momma wants you to call her. Your Grandma Schrader has had a heart attack. They don’t expect she’s gonna make it through the weekend.”

My mom picked me up at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport the following afternoon. It had been almost a year and a half since I had seen her and my dad at Lake Tahoe. I hadn’t been to South Carolina in almost three years.

She looked the same to me as she always had. Momma didn’t seem to age much. She quickly caught me up on all that happened with Grandma, who was still hanging in there, although the doctors said her heart was so weak, they didn’t see how she could last much longer.

Relatives were coming in from all over, although I had flown the furthest distance. Aunts, uncles, and cousins were driving in from Maryland, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Florida. Momma drove us directly to Greenville Memorial Hospital, where Grandma was in a temporary room just off the ER. It was as if the past year hadn’t happened. Right now all that my mom and I were focused on was Grandma and what was best for her.

Momma had warned me but that still didn’t prepare me for Grandma’s appearance. She was ghostly white and her hair was a mess, something that NEVER happened with her three daughters around. She had wires attached to her arms and face, and her gown barely covered her frail body.

“Stay with Momma,” my own mother said to me. “I’m going to see about getting her a regular room.”

Grandma recognized me and smiled and, in a voice so faint I could barely understand her, asked about my trip. I patted her on the head and tried to smooth out her hair and her gown. She kept tugging at the tubes attached to her arm, complaining that they irritated her.

Much to my surprise, Aunt Martha walked in. I wondered if the seemingly endless feud between her husband, Uncle Herbert, my mom’s older brother, and the rest of the family was over.

My mom returned to Grandma’s tiny, windowless room. “Now Momma,” she said in her “take charge” voice I recalled so well, “they got you a room. But you’re going to have to share with another woman.
And you can’t request color.
”

For a split second, I thought my mom meant that Grandma would not be able to request the color of her room.
Why would Grandma care…
then the realization of what my mother had said sank in. Grandma would not be able to insist that her hospital roommate be a white woman.

Aunt Martha leaned over and said to Grandma, “Don’t you worry, Miz Schrader, I know people at this hospital and, if there’s a problem, I’ll take care of it!”

Toto, we’re not in California anymore
, I thought.
I can’t believe I am related to these people
.

In a stroke of poetic justice, soon after Grandma was settled in her room and feeling better, hospital orderlies wheeled in a woman. An
African-American
woman. Because Grandma was closer to the door, the other woman’s visitors had to walk past Grandma to see their patient.

I knew Grandma was feeling better when she whispered to me, “Richie, reach over there and hide my bag for me, won’t you?”

Much to our relief, Grandma seemed to have survived the heart attack. X-rays showed however, that she had had a series of heart attacks that had gone undetected. Because of the scars on her heart from these attacks, it was only a matter of time before it finally gave out completely.

I had been mistaken about the reconciliation between Uncle Herbert and the rest of the family. The feud had something to do about my late grandpa’s land, that was now Grandma’s and a house and God-only-knows-what else. And it was still ongoing. They had tried to time their visits to Grandma in the hospital so as not to overlap, but I didn’t care about that. I had flown three thousand miles to see Grandma and I wasn’t going to leave because the elder generation couldn’t get along.

Of course, I still felt the tension. I guess Uncle Herbert did, too. I knew that everyone in the family, including him, now knew I was gay, and of all my family members, he and his son were the most homophobic. Still, like good southerners, we were pleasant once in each other’s company. We also didn’t want to disturb Grandma.

As I drove to dinner with them, Uncle Herbert tried to lighten the mood. “Hey, Richie, what’s a cryin’ shame?”

Goddamn, Uncle Herbert, you are in dire need of some new material!

“I’ve heard you tell this joke before,” I said while smiling politely.

“Oh…you have?” He remained silent for a moment. “They got some crazies out there in California, don’t they!”

“Well, I’ve lived all over the country, and there’s pretty much ‘crazies’ everywhere.”

“I guess you’re right.” More silence. Thankfully his daughter, Amy, my cousin and friend, showed up, with her husband, my college friend Colin, and their two darling little girls. Their presence rescued Uncle Herbert and me from the need for any more attempts at conversation.

“Rich…Rich Merritt…Melissa said that she saw you.”

I spun around and saw my old friend, Sam Thompson, standing in the hallway near my Grandma’s room. I hadn’t spoken to Sam since he called me after I had been uninvited to our Bob Jones Academy class reunion eight years earlier. Sam was visiting his father-in-law who was also a patient in the cardiac ward.

If I had to run into anyone I knew from Bob Jones, I’m glad it was Sam. After all, he had been the only one to contact me after the school “dissed” me in 1995. I gave him my card and said I hoped we’d keep in touch. I knew we wouldn’t, but it seemed like a friendly gesture.

The saddest part of my visit had nothing to do with Grandma. On Friday my dad came to hospital after he got off of work. As he entered the hospital room I had to sit down due to the shock. He had aged ten years in the eighteen months since I had seen him last. He was hunched over, his movements were stiff and he walked very slowly, with obvious difficulty. Even more shocking than his appearance, however, was his personality. He wasn’t himself.

My dad had always been cheery and friendly. He made people feel good about themselves. At first I thought he must be in pain, but he didn’t seem to be. Instead, his friendliness and cheerfulness were almost bizarre, to the point where he was flirting inappropriately with Grandma’s nurses. He had never done that. My dad had always been a man who recognized proper bounds of behavior. On more than one occasion, my mom got onto him for making a nurse feel uncomfortable. He laughed and gave me a look like you would expect from a schoolboy who’s been caught making mischief.

Considering my other grandma, my dad’s mother, was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, I feared my dad was starting to succumb to the same fate.

As I said good-bye to her before returning to California, Grandma said, “Richie, now I want you to promise me that you’ll become a preacher.”

Knowing that this might be the last time I ever saw her, I was faced with a choice:
Do I lie to my grandma to humor her? But then, that would be lying to my grandma on what could be her deathbed.
I wanted to curse her for putting me in this predicament.

I couldn’t think of a witty diversionary nonresponsive answer so I simply said, “No, ma’am.”

On the return flight to Laguna Beach on Monday, thoughts of my family raced through my mind. It was sad to see them get old and frail, but something more than that was happening to my dad. He wasn’t even sixty yet.

Worrying about my dad’s health didn’t do any good, though, so I put it out of my thoughts. Instead, I thought about my family in general and how different I was from them. Of course, I reminded myself, they weren’t the ones who had changed. They were just like they had always been. I was the one who had changed.

Why did it bother me so much that they didn’t approve of me? Of who I was, a gay man? Of what I had done—gay porn? Did any of them even know? Had
The Advocate
reached the corners of South Carolina? Besides, what was wrong with porn? Consensual sex with another adult. So what? Instead, their attitudes were discriminatory, racist, bigoted….

Who the fuck are you judging, Rich? How many times have I heard you say, “Judge not, that ye be not judged”? You don’t want them judging you; it’s pretty hypocritical of you to judge them, don’t you think?

I looked up and down the aisle of the plane to see who was saying this. No one. Ah, I had begun to listen to God, to my Higher Power. Now she was talking to me. And she was right. My relatives believed what they needed to get them through their day, just like I did. My heart began to feel lighter with this realization. I began to lose the need for their approval and acceptance.

After several months of diet and exercise, I started to look good again. This was always a dangerous place for me, as the validation gay men give those who look good can be overwhelming to those not accustomed to it. And I had not been accustomed to it for a number of years. I first noticed it one Sunday afternoon at Woody’s By-The-Beach, a popular restaurant and bar along Pacific Coast Highway just south of downtown Laguna.