Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (53 page)

I awoke one Sunday morning a few weeks later ready to go for a jog through Balboa Park. Running was when I felt the closest to God. My mind focused on nature and on the inner workings of my body and what a wonderful mystery the body was. How my dad’s body was no longer functioning properly. Considering all the microscopic things that had to be in perfect harmony, it was a miracle any of our bodies ever worked.

I had to hurry with my run because Gary Fullerton’s cousin was getting married at an outdoor spot by San Diego Bay that morning. In a bizarre twist of events, Gary’s cousin had met Hedy’s brother at their wedding in Illinois three years earlier. Their romance had blossomed and today was their day to join in holy matrimony. Both families would be regrouping for the occasion.

I had spent the previous Friday evening with Gary and his family at their rented beach house, coincidentally next to the condo I had rented in Oceanside with Raul. It was always good to see Gary and his relatives.

“Things are definitely over, then?” I asked as we munched down barbecued hot dogs. The beach was fogged in and Norah, Graham and Gary’s younger brother and I were all wearing sweaters out on the deck of the A-Frame structure.

Gary and I had chatted about his failing marriage over the phone, but this was the first opportunity I’d had to discuss it with him in person since the spring. “Yeah, so far everything’s going smoothly. No need for you blood-sucking lawyers to get involved at this point,” he joked.

“Good. Make sure it stays that way,” I advised. Changing the subject slightly, I said, “It’s probably too early…but here’s an idea. Why don’t you find you a nice, professional, thirty-six year old woman who has a definite career who’s self-secure and not too needy but wants to be with someone she can have a good time with? She probably knows that her chances of getting married at this point are less than her chances of getting struck by lightning.”

“You’re exactly right, Rich,” said Norah, “that’s what I’ve been trying to tell him.”

I thought about the women attorneys I had worked with and began matchmaking in my mind.

“Let’s just get through this weekend, okay?” Gary said. I had forgotten the obvious. Hedy would be there for her brother’s wedding. Gary’s first visit with his wife in months would be at a public ceremony where they would both be expected to put on a happy face for their relatives.

“Shit, Gary, I hadn’t thought this thing through. You gonna be okay?”

He smiled and looked at me. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

As I finished replaying the memory of my visit with the Fullertons in my head, I hurriedly laced up my running shoes and stepped outside. It was immediately obvious that something was seriously wrong. There was a strong burning smell in the air, the sky overhead was a dark gray, very unusual for 8:00 a.m. A wind blew something in my face which stung.

It’s the fucking Apocalypse!

I ran inside and turned on the television.
San Diego was on fire!
Wildfires were raging out of control at the northern and eastern parts of the city. The Santa Ana Winds were blowing the smoke and ash directly over the city.
This must be what it was like at the edge of hell,
I thought. Soon afterward my family called to check up on me and I told them I would be fine.

The wedding went forward, however. People had flown in from all over the world, from England, from Israel and with a Jewish bride and a Marine groom, they were bound to persevere. The bride looked lovely and acted as if the sky overhead were as blue as the Alps in
The Sound of Music
, despite the hot ash raining down on everyone. In the distance across the bay, the wedding spectators watched one of the fires burning on a hilltop. My eyes stung, but I pretended I was just crying because of the wedding.

“If she can make it through this and still smile,” I said to Norah, Gary’s mom, “She can make it through anything, regardless of her fears about her new husband going off to war in Iraq.”

“It looks like war here,” Norah replied. At this moment, San Diego resembled Baghdad on the first night of the war.

“I hope she’s not superstitious,” I said. “Bad weather for the wedding doesn’t have to mean a bad marriage. Maybe it’s the opposite. I mean, Gary and Hedy had perfect weather.”

“Right,” chuckled Norah, “and look how much good it did them!”

Inside, after the reception dinner, one of Gary’s aunts whispered in my ear. “Rich, why don’t you go ask Hedy to dance?”

I looked around the room and felt sympathy for Hedy when I saw that she was the only person sitting at the head table. Almost everyone else in the room was dancing. She had her face buried in the wedding program, pretending to be oblivious to her isolation.

I had always liked Hedy and had wished things had worked out with her and Gary. When she was “on,” she was fun, sensitive, loving and had a wicked sense of humor. The distance that had grown between us since the couple had begun planning their divorce hadn’t changed my fondness for her. Gary had just needed me to be completely on his side. But now, knowing all too painfully well what it felt like to be alone and excluded, I could relate to Hedy.

“Would you like to dance?” I asked, smiling.

She smiled sweetly and stood up from the table. “Yes, Rich, I would. Thank you!”

We danced slowly. I leaned over and said, “I’ll bet you’ll be so glad when this day is over, won’t you?”

She laughed. “You have no idea!” I laughed with her.

“Poor thing, I know this isn’t easy for you.”

The DJ began playing “Unchained Melody.” “Oh my God,” Hedy said as she started crying. She leaned her head on my shoulder. “This was the first song that Gary and I danced to at our wedding.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” I said. Just then, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Mind if I cut in?” I spun around and there was Gary, stunningly handsome in his dress blues.

“No, of course not,” I said. I let go of Hedy and put my arm around Gary’s shoulder.

The two of them looked at me dumbfounded for half a second then I said in mock surprise, “Oh…I see…you want to dance with
her
…okay.” I took a step backward.

The three of us laughed loudly and as Gary took his wife in his arms to dance, she said softly, “Thank you, Rich.”

Despite the fires, it was good to see Gary again. His affect on me had always been to keep me grounded, ironic considering he was an aviator. I realized that after living and working in gay-friendly Laguna Beach and then in Hillcrest, at an all gay law firm, with almost all gay friends, singing in the Gay Men’s Chorus, my life had become pretty much all gay. It was easy to forget that there were other perspectives. Gary was always a comforting reminder to me that differences weren’t necessarily bad, in fact, I might not always even be right. I liked having that reminder.

“Daddy turns sixty on November 18,” I reminded my mom. “I’ll fly home for that. Let’s plan a big birthday party for him and surprise him.”

Having something to plan for my dad was exactly what my mom needed. She got to work, making the preparations and sending out flyers.

The week before I flew home for my dad’s sixtieth birthday celebration, my mom called with devastating news.

“Your Grandma Merritt died,” she said. It wasn’t a surprise, as the doctors had removed life support a while earlier. And in light of what we were about to face with my dad, Grandma’s death would make things easier. It seemed so horrible to think that, but it was true. Grandma hadn’t even recognized me the last time I’d seen her. She no longer recognized anyone and had been living her own private Alzheimer’s world.

Because of my trip the following week, I wouldn’t be able to make the funeral. It was more important for me to be there to celebrate my dad’s life.

I flew into the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport for the second time of the year. My mom greeted me inside the airport but said my dad had waited in the car because he didn’t have the energy to walk from the parking lot into the terminal.

“We got here a little early,” she continued. “We were waiting out by the curb and the security guard told us we had to move. Your daddy got so mad I thought he was going to try to jump out of the car and hit the guy.”

That was unusual behavior for my normally mild-mannered dad. I had heard stories that when he was a teenager he had displayed a temper, but I hadn’t seen it and it was hard to imagine an airport security guard triggering him off.

“The guard was as nice as he could be,” she said. “I think he got upset because I told him to do what the guard said.”

At the car, I noticed my dad’s condition was significantly worse than just nine months before when I had flown to South Carolina after Grandma Schrader’s heart attack. His personality continued to change. Everything I had read about ALS said that it didn’t affect the mind, but I didn’t see how a diagnosis like that couldn’t have an impact on someone’s emotions, psychology, and thought processes.

He was still fuming about the security guard incident. Momma sat in the backseat and I climbed in on the passenger side. Considering my dad’s condition and temperament, I was anxious about his driving. After a quick stop to see Grandma, we came to a stop sign in downtown Greenville where we had to turn left onto a busy street. Looking left, I saw we’d have to wait a while before an opening to make the turn. To my horror, I felt the car lunge forward across the highway, swerving left and oncoming cars blew their horns in both directions. Instinctively, I shouted directions, telling him to pull over the least crowded lane.

“What the f…!” Fortunately I stopped myself before the “f” sound was audible.

Dad laughed as we proceeded on our way home. “Did you see that woman?” he asked, referring to the driver of the car that had come closest to hitting us. “Women drivers!” he declared with obvious contempt.

This was not the dad I knew. While my dad’s opinions about gender were to the right of my own, I had never known him to be a sexist. We made it to the house safely but I promised myself I’d never again ride in the car with him.

I saw my brother Jimmy for only the second time since our heated and drunken argument two years earlier. We didn’t have much of a chance to talk in February when Grandma was in the hospital, but now we both decided to go on a shopping trip together to get our parents a new television and DVD player for their Christmas gift from the two of us.

“Listen,” I began, “what happened in Annapolis…that was just…that was just from too much alcohol. I don’t have any hard feelings toward Momma and Daddy. I’ve come to understand over the last year or so that they did the best they could. I don’t blame them for anything.”

Jimmy didn’t say anything, which was pretty much the way he responded to most things. He was driving his truck and I was sitting in the passenger seat, so it was hard to tell what he was thinking without being able to gauge his facial expression.

“I’ve quit drinking,” I said, “and using drugs. I’d done some of that, too, but I stopped all of it. It just stopped being fun. After Brandon and I broke up it was hard, real hard, to deal with everything. But things are going better now. But only because I just stay completely away from beer, and anything else like that.”

Jimmy commented that he realized he had a drink or two too much occasionally. His comment was meant to bridge the gap between us, or that’s how I took it. When it came to expressing emotions, I took after our mother’s family. I laugh a lot, I cry openly, I pout and throw temper tantrums, and am just generally very dramatic. Jimmy, on the other hand, was just like the Merritts. In other words, he didn’t express his emotions much at all, at least not readily.

“Daddy’s doing real bad,” he said. “What do you think is going to happen?”

“It’s only going to get worse,” I answered. “But honestly…I don’t think it’s just the Lou Gehrig’s disease. I think something else’s going on. Everything I’ve read says that ALS doesn’t affect the mind.”

“I’ve thought the same thing,” Jimmy replied.

We chatted a little about his job, about how new owners were buying the swimming pool construction company from our aunt. If they didn’t want to keep him on as a manager, he would probably return to the Carolinas. It would help our parents if he were closer.

Returning to the topic of our dad and his health, I said, “He shouldn’t be driving.”

“Do you want to be the one to tell him to stop?”

Dad wanted to continue working as long as possible, but the problem was that the only way he could do that was to drive his car fifteen miles up Interstate 85 to the factory where he worked. Only five years ago, Dad had made Grandpa Merritt surrender all the keys to his cars and trucks. Dad said that was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. At the time I hoped it would be thirty more years before I had to go through that. Unfortunately, God or nature or just plain fucked-up fate had a different plan.

Jimmy and I decided for now to let our mom handle the driving issue.

Our dad’s party was a success and he broke down and cried when he realized what we had all done for him. Only twice in my life had I seen my dad cry, and that was at Elizabeth’s funeral and at my Grandpa Merritt’s funeral. It was unnerving, but a reminder that the future was going to require every bit of strength I could manage. It was comforting to see how the people from my parents’ church rallied around them at this time. This was what churches were supposed to do.

Well over a hundred family members and friends from the Piedmont, South Carolina, area showed up. Mostly, they were conservative Republicans and fundamentalist Christians, the kind of people who had made George W. Bush the president. For so many years I had looked at these people as “the enemy.” I almost chuckled at the thought. None of them were very wealthy, attractive, in shape, or sophisticated.
Why was it again that I feared them?
I couldn’t remember. My dad’s condition put things in perspective and our differences didn’t seem important now, at least not to me. Republican or not, all I knew was that now these people were all here to help my parents in their time of need. For that, I loved them all dearly.