Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (55 page)

I must be breathing in gas fumes
, I thought. Where was I getting these absurd analogies? The West was the West and South was the South. There were secretive people in both places and very open people in both places. The scenery was different but both places were beautiful in their uniqueness.

There was just way too much time to think driving this route alone.
Damn, Texas is one big-ass state!
I remembered a play I had seen a couple of times in West Hollywood, by Del Shores, called
Southern Baptist Sissies
. Del had captured in the play a lot of what I had felt growing up. He had set the play, and his hilarious movie,
Sordid Lives
, in Texas. Both were about the conflicts created in the lives of gay men who grow up in the South.

Southern Baptist Sissies
ends with a line by a gay boy in the church who grew up to become a drag queen. He looks at the sun shining through the stained-glass windows in the church with its multicolored panes and wonders that maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be…that we’re all different, and that’s what makes the world a beautiful place. “Maybe we’re all right,” he says, meaning that maybe the gays are right, but that his fundamentalist preacher is also right.

I have to be inhaling something, for sure.
Okay, enough with the psychobabble.

After a weekend visiting a former Marine buddy in the relatively liberal and gay-friendly Austin, I left Texas and crossed the Louisiana line. I called my friend Manuel.

“I just entered Louisiana and I’m pretty sure I saw your grandma out hitchhiking waving a cigarette in one hand and her leg stuck out in the road.”

Without missing a beat, Manuel replied, “Well, I hope she at least shaved her legs.”

I thanked God for the modern conveniences that allowed me to be no more than a quick phone call away from the people I loved. And I also thanked God for one thousand “anytime” minutes each month with free nationwide roaming. I would desperately need them in the months ahead.

Crossing into Mississippi wasn’t quite as funny. I was less than ten miles into the home state of Trent Lott when I saw the flashing red and blue lights going off behind me.

Fuck!
I thought as I pulled my bright yellow rental truck over to the side.
Maybe the cop will be hot. Ooh! A hot Mississippi cop stopping me…
My mind raced to the beginning scenes in more than one porn film I’d seen.

“Let me see your license and rental agreement,” the very hot cop said in a thick Southern accent.

I pretended to look for the rental agreement while I thought of a way to explain my California driver’s license and rental agreement showing my state of origin in California.

“I’m just moving back after being stationed at Camp Pendleton in the Marines,” I said. “I’m moving back because my daddy’s real sick.” I tried not to overplay my latent natural Southern accent, which had been watered down after years on the Pacific Coast.

The hot cop didn’t show any expression as he examined the contract I had with the truck company. “Well,” he said, “we’re looking for a yellow Ryder truck…but it’s not yours.”

Then he added, “Welcome home. And drive carefully. It’s raining up ahead.”

I know it is
, I thought.

Lake Hartwell separates Georgia from South Carolina along Interstate 85. Entering South Carolina was surreal. I couldn’t recall the last time I had driven this route. The lake brought back memories of happy childhood summers where my dad taught Jimmy and me and our cousins how to water ski. We even had home movies of me sitting on Dad’s shoulders while he water-skied. Lake Hartwell also reminded me of the skinny-dipping episode at Clemson those drunken August nights with the football coach’s son.

I exited to get to Piedmont and the road almost seemed too small for the huge truck I was driving. I felt a sense of panic rush over me.

Ha,
said a voice from my distant past,
you’ve become the prodigal son!

I thought about that story and in lawyerly fashion, I made all the distinctions between its facts and my own.

So I had some wild times, by most people’s standards. Doesn’t mean I am crawling back home, sorry for my sins.

Quite the contrary, my years away had enabled me to gain the strength to be able to make this journey back to South Carolina. Without the support and love of friends who knew me and understood me, and didn’t care what I had done, I would not be anywhere near capable of doing what I was doing today. And I didn’t need to ask anyone’s forgiveness for anything. Okay, maybe I owed some people some amends…but that was different than the fundamentalist notion of forgiveness.

I drove the truck around to the back of my parents’ house where I would be storing some furniture. Oddly my parents weren’t around. I walked inside the house and heard a noise coming from the laundry room. My mom rushed out, smiling, and gave me a big hug. But I could tell she was distracted.

“Your daddy was trying to get his shoes from the closet and he fell. He can’t get up. Stay here while I go help him. He’ll be so upset if the first time you see him he’s like this.”

Tears welled in my eyes and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

Two young men from my parents’ church helped me move some of my things into storage at the house. My mom also had large items that needed to be taken to the dump the following day. Before I returned the truck, my dad rode with me to take care of this errand.

The elderly attendant at the trash dump walked up to the back of the truck to see what I had to drop off. I explained that I had just moved back to South Carolina after being away for over ten years.

Seeing the California license plate on the back of the truck, he said “With all them queers getting married up in San Francisco, I’d leave that faggot-loving state too!”

I’m baa-aack!

My dad didn’t hear what the man had said. I thought about giving the guy a sharp retort but stopped. I looked at the man and thought,
You’re seventy years old and working at a garbage dump. Obviously, life has not treated you kindly. I don’t need to say anything.

Interstate 285 is sixty-five miles long and forms a complete circle around Atlanta. Georgians refer to it as the “perimeter.” During my first week in town I regressed to my days in northern Virginia and referred to I-285 as the “beltway.” I was soundly ridiculed.

A new friend gave me a piece of advice. “Most of these queens wouldn’t dare be caught OTP.”

“What’s OTP?” I asked.

“Outside the Perimeter,” he laughed.

“In LA we refer to the same as being ‘eight-one-eight,’” I replied; 818 was the San Fernando Valley’s area code and most West Hollywood types view “the Valley” with nothing short of derision.

“As long as you’re inside the perimeter,” he said, “you’re safe.”

That sounded just like the military. In the field, the “perimeter” represented the farthest line of a secured area. As long as you were “inside the perimeter” you were relatively well-protected from an enemy ground assault. If you were going “outside the perimeter,” however, you needed to be fully armed and wearing a complete set of body armor.

My new life became exactly like that. In Atlanta, inside the perimeter I felt like I could be myself and let people get to know the real me. Outside the perimeter, I put up my guard, the defenses and shields that I hoped would protect me from a potential attack.

It was a tale of two cities. I usually spent my weeks in Atlanta looking for work and my weekends in Piedmont with my family. Four million people live in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Four thousand people live in Piedmont. Piedmont is 93 percent white; within its city limits, Atlanta is 62 percent African American. Atlanta is a vibrant city filled with youthful people doing youthful things. My visits to Piedmont consisted of visits to hospitals, nursing homes, doctor’s offices, funerals, and tending to my ill father. In Atlanta, I saw plays and movies, and ran through the crowded park on the warm days that periodically happen during southern winters. In Piedmont, with my parents in their living room, I watched the Gaither family singing hymns on television. I felt the contentment in both places that can only come being exactly where you need to be.

I was back to being heavily in debt, with law school loans and credit card bills from the years of partying. Because of three moves in two years and long periods of unemployment, I had not managed to pay down that debt. I also could not afford a car. I borrowed the Toyota truck Grandpa Merritt had left my dad, at least until I could get a job and afford one of my own. In my previous life, I would have been humiliated to be seen driving a truck that wasn’t even mine. But too much had changed and I had too much serious shit going on in my life to care. My dad’s illness and the lessons I had learned put something temporal like an automobile in perspective.

Admit it. You’d still rather be driving a BMW.
I had to admit this was true.

Someday
, I thought.
When I can honestly afford it. No need to rush it.
Plus, driving my late grandpa’s truck reminded me of him and how proud he had been that one of his grandsons had been an officer and then a lawyer.

Atlanta had a Piedmont Avenue and Piedmont Park, and South Carolina had my hometown of Piedmont. My life revolved around the beautiful Appalachian foothills. Surprisingly, except for the rain, heat, humidity, and lack of a visible ocean, Atlanta reminded me a lot of San Diego. Midtown was Hillcrest, the LA Fitness Gym was like the 24-Hour Fitness; each gym had a Starbucks right outside its doors and Piedmont Park was like Balboa Park.

During my first venture into midtown Atlanta’s Piedmont Park one Sunday afternoon, I saw two shirtless guys, each with huge chest muscles and ribbed abs, holding hands with each other. I was shocked. I had never expected to see something like this in the South. Not the South I knew. This was not an unusual thing to see in Piedmont Park.

I assumed that being a gay former Marine would make me a big hit here. I joined the “gay” LA Fitness as I had been advised, and at the beginning of my first workout, a guy came up behind me and said “Ooh, rah, devil dog!” I spun around to see a handsome well-built guy a little younger than me, sporting his own USMC tattoo. This former Marine—and his boyfriend—were two of the friendly, genuinely helpful people I met in my first months in Atlanta.

During one workout, another good-looking guy noticed my tattoo and asked, “Weren’t you in a magazine a few years ago?”

Shocked, I replied, “No one’s asked me that in years!”

Ironically, we discovered later that he didn’t recognize me from the issue of
The Advocate
where I was on the cover. Rather, he was a huge George Michael fan and had kept the issue containing the first
Advocate
story about me. He was surprised when I told him about the porn and the second issue where I was on the cover.

My plan was still that this was a temporary move. I kept my cell phone with my San Diego area code. I maintained my San Diego post office box. I told recruiters that I was looking for a temporary legal position. I still couldn’t think about the reason for saying that my move was “temporary” because that was too horrible to think about, so I just got into the habit of saying it, very remotely, that eventually I wanted to return to San Diego, but I had no idea if that was going to be in a year, five years, or ten years.

“It would be best if you just told people that your move here was permanent,” said a partner at a large old Atlanta law firm during a casual luncheon. I followed his advice as I met with legal recruiters and had interviews at law firms.

“What differences do you expect to find between practicing law in California and practicing law in Atlanta?”

Without thinking I spoke from my heart. “I hope that in Atlanta, being a gentleman isn’t perceived as a sign of weakness.” In my legal practice, I had found the same problem that I had run into in the Marines. Gentility was often confused with timidity. Volume is mistaken for competence. I hoped that for me as a Southerner, practicing law in the South would be a better fit.

I thought this headhunter was going to cry and hug me. “It would be an honor for me to help you find a job.”

Dad was still working, but on several occasions, the manager of the company had sent him home because of health-related problems. Once they had even called an ambulance for him, but he refused to ride it once it arrived, claiming he was better and didn’t need to go to the hospital. The problem was the ALS had already affected his lung capacity and the dust in the plant made it too difficult for him to breathe.

He had to be hospitalized in February after one breathing attack that was especially bad. The manager of the plant told Mom that Dad would not be allowed to work in the factory anymore. After seventeen years, my dad had become something of an institution at the company, and they would always find a job for him somewhere, but not in the manufacturing area.

After his stay in the hospital, Dad appeared rested and more relaxed, but it was clear to me that he would never work again. This was as strong as my dad would ever be.

“Barney said he would find me a desk job in the front office,” Dad told me proudly, “as soon as I’m strong enough to come back to work. Until then, he’s going to keep paying me my regular pay. He said I’m the best employee he ever hired.” For a man like my dad who had been a workaholic his whole life, that faint bit of hope and gracious compliment meant a world of difference.

Dad wanted to go to the plant the following day and have lunch with a friend and clean out his workstation in the back of the factory. “I don’t know where they’re gonna put me in the front yet, but we’ll just get my things out of the back.”

I told Dad that we would leave at ten-thirty the following morning but I made a mental note to be ready to go at ten. Dad had been punctual his whole life and now that his personality was changing, he was even more that way, often annoyed when my mom wasn’t ready to go ten minutes early. The main reason, however, was I wanted to be sitting in the driver’s seat of the car, ready to go so that he could quietly slip into the passenger’s seat without a direct confrontation. I didn’t know if I could deal with that.