Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (10 page)

Julian was a bad influence on Bobby. Bobby displayed a rebellious attitude. At any other high school it would have been considered normal teen behavior, but not at Bob Jones. Any deviation from what was accepted could brand a person a “reprobate.” While Bobby wasn’t a full-fledged “reprobate,” he wasn’t being the gung-ho champion of his namesake school.

In the tenth grade, Julian was expelled from Bob Jones Academy. A lot of our classmates were expelled, or “shipped” that year. I thought of getting shipped the same way I thought of executions. It was terrifying and it would never happen to me because I kept to all the rules.

Shockingly, in the eleventh grade, it happened to Bobby. Julian had returned to Greenville to spend Christmas with his mother. Dr. Bob Jones III had forbidden Bobby from socializing with Julian, but Dr. Bob was out of town and Bobby disobeyed. Julian bought Bobby some beer and Bobby got caught drinking alcohol!

There was a rumor that some men in the university administration didn’t like Bobby and were going to make sure that he never followed his father to the presidency. This was their opportunity and they took it. It was so medieval. While the king was away, the henchmen removed his first-born son. The palace coup was successful, and such was the scandal of a teenager caught drinking beer that the prince was exiled to live with relatives. In Indiana.

Bobby’s expulsion had both an emotional and a practical impact on me. Although our relationship was rooted in rivalry, over the years we had developed a fond admiration for the other’s many appreciable talents. In recent years, I was neither cool nor popular enough to exist in Bobby’s orb but we still considered ourselves friends. I would miss him. Besides, if they could expel Bob Jones IV, they could expel anyone, especially a poor kid from Piedmont with no connections.

I would also miss Bobby for a practical reason. The junior class advisor had asked Bobby and me to co-author a play. This wasn’t just any play—it was the play that would he performed at the end-of-the-year junior-senior banquet.

Bob Jones Academy did not have a prom. A prom would have meant dancing and, because dancing was evil, we had a junior-senior play and banquet instead.

“Mr. Rasmussen,” I said, drawing the attention of a new student teacher in our eleventh-grade Bible class. Those of us who had attended Bob Jones for eleven years knew all the traps for these unwitting hapless novices. “Why aren’t we allowed to dance?”

“Because that would be against God’s teaching in the Bible,” he said. “We are not to give in to the desires of the flesh. Dancing is just that…it’s inappropriate for a Christian to engage in such activities.”

“Hmmm. I see.” This guy was such a dweeb. He had ugly thick brown glasses and we could see dandruff all over the shoulders of his cheap polyester suit. Lots of it. “What about Ecclesiastes 3:4 then? Don’t we have to obey that?”

Mr. Rasmussen looked perplexed. He almost tripped, stepping back to the lectern where he had left his Bible. “I’m sorry, what…what was the reference again?” He began flipping the pages.

I said, “Ecclesiastes…Chapter 3…Verse 4…. Do you want me to read it to you?” Without waiting, I quoted, “‘a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…’ Aren’t we
supposed
to dance? I mean, the Bible says there’s a time to dance. Why can’t we have a prom, then?”

I stopped listening. I knew Mr. Rasumussen would give the standard party-line answer…something about Old Testament dispensation, whatever that meant. God never changed, or so we were taught. Yet the same God that allowed Solomon and David to have as many wives as they pleased had somehow changed that traditional notion of marriage to mean that in the new era a man could only have
one
wife, not many as he had been able to have before.

Yet we were supposed to follow Old Testament laws about a lot of other things. No one had ever explained which laws were to be obeyed or why those laws and not others, but I didn’t ask many questions. Asking too many questions branded a person a reprobate. I might ask these pitiful student-teachers smart-ass questions when the real teacher wasn’t within earshot, but in front of my real teachers, I put on a cooperative face. I was such an ass-kisser.

The truth was that I was glad we didn’t have a prom. I would have been forced out on a dance floor with the girls. Instead, I got to write a play! It would be fabulous and everyone would know I had written it. Bob Jones Academy might seem weird to the rest of the world, but for me, it was ideal.

Unfortunately, writing a play was a big undertaking and, without Bobby, the entire responsibility was mine. I suppose I could have asked someone for help, but only Bobby was a match for the level of talent at which I perceived myself to be.

I locked myself in my room with my manual Royal typewriter and got to work. We were too poor to afford a sleek electric IBM Selectric but that didn’t stop me. I pounded away until the script was complete. The play began as a spoof of Macbeth. What it ended up as was a very campy modern upper-class version of
West Side Story
.

The adviser ran it by the higher-ups and brought me the news.

“They like your play…so do I,” she said. I sensed doubt, however, and didn’t say anything.

“But…I’m a little confused. I know this was going to be Macbeth…but this is okay. But is it
Romeo and Juliet
, or is it
West Side Story
or the War of the Roses…it’s just not entirely clear…” she was shaking her head.

“Well…yes, yes and yes,” I said smartly. “Except I see them as wearing carnations, not roses, the Rockefellers will wear red and the Vanderbilts will wear white…”

“The staging has to be inexpensive,” she said.

“I don’t see how it can be inexpensive,’ I said. I envisioned elaborate gold decorations and velvet curtains and antique furniture…

“It has to be inexpensive. And Richie…you have to change one thing.”

I didn’t like the sound of this.

“There can’t be any murders.”

I was stunned. My play required
three
murders. The higher-ups had all gone completely mad. “They wanted me to do
Macbeth
. How was I supposed to do a spoof of
Macbeth
without any murders? So what were they expecting? I can’t have a play without the three…”

“There can’t be any murders.”

“Okay, okay, then, here’s what we’ll do. Ben and Greg will just receive serious injuries but they’ll live. But Ronnie Rockefeller
must
be killed…”

“How many times to do I have to say it, Richie?
No murders!”

Bob Jones was not known for compromise. My play would be no exception. I thought about going on strike…but I wasn’t getting paid anything anyway.

“Okay, no murders.” I had no idea how this was going to work.

Behind the fortress fences, realities began setting in. Our twelfth grade year they expelled a girl who had gotten pregnant. Her dad kicked her out of her house and she had an abortion. The boy who had impregnated the girl, Lee, was the son of poor, low-level Bob Jones cafeteria workers who depended on Bob Jones for their housing and meals. Bob Jones told them that their sixteen-year-old son could not live on campus. The men in the administration knew the boy’s parents could not afford to live anywhere else and support their other three children, one of whom was disabled and had special—and expensive—needs. The parents were forced to kick their wayward son into the streets. “Tough love.” So much for forgiveness.

But we believed, we believed, we believed. We were good! We were righteous! Some of us went to New York City to preach on the streets to all the sinners there. As godly as I considered myself, it made me uncomfortable to be seen on street corners in this strange, new and exciting place while my Bible class teacher shouted to the sinners through a megaphone.

I was curious about life beyond the walls that had sealed me away for so long. I sneaked away from the group and peered into the windows or talked to strangers in the parks. I met some fascinating people. One man in Brooklyn had never visited Manhattan in all of his fifty years. I just couldn’t imagine staring across the water at the magnificent skyline and never buying a subway token to go over there. A woman sitting on a park bench wrapped in an old deep-red wool coat with cigarette burns on it told me she was from a former planet that was now the asteroid belt and had escaped to earth a million years ago just before her planet was pulverized.

We went to the top of the World Trade Center and saw the whole city.
What a place!
The world was enormous and my little slice of it seemed smaller and smaller.

I lost an election for student body vice president. I had been favored to win but was defeated by a little-known tenth grader. It hit me hard and embittered me against the system. Sources had told me that the student body adviser, Mr. Panache, didn’t care for me and had forbidden me from running for student body president. Some people might think I was just paranoid, but in reality, when it came to my teachers, I was the opposite of paranoid. I assumed all teachers
liked
me. So I was distraught when my friend Dana Jordan told me Mr. Panache had labeled me “power hungry.”

Mr. Panache was an extremely overweight, red-faced science teacher with a high-pitched voice and effeminate mannerisms. I sat at the front table in the class next to the outcast Julian’s handsome older brother, Evan. Because Mr. Panache was so overweight, he had the annoying habit of constantly pulling up his double-knit polyester slacks. When he would do this, it presented the class with the disturbing image of the outline of his strangely small genitalia. Second period for me was a perpetual contrast between the sexual allure of Evan’s post–gym class sweaty manliness and Mr. Panache’s distressing androgynous asexuality.

My friends on the student body committee protested and he compromised by allowing me to run for VP. Knowing that my defeat delighted him burned me up inside. What could I do to get back at him? The system? The world? Myself?

I bought a pack of cigarettes at the gas station.
Fuck them
. I wanted to see what it was like to sin. Smoking seemed an easy way to find out. I gagged but it felt great to know I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. I had done everything right and still lost the election. Smoking was a thrill.

In a pattern that would repeat itself throughout my life, days later I felt extremely guilty for doing something that I had been taught was wrong. I turned myself in to my Bible teacher and told him I had been smoking. It was a minor scandal and the drama appealed to me. I might have lost the election, but I was getting attention. Plus it felt good to get forgiveness.

People find it hard to believe that I didn’t masturbate. Didn’t really have overt crushes. Never entertained a conscious sexual thought and did all I could to kill the homosexual thoughts that seeped into my unwilling consciousness.

There was a lot of talk about masturbation at Bob Jones Academy. The nighttime study hall monitor talked to the boys about the evils of playing with oneself. I wasn’t quite sure what masturbation was, but I knew it involved hands and penises. I didn’t do it myself; I just had a lot of wild dreams instead. All about guys. I’d wake up with stains on the sheets. We weren’t responsible for our dreams, though, at least that’s what Mr. Panache had told us in science, so I never felt compelled to ask forgiveness for having wicked dreams.

The art teacher, Mr. Delaney, only let boys take his mechanical drawing class. Frequently he opened classes with a little talk about the sin of masturbation. Mr. Delaney was a bachelor and was a resident dormitory supervisor. I heard that he left the school years later under what may have been questionable circumstances. His best friends seemed to be the two spinster upper-level high school English teachers.

I adored our twelfth grade English teacher, Miss Denham. She openly praised my writing ability and was pleased that I always met the deadlines for getting articles in to the school newspaper. She and I kept in touch for many years and I sent her trinkets from the exotic places I visited while in the service.

When I transferred to Southern California, Miss Denham wrote: “I’m glad you like your new home. A young man was visiting Mr. Delaney from northern California this weekend. He was telling him how pretty the coast is in that area.”

Mr. Delaney was also the adviser for the school yearbook, the
Academian
. Now that I was not going to be a student body officer, perhaps I could be the yearbook editor. My ego and I were starving for some outward position to validate ourselves. I approached a friend who was a senior and on the current year’s
Academian
staff.

“Kathy,” I said, cornering her after a class we had together. “I was just wondering…have you heard who the editor is going to be for next year’s
Academian
?”

Kathy avoided my eyes at first. “Well, yes. That was decided a long time ago, actually. The editor has to take certain classes…”

I was crushed. But…“What about the staff positions? Surely those all haven’t been decided. I mean, Mr. Delaney had to wait to see who was going to get student body positions.”

Kathy sighed and raised her eyes to mine. She was sweet, but direct. “Richie, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me about this…several of us recommended you…but Mr. Delaney said absolutely not.”

I was shocked. “I…I didn’t even think Mr. Delaney knew me that well! What…what…”

“Apparently he thinks you’re too full of yourself. He talks to Mr. Panache, you know. They’re friends.”

It was a conspiracy!
I stormed out of the room, too angry and fearful I was about to shed tears over this to continue talking to Kathy. Was I really this big of a…a…jerk?

At least Mr. Monroe liked me. I was still going to be the president of my literary society the following year and reported to him for approving the activities I had planned. He was my German teacher and we got along well. But even he had some news for me…