Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (8 page)

I kicked the ball…but to my horror,
it went the wrong way!
I had intercepted the ball from my own teammate and had kicked it directly into the feet of Gerald. He dribbled in place a bit and with a swift kick, passed it cleanly to Chuck, who scored a goal.

Petrified, I stared at Mrs. Langston. She had done this to me. Now I was going to get killed. My teammates, who had been cheering my name moments before now exuded more hatred than I had ever felt directed my way. The other team laughed but I knew no one would dare verbally abuse me with Mrs. Langston standing so close by. As angry as I was at her, she was the only thing protecting me from getting my skinny ass kicked at this moment. I looked at her, my eyes pleading for mercy.

“Okay,” she said, resigning herself to the hopelessness of my situation, “you can go back inside now if you want.”

With lightning speed, I darted inside the building. I went to the boys’ bathroom and cried my eyes out. I tried to remember that good feeling and wondered what I could do to get it back. I wanted the boys to admire me again. If only there were something I could do, something that I could be good at, that would make them like me. But right now, I couldn’t think of anything.

“T
he American Society of Interior Designers 2004 Strategic Environmental Report observed, ‘Gay activists view the Supreme Court ruling of 2003 overturning state sodomy laws that prohibited a number of sexual acts…as the first step toward the implementation of new, more friendly gay rights laws.’”

Over the years, Melanie tortured me by reading sections from the
BJU Review
, the alumni newsletter of Bob Jones University, aloud to me over the phone. She had just received the Summer 2004 version and couldn’t wait to share Dr. Bob Jones III’s personal letter, “The President’s Corner.”

“Why the fuck is Bob the Third reading ‘The American Society of Interior Designers’? He’d probably say it’s just for the articles.”

“Good point,” Melanie responded. “I swear Rich, ninety percent of his rants in these articles are against homosexuality! And it gets better. Listen to this. He writes ‘Housing complexes dedicated to gays are springing up all across America. Advertisers of mainstream American products and services are rushing to buy space in the gay press. They are suddenly aware of the cold hard cash represented by the homosexual community. America is headed for an early grave.’ Ooh, he just makes me so mad…”

“Where are these housing complexes and how come I wasn’t aware of them?” I asked. “Dammit, I’m going to fire my realtor!”

“You’ll
love
this part! ‘God will not allow America to survive the legitimizing and legalizing of sodomy and same-sex marriages. The homosexual community in seeking it, the courts in pandering to it, and the legislators in legalizing it constitute an infantry assault against the God of Heaven…’”

“What the hell does that wuss know about an infantry assault?! And no court has ever pandered to me, that’s for sure.”

“The best part is at the end…‘We appeal to the people for your prayers, financial support, and for the sake of your young people…’”

“Why are you still getting that rag?” I asked. “They haven’t blacklisted
you
yet? I mean come on, all I do is suck dick, but you—not only are you divorced, you remarried, which you know to them makes you an adulteress because ‘what therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder!’ Remember that? Anyone who gets remarried is committing adultery in God’s eyes! I hope they at least stamp a big scarlet ‘A’ on the address label. Then you go and get another divorce. That would be like me dating a black man. Two strikes all in one!”

“Nope. They let blacks and whites date now.”

“So Bob Jones has finally made it into the sixties. I’ll be damned.”

“Yes, according them, you will be,” Melanie said.

“I’ll save you a spot when I get there.”

“I can’t believe this!” she exclaimed. “They didn’t send it to ‘Melanie Runyan’ they sent it to ‘
Mrs
. Melanie Runyan
Burtner
!’”

“‘Mrs.?’ And I didn’t know you had ever taken your second married name.”

“Neither did I. But apparently someone at Bob Jones thinks I should. Just like they insisted on putting my first married name on my university diploma when I specifically told them I wanted it to say ‘Runyan.’”

“I can laugh at all of his fucked up dogma in that letter, Melanie, except for that last part. Those poor kids who don’t know any better. I mean, most of them…fine, they want to be there, let them. But there’s ten percent that are lonely, scared and thinking there’s no one there like them, but their parents or somebody’s forcing them to be there…he’s just poisoning them.”

“Well,” she said, “look at us. We survived.”

“Barely,” I added. “And only by the grace of God. The
real
God. Not this asshole’s version.”

Ironically, or perhaps not so ironically, given the prolificacy of his homophobia, the first time I recall hearing the word “homosexual” was from Dr. Bob Jones III on the university’s Sunday morning television show. We didn’t go to church as much after Elizabeth died so if we stayed home on Sunday morning I watched it. It was called “Show My People” after the verse in the Bible where God commands one of the prophets to “Show my people their transgressions!” That’s what Bob Jones III intended to do. Show the world where it sinned.

One show “Dr. Bob” talked about Anita Bryant—who I knew as “the orange juice lady”—and how he thought she was a courageous woman for taking a stand in Florida against the sodomites. He sneered that you couldn’t call them “sodomites” anymore but had to say the more proper “homosexuals” instead. He talked about how homosexuality was against the Bible and anyone who said otherwise did not understand Scripture. I didn’t know what a sodomite or a homosexual was and there certainly wasn’t anyone in my life I could ask.

Bob Jones the Third’s contempt wasn’t limited to the act of sodomy. For whatever reason, he also detested effeminacy or anything remotely relating to it.

Dr. Jones showed this contempt after the conductor of a nationally acclaimed orchestra displayed wildly flamboyant feminine mannerisms. The conductor and his orchestra had given a special concert one evening on the Bob Jones campus as part of the school’s annual “Artist Series.”

During chapel service the following day, Dr. Bob Jones III said, “Wathn’t he jutht such a thweet fellow?” Dr. Jones exaggerated a lisp and made a limp-wrist motion. The students laughed and laughed. I laughed, too. At least Dr. Bob wasn’t making fun of me. The joke was on Dr. Bob, however, because the guest conductor was in the audience. At least that was the rumor that went around the campus.

Dr. Bob Jones III’s opinions on homosexuality made nationwide news. His grandfather had chosen alcohol as the scourge of the nation and his father had chosen to beat up on Catholicism. For Dr. Bob Jones III, America’s curse was homosexuality. In March 1980, he and other fundamentalist ministers went to the White House to deliver petitions to President Carter opposing extending provisions of the Civil Rights Act to homosexuals.

“I’m sure this will be greatly misquoted,” Dr. Bob said to an Associated Press reporter, “but it would not be a bad idea to bring the swift justice today that was brought in Israel’s day against murder and rape and homosexuality. I guarantee it would solve the problem posthaste if homosexuals were stoned, if murderers were immediately killed as the Bible commands.”

I loved to read anything I could get my hands on. I read so many books the ophthalmologist said that’s why I had to get glasses. The glasses, of course, made me look nerdy and unattractive, which didn’t add to my already low self-esteem. But now I could see further and I began to realize that there was a world that existed beyond a three-foot perimeter surrounding me. Eventually I would have to learn to occupy that world; for now, though, I put on my glasses and buried my face, my mind, and my imagination in my beloved books.

If there were no new books in the house I would read the
World Book Encyclopedias
my parents had purchased soon after I was born. I especially enjoyed reading the sections on other countries and tried to imagine myself in those places, amidst the people I saw in the photographs doing the things that were described in the narrative about that country. The people looked so happy doing whatever it was they were doing, whether it was fishing in the South China Sea, bathing in the Ganges, or chasing kangaroo in the outback. It never occurred to me that I had grown to detest the things that my own people did, like picking green beans, corn, and okra in the blazing summer heat with bugs attacking our flesh, mowing the huge lawn or cleaning the house. No wonder no one took pictures of us for the
World Book Encyclopedia
. We were mundane.

I was drawn to the sections on the military, especially the Navy and Marine Corps. I also enjoyed looking at maps and wanted to go to other countries so it became a synergistic fantasy to think of myself standing on the deck of a Navy ship wearing the same crisp white officer’s uniform I saw in the pictures, charting the vessel’s course over the world’s oceans. I would tell the captain how far he needed to turn the wheel to get to whatever port we wanted to visit. The fact that Navy ships no longer had steering wheels was an inconvenient point I overlooked in my fantasy.

But there was something mystical about the Marines. My attraction to the Marine Corps at this age was not easy for me to understand. My vague imagination had me in a group of men
just like me.
That was so different from where I felt myself now, so emotionally separated from the rest of my extended family and ridiculed by the boys in my class. In my reality, I was lonely, but in my Marine Corps vision, I was happy being one of a group of peers. These Marines wouldn’t scorn me like the boys on the soccer field because I would pass whatever test was necessary to become one of them. They would have to like me then.

My favorite novels were the “Hardy Boys Mystery Series.” I read every one of them and begged my mom to take me to the Kmart whenever a new one was published. The mysteries these teenage boys uncovered were intriguing and their lives seemed infinitely more fascinating than my own. I wondered when Frank and Joe Hardy had time to do their homework.

However, it wasn’t just the boys’ sleuthing that caught my attention. Frank and Joe’s adventures frequently took them to remote destinations in the woods where they had to cross a body of water. Sometimes they swam across a river, other times they might fall into a lake while boating or they might simply find themselves caught in a rainstorm in the middle of a forest. Inevitably, the brothers would strip naked and wait for their clothes to dry. They would use this time to ponder the clues they had uncovered or talk about the next step of their investigation. But I couldn’t get the visual out of my head.

They were naked!

I didn’t recognize this image as something sexual and the fact that they were brothers made it seem okay that they were standing around outside without a stitch of clothing on talking to each other. Their clothes were wet and they had to wait for them to dry and they were detectives discussing a case. It was okay.

But they were naked!

I read and reread those parts. Yum! The idea of dark-haired, eighteen-year-old steady and thoughtful Frank and blond, seventeen-year-old short-tempered and impetuous Joe posing nude in the woods by the river gave me goose bumps. I liked this feeling. I wished that I had a brother I got along with enough to do things like this. Jimmy was just too wild and different. Besides, Joe always did what Frank told him to and Jimmy
never
did what I told him to. I sighed.
This would just have to be my dream.

There was a similar line of Christian adventure books for boys. These books weren’t as interesting as the Hardy Boys books and quite often the “preachiness” of the story overwhelmed any intrigue. These were called the Danny Orlis books.

The Danny Orlis books weren’t as well written as the Hardy Boys books. Frank and Joe seemed so…alive! Danny Orlis wasn’t real. Besides, Frank and Joe had each other. I really liked that part. Danny Orlis was…well, he was alone. Plus, he could be really bitchy sometimes.

Most of all, I started reading the Bible. Not just stories adapted for children from the Holy Scriptures, but the actual text of the King James Version itself. I wanted to know first-hand what God said about things.

My favorite character in the Bible, after Jesus, was David. Not the old David, who, after he became King turned into a sleazy, murderous adulterer. My hero was the young David. Out of all the men in the Promised Land, David was the one handpicked by God to be the next King of Israel. I pictured the young David as tanned and handsome, playing his harp while he watched over his sheep. I imagined that he was shorter than the average man, but muscular, and that he had curly light brown hair with a golden tint caused by constant exposure to the sun. My David had a robust and manly scent, made fresh by a constant outdoor breeze.

I could relate to David. He wrote poetry; I wanted to write stories too. He was musical; I played the piano and the clarinet. He seemed gentle and kind, like me. But he was also a fierce warrior and I got revved up every time I heard the story about how he killed the giant, Goliath, armed only with a slingshot. David was a tender soul, but he was no sissy.

The best part of the David story, though, was his relationship with Jonathan. Jonathan was the son of the reigning monarch, King Saul. King Saul learned that God had anointed David to be his successor instead of his rightful heir so Saul tried to kill David. Jonathan was aware of these facts, but he loved David so much, he didn’t care that David was going to be king instead of him. In several places, God tells us that Jonathan loved David as he loved his own soul.

Because of King Saul’s murderous plot against David, Jonathan and David were forced to meet secretly in hidden places. It was so romantic! Each time they met, they kissed, removed their clothes, wept, or made promises to each other. When David learned that Jonathan had been killed in battle, he tore his clothes, mourned, wept and fasted until evening. David publicly paid special tribute to Jonathan by wailing, “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

I wouldn’t understand the true nature of the relationship between these two young men for several more years. Right now all I knew was that I wanted my very own Jonathan.

As my mind was developing at a fast rate, so was my body. I remember watching a made-for-television movie about the Bible. At the very beginning of the film, as in the book it was based on, God created Adam and Eve. Suddenly Adam was there and was completely naked. Of course, this was network TV; all they were allowed to show was the appearance of nudity, so all you saw was the side of him. Yet you could see his bare ass—not the back of it, and definitely not a full-frontal shot, just his naked side. I noticed he had the most muscular thigh and leg. And he was stooping down as if God was just about to create Eve out of his rib. I remember being so taken with that image.
Wow. The first man and he’s so beautiful!
He was like a statue.