Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (36 page)

The scene stayed with me because I had grown to understand what the black servant felt. I had heard General McCorkle tell a few queer jokes and tell his subordinate commanders that under no circumstances were they to permit homosexuals to remain in the Marines. The law was clear. I often felt just like that black servant. A battle raged within me. My rage toward the general had never reached homicidal proportions, but I cringed and grew inwardly angry every time he told an antigay story. Still, I had grown to love him like a father and, as with my own real father, forgave him his shortcomings.

But Bob Dornan was too much. There was no way I was going to kiss his ass, not without a fight at least. It was late Friday afternoon and I hatched a plan. I called Bossy.

“Bob Dornan is going to be flying an F/A-18 on Monday afternoon,” I informed Bossy

“So what?” asked Bossy in his typical matter-of-fact fashion. “Who’s Bob Dornan? Why would anyone care about that?”

“Because,” I explained, “why does a lame duck asshole like Dornan need to be flying an F/A-18? It costs taxpayer money to fly those things.”

“Costs money?” Bossie exclaimed sarcastically. “Well, we can’t have that.”

“I know, call the
LA Times
. There’s a woman who’s written quite a few articles about Dornan. She’ll love to hear about this.”

General McCorkle was also not very pleased about Dornan’s plans. He never allowed civilians to fly in military aircraft, not in his Aircraft Wing. But he took orders, too, and he had been ordered to allow Dornan to fly in the F/A-18.

Monday at noon, the staff secretary took a call from the Public Affairs Office. “Shit! General, the
LA Times
wants to know if it’s true that Dornan is flying in an F/A-18 this afternoon.”

Inwardly, I absolutely glowed with satisfaction. Outwardly, I remained stoic. Oh dear, Bossy and I had committed treason of the highest order.

“Didn’t take the ninjas no time, did it?” asked the general.

We were spared the obligation to greet Dornan at the gate, but General McCorkle insisted on catching up with him at the end of his flight. Not one, but two two-seater F/A-18 Deltas had gone up that afternoon, with soon-to-be-ex-Congressman Dornan in the back seat of one. We arrived at the squadron just in time to watch the two jets return from their afternoon flight over the desert.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just Dornan himself. His wife was there, along with his children and grandchildren. It was like a B-1 Bob Beehive. His son, Mark, was videotaping the whole event. They knew this would likely be the last time Dornan got to use his position to attain what he loved, a flight in a military aircraft. Dornan was most notorious for having crashed military jets in the 1950s.

I’m sure it’s not my preconceived opinion that made me view Dornan as arrogant and obnoxious. I had heard some people describe him as charismatic. Well, his so-called charisma was certainly not evident on that day. Sure, he was a large man who commanded attention, but I found him to be egocentric and oblivious to everyone else around him, including General McCorkle. Few people were oblivious to General McCorkle.

I remained stone-faced even as some of the young pilots in the squadron laughed and joked and had their pictures taken with Dornan. I felt like I was in the presence of Satan, or more like a closeted Jew in the presence of Hitler. Here was a man who hated me and my people, who had used his power and position to do all he could to make our lives as difficult as possible. If only I had a knife, I probably wouldn’t have been as forgiving as the servant in that movie about George Wallace.

But no, I reminded myself. The fact that Dornan was here today, on his way out, was proof that ultimately good does prevail. Just like Dornan had been kicked to the curb, so too would other injustices fall, like “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The following morning, the
LA Times
ran a story about how B-1 Bob Dornan had taken a useless ride in a military jet at taxpayer expense. That night on the evening news, the Pentagon spokesman was grilled about it and two of the national networks ran stories about the Dornan joyride.

“The ninjas will get you every time,” said General McCorkle as he handed me the Pentagon’s daily press clippings containing the story.

A few months later, Dornan’s replacement visited El Toro. General McCorkle jokingly asked Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, “How ’bout you? You wanna go up for a ride in an F/A-18?”

“No, General McCorkle,” she said with a laugh, “I’ll just take the ground tour, if that’s all right with you.”

I was part of a team that accompanied Sanchez as she took her first tour of a military base. She ate in the chow hall with a small group of Marines, most of whom had no idea who she was. They had made sure that the first female Marine pilot, a young captain who has just checked into Tustin, was present for Sanchez’s tour.

At the end of her visit, I drove her back to the front gate, where she got in a small car with the one aide who had accompanied her to the base. The rigors of her new job had exhausted her, and she seemed tired and completely worn out. Adding to her stress was the fact that Dornan’s legal challenge was ongoing and the future of her seat in the Republican-controlled Congress was not yet certain. But to me, a political buff, Loretta Sanchez was a glimmer of hope that things were headed in the right direction.

Another VIP visit that loomed on the horizon was by Congressman Sonny Bono. He was a rising star in the Republican Party and the generals had been told that he was friendly to the Marine Corps, so they were to give him the royal treatment.

“All those years I was busting my ass to make general,” mused General McCorkle on the eve of Bono’s visit to Miramar, “I never thought I’d have to kiss the ring of Sonny Bono.”

Fortunately for General McCorkle, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made a surprise visit to southern California and he had an excuse to back out of the Bono visit, sending a one-star general in his place. I, on the other hand, was one pissed-off Marine. I had come so close to meeting Cher’s ex-husband in person!

I had become closer to my editor at the
Navy Times
. Cathy and I e-mailed each other almost every day, and she frequently complimented me on my writing. I asked her some questions about her background.

Her response shocked me. “I got my degree in journalism from Bob Jones University,” she replied. “You’ve probably heard of it, since you’re from South Carolina.” How had I not figured this out? How had I let myself get so close to a fundamentalist without knowing who she was? The agenda that I had for my column might be a little more difficult to follow now but maybe I could make it work to my benefit. I’d just have to be smart about how I handled her.

General McCorkle attended over a dozen Marine Corps ball ceremonies that year. I only had to be present at two of them with him. Both times he asked me where my date was.

I talked vaguely of a girlfriend, but I always made the excuse that she worked a lot of hours. I was asked about my nonexistent girlfriend an awful lot. Much more than I had ever been asked about my private life when I was at the air defense battalion. The general, his wife Kathy, and I attended hundreds of receptions, dinners, and other events to which it would have been perfectly appropriate for me to bring a date. I told him that being his aide was a full-time job and that I didn’t have time to take care of him at these social events, and meet the needs of a date or a girlfriend. That excuse worked well up to a point, but I could tell he was growing curious. Why did I never have a date?

I had grown weary of the practice of bringing a “stunt babe” or a “beard” to official functions. Especially after my disastrous second episode with trying to pass off Tami as my girlfriend, I had grown really uncomfortable using my female friends like that.

The truth was, I was growing weary of a lot of things about the Marine Corps. As a general’s aide, I saw how politics and money permeated every aspect of decision-making. I also saw that, above the rank of captain, most officer positions involve a lot of staff work to appease the mood of a higher-ranking staff officer. I hadn’t seen too many happy faces among the senior officers I had encountered in my year with General McCorkle. During my hell year as the aide, I had quit thinking of my future in the Marines, but as the year wound down, it was time to think about it again. What was I going to do?

“Rich,” said General McCorkle, “your battalion commander told me that he was going to make you a battery commander when you’re through up here. Is that still the case?”

“Yes, General.” In addition to receiving the Navy Commendation Medal, my reward for faithful service as an aide would be the command of my own air defense missile battery. Ninety Marines, more or less, would be mine for a year and a half. It was the job I had always wanted in the Corps, but never thought I’d have.

General McCorkle taught me a few lessons about life I’ll never forget. Days before each promotion list would come out from Headquarters Marine Corps, he’d find out which of his lieutenant colonels and colonels were getting promoted and which were heading toward retirement. The general would personally visit each of his officers to let them know their fate. Some of the visits were joyous, but most were brutal as the pyramid shape of the rank structure forces out most officers at each rank.

“Professional jealousy is the most powerful force in the world,” he said as he slid into the backseat of the car after an exceptionally awkward visit with a disgruntled lieutenant colonel.

Other, happier times, he’d joke with the Marines. A general with a sense of humor was rare, so the Marines appreciated General McCorkle’s dry wit. He’d say that if they weren’t safe working around the aircraft, he’d be the first one around to pick up their watch and wallet from their corpse since they wouldn’t have any use for it anymore. The senior enlisted Marines at his previous command had given him a plaque with dozens of watches and wallets plastered to it as a farewell gift.

A female sergeant major at Miramar impressed him one day when she said, “Aw, General, don’t be wimp! Watches and wallets ain’t nothin’! You should rip the gold right outta their teeth, now that’s worth something!”

General McCorkle’s favorite saying, by far was, though, was after one of those thousands of events when someone would make a dumb-shit mistake.

“The world is run by idiots,” he’d say after a hotel’s front desk clerk miscalculated his bill or a defense contractor’s secretary wrote down a phone message incorrectly.

“Well, you know, as a two-star general,” I’d say, hoping to put him back in a good mood, “most everyone would agree you’re one of the people running the world.”

He’d let out a low laugh, like an engine rumbling to life. “Heh-heh, that’s right, ain’t it?” Toward the end of my time as his aide, he’d add “We sure are gonna miss you, Captain Merritt.”

Most of the time he’d catch a quick half-nap during our many hours in the staff car along the five.

“I wonder what type of music he likes,” the driver said quietly early in our tour.

Before I could guess, we heard a low voice in the back respond “Twisted Sister!” He was no ordinary general, a fact he pointed out to me a lot.

Once after a half hour of silence in the car, he popped to life and asked, “Do you believe in conspiracies, Captain Merritt?”

By the end of my year as his aide, I was accustomed to General McCorkle’s off-the-wall questions and comments. This one didn’t throw me and I answered honestly. “No. I think most things that seem like conspiracies are just an unintentional collaboration of incompetence or freak accidents.”

“I agree,” he said. “When I was younger, I always thought people up top had to be geniuses and there had to be a sinister plan behind all the fuckups that happen. Now…let’s just say I know better.”

Personally, I’d screw up one thing or another at least a dozen times a day, which I’m told isn’t bad. Some screwups were worse than others, however. The general had a photographic memory and knew the name of almost every major or higher in the Third MAW. For the few he didn’t know, I would find out their name for him so that he could introduce himself. Once, however, he flew a Cobra helicopter to Yuma and there was no room for me to accompany him. I wrote down the names of every person I thought might attend the event.

When he returned to the Camp Pendleton airfield that night, he took off his flight helmet and handed it to me and ran his long fingers through his thinning hair.

“Colonel Smith’s wife is named Barbara not Deborah,” he growled, giving me a piercing stare that reinforced how badly I had fucked up.

He didn’t speak to me for a day and a half. I knew he had forgiven me when he said, “Rich, just think. You’ve got the highest goddamned GCT in the Third Marine Aircraft Wing and look how badly you fuck things up sometimes. So when you take command of your battery, just remember to have a little patience with your men. Not everyone has been so blessed.”

When my tour was up, I took a week’s leave and my parents and Jimmy visited me. I wanted them to meet the general so I called the new aide to find when he might have two or three minutes on his schedule. We entered the office suite from the front entrance and I heard the general’s low but booming voice from his office in the back corner. I stopped at the aide’s desk.

“We’re running late…just like always, as you know,” said Trent, the new aide. Trent looked exhausted and had dark spots under his eyes.
Man, it’s only been a week!
Poor guy.

“I’ll just say a quick ‘hi’ and then we’ll bolt,” I promised.

My parents were lined up along the hallway leading out of the general’s line of sight. He spotted me, however, talking to Trent and shouted, “Rich Merritt, what the fuck are you doing up here on your time off?”

I cringed and looked at my mom. Her eyes were as big as the planet Jupiter. The fright she had felt at first just being in the command suite of a marine general quickly turned to her more comfortable feeling of righteous indignation. My dad and brother tried hard not to laugh. I was petrified, caught between my general’s typically Marine disposition and my mom’s standards.