Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (4 page)

Even as a child I had been abnormally sensitive to pleasing others. I was always trying to do right, to gain the grown-ups’ approval. It was all the more troubling to me that nothing I seemed to do would please Mrs. Hand. To her, justification for punishment was never a serious concern. If Mrs. Hand wanted to slap your wrist or beat your behind, she’d find her own reasons.

My first incident with the dreaded woman is etched in my memory. Chapel service was a daily ritual at Tabernacle Kindergarten. Students met at the end of each morning to listen to Bible stories and sing children’s songs about Jesus. The teachers would take turns leading the kindergarten in chapel. It was during one of Mrs. Hand’s turns to be in charge that I “earned” her uncompromising wrath.

Our small chapel contained several rows of church pews. By the age of five, I was already fascinated with church pews, primarily the way that, no matter how crowded they became, as if by some Biblical miracle, another human body could always be added onto the end of the row. That belief was in full force one day during one of Mrs. Hand’s chapel services. One five-year-old body after another was pressing its way into the end of my pew, forcing the rest of us to slide down to accommodate someone else.

We all stood as Mrs. Hand was about to lead the group in prayer (I learned early on that God doesn’t like to spoken to by mere humans who are seated). I tried to slide to my right to make room for even more students entering the row. The boy to my right, Lewis, who was significantly larger than myself, refused to move.

“Slide over!” I whispered to Lewis.

“No,” Lewis responded, adamantly. And he didn’t budge.

Even from that short exchange, the entire room suddenly became deathly quiet. I looked to the front and saw Mrs. Hand laser-beaming an evil stare through her glasses directly at me.

“Richie Merritt,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “Go to the classroom!”

Never before had I felt such terror. I walked out of the chapel to the classroom. Alone in the room, I sat in my chair in the darkened room, too ashamed to turn the lights on, waiting, waiting.

Finally, the other students slowly trickled into the classroom, each of them taking their turn to give me the look that in the olden days was reserved for the pagans.

At last she appeared. She glared at me for a while, blinking through her bifocals, then she said, “Richie, do you want to tell me what happened?”

I actually deluded myself into thinking that Mrs. Hand wanted to hear the truth. “We needed more room in the pew,” I reasoned, “so I was just asking Lewis to slide over.” I relaxed a little, convinced that my sincere explanation would win me an acquittal.

Instead of immediately pronouncing me “not guilty,” Mrs. Hand turned to Lewis and asked, “Lewis? Is that true?”

I was offended. Never before had anyone questioned my integrity!

“No,” Lewis lied.

I froze in my seat.

Mrs. Hand removed her paddle from its usual, prominently displayed position on the wall and slowly moved her portly body in my direction.

“I’m going to paddle you,” she said slowly, enjoying the taste of the words, “not because you talked in chapel, which I saw you do, but because you lied to me. Hold out your hand.”

My first public execution and no blindfold. I gave her my hand and she whacked it hard over and over. I opened my eyes just long enough to catch the faces of the other students. Much to my astonishment, they were enjoying this as much as Mrs. Hand. Didn’t they feel any empathy for me? Couldn’t they see what a grave injustice was taking place? Why hadn’t anyone stood up for me?

I did not tell my parents about the paddling. I could not let them know that their little boy was now a failure. All I could do is hope the school officials would not tell them anything and I could keep this dirty little secret. But there were other incidents with Mrs. Hand, and each time was the unbearable fear that my parents might find out.

It was all the more upsetting to me, because I was being treated this way by a woman. She was so different from my mother, Momma King, Martha Rogers, and all my aunts. Before Mrs. Hand came along, I had all these close, wonderful relationships with the women in my life. Then along came this woman who I couldn’t seem to please. I remember being disturbed my whole kindergarten year. It made an impact because it was the first clue that maybe this wasn’t heaven on earth after all. Being good, doing what’s right, trying to please, didn’t automatically mean you’d be rewarded. There were bad things. Bad people. Injustices. Things I couldn’t control. I thought it was
me
, of course, but in retrospect, I see that she was no worse with me than she was with the others. As her student, however, I didn’t recognize that. I just noticed school simply wasn’t working for me. I kept wondering,
What am I doing wrong, that I can’t make Mrs. Hand happy?
Up to that point, and for many years to come, every move I made was an attempt to make other people happy.

There were other things in those primary years that were becoming unsettling to me. You must understand that I was a very gentle boy. I was always closer to the women in my family than to the men. Other than my kind and gentle father, the men were sort of gruff. They weren’t warm and friendly and polite and courteous—all the things that I was. In truth, they scared me. A couple of my uncles, particularly my Uncle Herbert, really frightened me. I also had an Uncle Howard who was very mean.

And when I was about five, my Uncle Robert would always call me a sissy. Maybe it was a joke. I don’t think he called me a “sissy” because he saw me as effeminate. He called my brother that too: “Look at the little sissy.” He’d say the same thing to my cousin, Greg. Uncle Robert would laugh and I don’t know if he intentionally meant to hurt my feelings. But it would bother me. A sissy was the worst thing you could call a boy in the South, and being called that probably hit me harder, because somewhere buried deep inside myself, I feared that I might actually be one.

We’d have a big family dinner and after the meal the women would migrate to the kitchen and dining room, cleaning up. The men went somewhere else—either outside or to the living room. I would always stay with the women. I felt more comfortable with them, listening to their soft, calm voices, except for Aunt Lydia, who was kind of loud. As I got older, the other people in the family began to notice my preference. I recall my mom once or twice saying, “Why don’t you go in there with the men?” These were subtle things. I didn’t let them bother me, really. But, still, they were there and there were other things that were beginning to add to my uneasiness.

Tabernacle is also where I learned to dread recess and the playground. My cousin Amy, who was a four-year-old preschooler, and I were very close. She was a tender soul and I always felt very comfortable with her. We looked alike and felt the same way about a lot of things. Amy and I got together whenever we could at kindergarten. When I was with Amy, I enjoyed the time on the playground. Our meetings were usually limited to recess, however, because we were separated by a grade most of the time. When she wasn’t around, I preferred to play by myself, left to explore the fantasy world in my head. I even had an imaginary friend, Susie, who I often used to replace Amy when she was absent.

One day while I was seated alone on the bleachers, daydreaming, I was jolted into reality by the comment of a girl walking by.

“Look at that kid,” she said to her friend, unmindful that I could hear her. “He’s always by himself.”

I was puzzled. I not only thought the girl was unkind—pointing me out to her friend—but I also thought she was a liar. I wasn’t always alone, I was usually with Amy, and even on this day, I was with my pretend friend, Susie. But of course I could not tell them that.

I watched the two girls as they walked by. Had she intended to criticize me? It had never occurred to me before that being alone was something undesirable. While I enjoyed my time with Amy, I didn’t mind being by myself. Was there something wrong with it? With me? The time I spent with my family was what really mattered to me because, at this point, home was a very supportive environment. As long as I was going to be leaving school and going back home, I was fine knowing that “aloneness” was sometimes an option for me.

I looked around the playground and it was as if I had been let in on a secret—most of the other kids were playing with someone, or in a group. There were only a few other isolated souls on the outskirts of the playground area.

I tried to think of a solution but the alternative to being alone, I realized, was unthinkable. I would have to talk to someone, or worse, play ball. That I could not do. The boys scared me. And so, I stayed where I was. Alone.

The next day, Amy was at school and she and I met on the playground after class, our usual allotted recess time. We were next to the driveway under a tree when a couple of Amy’s friends approached us. I thought that this was nice, we were less alone now and people wouldn’t pick me out of the crowd for being abnormal. I welcomed meeting these girls, and Amy and I enjoyed their company.

Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice behind me. Amy’s face brightened with recognition and when I turned around I saw my dad standing there. He had arrived early to pick me up. I said goodbye to Amy and my new friends and hopped in the truck with my father without giving it a second thought.

At dinner that evening, Daddy said to Momma, “Guess who I saw Richie with today on the playground when I picked him up?”

Oh good
, I thought,
Dad is going to tell Mom that I have some new friends
.

“He was hanging around with a group of girls,” my dad said. Then he turned to me, “You aren’t a sissy, are you, son?” I’m sure he was joking and didn’t mean any harm. But there was that word again! I felt a lump form in my throat.

“No,” I replied, looking down at the table. And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

My father’s statement was another painful awakening. It was the moment—shaded with time, but clear with emotion—when I first had the impression that maybe there’s something wrong with the way I was. I mean, before my father said that, I was okay. I would rather sit with Amy and her friends—the girls. I wasn’t comfortable trying to play ball with the boys. But once my dad pointed out to me that there was something wrong with it, I was caught in this:
I’m not at ease playing with the boys, yet I’m not supposed to be playing with the girls. What the hell am I supposed to do?
That was the beginning of discomfort about who I was.

The following day I was determined to solve the problem. My dad would not have to ask me again if I was a sissy. I tried to play ball with the other boys, but I soon realized it wasn’t working. My dad had been a football player and my mom played basketball. Even to this day, my mom tells a story about how, when I was a little boy, they would take me outside and throw me the ball and I just wouldn’t play. I would stand there and cry. My dad would joke around and look at my mom and say, “Who was it, Ruth? The mailman? The milkman?” I took that to mean that my dad was not “owning” me.

When, a bit older, I did try to play with the boys, I could only do it for a few excruciating minutes at a time. Then I would get their ridicule and criticism. I kept trying to play with them but I would inevitably mess up. By trying to remedy my dilemma I made it worse. Before that usually no one noticed me at all. And as long as no one noticed me I was fine. It was when they saw that I was not able to be like the other boys when it became horrible. I learned the real and terrible truth: the other boys did not want to play with me.

But it wasn’t something I worried about all the time, really. I think I had a typical child’s short attention span, along with a resourceful nature of trying to make things work. If I was rejected by the boys, it bothered me for awhile, and then I would distract myself with something else—like chasing a lightning bug—until it would be out of my mind. At least the conscious mind.

Long before my photo appeared on the cover of
The Advocate
—uncovering my history in porn—my little Southern community was familiar with sexual scandal. Like the time it was discovered that a woman in the church, Hattie May, was having a torrid affair with Preacher Jim, the minister. Preacher Jim’s wife was my Momma’s best friend whom I also loved dearly. She used to read “Winnie the Pooh” stories to me and I’d cry whenever Pooh got stuck in the honey tree. That made the scandal up close and personal although years would pass before I learned what had happened.

In my Daddy’s eyes, Hattie May and Preacher Jim were safe from being damned to hell for all time because he believed in eternal security, meaning, once you were “born again,” you were always “born again,” forever safe in accepting Jesus Christ. I liked the sound of that…“eternal security.” Sort of like a “get out of jail free” card. Grandpa Schrader didn’t agree with that concept. He believed that, even if you were born again, if you sinned, you “lost” your salvation. Over the years, they’d argue about this theological point for hours and hours. Momma and her younger sister would cry because Daddy and Grandpa were arguing. Jimmy and I would fall asleep waiting for the end of an argument that would never be resolved, at least not in this lifetime.

Grandpa Schrader, the godliest man I’d ever known, lay on his deathbed, terrified that he had sinned somehow and God wouldn’t let him into heaven. He didn’t believe in eternal security but he sure as hell believed in and feared eternal damnation.

Religion and relatives, like most of Southern society, are two of the three pillars of my family. Race is the third. The three “R’s” of being a Southerner. Your life revolves around them.

Your race determines where you live, where you go to school, where you go to church, where you shop and where you work. It determines whom you hang with and whom you can marry.

“Richie, what’s a cryin’ shame?” asked Uncle Herbert.

“I…I don’t know.” Uncle Herbert always made me nervous.