Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star (54 page)

“I
t sounds regressive.”

Obviously my therapist didn’t approve of what I had just said. “Regressive” was never a positive endorsement of any plan.

“You have this tension between what you’ve been taught, and what you’ve experienced.”

No shit. I’m paying you to tell me this?

“Look at you—you’ve traveled the world, been a Marine, a general’s aide, you’ve commanded Marines—the toughest of the tough. You were an attorney at a tough firm, still are. You’ve had worldwide publicity, on the cover of the
New York Times Magazine
. You’ve been around powerful men; you know what it’s like to be a powerful man, a man in control. Yet you want to go home to your mother and father.” He frowned and gave me a puzzled expression.

“Well, when you put it like that,” I said, a little disappointed. “I’ve just been worrying about my parents so much…”

“Your parents are going to be fine; I mean, your dad has your mother, they’ve got insurance, they can get help. But you…you’ve built a wonderful adult life for yourself here.”

The therapist leaned closer. “You’ve got to learn how to live with this tension between your past and your present. You cannot correct what you perceive to be the mistakes of your past. I think that, by going back to South Carolina, that’s exactly what you are tying to do.”

Perhaps he was right. I had been frustrated with my job and my low salary and had not had any luck finding anything better. I had looked into buying a house in San Diego, only to discover that the only thing I could afford was a one-bedroom condo in a shitty part of town. On top of that, what if I still had some residual guilt, over not doing what was expected of me, as a good son? I had never gotten married and produced grandchildren for my parents. I hadn’t become a Baptist minister. But I could go back now and right some of that wrong by helping out.

“You’re right,” I said. “I would be going back for the wrong reasons.”

I didn’t feel any better, though.

I worked throughout most of the holidays and spent the time in southern California with friends. I saw Gary Fullerton once the Sunday night before Christmas. We ate dinner at the In and Out Burger in Oceanside, where he was house-sitting for his cousin.

He no longer seemed depressed over his separation from Hedy, and the imminent divorce. As far as the stages of grief went, he was definitely in the anger phase.

“I think that, someday, she’s going to realize just how much and what I did for her,” he said. “And she’s going to wish that she had taken our marriage a little more seriously.”

I listened sympathetically. No doubt, Brandon felt the same way about me.

“But, Gary,” I started. How to say this? “It sounds to me like just maybe you’re partly hoping that something happens down the road…something bad happens to her—she goes bankrupt, or her career doesn’t pick up, I don’t know…but you can’t take that forward with you. You’ve gotta let go of this resentment, or else it will eat you alive. Take it from someone who knows.”

We ate our cheeseburgers in silence for a minute or two, and he finally admitted, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. This is going to take some time, though.”

“It always does but, knowing you, you’ll get over your resentment a lot faster than I’ve gotten over mine.”

It had taken me years, but I could tell I was nearing the end of any resentment I still harbored toward my family, at least toward my parents. I couldn’t stop thinking about what they were dealing with. The new year started but I didn’t feel festive. I kept picturing my dad, getting weaker by the day, his muscle strength slowly ebbing away. My mom would be taking care of all of his needs soon, even more than she was doing now.

Jimmy told me that the new owners of our aunt’s pool company wanted to hire him on and even give him a small percentage of ownership. For Jimmy, it was an ideal situation. But it would mean that he would remain in Maryland, almost six hundred miles away from our parents.

My mind raced back and forth between the pros and cons of returning to South Carolina. There were a million arguments I could make against retuning to a place where I had felt so unwelcome, misunderstood and unappreciated. Where I was condemned for being born a certain way. Where the mosquitoes came out in force every summer.

Was I wanting to do this because I was basically an unhappy person who always had to keep moving looking for satisfaction somewhere else? Was this just because I didn’t like my job and I hadn’t been able to find one I liked, so I wanted to run home for Momma and Daddy to take care of me, but to use my dad’s illness as an excuse to cover my true motivation? Was I just trying to correct the mistakes of the past, still trying in vain to gain the acceptance and approval of a family that was never going to give me either?

Fuck. I’ve had way too much therapy.

As the weeks progressed, the importance of the only “pro” I could think of for returning to the South grew and grew. My parents needed me. I had spent most of my adult life resisting what I felt were the emotional needs my mother had placed on me as a child. But now, this wasn’t an irrational, clingy emotional need. This was real. My dad was losing the ability to move, to eat, and to breathe, and my mom simply could not take care of him all by herself. She was a strong woman, but what lay ahead of her would take the strength of a small army.

If there was ever a time to rally as a family, this was it.

I looked online and found a position for temporary contract attorneys two hours from my parents’ house in Columbia, South Carolina. I talked to a recruiter who said I would be ideal for the position. I could live in Columbia during the week and visit my parents on the weekends, and maybe even work from their house as I needed to. Much legal work is online now and can be done anywhere there is Internet access. The South Carolina bar exam would be given in a few weeks. Maybe I could walk in and…

What are you doing? You’re finally where you want to be, and now you want to give this up to return to a place where they hate people like you?

I wanted to fire the committee that was holding this meeting inside my head. Since I couldn’t, I did the next best thing. I went for a run through Balboa Park. It was the middle of January and sixty-eight degrees—perfect running weather. I even ran with my shirt off and got a few stares from hot guys as I ran across University Avenue in Hillcrest.

How can I give this up?
I couldn’t decide what to do. On my run, I prayed a little bit, asking God for her guidance. I trusted myself more these days and had stopped relying on signs, but this might be one occasion where a little divine help would nudge me in the right direction.

I finished my run back at the townhouse Mick and I shared. He had just arrived home and was really pissed about something.

“Look at this! This is bullshit. Auntie Joan has really gone overboard this time.”

Auntie Joan was our nickname for the Wicked Witch of the West, also known as the property manager for the townhouse we were renting.

He handed me a sheet of paper.

“An eviction notice?” I exclaimed. “What the fuck is this about?” We were on a month-to-month lease and the eviction notice gave us thirty days to vacate the premises.

“Well…the security guard
claims
that Diesel bit him one night when we were both out and he was on the patio.”

I looked across the room at the Rottweiler. “Okay, that’s fucked up,” I said. I walked over and petted Diesel’s head. He lowered his eyes as if he knew he was the cause of something bad. “This is the sweetest dog I’ve ever seen.” It was true. Diesel had disproved everything I’d ever heard about Rottweilers being mean and vicious.

Mick and I both suspected that the guard was merely trying to set the association up for a lawsuit, but we also knew that, with a month-to-month to lease, thirty days notice was all it took to force us out of there.

Hello, shithead, weren’t you asking for a sign?

I almost dropped the eviction notice. Now I had to move. I needed a new job. I couldn’t afford a place of my own. I didn’t have a boyfriend.
What is keeping me in San Diego?

Other than the fact that almost all of my friends were in southern California and I was licensed to practice law only in California, I had no concrete ties to San Diego. Except that San Diego was where I wanted to be.

But not right now.

Over the next two days, I sought advice from many people whose opinions I respected. I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing.

“This is the last thing I ever thought I’d hear you say,” my mom said. I could hear the joy in her voice. I began to feel a calmness—a peace I hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Rich, the people in South Carolina don’t
get
you.” As expected, the therapist seemed to disagree with my decision. He looked out the window for a brief second. “Columbia…how far away from your parents is Atlanta?”

Atlanta’s in Georgia
, I thought. My parents were in South Carolina, a whole state away. Then I realized what he was saying.
Why hadn’t I thought of this?
All at once, I knew exactly what I should do.

“Two hours,” I said. “The same distance as Columbia. I just hadn’t thought about Atlanta, because, well, I don’t know why!”

“Atlanta’s a progressive city, with a vibrant, supportive gay community. In Atlanta, there will be people there you can turn to. Drive two hours on the weekend, see your parents, be there for them, but then you’ve got a real home to go to…a home with the right kind of environment for you. Plus the jobs are better. Besides, Atlanta is a town with ambitious, energetic people. Much more so than San Diego. People move here because of the weather. Because they don’t want to be bothered and stressed out. Move to Atlanta.”

In my mind, I was already there. But it would be a temporary move. That was a promise I had to make to myself. Someday I’d return to San Diego. I couldn’t think about that, though, because that wouldn’t happen until…until…circumstances permitted. And that meant only when my mom no longer needed me to help care for my dad, something too horrible to think about.

I spent my last week in southern California driving to all the places I’d lived and worked and saying “good-bye for now” to almost all the people I’d become so close to over the previous eleven years. It had never been clearer to me what a fortunate person I was to have so many fantastic people in my life. It was impossible to see everyone in six days.

One person I didn’t see was Gary Fullerton, but we chatted briefly on the phone.

“Hey, Gary, I’m moving before you get back from your trip, so I won’t see you before I leave.”

“Well, I’m sure I’ll fly into or near Atlanta soon enough,” he said. “We’ll get together then.”

Gary also had some other good news. “I’ve met someone. Not sure where it’s going, but I just like being with her, you know?”

I recalled our conversation in the fall when he’d agreed with me that he needed to find a nice, stable, career-oriented thirty-six year old woman. I asked him to tell me about her.

“…well…she’s twenty-four…two kids…”

Goddammit, Gary!
I made a mental note that when I saw him in person, I’d gently revisit this subject and remind him of our conversation on the beach with his mom and dad, about finding a thirty-six-year-old professional…but he was going to do what he wanted. And I would support him, just as he had always supported me.

I sold my car, rented a fifteen-foot moving truck, packed up my meager possessions and headed east.

The western deserts are endless and I had more than enough time to think about what I was doing. I brought some books on CD, including Homer’s
Odyssey
and
The Life of Pi
to occupy the time. Between CDs I had some time to think about all that had happened in my life since I had driven west on this same interstate highway eleven years earlier.

Back then I had been more and more ecstatic with each mile I put between me and South Carolina. I loved the fact that there was nothing visible—no exits, no gas stations, no sign of any civilization for lengthy stretches of asphalt. No one would come after me, no one would pursue me, and, for the first time in my life, I could do whatever I wanted without looking over my shoulder to see if any of the fundamentalists were trying to catch me breaking the rules.

Considering I was gay and in the Marines at the time, it had been ridiculous for me to think that I wouldn’t continue hiding a big part of who I was from the rest of the world. Even with an entire continent between me and the fundamentalists and my family, I would continue hiding something for a very long time, whether it was hiding my homosexuality from the Marines, my depression from my friends, or my drug use from anyone who might find it objectionable.

But for a fledgling gay man, southern California, in a bizarre way, had been a place of relative safety, a place where I could explore the newness of being semi-openly then openly gay. Surrounded by people who generally were more supportive and tolerant of differences, I had been given the chance to rebuild myself from the ground up. Now, the time had come to go back out into the “mission field,” my mission field. That’s exactly how I felt as I crossed from California into Arizona, New Mexico, and then Texas, right into the heart of the Bush-loving “red states.”

I liked the desert because you couldn’t hide much in the desert. Of course, you couldn’t stop and take a piss just off the highway as you could along the heavily vegetated East Coast inter-states. Not without other cars, trucks, and buses passing by and catching a glimpse. The West was majestic and open. It had the self-confidence not to care that everyone could see everything else.

The South was different. Large oak trees dominated the landscape along with countless other types of thick leafy vegetation, especially the ubiquitous kudzu vine. Much of the year the foliage hid everything from plain sight. From a distance, it all appeared pastel in the spring with an occasional flower or blossom, green in the summer and reddish-brown in the autumn. But looking behind the leaves always revealed something else, something that you weren’t supposed to see. Only in the winter when all was old and decayed and frigid could an observer see most of what was going on. By then no one cared.