Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. Rich Merritt
later it would be very easy for me to reject the overt, hostile, ugly redneck racism, homophobia, and intolerance demonstrated toward other people by my relatives. However, BJU’s kinder gentler form of bigotry would take years and years of therapy, medication, and moving to the other coast to get it out of my head. Even now I’m afraid it still lurks in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind.
What stands out most in my mind about Bob Jones is that we were told what we should believe about why we were born, what happened when we died, and everything in between. We were told what we should believe about God. Sure, that’s true of any religious school, but at Bob Jones we were as strict on ourselves and on each other as our teachers and parents. Most of us were really as devoted religiously as the adults. Of course there were a few who were rebellious, but they were the ones you noticed, who stood out. At Bob Jones if you so much uttered a sentence that was not acceptable by the school, you knew that someone was going to report you.
A common defense for the school is, “Well, no one is forced to go there.”
I was five years old, okay, so don’t give me that fucking bullshit. I went where I was told.
My first grade teacher was named Miss Kline and we were the first class of her teaching career. She was perhaps twenty-two years old but she looked even younger. She was quiet and calm and friendly. She didn’t get angry or yell. We all loved her; I know I did. After the terrible year I had in kindergarten, I would do anything for Miss Kline. The last thing I wanted to do was to disappoint her.
First graders did not have desks that opened from the top; rather, they were open in front enabling us to slide books, pens, and papers in and out of them. These desks were welded onto two metal legs on both sides of the desk. From inside the desk, you could feel an opening into the hollow interior of the desk’s legs.
We had to write with large blue plastic pencils that used replaceable lead, which we obtained in small, round containers. During a class lesson, my left hand was inside my desk, sliding my canister of lead along the bottom of the desk’s interior. To my dismay, the canister of lead fit perfectly inside the leg of the desk, and the canister slid all the way down the leg. There was no way I could get it out; the leg of the desk must have been a foot and a half long!
To a first-grader’s mind this was a life-threatening dilemma. My thoughts were only on that canister and what I was going to do to supply my pencil with lead. Worse, I was afraid that losing my lead might be bad enough to cause Miss Kline to give me a paddling. Mrs. Hand would have paddled for a lesser offense.
At the next break, I nervously approached Miss Kline’s desk, explaining that I couldn’t find my lead.
“Does anyone know where Richie’s lead is?” Miss Kline asked the class. I didn’t expect that! I simply wanted her to give me another canister. Of course no one knew where my lead was. It was trapped on the inside of the leg of my desk!
Miss Kline pressed the issue. “Did anyone take Richie’s lead?” Upping the charge to thievery made me feel even worse. Miss Kline ordered everyone to empty the contents of their desk. She walked around and inspected the students, looking for the culprit with two canisters of lead. This search, of course, turned up nothing.
She returned to the front of the classroom and told us to put our heads down on our desk. “Before I come around and begin searching your pockets,” she said in her calm, sweet voice, “I’m going to give you one last chance to confess what you have done. One of you took Richie’s lead. Jesus knows who did it. If you don’t confess that you are the one who took the lead, Jesus will be disappointed in you.”
This hadn’t started out as a lie. I simply wanted my canister of lead back. I kept silent about what happened to it, thinking that the truth would fade away and Miss Kline would simply give me a new piece of lead. Now my silence had turned me into a liar. The entire situation had turned into a complete dilemma. I could tell her the truth, or let her search every student in the class. I raised my head and walked up to her large desk at the front of the room.
Between sobs I managed to say, “I did it.” I still thought she might paddle me, but I could not lie to her any longer and I added, “It’s in my desk.”
“Why did you tell me that you didn’t have it?” She was disappointed in me, I could tell.
“Because…” I cried harder, “because, I got it stuck in my desk.”
She walked over to my desk and knelt down on her hands and knees beside it. I showed her the hole in the bottom of the desk where the leg attached. “It’s in there,” I said. Now, everyone’s eyes were on me.
Miss Kline emptied my desk and turned it upside down. She retrieved the lead and handed it to me. “Don’t lose it again, okay?”
“No, ma’am.”
I was too ashamed to look at my fellow students—I had been a goody-goody. Now they saw me as flawed. A liar. Almost willing to get them in trouble to save myself. A few minutes later, Miss Kline said, “Richie, come with me.”
This was it! Well, at least Miss Kline paddled her students in private. I followed her into the lobby. She seated me on the bench underneath our coat hooks and knelt down in front of me.
“Richie, you lied to me. I’m very disappointed.” She let this sink in before continuing. “Jesus doesn’t like it when we lie to Him.”
I started crying and shook my head.
“Have you ever accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your Lord and Savior, Richie?” She asked.
So that’s what she wanted to see me in private about! Even though I had done something wrong, Miss Kline was being kind. No, I hadn’t been born again.
Through my tears I smiled. “No, ma’am.”
She asked me if I’d like to be born again and I eagerly agreed. I bowed my head and repeated a little prayer after Miss Kline. I told the Lord I wanted Him to forgive me of all my sins and to come into my heart. I felt so much better, my tears stopped flowing. I smiled.
“Why didn’t you tell me about losing your lead in the first place, Richie, why did you lie to me?”
“Because…I didn’t want you to paddle me,” I said.
Miss Kline looked shocked. “Why would I paddle you?”
“Because Mrs. Hand paddled me last year,” I said.
“I see,” Miss Kline said, not smiling.
I followed her back to the classroom. All eyes were on me, wondering what had been my fate. I didn’t say a word to anyone.
Years later, I learned that Miss Kline had informed my mother about the paddlings I had received at Tabernacle. My mother would tell people that, according to Miss Kline, I was the sweetest child she had ever met and that there was no reason anyone should have paddled me in kindergarten.
Unfortunately, this information was never shared with me, and I was left to think that I had somehow deserved the paddlings in kindergarten. Ever since then I’ve often had vivid thoughts of Mrs. Hand juxtaposed with Miss Kline. Certainly Mrs. Hand instilled emotional damage to her students. But the lessons taught by the gentle-faced Miss Kline were harmful in their own way although she, of course, didn’t mean them to be. It was overwhelming for a five-year-old to think that there is some God or Jesus up there looking down on him and that this Person actually cares whether he lies about the location of his canister of lead.
One of the major differences between Bob Jones University and other schools was the intensity of the religious beliefs and training. Even when you were just starting, religion was ingrained in every class. There was no separation at all.
Most of our textbooks were written by the Bob Jones University Printing Press. Every chapter, even in math, was somehow related to God. Especially science. Evolution, for example. Of course the idea of evolution being a legitimate science was never taught. Instead we were taught everything that was possibly wrong with