Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. Rich Merritt
I felt sorry for him—his son should have been sharing the glory with me for writing this play. But I didn’t feel too bad for him—I wasn’t the one who had poured the beer down Bobby’s throat.
The cast performed the play flawlessly. Frank and Amber were convincing as Ronnie and Julie, two lovestruck teenagers from feuding billionaire families in Manhattan. They went to the same high school and were cast as the leading characters in their school play. The play? Romeo and Juliet, of course. Their cousins and brothers and sisters fought throughout the show and the hostile action between the two wealthy families culminated at the dress rehearsal.
One of the Vanderbilts murdered Ronnie. As he lay on the floor dying, Julie delivered a moving final soliloquy. The play ended with her plea, “When will it all end?”
At least, that’s when everyone thought the play ended. After Julie’s line, the entire cast froze in their positions around the corpse of Ronnie for five seconds. Just as the audience began to grow restless, wondering what was going on, I leapt up onto the stage from my seat on the front row of the concert center.
“Cut! Cut!” I shouted, as if this were a Hollywood filming and not a stage presentation. I grabbed the resurrected Ronnie by the hand and helped him as he jumped to his feet. “Very good dress rehearsal, everyone! Very good performance, Frank, Amber!” I shouted other things making it obvious to everyone in the concert center that what they had just witnessed was a play, in a play, in a play.
For the real ending, I turned to the juniors, seniors, guests, faculty, and Dr. Bob and said, “Shakespeare said it best when he wrote, ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts.’ This has been our stage of life.” The End.
I thought my play, the presentation, and everything about the evening was brilliant. The audience cheered and in my memory they gave me a standing ovation, although that memory may be a creation to enhance a night of what was for me pure ecstasy.
On the walk from the concert center to the dining commons, where we would have our formal banquet, I received accolades from many, including Miss Denham.
“Wonderful! Wonderful! Bravo!” she said, clapping as she walked. “And I just love how you were able to make yourself the star…and have the last word at the same time!”
“Yes, Richie, fantastic,” said her friend, our junior English teacher. She had always frightened me, but I was glad to receive her compliments. “It sets up the theme of this year’s junior-senior so nicely!”
I had also come up with the theme for the evening. To fit the play, I suggested “Life is a Stage” as a workable theme that the class officers could use to design the banquet. I chose “Life is a Stage” rather than “All the World’s a Stage” because I thought it was more concise and “theme-worthy” and besides, it looked better on the programs. They loved it. So did I.
As part of the program, the adviser announced the class officers for our senior year. Although being senior class president was viewed as a figurehead post and a consolation prize for the guy who hadn’t been elected student body president or selected as the yearbook editor, it made my evening complete when they announced I had been elected president. At least I would be president of something. This was my night. I felt redeemed after my transgressions earlier in the semester.
No event at Bob Jones would be complete without a sermon and to end the evening, Dr. Bob Jones III got up to say a few words. In what to me was icing on the cake, he began, “I thoroughly enjoyed the play, and Richie, let me commend you for a job well done in writing it!”
If only he had stopped there, the night would have been perfect. But he added, “But young people, life is not a stage! Life is real! And you must make real choices…”
How dare he?! I was livid. Dr. Bob Jones III had directly contradicted me and undermined my entire theme. Why did he have to say that life wasn’t a stage? The words “Life is a Stage” were plastered all over the room, and for one night, the man couldn’t keep his opinions to himself.
“That’s such a crock of shit!” said Melanie, twenty years later as she and I discussed that evening. “Everything about life at that school was a stage…an act! Those of us who played our parts well, like me, survived and those of us who didn’t, like Bobby, and um, well, we-know-who, didn’t survive there.”
“I don’t know, Melanie, I wasn’t playing a part…I was really trying as hard as I could to be a fundamentalist…”
“And look what happened!” We both laughed. “Your problem was that you were trying hard to actually be something you were never capable of being…that no one is really capable of being. I, on the other hand, was merely acting the part. And very well, too,” said the woman who would go on to graduate as salutatorian of Bob Jones Academy and number one in her class at Bob Jones University.
But Melanie hadn’t been acting all that well in front of me that year. She had a birthday party the summer before our senior year and I found it disturbing that, in a major about-face, she had become friends with Amber, a girl that our group had previously regarded as the enemy.
Amber had allowed herself to get an unpredictable reputation and one time styled her hair just like Madonna had in one of the Material Girl’s darker looks of 1984. Melanie explained to me many years later that Amber was what is known as a “tease.” She enjoyed making guys think she could be had just to get them to chase her, but never went through with anything. She certainly couldn’t have survived at Bob Jones Academy if she had gone through with anything.
But I was clueless about all that dating and sex stuff and was fascinated with Amber because of her reputation. For Melanie’s sake, I had cast her in the play, but I didn’t consider myself cool enough to be in Amber’s inner circle. That made it easier for me to dismiss her as a potential rule-breaker who toed the line of acceptable behavior. I didn’t think Melanie should he hanging with her; obviously, Melanie didn’t care what I thought about that.
The party was a fun and harmless afternoon event at Melanie’s house, which by my family’s standards was thoroughly modern and expansive. We had cake and cookies and ice cream, and she opened presents. I had brought a handsome friend from out of town who I was working with at a Christian summer camp called the Wilds. After the party he made an interesting observation to me in private.
“No one talked about the Lord, about how good God has been in their life. I just can’t believe that your friends are the cream of the crop at the number one fundamentalist Christian high school in America, and you really don’t act like you care much about God at all.”
That really stung. I blamed it partly on Melanie’s new friendship with Amber. I wrote a nasty letter to Melanie telling her all the things my friend had said to me. Before I mailed it, I showed it to him, hoping to convince him of my piety. Melanie claims she still has that letter but that she can’t locate it, else she’d give it back to me. For someone who still has every note every boyfriend passed to her in class, I find that doubtful.
The Wilds was located high in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. The location was beautiful and remote. Creative real estate guides might call the facilities at the camp “rustic.” They were primitive but I loved it there. The camp had several large ball fields, a creek that encircled the property leading to four giant waterfalls, and a lodge on a hilltop. There was also a metal building housing an activity center, where weary young people received marathon lectures and sermons about God in the hot summer months. The Wilds became my summer home.
I had been a camper there every year since the sixth grade. There were many things I liked about the Wilds, but what I liked most was that I was able to befriend older men in a safe and relaxed environment, without the constant pressure to be good at a sport, although athletics were certainly a big part. But these athletics were more creative and they didn’t require so much skill and I was pretty good at them. Also, the shower room was a small open area where dozens of boys crowded each evening to get clean. I didn’t know why, but I got a secret thrill from those showers.