Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. Rich Merritt
was twenty-one years old and I was fifteen. He became the big brother I never had. He was very manly but also a gentleman, with a soft-spoken voice and defined features. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He looked at me like I wanted a man his age to look at me—like he had so much he wanted to teach me and share with me.
Bill became my band director the following year and our relationship grew. It was a difficult one because of the potential that existed we might be accused of fraternization, but we did a good job of staying within proper boundaries, even though I wouldn’t have minded straying beyond those bounds.
I went to Bill’s mother’s house with him on the weekends and washed her car and did other errands for her. I became insanely jealous when Bill turned down things to do with me to go out with his girlfriend. I thought she was whiny and annoying and that there was so much more I would do for him than she could. If only he could see that. But he never did. As I grew older and more rebellious, it put a strain on our friendship and we lost touch.
“Yeah, that was kind of weird,” said Melanie about my friendship with Bill. “Now that I know all about you, it makes sense, but we all thought it was…well, an unusual friendship.”
All my best attempts at total purity couldn’t stop the unstoppable. Sexual desire, gay or straight, is the strongest urge in a person and I was really no exception. I might not have been having sex, but I was doing homoerotic things. I developed a routine of inviting my handsome friends to our house out in “the country.” On hot summer days I almost always succeeded in getting them to go skinny-dipping with me in the river. Daddy had put up a rope swing so we could swing from the shore halfway across. Usually I had to stay under the muddy water so my friends couldn’t see my erection while I watched them sail over my head into the water.
I remember the idea of being best friends with a guy gave me this feeling that I know now was a sexual attraction. I didn’t call it that then. But I remember that in my high school years it was getting to the point where I was almost ready to name it.
My first summer working at the Wilds, one of the junior counselors there, who I knew from high school, invited me to go inner-tubing with him. His name was Mitch Harmon.
A few weeks earlier, while all the guys at the camp were swimming at the bottom of the huge waterfall deep in the woods on the far edge of the camp property, Mitch had climbed up on some rocks and mooned the crowd of guys below. The camp director, Dr. Bartley, had scolded Mitch for this and had stated that mooning other guys was a sign of latent homosexual tendencies. Everyone laughed when Mitch repeated this. Secretly I wish I had seen the mooning incident; Mitch’s bubble butt was obvious through his jeans.
Mitch and I hopped into the creek at the main part of the camp and began our float toward the more dangerous area where the waterfalls were. It was a blast! After heavy rains, the creek was flowing swiftly like white water rapids. At a treacherous spot, we lost our inner tubes and managed to pull ourselves to the shore.
After rolling around on the wet leaves, laughing at our misfortune, Mitch looked at the sky. “It’s going to get dark if we don’t hurry back to the campsite.”
I agreed. He was older and in charge.
Mitch stood up. “You know what we should do that would help us move faster?”
I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that we had quite a hike to get back to camp.
“We should take these wet clothes off and carry them. That way we can move more quickly.” Mitch leaned against a tree and began untying the laces to his sneakers.
“That’s a good idea!” I said, quickly following my leader’s example. Within minutes we were both naked, except for our tennis shoes, walking through the woods to find our way back to camp.
Mitch walked in front. “Now, aren’t you glad we did this? This is a lot more comfortable, isn’t it?” He turned his head and looked at me.
We had been walking for about five minutes and the whole time I had been mere yards behind Mitch’s hot bubble butt. I had a noticeable semi-erection at this point. Mitch looked at me and smiled. I was petrified until I saw that he was in the same…situation.
Had either of us known what to do, I’m sure we would have acted on it. Instead, we continued our walk for another twenty minutes. We put our clothes on when we hit the main trail and made it safely back to camp.
Just like the Hardy Boys! I thought. Finally, I was having my adventures.
Not everything about my first summer at the Wilds was a real-life homoerotic fantasy come true. I was sixteen years old and had signed up to wash dishes for seven hundred people three times a day for eleven weeks. The first two weeks were torture. I told Dr. Bartley I wanted to quit.
He wasn’t loud, but he made up for it with intensity. Dr. Bartley had a bald head and a gut that protruded from his six-foot-five frame. He intimidated me beyond belief. I thought I might urinate on myself.
“Richie,” he said quickly and directly, “if you quit now, you will never be able to persevere with anything the Lord calls you to do again, do you understand me?”
I looked at the floor. Why had I agreed to do this? This job was miserable, but I said I would do it.
“Well,” he said, “I’m going to call your parents to come get you…”
“Um, you don’t have to do that, my dad gave me an old car to drive…”
“Well, I’m going to call them and tell them that you’ve decided to quit…”
As Dr. Bartley reached for the phone, it rang. He excused me for a few minutes while he took the call.
I can’t quit! I can’t be known as a quitter! Dr. Bartley was right.
“I’m staying,” I said resolutely as he finished his call. And for twenty-five dollars a week, I persevered through nine more hot summer weeks washing dishes in the Appalachian Mountains.
My proudest moment that summer came unexpectedly one rainy day. The other guys on the staff and I were sitting around our room when the door opened and a counselor came in. The guy was my brother Jimmy’s counselor.
“Richie,” he said, “There’s someone here who has something to say to you.”
Jimmy popped out from behind him, crying. His counselor said, “What was it you wanted to say to Richie?”
Jimmy looked at the floor. Oh boy, I wondered, what has happened now?
“I…I…I got saved this morning,” he said quietly.
I was stunned. This was the last thing I had expected. I jumped up off the floor and grabbed Jimmy around the neck. I started crying. “I’m so happy! You gotta go call Momma and Daddy.” He smiled at me and nodded and his counselor took him up the hill to the telephones.
Jimmy made a plaque for our mom in the craft shop that had the Twenty-third Psalm, the one that goes “The Lord Is My Shepherd” on it. Momma still has this plaque, but Jimmy and I never again discussed this moment.
The Wilds was that kind of place—there was no television, no telephone without approval, no radio, no stereo—nothing that wasn’t approved by the camp administration. Teens were freed from every possible distraction, giving the staff a chance to get through to them. Emotions ran high and tears flowed freely. For one week, even the hardest hearts melted upon hearing the message of the Lord.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about Mitch Harmon. Every time I went on the trail to the falls, I recalled our naked venture through the woods. I started fantasizing about him. Naked fantasies. They were only fantasies because nothing like the inner-tubing incident ever happened again. But fantasies were enough for now. I’d think about us being nude again, this time our bodies touching. I couldn’t help but think how awesome that would be. These thoughts were more tender than overtly sexual. I fantasized about us curling up naked in a blanket under the stars—the more we’d touch each other the further we’d go,