Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. Rich Merritt
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