What a long, strange trip it’s been.

In Part 1 of our interview with Rich Merritt, he told us how he landed on the cover of the New York Times Sunday magazine under the headline "The Shadow Life of a Gay Marine." But coming out in the Marines was relatively easy, he contends, compared to coming out had he stayed put at Bob Jones University, a notoriously backward Bible University in South Carolina.

Luckily, he had gotten expelled from BJU (an ironic acronym considering how homophobia was worn there as a badge) for, of all things, dancing with girls and listening to rock ‘n’ roll! How Merritt went from Marine to porn star to Atlanta attorney is all spelt out in his new memoir Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. Nightcharm editor John Calendo picks up his interview with the author right as he’s about to join the Corps.

Nightcharm: It’s clear from your book that you have an ex-Marine’s gut-love for the Corps. Yet, you were by nature a quiet, sensitive boy who liked to hang out in the kitchen with the women. Didn’t much take to other boys your age. How did you get from that classic gay-child place to being a Marine captain?

Rich Merritt: I felt there was something wrong with me because I wanted to hang out with women and I thought that if I joined the Marines, that aspect of myself would change. Amazingly, it did!

In boot camp, I felt completely out of place — perhaps because I was coming from the sheltered world of a Bible college to one of the harshest environments in the country. But with time, I began to blend in. Not only did I survive, I thrived. It was actually easier to get by as an officer because I had to be above the fray. I couldn’t have too-casual conversations with the junior enlisted men about my personal life and I wasn’t joking and telling stories elbow to elbow with the men. The military places officers on pedestals, which in a weird way appeals to the queen in each of us. In that sense, officers are not really one of the men.

NC: First Bob Jones, then the Marines. To outsiders it might seem you stepped from one regimented society into another. A surprise for this reader was that the Corps turned out to be a worldly, normalizing experience for you. Yet it was as homophobic as your church.

Merritt: Yes, the Marines were a very regimented fundamenta- list-like society. I was 25 when I came out. I had been an officer for a couple of years and I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, where my life had become all Marine Corps all the time. Being so far from my life of fundament- alism — geographically, philo- sophically and chronologically — made coming out to myself easier. You see, the homophobia of the Marine Corps was very different from the homophobia of BJU.

The worst that could happen to you in the Marines is that you might get thrown out, or, really, in the worse case, get thrown in the brig for violations of Article 123 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice [the anti-sodomy provision.] Either of those penalties, I was prepared to deal with.

At BJU, however, sodomy got you thrown into the Lake of Hellfire and Damnation for all eternity. I was NOT prepared to deal with that.

NC: As much as you excelled both in the Corps and at BJU, there’s no denying that you eventually defied them both –

Merritt: (laughing) For a moment, I thought you said defiled them both! BJU and the USMC might see it that way– but hardly. I don’t think either is defile-able.

NC: No, my question is about defiance. The boy who can’t masturbates become a porn actor. The model Marine becomes a NYT coverboy for what’s wrong with the military. Even the nom de porn you chose, Danny Orlis, was a character in a series of Christian children’s books. Could you talk a little about these two parts of you, the conformist who excels in his model conformity, the rebel who smashes these same rules in a high-profile way.

Merritt: I’ve been round and round with this part of myself with a number of therapists. Sometimes I feel like a dog chasing his tail. I’m still not sure I understand it. Partly, I think, it’s because I’m an extremist. I want to be extremely good, but then I go about as far in the other direction as possible. Mainstream society looks at gay porn and drug abuse — which got me fired from my first job at one of the top law firms in the country — as pretty radical, especially for a young lawyer.

At least now I’m aware of my tendency to go to extremes and I watch for signs of its reemergence. For example, with this book, I am constantly checking my sales ranking on Amazon. But if I’m not careful, I can go crazy with that. So I take a deep breath, put on my iPod and go for a run through the park.

NC: Do you feel your drug problems came from the party-party pace of being young and gay? Or was it a more personalized reaction to the sudden loss of all the baggage you were carrying from your strict years in BJU and the Marines?

Merritt: The real problem is that I DIDN’T lose all that baggage! It was like I had stored it away in the overhead compartment, and believe me, it had definitely shifted during flight! When I opened that door it came crashing down on top of me.

That’s what happens when you don’t deal with past issues. They don’t go away. I had never dealt with the extreme conflict that comes from being gay in the military and within fundamentalism. So when it came time to face them, I found the parties and drugs and alcohol instead. Actually I had been abusing alcohol all along, but as the weight of the issues became heavier, the alcohol stopped working. I then discovered what fun the parties could be and for a while longer, I didn’t have to think about the pain or the guerilla warfare that had gone on inside my head.

NC: If a gay 17-year-old told you he was thinking of going into the Marine Corps — right now in the middle of two wars — wanted to do it partly for the college benefits, partly for the glory of being a Marine, but he asked you for a reality check. What would you say to him?

Merritt: Apart from the reality of two wars — which is a completely separate discussion — I wouldn’t necessarily discourage him. I would ask him to take a thorough look at his life and to honestly evaluate his sense of identity. Is his need to identify himself as belonging to a group like the Marine Corps far greater than his need to identify himself individually by his sexual orientation. It all depends on the guy’s psychological makeup. The real problem is that most 17-year-olds are experiencing major doses of BOTH needs — a sense of belonging and a sense of sexual exploration. The problem with the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy is that it discriminates against those sexual-identity needs in gay men and women.

NC: How about the young gay man who grew up under evangelical fundamentalism and feels an emotional bond to his family’s world — still he knows, whether he wants to or not, he’s coming out. He comes to you as someone who has made the trip. How does he keep his bond with his family from withering?

Merritt: This is the toughest question you’ve asked. Based on my experience, most fundamentalist parents are good, decent people, only they are severely misguided and uninformed about the world beyond the narrow confines of their homogenous community. And gay men tend to be natural-born pleasers who want to make their parents happy. It’s almost like a trainwreck waiting to happen.

In this context, I think about Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces. Campbell studied all the myths and religions in the world and discovered that there is always the same story, more or less, about the journey a young man must take away from his mother and to his father. In fact, George Lucas based the original Star Wars on this idea — Luke Skywalker’s journey to discover that Darth Vader was really his father was a modern version of the ancient Odyssey. In order to become a man, the boy must learn to quit living to please his mother and go toward a larger purpose — defined in a somewhat patriarchal fashion as the father.

I would first tell this young man that I could only say what I did and that every man has to decide what is best for himself. The first thing I had to do was to quit worrying what my mother — and my father — thought about my life. God did not put me here on earth to please them. This took me years to learn.

After I lost the need for my family to accept and approve of my life — which I was NEVER going to get anyway — I could look at my parents as equal adults, no longer as a child to a parent. That is extremely difficult and occasionally the relationship reverts for brief periods to that of parent and child — I think a little bit of that is healthy. But mostly I become the adult and my parents, the child. I am the one who accepts them — homophobic, bigoted, racist and chauvinistic as they are. I try to accept them honestly, sincerely and with nothing but true unconditional love – the kind I used to crave from them. I do this even though they do not reciprocate. I have to be okay with that. It’s a difficult but mature attitude.

Oh, and the most important thing is that along the way I have discovered dozens of wonderful, amazing and honest friendships that freed me from having to have my needs met by my family. My friends and former partner have taught me how to meet a lot of my emotional needs on my own — something that fundamentalist parents rarely teach their children. This is because in fundamentalism only an external God can meet your needs and if you are gay, you no longer have access to that God.

NC: What’s next for Rich Merritt?

Merritt: The Trevor Project. It’s a suicide-prevention hotline specifically set up to provide counseling and assistance to gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gendered and questioning teens. The Trevor Project needs money, time and attention. The homophobia of the fundamentalists is killing young people and it’s got to stop!

For me personally, look for more books by Rich Merritt and possibly television or film projects!

Rich Merritt has his own website and would be happy to receive email from our readers. His book Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star can be ordered from Amazon. ( Special thanks to B. Andrew Plant.)