Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star

"An absolutely invaluable firsthand account of LGBTQ+ history." –KIRKUS REVIEWS — STARRED REVIEW“Readers don’t just discover a memoirist, the memoirist discovers himself. And any life worth examining is worth a second look. Rich Merritt is honest, hilarious, and even less interested in behaving this time around.”–Greg Cope White, author of The Pink Marine, and writer on the Netflix show BootsHere’s the true story of Rich Merritt—the good son, the teacher’s pet, the model Christian student who spent the first two decades of his life inside a fundamentalist cult that taught him gay people were worthy of death. The Marine captain who served with distinction under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell while secretly shooting gay porn films—a dangerous rebellion against the institutions that had tried to own him.When an acclaimed novelist named Jennifer Egan profiled him anonymously on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, the walls between his worlds came crashing down. The gay press outed the porn. The military came asking questions. And the man who’d spent his entire life performing different versions of himself for different audiences suddenly had nowhere left to hide.What followed was a spectacular unraveling—addiction, a shattered career, a fight for survival that brought him to the edge and nearly pushed him over. By turns harrowing and heartbreaking, angry and darkly funny, Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star is the story of a man who refused to let anyone—gay or straight, fundamentalist or liberal—define who he was allowed to be.This second edition includes shocking new revelations that The New York Times does not want you to know—and the confession Merritt wasn’t ready to make the first time around.