Purchasing Porn

Remember that book I blogged about called ‘Code of Conduct’? Well apparently the author wrote another book before that, and that book was pretty popular as well. It’s actually a sorta biography/memoir of the author as a gay marine, and its entitled ‘Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star’.

The book is supposed to be about Rich Merritt’s (the author) experience as a gay marine coming from a strict and straight fundamentalist background. It is also about him and his small gay pornography career, it was a little something he did on the side while in the military. I’m actually only half way through the book, because biographies aren’t really my thing. I mainly bought the book because I enjoyed his other book very much, and I just wanted to get to know him a little more by reading his biography… this is so that I can better understand what drove him to write such a fascinating gay military fiction.

Since I haven’t finished the book, and won’t be finishing it anytime soon, as I said… biographies aren’t my thing, this post is more about how I acquired the book, instead of a book review on the book…

It was Borders... not a gay book store

On one fateful day, I was at the bookstore again, and it was then that I decided I wanted to read this other book by the same author of the book I just read. After all, the title itself was interesting enough to attract any gay reader to buy it. So… in I walked to the store and started browsing the Gay, Lesbians, Bi and Transgender (GLBT) section for this book.

Well obviously I didn’t find it there, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging about it as the story would have been boring… so failing to find a copy of the book, I headed to their electronic book catalogue and typed in the title of the book and tried to locate it. To my utmost surprise… the book was actually shelved in the biographies section, and not the GLBT section.

So being the persistent shopper that I was, I started wandering around the store in search of the biography section. After searching high and low… the search for the biography section proved unsuccessful, as it was no where to be found. I then proceeded to ask one of the staff at hand where the biography section is… since I obviously wasn’t going to ask her where a gay book was located.

“We have a very small biography section… are you looking for anyone in particular?” and she lead me to this two small shelves labelled with small labels ‘biography’.

“Oh no… nobody in particular… I’m really just browsing around, thank you very much”, and she left me alone after that.

For such a big book store, their two shelf biography section was meagre and pathetic. One glance across the two shelves and I instantly knew the book I was looking for was not there. Like an unrelenting vampire searching for blood, I knew I had come too far to give up on the book just because its not shelved in the biography section. The electronic catalogue clearly stated that there were 2 more copies in store…

"fuck! where issit?"

Screw it I thought to myself… so what if she thinks I’m a fag… I’ll just ask her where the book was. So again I approached the lady and asked her if she could help me locate a book I was looking for that wasn’t in the biography section. Instead of telling her the title of the book, I brought her to the electronic catalogue and typed out the title of the book, trying to subtly hint to her that there are two copies of ‘Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star’ that should be in the biography section as stated… but wasn’t there.


“That’s strange, hang on a second” then she pulled out a walkie talkie… and loudly said, “hey, there is this book entitled the ‘Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star’, it says here it should be in the biography section… but it isn’t there… could it be anywhere else?”

“No it should be there, unless there was a mistake and there aren’t any stocks left”, answered the guy on the other end of the radio.

I was like, OH MY GOD! Did she just read the title out loud with me next to her… I was freaking embarrassed. I was debating in my head whether or not to just make an excuse that I was in a hurry and would get the book another time so that I can make a dash out of the store. When suddenly a male attendant walked pass pointing to the screen asking us if we were looking for that book… and told us he knew where it was… I thought to myself… ‘you do? Then hurry and bring me to it so I can get out of here… you ding dong’. He brought us to this shelf entitled ‘Literary GLBT Themes’ and pulled the book out of the shelf instantly… I happily took the book, thanked him… paid for the book at the counter and left the store… almost all in a single breathe.

Well… this story may not be a big deal to a lot of you all reading this. But to me it was… it was very difficult asking a stranger where a gay themed book was… especially one with the title ‘Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star’… which could easily be interpreted as me being very interested in gay porn… although I do not deny my interest for gay porn… I would rather my local book store lady not know of my preference in images of naked men.

Anyway, I survived the ordeal… and here I am to tell the tale. Hahaha…

Signing out.