Here'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 under Don't Ask, Don't Tell while secretly shooting gay porn films — a dangerous rebellion against the institutions that had tried to dictate his life.

When The New York Times Magazine profiled him anonymously on its cover, the walls between his worlds came crashing down. The gay press outed the porn. The Marines came asking questions. And the man who had 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 suicide attempt, and a fight for survival that nearly killed him. 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 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.