Adam4adam is a gay dating website much like some prostitute you just met on lower Peach Street is your girlfriend. Not to be crass, but beating around the bush (so to speak) does no one any good. It is similar to Grindr, which I’ve written about, but without all that handy portability. Most guys there prefer not to hit up by strangers with tired lines like “‘Sup?” or “UR hawt!” or “Pardon me, good sirrah. Might I steal a moment of your time to extend an invitation to my bedroom where I shall throw your legs up behind your ears and ravage your chocolate pucker till the morning light doth glow dimly on the horizon?”. No, no, it’s all about being real, or at least having a memorable opening line.

Which bring us to thkdk4u:

from his description, he possesses the one outstanding quality I look for in a guy: online pictures of his unit, which his ad informs me is not only formidable, but also wielded masterfully. I approached him in a way that I felt was humorous and slightly self-deprecating, having learned from io9 is a way to get people to like you. However, it looks like io9 may have been off the mark this time (click for the legible version):

Sadly (for both of us, I think), I probably won’t hear back from him. Unless I do. Come back for updates!

Whenever you find Batman, you also find… punchline HERE

This story comes from Chris Reidy, who introduced himself to me as an acquaintance of Russell’s in California while he was making adult films. I’m taking what he says at face value, because I have no real way to vet what he’s saying. This is the frustration and mystery of not only the subject, but also of memory. I’ve said it myself that I may be remembering things wrongly or in a different order than they really happened. However, there’s nothing to be done. For now, oral history will suffice. Again, if anyone has a story to share, please contact me and we’ll talk. Thanks, Chris, for sharing your memories.

Before I launch into my recollection, I wanted to mention a few things. When I first heard that Russell had died I too thought he would be a fantastic subject for a documentary. In fact, I’ve been turning that idea over in my mind ever since. But there was so little concrete stuff about him it wasn’t until I found your eulogy that I discovered a starting point. I was a film major at Boston University and I’m also a writer. Saying and doing are two different things, of course. I think you have the real starting point for a book. Do you have any plans for that?

More than a few gay porn stars have died untimely deaths, often at their own hands. I met a few of them. One was almost a household name. But there’s something about Russell and his story that just won’t go away. I think it’s an important story. I found in reading your eulogy how similar your boyhood experiences were to my own. It’s that “specific speaking of the universal” phenomenon. I too went to a Catholic High School. I was considered smart and artistic. I had a few bullies. I was a preppy…and on and on. That Russell turned out to embody many of my own traits was pretty astonishing to me. Perhaps I sensed he was a kindred spirit all those years ago on those porn sets. But we never exchanged a single word. When I read that you were both gay and sort of reluctantly out to each other, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were stronger feelings there than “just friends”. But I don’t want to pry. I know I had a crush on him! He was one of the handsomest guys I’ve ever laid eyes on. Have you ever watched any of his movies? The strange thing is, based on his “characterizations” he always came across as a really dumb jock. So again, when I read your history of him I was stunned…but not surprised. Because I knew that there was way more there than met my eye.

So here’s my Russell story: It was around 1997 and I had recently quit a job at Paramount Studios where I’d become sick of fetching lunch for black BMW driving assholes. I was working at a video store but it wasn’t enough to cover the rent so I started doing odd jobs here and there. I was a model for an art class, but found I was very uncomfortable being naked that way. So being in porno was not much of a temptation. I know that it’s an easy way to make money and a lot of guys will fall into it for the quick cash. I wasn’t, however, opposed to working on a porn set.

I had a friend who knew a lot of people in that field, so he hooked me up with a porn director and the next thing I knew I was a “production assistant” for All World’s Video. The first production I worked on was a little epic called Invaders From Uranus. The director was a nice guy and a very talented film maker. Not only did he make the guys feel at ease, he actually had a cinematic eye and a creative mind. All the guys were nice. Especially the “porn stars” themselves. They were some of the sweetest, nicest, kindest most laid back, comfortable in their skin, in touch with their sexuality guys I’ve ever met. I have to admit I was taken aback by this. It was not what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting degenerates. The first instance of misreading things.

We were filming some scenes at a house in Silverlake, a very hilly neighborhood in Los Angeles. The house belonged to a Japanese hairdresser (hair is almost as important as the sex in gay porn) and was at the very top of what was essentially a small mountain. The house had a deck that jutted out over the hillside and above the tops of the eucalyptus trees. The doorbell rang and I answered it. There was a guy there wearing that Southern California skater boi look. A baseball cap pulled down over the eyes, a tee shirt, a pair of denim shorts that came down to the knee. A wallet on a chain and high tops. It was Russell. Or Kyle McKenna. I wasn’t familiar with him. He grunted something. Mumbled his name maybe. I was just mesmerized by his beauty. I literally couldn’t take my eyes off him. He went to talk to the director who told him they were about to shoot his scene. He unceremoniously dropped his clothes in a pile. He was quiet. Extremely quiet. The only words I heard him speak were the lines of cheezy dialogue…of which he had little, since his character was supposed to be hypnotized by the invaders from Uranus. One of my major duties was holding what was called “the C light”. Essentially this was one of those hand held lights that mechanics use; the kind with the bulb in the little cage with the hook. I had to lie on the floor under Kyle while he was being “entered” by the other guys. I was basically shining a light where the sun don’t shine so it wouldn’t be underexposed. It was not erotic. It was clinical. Meeting someone one second and then minutes later shining a light on his nether regions mere inches away from my face. To say this was surreal would be understating it.

During the lunch break, I overheard one of the boys talking about a shoot they had done in Palm Springs. Apparently this fellow had worked with Kyle. I remember him leaning against the kitchen counter, raising his eyebrows and saying, “….well, Kyle has ISSUES…” I immediately wondered what he meant. What kind of issues? I went out on the deck where several of the boys were strolling around naked. Once their clothes were off, they didn’t usually bother to put them back on. Kyle was over on the other side of the deck. There was a hammock and he was trying to get into it in order to sunbathe. He was all ready as red as a lobster. I assumed this was too much Palm Springs sun too fast. I didn’t mind though. Getting to watch him move around completely nude was a definite job perk. He finally settled into the hammock but couldn’t seem to find his balance. He wasn’t there five minutes before he shifted his weight and the whole hammock spun around like a rotisserie, dumping him flat on his ass like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character. Clearly embarrassed, he jumped up, looking around to see if anybody saw, now even redder than red. I was the only one who had witnessed this, but I don’t think he saw me watching him. Something about the incident and his reaction made my heart leap into my throat. He seemed so clueless and so alone and so trying to fake something he wasn’t. And what he wasn’t was “Kyle McKenna, Porn Star”. I was in charge of getting documentation from the boys of proof of their ages, so I saw all of their driver’s licenses. “Russell McCoy” and some address of what I recalled was some distant desert town. “He commutes all the way from there?” I wondered. I had a habit of becoming smitten with men who were extremely aloof. It’s the ones who resist that we most want to kiss, wouldn’t you say? Russell was beyond aloof. He seemed mute. Like a horse with blinders on. He left several hours later in a red Chevy pick-up truck. The image he was projecting was decidedly macho. But something didn’t seem to fit.

There was another movie called Thunderballs by the same director. I think Kyle had the James Bond part. It was being filmed simultaneously with “Invaders”. Some scenes were being shot at the All World’s studio. Some guys on a boat having an orgy. I knew Kyle was in the movie, but he wasn’t in that scene. I was disappointed. I wanted to see him again. Maybe try to talk to him. A few months later I got a job at an editing house that specialized in gay porn. Kyle was working a lot during this time so he always seemed to be in one of the movies that was being edited. He was omnipresent. I may have fooled myself into thinking I knew him since he now seemed so familiar. I used to hang out in a bar called The Faultline on the far east end of Melrose Ave. I’d often play pinball. The pinball machine was in a little alcove that looked out onto a large open air patio. One night I was there and I looked up from the game and standing out there by himself, a few yards away from me, was Russell. At first I didn’t realize it was him. A really good looking guy had caught my eye. Then it dawned on me who he was. But he wasn’t skater boi now. He was all buttoned up in a button down oxford shirt (pale yellow) with the sleeves buttoned at the wrist. His hair perfectly brushed businessman style. Crisp jeans, the shirt tucked in and Topsider boat shoes! I hadn’t seen anyone in a pair of those since 1984. He looked like a completely different person. He was alone, staring at a video monitor, sipping on a bottle of beer. Now was my chance! I would go out there and chat him up, since we had a mutual experience in common, it would be easy. Right? But I was shy. And still a little intimidated. So of course, the next time I looked up, some guy was talking to him. Damn! I played a few more games. The other guy just wouldn’t go away. At some point I went to the bathroom and when I came back, he was gone. I assumed he left with the other guy. Now my heart sank. I’d lost my chance. I would never see him again. The next thing I heard about him was the news of his death in Adult Entertainment Magazine. And it was the sketchy, mysterious raising more questions than it answers official explanation of his suicide…

I blame Jon Macy for posting about oglaf.com on Facbook and thereby causing me to lay helplessly on my couch until I had read every cartoon. Well, not every cartoon, not all at once. There was a break for sex somewhere in the middle. Though it wasn’t sex with a giant spider nor Jon Macy, it was still outstanding sex.

But I am now curious about that spider.

This was unexpected:

One mystery solved: Victoria V. McCoy must have been the heretofore unidentified woman who answered the Charles, Sr.’s phone when I called a few years ago. I didn’t know she was still alive then, and now she’s gone. Part of me wants to go to the funeral on Friday, just as a “disinterested pray-er” to see if Charles or Ryan show up. Would I then go up and talk to them? It seems the proper thing to do if I’m there already, but at the same time what would I say, and how would they receive it? I didn’t know the elder Mrs. McCoy, so how could I even justify my presence there except to say, “Please tell me what really happened”? And that would clearly be improper (or at least ill-timed).

Two things strike me about the obituary: 1.) Caroline isn’t listed among the survivors though other husbands and wives of the immediate family are. I guess she and Charles finally divorced. and 2.) Russell is listed as being a survivor. My brother and I spoke about this today. Was this obituary written more than ten years ago while Russell was still alive, and no one bothered to update it? Or is the family is complete denial about his death? Or, most intriguing of all, is the story of Russell’s suicide, like many stories out there about him, a fake?

I could get answers on Friday if I’m bold enough. Or I could leave well enough alone.

What to do?

Even though we were sometimes friends and other times a mutual annoyance, Russell and I also got under each other’s skin in bad ways. I know that I was hurt by what he would say to me, but I never knew what, if anything, Russell felt. And that annoyed me more than anything else: that he could get to me, but I couldn’t get to him. When we did get into a skirmish, I was becoming more and more at a loss on how to one-up him, so I started swearing. A lot. It didn’t do anything except escalate our arguments and make me feel a little bit better. When it came down to it, I wanted to be friends with Russell – full-time, hanging-out and doing-things-together friends – but being mean to each other for so long made that more and more difficult.

By eighth grade, there were six of us that sat together at lunch – me, Scott, Russell, Jay, David, and Marc. Marc was mostly unwelcome because he had behavior issues: poor attention and worse impulse control. He cried when he didn’t get his way, and, unfortunately, since we were young and careless, we picked on him just to see him meltdown. However, he lived near Jay and was part of the Dungeons & Dragons group we belonged to, so he was around more often than not.

One day at lunch, a sixth person joined us at our table before Marc could get there. I have no recollection as to whom it was; Marc tried to muscle him out, and we told Marc to sit elsewhere. He was not happy, but he had no choice; St. George’s wouldn’t let tables add on chairs, six was the max. Also for whatever reason that day we were all in bad moods. Jay was planning a sleepover at his house that Friday, but that was causing more problems than it was solving. Honestly, I don’t remember the details except that Russell and I were on opposite sides of the argument, and our voices were raised. Everyone was just mad and we argued the whole lunch period. While this was going on, and with just a few minutes of lunch left, Marc pulled up a chair to the table. Jay, fed up with the proceedings, canceled the sleepover in a huff. Russell said something; I said something back, swore at him more than likely, and he called me a “son of a whore”.

Just then the lunch bell rang. We stood up to leave, everyone except Marc. As I turned away, I heard him counting down, “Three. Two. One.” and he grabbed Russell by the arm while the rest of the table went to line up with our classes to go back to homeroom. I pretended I didn’t see it, and just kept walking. Whenever I think of why I didn’t stop Marc, I come back to being angry at Russell. And I’m embarrassed and ashamed of it. It makes sense – I was only 11 or 12 at the time, but still, it was a shitty thing to do to a friend. When I got to my homeroom’s line, I looked back and saw teachers rushing over to the scene, pulling Marc off of Russell. Then they were escorted out of the cafeteria. By then, everyone was looking, and the cafeteria was dead silent. Then I heard someone say, “Marc just punched Russell!”

“Oh. Shit,” I thought. And tried to not look back as we left the cafeteria.

I went to homeroom and then to my next class, but within fifteen minutes, I was called to Mr. Nalepa, the science teacher’s, room. When I got there, Scott and Jay were already there, as was that period’s science class. I’d never been in trouble before, and it looked like there was going to be an audience for my first time.

“What happened at lunch today?” Mr. Nalepa demanded.

We looked at each other and were silent, not because we didn’t want to answer, but because we didn’t know who should answer.

“What? You don’t know what happened?”

I felt my face go hot. Someone in the class snickered.

Mr. Nalepa raised his voice at us. “Do you know that one of your friends is hurt, and another one has been suspended?”

“We… were having a fight,” Jay volunteered.

“What about?” Mr. Nalepa probed.

“Nothing important. It seems kind of stupid now,” I said.

“Stupid?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t even know what started it. We were just arguing, like we always do. Marc wasn’t part of what was gong on. He came in at the last minute and had no idea what we were talking about. He decided on his own to hit Russell.”

“So, you knew what happened, but you didn’t do anything to stop it?”

“We had already walked away when Marc hit Russell,” Jay said.

“I didn’t know what had happened until I was standing in line and turned around,” I lied.

Mr. Nalepa stopped and regarded us. Then he said, “Kneel down and stretch out your arms to your sides, plams facing down.” We did so. He put five-pound weights on each of our hands and told us that we had to hold them that way for ten minutes. If a weight fell, we would have to start over with five more pounds added on (remember, this was a Catholic school). Luckily, we didn’t drop a single weight.

At then end of the ten minutes, we were sent back to our classes. In the hallway, we were all very sheepish with each other, and Jay finally said, “Why don’t you come over Saturday around 7?”

“Can we invite Russell?” Scott asked.

“If he wants to come,” Jay replied.

Reports were sent home with all of us that night. When I handed mine over to my Mom, she was dismayed. What happened?” she asked.

“Russell and Marc got into a fight today,” I said coyly. To this day, I don’t know what my motivation was for framing the situation this way. Russell was already in trouble. Was I kicking him while he was down? Was I trying to deflect blame away from myself? “We were having an argument, and he called me a ‘son of a whore’. Marc, I think, was defending me. Or maybe he just doesn’t like Russell.”

My mom picked up the phone and started dialing. My heart pounded. “Are you calling the school?” I asked. “Because no one will be there now.”

“No, I’m calling Russell’s parents. This thing between you has got to stop.”

“Charles? Hi, this is Marlene McGrath. We have a problem…” Mom went around the corner to talk to Mr. McCoy and I was anxious. I held my breath and looked down at my homework. I hoped that Russell’s parents would be so upset by the fight that my guilt in the matter wouldn’t be in the forefront of their minds. As it turned out, I was a hot topic at their house that night. The conversation was punctuated by I-see’s and I-did-not-know-that’s. Finally, Mom hung up and called for my Dad to come into the kitchen.

“So, what happened?”

“Well, according to Russell, it’s Sean who has the filthy mouth.”

What could I do? I confessed, but I was furious at Russell for outing me. My parents made me promise to apologize to him the next day; however, he didn’t come to school. And at first I was relieved because I wouldn’t have to acknowledge my part in what was really the most shameful thing I’d ever done: set up someone to get hurt.

When Russell did come back to school, I tried to apologize, but he wasn’t interested in hearing it. He said it would be better if we didn’t talk again, and he would be sitting somewhere else during lunch.

We graduated from eighth a few weeks later. I didn’t see Russell all summer long, though my brother went over to his house to play several times.

I know how Russell’s fans speak about him today. And let me take a moment here to explain to his fans why I keep calling him “Russell” and not “Kyle”: I didn’t know him as ‘Kyle” even though the last time I saw him he was already doing porn under that name. And I think if I call Russell “Kyle” then I’m buying into some of the stories that are on the ‘Net about him. I also don’t know where “Kyle” came from, who created his name and his story. This is someone I was totally ignorant of. What I do want to know who got Russell into his first porn, and why he did it because he could have done anything with his life. No judgment; I just want to know. Kyle’s fans speak about his performances on the screen as artistic achievements, but here are some things that Kyle’s fans may not know about Russell.

Russell’s Bible by seventh grade was The Preppy Handbook, though he was a Preppy long before that. Before anyone else knew that it was gauche to wear white after Labor Day, Russell was wearing an alligator over his left pec. I had never before heard the term “status symbol” until he was explaining the importance of Izod one day. Along the same lines, Russell’s mom didn’t let him and his brother eat chocolate, but they were allowed to eat carob. She never struck me as a “health food nut” (as they were called in those days), so part of me thinks this was a bit of a “status symbol” as well.

Knowing what Izod was when most of us were more concerned about how to win at Asteroids was a harbinger of a deft wit in the making. Going to St George’s Catholic School, we were required to go to Mass every Friday. One of the songs was called, “Take My Hands”, and as a kid I had a difficult time with this verse:

Take my hands and make them as your own,
And use them for your kingdom here on earth,
Consecrate them to your care,
Anoint them for your service where,
You may need your Gospel to be sown.

I thought that the Gospel needing “sewn” (as I thought it was spelled) had something to do with book binding, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me because the Bible was supposed to be the infallible Word of God and thereby, one would assume, immune to glue rot. So, one day at lunch, I expressed this confusion and Russell rolled his eyes and said, “S-O-W-N, like seeds being sown. This is the Bible, not Simplicity Patterns.”

Back in the 70’s there was a campaign by the Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital to discourage kids from ingesting cleaners or detergents or solvents or poisons around the house that used a character called “Mr. Yuck.” Parents were given Mr. Yuck stickers to put on any containers with dangerous substances inside, while commercials with Mr. Yuck ran during weekday afternoon and Saturday morning children’s shows. The song went:

Mr. Yuck is mean.
Mr. Yuck is green!
MUAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!

Russell’s (much) gayer version went (in the tradition of “Boy’s Beware”):

Mr. Yum is pink.
Mr. Yum will wink.
Hee hee hee hee hee!

I say it was “gayer” now, but at the time, I didn’t know Russell was gay. I was only vaguely aware of myself being gay, but I also knew that being at a Catholic school in a very small Pennsylvania town saying it out loud would be a bad idea. It would make sense for Russell being as private as he was to not say anything about his orientation one way or the other, but looking back I can see clues here and there.

Russell liked ABBA, Devo and Blondie. He was, of course, well aware of New Wave well before anyone else was. When he said “New Wave” for the first time, I remember asking, “What was the ‘old wave’”? He rolled his eyes and tsked.

In eighth grade, when Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was a mega-hit, Russell and Scott created a pimp named “Skinner”, and Russell wrote:

Darkness falls across the land
the Skinner hour is now at hand
Skinner’s out in search of bods
Slinking through your neighborhoods.
And though you fight to free yourself,
your start to writhe and quiver
for no mere child can resist the of
THE SKINNER!!!!!!

This is from my freshman year yearbook, and the only drawing of Russell’s that I have of Skinner:

The line about Gar-animals refers to a junior at Prep, Kevin Gorny, who was a friend of a friend, but who also went out of his way to pick on Russell and me and our friends. We were freshmen, so brave guy, right? In English class, Russell wrote an ode to him, then read it out loud to the class. The only line I remember is the beginning:

Adorned ye, Gorny,
In small patterns of barn animals
Clothed in thy older brother’s Gar-animals.

Again, he was quite the wit.

Russell took piano lessons for just about forever, and in fifth grade started taking guitar lessons at school (everyone had to choose an instrument or go into General Music). For a while he sang with Scott and me in the Eire Kiwana’s Boy’s Choir, but he soon backed out when he found out we had a concert scheduled at St. George’s. He had a solo and was embarrassed to sing in front of so many people who might have known him.

Russell was also a swimmer and in high school a water polo player. Like playing the piano, he had been swimming forever. I know he set a few records and won many meets, but I don’t remember the who’s and where’s.

Because Russell was smart, everyone assumed he’d go on to have a career in the sciences. He once made this hard plastic out of toilet bowl cleaner. He said there was flour in it as well. I tried it once, but failed to get the same result. To this day I have no idea how he did it. Unfortunately, because he was so different and so smart and so mature, he got bullied a lot. This one kid, John Root, called Russel “S.A.” for “Scientific Ass”. Russell used to chant at him

John Root’s a hippie!
John Root’s a hippie!

By this time we were in seventh or eighth grade, and Russell was pretty advanced in terms of sexual awareness. Probably as early as fifth grade he started talking about jacking off (as my brother recalls), and knew that ADIDAS (his preferred brand of sneaker) stood for “All Day I Dream About Sex”. He was also drawing hawkpeople, which were exactly as it sounds like – heavily-armed and barely-clad men and women wearing hawk heads with wings growing from their backs. This was probably the first time I had ever seen anyone draw boobs. Scott and I started copying the characters into our own drawings, and it was quite the scandal when our parents found the drawings. By this time we were in seventh or eighth grade and rationalized it by saying boobs were “no big deal” and, really, everyone had nipples; it was just that women’s were raised up a bit. They didn’t buy all the way into the explanation, but we were on the cusp of puberty, so the issue was dropped pretty quickly.

Like I said before, if there was one thing Russell excelled at, it was drawing. He had wanted to be an architect when he grew up. I think around fourth grade Russell started to carry around the blueprints for the original Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise. I don’t think Russell actually watched Star Trek, but he studied the plans for details, scale, and design elements. He had a steady and exacting hand, and I wish I had some of his pictures still. When I visited him in 1994, he showed me some of his current drawings. Most notably, there was a detailed close-up of the feet of four men in black Doc Martin boots and white socks which were pushed down to just above the top of the boots. At the time, that was the height of fashionable gay clubwear. I looked at the drawing, then to Russell, hoping he’d say something about being gay, but he was silent. “Ah yes.” I hinted. “I see this in the clubs all the time. I sadly can’t afford Doc Martins.” But his response was something along the lines of, “I think this fad is starting to fade anyway.”

Even though Russell didn’t like comic books’ portrayals of magic and sorcery, he was completely enamored of The Lord of the Rings. This was around the same time that the animated version played on television for the first time along with the animated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. By the time we were in fourth grade, he had read the entire trilogy, and I’m pretty sure he had committed The Hobbit to memory. Within the year, Scott had read The Hobbit and I started to (I was much more interested in Michael Moorcock than Tolkien). Russell’s drawings started to take on a more fantastical element at this time, and he started to keep a journal that looked just like this one:

One drawing I remember in particular was a battle between rival wizards, some riding dragons with membranous wings, others shooting mountain-sized lightning bolts from their staves. Large wolves roamed the battlefield and carried off the unwary in their iron jaws. Like everything Russell drew it was precise, well-composed, and technically proficient. But the journal was the rule book for “The Istari II of the New World”, based on The Lord of the Rings‘ council of which Gandalf was a member. Potential members were tested by answering questions from The Hobbit, including naming all of Bilbo’s dwarven companions. The four members were Russell (the White), Scott (the Grey), Nate (the Blue), and me (the Brown). We all had names, I think in Quenya, that Russell had learned to write in runes. I cannot remember what my name was, but I do remember it translated as “Rock-Head”. I was alternately pleased that I passed the test to become a member, but annoyed that it wasn’t enough to be friends with Russell.

Still, his journal was a beautiful piece of work. He drew a map of the woods and creek near our family’s house in such detail that it could have been done by Daniel Reeve, the Middle-Earth map artist.

When Russell and his family moved to California, he left the journal behind with me. I have no idea where it is now, which is a source of distress for me. On some days I imagine that it’s in my mother’s basement in a box somewhere with all the missing letters. On other days, I have a cloudy recollection of giving it back to him when I visited him in 1994.

Fantasy was one of the few overlaps Russell and I had. When I started to get people together to play Dungeons and Dragons in earnest, Russell joined in a few times. He even got me a module one year for Christmas (it was “The Tomb of Horrors”), and I got him several “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. I was told that they certainly didn’t measure up to the thought he put into my gift. Emily Post maybe would have cheered, but I was hurt.

And that was the nature of our relationship – this back-and-forth, push-and-pull, hate-and-make-up dynamic. I admired Russell and I wanted to be friends with him until I didn’t. And that was a really bad time.

To be continued…

I want to set the record straight as best I can. I don’t know if all the stories I’ve read about Russell since learning that he was a performer in gay porn under the name “Kyle McKenna” and that he killed himself back in 2000 came from his own mind or from the studios he worked for, but most of them are wrong, if not flat-out fabrications. If the former is true and Russell deliberately obfuscated his background, then I run the risk of offending his privacy (and Russell was a very private person), but if the latter is true, then Kyle numerous fans don’t know the truth about this man they adore. I worry also that the story about his family not claiming his body after he killed himself is also true and that this article will embarrass them or cause them pain, and I always liked his family. However, if the story is true, then my childhood impressions of them were completely wrong and they are horrible people for doing that to their son.

I first learned that Russell was dead during my Christmas break in 2007. I was staying with my brother, and one idle night wondered vaguely what Russell was up to since I hadn’t seen him since 1994. Yeah, that makes me a really horrible person, I know. But finding answers to vague questions is why the Good Lord invented Google in the first place, and its top entry was surprisingly from IMDB. When I followed the link I didn’t believe what I was reading. People always talk about “cognitive dissonance”, but what I felt was as if I had gone momentarily stupid.

I thought it couldn’t be the same person I was looking for. Russell had done porn? Gay porn? Anything was possible, sure, but someone from Erie, someone I knew had done gay porn? And he was dead?

“Scott?” I asked my brother.

“Yeah?”

“What was Russell’s middle name?”

“Charles.”

“Was he born a year before us?”

“Yeah. 1968. Why?”

“Apparently, he’s dead.”

“What??”

“And did gay porn.”

“WHAT?!?”

Scott leapt over to the futon where I was sitting and we started to read the page together. He had the same difficulty believing this was the boy we had known because the biographical details were all wrong: Russell moved out to California with his family after freshman year in high school because his father had been transferred with GE, not because he ran away from a physically and sexually abusive father. Russell had a brother four years his junior, not an older one in the army who roughed him up when he came home on leave. If this was the Russell we had known, why were there all these lies being said about him? And if it wasn’t Russell, who in the world would have taken his name and claimed Erie, PA as his hometown?

“Holy. Crap.” Scott said.

“Yeah. Is this Russell?”

“I don’t know. Is there a picture?”

“Uh. No. Let me find one.”

In about five seconds, I had a picture of Kyle McKenna on the screen, and it was Russell. The chin was the giveaway. He had grown up to look like his father, but I could still see the parts of him I remembered.

“Jesus,” my brother said. “It is him.”

“Yeah, it is. How did we not know this before now? I mean, don’t you think we would have known somehow or other?”

“How?”

“I don’t know. It’s just weird that someone we know is dead.”

“It’s weird that someone we know did porn. Maybe we didn’t know him that well.”

“That’s… distressing. And somewhat sad. Why didn’t someone tell us?”

For the next few days, I dwelt on that question. Even now, I can’t fully explain why I felt I was entitled to some kind of an explanation, some truth in the matter. I think I felt ashamed that I hadn’t kept up contact with him, writing like I had promised I would, and in the end when he felt no one was there for him, I was one of those “no ones.” Nothing punctuated, bolded and underlined that “no oneness” than when I found a Charles McCoy listed in the Erie phonebook, and called thinking that it was Russell’s dad. A woman answered the phone, her voice timid and suspicious, “Hello?”

I didn’t recognize her voice, but then again if it were Russell’s mom, how would I know what her voice even sounded like anymore? I decided to play it dumb.

“Yes, hello. My name is Sean McGrath. May I speak with Charles McCoy, please?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”

My heart ker-plunked. “Oh, no. Really? Charles was so young. I’m sorry to hear is. Is his wife Caroline there by any chance?”

The woman’s voice audibly relaxed. “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. It was Charles Senior who passed away. His son, Charles Junior, is still alive as far as I know.”

“Ah! Is he still in California?”

“Who is this again?”

“My name is Sean McGrath, and… well, let me explain. I went to school with Charles’ son, and I wanted to get back in touch with him. I live in Texas now and am visiting Erie for Christmas, and on a whim thought I would look up… the family and see if anyone was in the area for the holiday.”

“Isn’t that sweet? No, I’m afraid they’re all still out in California, and with Charles gone now, I don’t think that they’ll be coming back to the area again.”

“Would you happen to have a phone number for Charles or Caroline?”

“I don’t. Sorry.”

I did a mental double-take. Someone who knows the grandfather, is living at his address and answering his phone, but has no idea how to get in touch with the extended family? Or was she lying? Who was this woman?

“What about Ryan? Or… Russell?”

At the mention of Russell’s name, the woman became stern and inquisitive. “Who did you go to school with? Where did you go to school?” she practically yelled.

Still trying to sound out-of-the-know, I answered, “I went to Saint George’s with both Ryan and Russell, but I graduated with Russell.”

Now she was yelling. “Who is this?!?”

“My name is Sean McGrath,” I repeated. “And…”

“NEVER CALL HERE AGAIN!!!!” Then she hung up on me. I was left with the impression that she knew what had happened to Russell (judging from her reaction to his name), and that there was more than a little shame attached to it. Granted, she didn’t know me from a Big Mac, and it’s possible that back in 2000 Kyle McKenna fans were calling out of the woodwork to get a statement or a memento. But seven years later to still be that angered by a phone call, she would rather have forgotten Russell existed than to remember any unpleasantness. Again, it was just my impression.

In the end, there are many things I don’t know about Russell and his life in California as Kyle McKenna, but I would like to know. Maybe someone can tell me. I’d love to find out. Even what I think I know and remember is unraveled around the edges, but as it comes to me, I’ll tell you. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Russell Charles McCoy was born October 27, 1968. His first school was Erie Day School, and in 2nd grade transferred to Saint George’s. His father’s name was Charles, Jr. and his mother’s name was Caroline. He had a younger brother named Ryan and a dog named Raisin. He lived at 1777 (or “one triple seven” as Russell put it in his supercilious way) Emory Drive. Russell and my brother Scott became friends quickly, and at dinner, we would hear about how smart Russell was, how good at math and science, how good at drawing… and he was. Russell’s mind was stunningly clutter-free and disciplined even in second grade. He was also unfailingly polite. Teachers and parents often used him as an example of the right way to behave in class. Russell was kinda scary, almost alien compared with the sloppiness we were used to (we were, after all, just seven years old). How this happened is anyone’s guess: natural inclination, training at Erie Day School, his parents’ influence… I remember my Mom saying that Russell’s mom was too hard on him, that she never let him have any fun. It’s possible that his meticulousness came from her. If I recall correctly, Carolyn was a student most of the time that we were in elementary school. I don’t recall what she was studying, nor if she had a job. But I do remember that she scared me a bit. She was aloof and always had some activity going on that didn’t involve us kids when we would visit their house. Charles, Russell’s father, was an engineer for GE and just a friendly guy, even a bit goofy (he kept an ABBA poster taped to the family room wall). He planned a birthday party for Russell one year that had us running around the house in a riddle-based scavenger hunt, playing party games, and winning comic books. I think Russell was alternately delighted and embarrassed. Embarrassed because what we were doing was so childish (Russell wasn’t really a “kid”), but delighted because he was having fun. Every once in a while he’d step out of his mature-beyond-his-years façade and really smile, like when he blew the candles out on his birthday cake. And that smile was a rare thing. At most, one would get a Spockian cocked-eyebrow if he was amused. Really, any emotion from Russell was unusual, he was so even-keeled, so controlled. I think the entire time I knew him, I saw him cry once. A bully had been picking on him on the playground before school, and had said something to really upset him. When Scott and I arrived, Russell was crying and told us the kid had spat on him. We said he should report it, but he wouldn’t. If nothing else, Russell was driven by pride.

When we first met, Russell hated me, and I wasn’t too thrilled by him either. Russell was in the same class as my brother Scott. The two of them were a lot alike: mature, had talents for writing and drawing, and were both… let’s call it “well-ordered”. I, however, wasn’t. I was emotional to the point of being gregarious, demonstrative, and spilled a lot of Kool-Aid. I think there was also a “tag-along” feature that Russell didn’t like (he often compared me to his younger brother, Ryan, who did the same thing). Scott and Russell became really good friends very quickly, and Scott would tell stories at the dinner table about what he and Russell did that day in school. If I recall correctly, Russell and I were introduced after school one day while we were all waiting for the bus. I had heard so much about Russell that I was eager to meet him, and when Scott said, “That’s Russell over there,” I insisted on an introduction. The exchange went something like this:

Scott: Russell, this is my brother, Sean.

Me: Nice to meet you.

Russell: I’ve heard a lot about you, and most of it’s not good.

Me: The fuck…?

Of course, this is recalled through the filter of 30-some years, so I don’t expect this is exactly what was said, but the content is accurate. And this began our rivalry, if it can even be called that. We weren’t competing for anything except to put the other in his place, but it was an on-again, off-again affair throughout grade school. Sometimes (OK, rarely) we’d get along like peanut butter and bananas, and other times we’d be at each other’s throats like Joan Collins and Linda Evans. An example of the former was when we were in fourth grade and our teachers decided that an inter-classroom Multiplication/Division Off would be just the thing to get us learning our times tables. There were three fourth-grade classes, and in the end, my room won. Scott and Russell’s lost. At lunch that day, I was ready to brag a little bit (even though I wasn’t the one who cinched for my room), and when I asked Scott and Russell how it felt to lose, Russell said, “I decided that anyone who brings up that event will get a noogie.” So, he gave me one, but I let him. It was kind of funny.

There were plenty of times when we had sleepovers that went well. We slept over Russell’s house one night and he created a burglar alarm on one of those “Hey, Kids! Electronics!” kits that one could buy at Radio Shack to let us know when Ryan was coming down the hall to the bedroom so we could pretend to be asleep and not have to play with him. Of course, it was all much more “Doctor Doom’s Lair” in our imaginations than it was in actuality, but it was fun pretending what we would do if the kit were more advanced.

Another sleepover I remember happened when we were probably in fourth grade because that was the time I started to get into playing Dungeons & Dragons and the whole nerdfest of associated obsessions: comic books (Doctor Strange was a favorite), Michael Moorcock novels, and an interest in the occult (I got my first set of tarot cards not long after this); and Russell was reading The Lord of the Rings. More accurately, he was memorizing it, and learning to read and write runes. I found out that night that Charles was a Ham radio operator, and in my very spastic, over-eager, and utterly ridiculous way, asked if he could radio Tibet for us and ask if they could give us magic lessons. Charles (God love him for being so nice about this) said, “Well, I’m not sure you’d find many Hams in Tibet who speak English.” Russell for the occasion had composed a song to the tune of “Frere Jacques”:

Mystic arts, mystic arts;
Dormamu, Dormamu.
Doctor Strange is dying.
Ancient One is crying,
“Help me, too, Dormamu!”

Even though Russell didn’t like comic books’ portrayals of magic and sorcery, he was completely enamored of The Lord of the Rings.

To be continued…

Fred Guerra‘s January calendar starts the new year in the right way. See who can be on your desktop after the wrinkle!

click for the calendar

Fred Guerra‘s December calendar will warm the cockles of anyone’s heart. Or loins. Or whatever. It’s below the wrinkle. Click and save!

click for the calendar

…one need only turn to James Gunn’s new PG Porn, sponsored by Spike TV, that claims to be “for people who like everything about porn… except the sex!” Their first movie – “Nailing Your Wife” – stars my boyfriend Nathan Fillion and it’s… well, it’s better than most straight porns I’ve ever seen because it has Nathan Fillion and lacks baby caves. Win-win.