"You first encountered the defendant where, Mr. Philips?"
"At my gym. We were members of the same gym."
I did not want to be here, in this courtroom. But the DA had intimidated me. He had said that they might delve deeper into why I was in Baltimore—why I had left San Diego. I really didn't want them to do that. I had just fallen into it in San Diego. I didn't know they were illegal immigrants. I was just working in a worker-placement office. Sure, I was dumb and nonobservant. But is that a crime? California thought it might be, it seems. But I hadn't waited around to find out, and they hadn't come after me. And the issue hadn't come up again until the DA was looking for witnesses to help put Dr. Martin away.
"And did Dr. Martin make untoward advances to you in your gym, Mr. Philips? In the gym's sauna?"
"I don't understand."
The prosecutor turned and looked at me over his glasses with his head tilted down—the "Oh really?" look. Done for the jury, I was sure. "You understand what this trial is about, don't you, Mr. Philips? Dr. Martin stands accused of entrapment, holding his victims in captivity, and rape. You do understand that, don't you?"
"Yes," I answered. I knew what the prosecutor wanted. I knew what might happen if I didn't give it to him. But it would be skating on thin ice here. I tried to tell him how it really was, but he didn't want to hear it. He told me to keep my answers short and right to the point of the questions he asked. But already he was making it difficult for me to give him the answers he wanted and not perjure myself—and even more important to me, not reveal what I didn't want to face.
"Then I ask you again, Mr. Philips. Did Dr. Martin make untoward advances to you in the gym sauna room?"
"Yes . . . I guess so."
"You guess so, Mr. Philips? It seems a straightforward question. Either he did or he didn't."
"Yes, yes, he did. But I hesitated in my first response, because I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know it was a sexual approach. I was so naïve and it happened so indirectly. I'm embarrassed to testify to how dumb I was at that time. And there was that medical element—that confused and numbed me to what was happening, I think."
"We'll get to the medical aspect in a moment. Let's take this step by step. You'd never had sex with a man before, had you, Mr. Philips?"
"No. Never before. Never before Dr. Martin."
"And you didn't ask him to take advantage of you, did you, Mr. Philips? You didn't ask him to perform sex on you in the sauna or ask to go back to his office and be restrained and taken again, more fully—be penetrated in a sex act? You didn't initiate any of that with Dr. Martin, did you?"
"No. No, I didn't."
I could see now why I was told to keep my answers short and to the point. I'd almost drifted off in an unwanted direction. But the prosecutor had brought me back. And his questions were now leading me to short, specific response that would help me stay clear of the shoals while he phrased the questions to elicit the answers he wanted—the short, specific answers he was leading me to, and nothing more.
But, although I was answering his questions truthfully, this was misleading. This isn't exactly how it transpired. I wasn't the raped innocent. I had denied—was still denying—so much to myself. But I couldn't pretend on that point—not any longer.
It had started months before, and I wasn't blameless in getting it started. I had thought about it when I was younger, but I had put it out of my head. I'd been told it was a choice, and I made the choice not to do it. I went to college and kept away from it, even though it was rampant on the sports teams I was on. And I got married right out of school and got a job just like any regular guy. The marriage hadn't worked out, but I thought at the time that it was just something that wasn't meant to be, that we were too young. It wasn't until later that it occurred to me that it just wasn't satisfying—not in that way. That it was me, not her.
I probably would never have thought about it at all if I hadn't stopped to take a leak at that rest stop south of Washington, D.C., on I-95 on my way to a business meeting in Richmond. And even then I walked away from it, immediately, in total shock, without any thought of doing anything. While I was at the urinal, a guy came in and stood beside me at the other urinal. I was petrified when I felt him touch me on my penis and turned around to see that he was flashing me and making a circle with his mouth, obviously offering me something.
I was in shock. I didn't say anything or try to hit him or anything. I just wet myself down the inseam of my trousers and turned and stumbled out of the facility. I went back to my car and got in and just sat there, shaking, my eyes glued to the men's room door. I saw another young guy go in—with the other guy still in there. And he didn't come out. Neither of them came out while I sat there. I knew what they were doing in there; I knew that it could have been me, if I had stayed. I felt guilty about how my mind was playing with that. My hands were still shaking several minutes later when I started the car up and pulled out of the rest stop.
I hadn't done anything. Nothing happened. But in the ensuing weeks, I thought about it—increasingly. And I started fantasizing about it. I began to think of the what ifs. And it turned on my curiosity, and I went to the Internet and sought out the sites I didn't even know had existed before.
A few weeks later I changed gyms. I didn't need to change my gym. And I guess if I was pressed to tell all in this courtroom, I'd say that this was the beginning of my undoing—the first action beyond just thinking about it down that slippery slope. And that, no, Dr. Martin might have been the vehicle—and he may be as evil and criminal as they are making him out to be—but he isn't guilty of everything the prosecution is implying—at least not in my case. Maybe the other witnesses can justify their case. Truth be told, though, I don't think I could go that far in my own case.
In my own case, I was embarrassingly naïve, yes, but I guess I really wanted it. His wasn't the first approach at the gym, and I invited the earlier one, even though I was just being a tease, I thought. I'd seen sex in the sauna before—if I was to fully disclose what happened, I'd have to admit that I changed to this gym because I heard about it. I'd heard what happened there—and, specifically, in the sauna there.
I told myself that the tease and the what iffing and the voyeurism were enough. That's what I told myself initially when I changed gyms.
A week or so before Dr. Martin took me, I'd been laying on one of the benches, covered with a towel, when one of the guys I'd seen have sex in the sauna before came in there when I was in there alone. When I'd seen him before, I'd come into the sauna when he was sitting close to another guy—both young and well-built—and I got the strong impression that they'd had their hands on each other before I came in. They stopped and leaned away from each other when I came in, though. I sat there for a few minutes, looking at them. But they didn't do anything. I really wanted them to do something, something I could watch without doing it myself. I'd been looking at it in videos on the computer, but this would be live; this would be a step up. And I thought this would be enough. Then I could go off by myself and take care of myself while thinking about what I'd seen actually happen, in live action, in front of me.
The three of us just sat there. They obviously were waiting for me to leave. So, I did. And I went for a cold shower and waited for them to come out—they'd gone in before me, so they should be coming out to cool off in the shower themselves. But they didn't. So, I went back in. Now they were too far along to just pull away from each other, though. They both had their towels off and one guy was leaning over the other one and working the other guy's cock with his mouth, while he beat his own. And this time, they just continued as if I wasn't even there.
So, I sort of dallied in my exercises a couple of days later when I saw the guy who'd given the blow job doing his. And a short time before I figured he was finishing his routine, I went to the showers and then to the sauna. I laid down on a bench, with my towel around my midsection, knotted at my waist. Sure enough, the guy came into the sauna and sat further down the bench from me, below my legs. I was nervous and trembling, but it was something I was building up to, something I wanted. I was wrong when I thought that I'd be content with just seeing it live and that this would be enough to fuel my masturbation dreams. After seeing it, I wanted to experience it to.
I spread my legs, pulling the towel tight, leaving a wide gap at the bottom between my wide-stanced legs so that he could see all the way up my legs under the towel—just for the thrill of that much of a connection, I thought. Another guy had come into the sauna and was sitting across from us. I didn't know before, but I know now that it was Dr. Martin. The first guy didn't seem put off by Dr. Martin being there, and I began to hyperventilate—but in a good way. Being aroused that some other guy would watch us. I was getting hard—some guy the first one was comfortable having watch.
The blow job guy moved closer to me. I moaned at the very thought of what we were moving toward, probably loud enough for both of them to hear, when he put a hand on my ankle. I did nothing, and the hand went up onto my calf. My mind flipped ahead to feeling the hand on my thigh, under the towel, and then higher. And I knew I'd be hard by that time.
I had a vision of his hand reaching and encasing my cock, and beating me off slowly, as my eyes went from his to the rise and fall of the towel still encasing my midsection and then to those of the other guy in the sauna, watching us.
But then a couple of other guys came into the sauna and he stopped, his hand pulling away from my ankle. And, scared suddenly, I got up and escaped out to the showers—and masturbated under the flowing water at the image of what hadn't happened.
So, I was ripe for it, I know. I could say that I hadn't verbally asked for any of it. But I couldn't truthfully say that I didn't want any of it—and that I hadn't sent out signals that I did. Or that I didn't know I'd go through with it, given the opportunity.
"And in the sauna, Mr. Philips. When you had your first sexual encounter with Dr. Martin, did you know that this was what was happening? Did you ask Dr. Martin to touch and fondle you?"
"No, I had no idea. I thought that it was me, that I was misinterpreting what was happening. And that any sexual connotation in it was mine—and it embarrassed me."
"How could that be, Mr. Philips? Did you purposely expose yourself to Dr. Martin to initiate a sex act? Did you ask him to handle your genitals and cause you to ejaculate?"
"No, I didn't. And I thought I was the only one who had any such ideas about it as being a sexual encounter. I mean he was a doctor—and was so clinical. He said he'd seen something that he questioned medically, and he seemed to just be trying to help me, to give me medical advice. And I was nervous—and thought my reaction was just because I'd never had that happen before and the circumstances were so . . . strange, unusual."
"Let us be clear about another point while we are in this line of questioning, Mr. Philips. Did you at any time touch Dr. Martin in this sauna encounter? Specifically, did you handle Dr. Martin's genitals?"
"No, no, I did not." I was emphatic about that answer—because on that point, at least, I could clearly answer. I had not touched him in any way. He had seemed to want me to at one point, but I wasn't at all ready for that in the sauna on that occasion. I knew why the prosecutor had asked this question. He sensed that my feelings of guilt had me on the edge of saying more than I had—more than he wanted me to say. He was leading me—and the jury—back to safer ground.
"Thank you, Mr. Philips. Strange and unusual circumstances you said in response to the previous question. So, you didn't go into that sauna to have sex with Dr. Martin, did you, Mr. Philips?"
"No." Skating on thin ice here, but he'd prepared me on this point. I hadn't seen the guy giving blow jobs in the gym that evening. When I'd gone in the sauna, I wasn't thinking of having sex there with anyone, let alone Dr. Martin, who I didn't even know. But my general idea of going into the sauna was someday to have sex with another man in there, so this was a circumstance for me to listen very carefully to how the prosecutor worded his questions and to answer them just as I thought he wanted them answered.
"Did Dr. Martin . . . in the sauna on the evening in question, did Dr. Martin identify himself to you as a doctor, Mr. Philips?"
"Yes."
