Home Our Mission New at USNA Out Who We Are HistoryWhat You Can Do Join Donate Connections Contact Us is for OUT Member Info

Skip Muller

USNA ’96

Homepage: myspace.com/will_work_for_wine

Unlike most of my high school classmates, who were driven by the more typical teenage motivators of sex, beer and surfing, I was driven by an insatiable desire to get out of Cocoa Beach, Florida, learn a foreign language and travel the world. The Cold War dominated the news. I decided to get into the military’s linguistic/intelligence program. While most of my pals went either to college to work at the supermarket, I was (in their eyes) off to try to be James Bond.

I found myself at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, CA, before the days of DADT. As an 18-year-old I struggled to understand my own sexuality, while all around me I saw people actively targeted, investigated and ejected from the military because they were homosexual. I forced myself to date women and live the lie that consumed and exhausted me for years to come.

By Navy standards I achieved success. I made it to the top of my Russian class just as the Berlin Wall fell, erasing my Russian-based prospects. I fortunately got into NAPS, the Naval Academy Prep School in Newport, RI; then to USNA, graduating in 1996. I served a long first tour as a DIVO aboard a brand-new destroyer, USS DECAUR (DDG 73), and then an extremely short second tour aboard the carrier USS JOHN C STENNIS (CVN 74), where DADT ended my USNA-payback a year early.

In 1998, just two years after graduating from USNA, I finally “had it” with being miserable. I gradually and carefully allowed myself to get on the San Diego dating scene. Soon after, much to my surprise, I met a college student named Deth Khaiaphone, originally from Laos. I began bringing Deth as my “roommate” to wardroom functions. We bought a condo in Hillcrest, the gay part of San Diego, and while I continued to give my full effort to ship, I finally had a happy life.

I can’t recommend that course of action to everyone. For me, however, it worked out. It released much of my stress, it opened my world to my shipmates, and though at my next command I left under DADT, my mind and spirit were clear.

Deth has been my partner since ’98. He went on to graduate from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, and currently works as a chef. We traveled to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand together in October ’06 on a kayaking/nature tour of the Mekong River, which was an amazing opportunity. After seven years of working in the tech industry, I’m now focused on writing screenplays and starting an internet company of my own.

I feel honored and proud to be able to support a Navy service member who is struggling in this difficult situation. Please email or call anytime.

Please feel free to contact Skip here at USNA Out.