History Forum / General / British History / May 2006

"MCGREEVEY'S GAY ROAD THRILL"

"MEMOIR BARES HIGHWAY HOOKUPS"

By DAN MANGAN

New York Post

"May 22, 2006 -- Jim McGreevey shockingly admits that before he became
governor of New Jersey, he'd have anonymous gay sex at Garden State highway
rest stops.

"All I knew was that my behavior was getting crazier and crazier," McGreevey
says of his torrid truck-stop trysts in an upcoming book that details his
tortured life of lies and sexual repression.

"With each new encounter, I was getting nearer and nearer to being caught -
which surely would have generated headlines, especially after I became
executive director of the state parole board" in the mid-1980s.  ******

Hilarious!  ---- DSH

"The closet starves a man, and when he gets a chance he gorges till it
sickens him," he writes in his book, titled "The Confession."

McGreevey revealed to The Post that he spent time in a psychiatric hospital
at an Episcopalian monastery in the Hudson Valley after his stunning
resignation as governor in 2004.

And he describes in the book his fruitless attempts to conquer or hide his
homosexuality by ogling Playboy centerfolds, frequenting strip clubs and
becoming "as avid a womanizer as anybody else on the New Jersey political
scene."

"The more the rumors circulated, the more public and brazen I became about
my heterosexual conquests," the twice-married father-of-two writes.

All that came to naught when he resigned amid rumors of an affair with a
male appointee, Golan Cipel.  He then declared proudly, "I am a gay
American,"

His wife, Dina, and his parents stood at his side.

His turgidly written tale, whose subject matter sometimes seems better
suited to a sleazy dime-store paperback than to a former governor's memoir,
is due to be published next fall by Regan Books.

Excerpts from the tome - for which McGreevey reportedly will be paid up to
$500,000 - were printed yesterday by The Star-Ledger of Newark after the
newspaper obtained them at a publishing-industry convention in Washington.

McGreevey, who is now separated from Dina, currently lives with his
boyfriend, financial adviser Mark O'Donnell.

McGreevey writes that he was aware he was gay at a young age. While his
parents' working-class Irish-Catholic identity comforted him, he knew "deep
down . . . that this American ideal excluded me."

At one point, he told The Post, he considered entering the Catholic
priesthood because he hoped its vow of chastity would solve the dilemma.

He also writes that while he had a "great number of heterosexual
experiences" while attending St. Joseph's all boys high school in Metuchen,
"I can't say I was interested in girls sexually."

"Yet I liked the physical contact, craved it even," McGreevey writes.

In 1983, while attending a political conference in Atlantic City that was
rife with sexual pick-ups, McGreevey got soused in an Irish pub and had an
epiphany.

"I knew I would have to lie for the rest of my life - and I knew I was
capable of it. The knowledge gave me a feeling of terrible power," he
writes.

No surprises there.  Many Democrat politicians lie for the rest of their
lives.  ---- DSH

McGreevey felt such shame, he writes, that he "split in two" - living on the
one hand a life "that stands for tradition and values and America," and
another life that he pretended to ignore as "something spoiled, something
disgusting."

But that duality only made his problem worse, and also made his forays into
the world of illicit sex more risky and degrading.

"In my case it went from the simple passions of a young adult - for physical
and romantic love and happiness - to a particularly rank, unfulfilling
variety of lust. I felt it get ranker and less fulfilling with each passing
year," he writes.

McGreevey longed to have a healthy relationship with another man, "with
someone I love," whom he could kiss, hug and with whom he could plan a life
together.

"I used to make long lists of guys I had crushes on, scribbling their names
like a teenager," he writes. "But I never allowed my conquests to be
anything like that.

"As glorious and meaningful as it would have been to have a loving and sound
sexual experience with another man, I knew I had to undo my happiness step
by step as I began chasing my dream of a public career and the kind of
'acceptable' life that went with it.

"So instead, I settled for the detached anonymity of the bookstores and rest
stops - a compromise, but one that was wholly unfulfilling and morally
unsatisfactory.""

"Additional reporting by Keith J. Kelly"
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DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Vires et Honor