The Confession (7 page)

In sophomore year, I accompanied Sean to a neighborhood party. I don't recall whose family was away, but the house immediately became a warren of teenage debauchery. Beer cans popped open, marijuana joints were lit. Unlike my peers, I had no taste for alcohol. To this day I don't drink more than a few sips of wine on special occasions. And I never smoked a cigarette or tried drugs of any sort. I suppose that makes me unique among my generation of politicians, but drugs just never appealed to me. This probably had as much to do with my family heritage in law enforcement as it did with not wanting to spoil my future plans. Most of my friends hadn't drawn so sharp a line in the sand, and for the most part I don't think their youthful experiments did them lasting harm.

Sean was having a blast. Everybody was. Kids were making out everywhere, from the basement to the master bathroom upstairs, or else talking and laughing in small groups. But something about this party made me realize that I had nothing in common with them. Looking around me, I saw in their faces a simple joy that I felt would forever elude me.

Without saying good-bye, I left the party to walk around the neighborhood, taking in the fresh air. And I began to cry in a way I hadn't before or since.

By now I knew a little more about homosexuality. Amazed to learn how fully it had been embraced by the ancient Greeks and Romans, I'd read
Spartacus
, with its magnificent love scene between Antonius and Crassus. I'd also read Oscar Wilde and D. H. Lawrence, and committed swaths of
Brideshead Revisited
to memory. I had heard of the gay life in Greenwich Village, just across the New York Harbor and visible from the tops of buildings in Carteret. Still, in all my reading I had never found evidence of two men falling in love
simply,
settling down, and pursuing a life together among their family and friends.

And more to the point, I knew there was not another person at that party, or in the rich landscape of Carteret, whose life was anything like mine. For all I knew, I was the only gay kid in my school, in my neighborhood, perhaps in the whole town—and the loneliness this realization gave me was insufferable. I felt totally let down by my faith. “What did I do?” I prayed to God. “I've been good. I've prayed. I've tried to live a spiritual life. I've tried to be of service to others.” No relief came. “What good can come out of this?” I pleaded. “Is this all an exercise in power? Did you make me gay as a way to humble me? Where is the relief, God? How do I find the way?”

Nothing. In those moments of suffering, I'll admit, I resented God. I felt the grip of evil, and I was angry at God for that. Theologically, I felt completely lost, totally without hope.

And in that way that teenagers do, I came to the conclusion that my only reprieve would be suicide. I will not detail the intricacies of my thinking, except to say that I never found the courage even to do that. And thus my self-esteem was further pummeled.

 

FORTUNATELY, THERE WERE OTHER THINGS TO THINK ABOUT, POLITICS
chief among them. Here again, though, I was an outcast: an Irish Catholic who took the side of Richard Nixon.

This was not a popular move in 1971. Catholics were natural Democrats to begin with, and they'd never forgiven Nixon for his fierce losing campaign against John Kennedy in 1960. And once Bobby Kennedy turned against the Vietnam War, Nixon wasn't likely to get much leeway from the Catholic bloc—not in Carteret, anyway. That's not to say that my town was antiwar; far from it. We were soldiers and law enforcement officials, or had family members who were. And we were anti-Communist to the core. More than that, we were Americans—in that eager way that first- and second-generation Americans tend to be. We answered our nation's call. We closed ranks when necessary, and waved the flag as we sent our best and the brightest off to fight the Vietcong. Eight never made it back home to Carteret. Only with time, as the war dragged on and the body count grew, did we grow divided about the war.

Not in the McGreevey household, though. Dad's views held sway, and they were the views of a marine. “Don't give ground,” he would say. “Our troops need our support.” But one by one our neighbors became critical of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. I remember, as if it were yesterday, walking by the home of one our neighbors, Mrs. Kvidahl, one day in 1967 or 1968. Mrs. Kvidahl was no hippie or political radical, and there was no better Catholic I knew. That day, on the way to school, I noticed that she'd hung a poster of Bobby Kennedy in her garage. I remember turning to my friend Eddie and saying, “That's interesting. Something is happening here.”

Where Mrs. Kvidahl led, others followed, and by the early 1970s slow revolution was taking hold in our sleepy blue-collar suburb. But nothing compared to the seismic explosion that took place when one of our parish priests went the way of peace. I'll never forget the Sunday morning Mass when Father Murphy, in his melodic brogue, turned fiercely on Nixon after the Cambodia incursion. “The war,” he concluded, “is morally wrong.”

I was sitting with my family in our regular pew, and when he said these words I snapped around to look at my father, who as a church lector was standing beside the altar—at the elbow of the priest delivering the antiwar homily. Dad's face turned to stone. His two most adored institutions, America and the Church, which had always seemed to be on the same side of any fight, were crashing into each other head on, and you could see the agony in
his eyes. I don't remember specifically what Dad spent the rest of that afternoon yelling about, but I remember the volume still. I wasn't the only McGreevey groping my way through an identity crisis in those years.

In this case, Dad had no bigger defender than me. In debate class, I went out to the
right
of Nixon when he announced an end to incursions across the twentieth parallel, in October 1972. And I was heartened when Nixon dropped the ceasefire and pushed north again during the so-called Christmas Bombing, setting off twelve days of the most concentrated air strikes in world history, which led in turn to the withdrawal of American troops within weeks and the collapse of Saigon two years later. My father and I watched these events closely on television, studied each new development in the morning's papers. It was a sober but also a thrilling time; only later, once Nixon's lies were revealed, did I come to regret my precocious early stand.

My excessive conservatism during these years also put me even further out of step with my peers. Looking back, I think my rightward turn may have been an attempt to give purpose to my isolation, as if I were saying,
What you see in me that's different is really Republicanism, nothing more sinister than that.
I acted proudly out of step, wearing ties long after they were no longer required at school and getting myself elected president of every wonky club there was, from science to German to school spirit. I was chairman of the Assembly Committee, managing editor of the newspaper, and the only kid to do four years in the debate club. I turned all my attentions to accumulating accomplishments.

I also began throwing myself into church affairs with the same energy I devoted to my schoolyard political campaigns. I even began flirting with the new charismatic movement in Catholicism, which had first blossomed in Pittsburgh in 1968 and was slowly spreading to other American cities. A group meeting in Edison welcomed me in, but I never became comfortable with the singing, dancing, clapping, and speaking in tongues. The Holy Spirit, when it entered me, told me to go back to St. Joe's, get on my knees, and say my prayers, the way Catholics have been doing for two thousand years.

At St. Joe's, even Brother Michael thought I had taken my conservatism too far. “You're too extreme, Jimmy,” he told me. “Life isn't black or white.
You've got to be more balanced in your viewpoints.” He counseled me to be more forgiving of the hippies and “peaceniks” I disparaged. I didn't take his advice; I was still too much of an absolutist. If Rome was against communism—as Bishop Fulton J. Sheen so eloquently established on his television show,
Life Is Worth Living
—then it must also be against Hanoi. The Church had handed me down this set of inflexible, God-given values, and I wasn't about to give any leeway in return.

 

I KNOW I MUST BE COMING ACROSS AS AN EXTREMELY LONELY
young man, but I did have many close friends—men and women alike, who remain instrumental in my life to this day. My high school years, in fact, were crowded with social obligations and opportunities. Nothing was more important to me than the time I spent at the YMCA in Rahway, an invigorating universe inside a blocky two-story brick building near the railroad tracks. The lessons I learned at the Y have stayed with me throughout my life: leadership and consensus, ecumenism and racial tolerance, and solid values, chiefly a belief in the value of social service.

I had been taking classes and swimming lessons there for years, but in the summer after freshman year the Y gave me my first job, as assistant camp counselor. The work thrilled me. The “camp” was right there at the Y, a program of day-long activities for underprivileged kids from the area, some just a few years younger than I was. We helped organize ball games, crafts, and other recreations, as well as field trips. This was a lot of responsibility for us kids, and not without potential for disaster. One afternoon we took the campers into New York to visit the legendary Bronx Zoo. Each counselor was responsible for twelve or fourteen kids. One of the kids under my supervision was named Billy Wnuck. Unfortunately, his natural curiosity drew him to the crocodile ponds—literally. When I turned my back he climbed over the fence and bent down to pet one of those enormous creatures on the head. Our cries of alarm were enough to convince Billy to scoot back to safety in time.

Visiting these kids at their homes over on Hazelwood Avenue allowed me to see stark poverty for the first time. In one kid's home, wooden boxes stood in for furniture, and layers of unhemmed fabric served as curtains.
His ill grandmother was convalescing on a mattress on the floor. It was a scene that almost made me cry. Most of the kids at the Y camping program were there on scholarship. Often they came with no food in their stomachs and ill-fitting clothes on their backs. But there was always something to wear and eat there, and even extras to take home.

It was also a racial mixing bowl, where the color of one's skin was so irrelevant as to go unremarked. I remember the first time Patty Cannon cornrowed my hair, how excited I was to show it to my sisters and to teach them the songs the children had taught me: “Hambone, Hambone, where you been?” I wore the braids all week, only taking them out in time for Sunday Mass.

At the Y, I felt I could be totally myself. I felt none of the sense of judgment that shadowed me at the church, or the burdens I felt at school. I also felt a little more “cool” at the Y, where I didn't have to wear my goofy glasses. Even my vexingly curly hair straightened out after a swim, just the way I always wanted it.

So from May to September, I hardly left the place. I worked from seven in the morning to nine at night, loving every minute of it; the harder I worked the more I enjoyed it all, and the faster I rose in the esteem of my supervisors. As the seasons clicked past, I was swim instructor, then pool manager, then aquatics director; before long I was practically running the whole camp.

Junior prom was approaching, and with my newfound confidence I invited Nancy McKeown, a gorgeous young woman with sparkling eyes. I coaxed Sean Hughes into coming along, too, setting him up on a date with a girl I knew from the Y, and they made an attractive couple. I can't say I had a fabulous time that night, and it ended awkwardly when Dad told me I couldn't continue on to the after-party. I think I was the only member of the junior class who was home by 10:30. Still, for the first time I'd begun to think of myself as having some kind of social potential. And for this I credited my time at the Y.

But my private struggles weren't going away. I had developed a close friendship with another swim instructor I'll call Brian Fitzgerald. Brian and I were a lot alike. We were both Irish, of course. And we were both perfect
sons who did what we were expected to do: overachieved in school, went out of our way at work, followed all rules unfailingly, and took immaculate care of ourselves. We were the kind of kids who flossed our teeth regularly.

Brian had a great sense of humor and solid academic training and was handsome besides: blue-eyed, blond-haired, with a taut athlete's physique. Maybe because I found him so attractive, I competed with him nonstop, which he seemed to enjoy as much as I did. We both had crushes on the same girl, and we spent months vying for her attentions. Brian and I went to sleepover camp together, even double-dated a few times, and I enjoyed cautiously pushing the limits (like trying to get the girls back to our cabin), just to make him nervous. I don't believe he tried anything with the girls. I, on the other hand, sometimes kissed or touched a girl specifically to see his reaction.

In senior year, we began a nightly ritual. After clearing all the kids out of the gym and emptying the locker room, we would turn off the lights in the pool room and sprint a few laps in the dark. He was always faster. But one evening, when I came particularly close to beating him, we got tangled up in a wrestling match—which dissolved into something entirely driven by hormones. Before it was over we had somehow ripped off one another's suits and were standing in waist-deep water totally naked. Our excitement carried us even further.

And when we were through that night, and the many other times that followed, I saw that Brian wasn't spiraling into the self-hatred that had consumed me after my first experience. I took great strength from that. With Brian, I was able to express myself sexually without hating myself. This was a lovely gift he gave me.

When the lights were on again, though, my ease always vanished. Brian, on the other hand, eventually found a way to do what I could never even imagine for myself. As I later learned, he became a doctor and moved to New England, where he lived a casual, openly gay life with his life partner. My heart ached when I heard this—not that I was pining for him, but because I pitied myself for not finding the courage to make the same honest choices. Brian had given me an opportunity to choose truth, and I missed my chance.