I Had to Say Something (22 page)

“He should be calling me any day now,” I assured Paula. She told me that a camera crew was ready to come to my apartment building. All I had to do was call her once I had scheduled an appointment with Art. “Hang in there,” she told me.

Paula was patient as the days wore on with no sign of Ted. I started apologizing to her for Ted's inaction. In my heart, I felt that I was letting her down, even though it was all out of my control. I yearned for the couch again.

“He should be calling anytime, really,” I told her. Every time my phone rang, I would quickly check my caller ID to see if it was a blocked call or if it was from a 719 phone number. Sometimes, when it was a 719 area code, my heart would start pounding wildly. But each time, it was not Ted.

Time wore on. We notched thirty days from my first meeting at Channel 9 and still no sign of the Reverend Haggard. “I swear, this is not like him,” I told her. I wanted so badly to call Paula and ask her if she believed me. Other than her bosses, she was the only one I'd ever told about my life as an escort. My closest friends did not know what she knew. I needed to know that everything would be all right. Day in and day out, I was sure of less and less. All the while, I felt like I was setting a trap, and I felt trapped myself. My mental health was deteriorating.

I was still spending several hours daily digging up information about Ted Haggard on the Web. It was my new addiction, an attempt to replace junk food and
The Golden Girls
.

Ted knew a lot of famous people: Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters, Mel Gibson, Chris Matthews, and all kinds of political
figures, including George W. Bush. Ted had even met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to talk about the environment. It'd be easy to think Ted was a decent guy—as long as you never read his sermons.

Part of my searches always included taking a look at
www.tedhaggard.com
and the New Life Church Web site. Bouncing around the church's site one night, I discovered that on October 20 and 21, New Life would be having a men's retreat in the south Denver metro area. I started bouncing with joy, because I knew that was something Ted would be attending. I called Paula right away, even though it was almost ten o'clock. I gave her the details and told her, “I can't imagine Ted not sneaking away for a moment to come see me.”

Paula told me she would let her bosses know and thanked me for calling. I hung up, almost giddy with excitement. Something like that can suddenly make you feel like a winner, just like the winning hands my mother used to draw at the poker tables.

But after a few days with nothing, my mood started turning again. Sure, nothing was happening—nothing might happen until the weekend of the men's retreat. It was the waiting that drove me nuts.

I was starting to feel defeated again. It seemed as if the universe had alerted Ted to my efforts. Once again, I began to think that no one would ever believe me. I began to wonder if Paula still believed me.

I would love to tell you that I am great at planning, but more often than not I do things on the spur of the moment. During one of my occasional moments of strength, I decided on a whim to fire off an e-mail to Patricia Calhoun. She is the editor of
Westword
, a well-known alternative newspaper in Denver. They publish weekly, and they have a reputation for
running articles that more mainstream outlets won't touch. The paper had been around since 1977, and I read it every chance I get.
Perhaps they would like this story
, I thought.

I sent her, more or less, the same e-mail I'd sent Paula just a few months earlier. I made sure to stress that I had the voice mail tapes and the envelope he'd sent me, and just to cover my ass, I did not mention Ted Haggard's name anywhere. Once again, I poured my heart out and out it went into the universe.

Naturally, I started daydreaming about telling my story to Patricia. I had seen her on local shows about local issues, and to me, she always stood out as bright and knowledgeable. Since I saw myself as bright and knowledgeable as well, I felt that I knew her and could trust her. Plus, she looked like someone it would be cool to hang out with. Patricia struck me as someone who knocked it around loudly with the best and butchest of them. I hadn't even met her, and suddenly she was my friend.

But to be honest, I felt like I was cheating on Paula. Here I had made a commitment to her, and just because nothing was happening, I'd gone looking for someone else to talk to. I knew that in the real world, you can't play favorites, but one of my biggest strengths—and weaknesses—has always been that I'm very loyal, especially if you show an interest in me. I will be your friend for life as long as you don't screw me over. I felt that Paula liked me, even though I knew she was just doing her job. I didn't want to hurt her. Even though my world was falling apart, I still felt that I had to protect her somehow. No wonder I was a mess.

A few days later, Patricia called me and said she wanted to meet. I was elated to hear from her, convinced that once she heard my story, heard the tapes, and saw the envelope, she would run something. Her phone call helped give me the
energy to run some errands and do things that I had postponed until I was no longer in a crappy mood.

I needed to get my story out there. I was vacillating between going public and staying quiet, so I felt that if I could just get it out there, this inner conflict would end. I still felt guilty about going behind Paula's back, but I didn't want to bring myself down. Once again, I turned to the universe and offered Paula an apology. That made everything better. Maybe the clouds in my life were starting to clear.

Patricia and I scheduled a meeting for Friday morning at eight o'clock sharp. Much like getting ready for a job interview, I put on jeans and a shirt and had all my papers prepared in a nice portfolio. I needed to make a good impression. I did not want her to think that I was a street hustler.

She brought me to her office, and I took a seat amid her clutter. Papers and reference materials were scatted all over. It wasn't dirty, just extremely cluttered. Somehow, she seemed to know where everything was. Perhaps it was my gay sensibilities, but it was all very unappealing to look at. She needed the
Queer Eye
guys bad.

“Do you feel you are more of a risk taker than, say, a TV station?” I asked her point-blank. After spending more than a month with Channel 9, I was ready for things to move. That morning, I was ready to give her whatever she wanted so my story could get out there.

Patricia confirmed that she was indeed a risk taker. With that, I told her my story. I was very up front with her about my years as an escort and how I had a client who was very well known in religious circles. I told her about the meth. I told her everything. I didn't flinch, and my story was the same one I gave Paula over a month ago. I gave her my real name and my real phone number.

To be sure, Patricia gets dozens of e-mails and phone calls every day. Many of them are from nut jobs, while others are sincere but just don't have any information worth putting into print. Most just need to vent, and
Westword
, for many people, is the perfect place to vent. Nine out of ten stories she chooses to pursue go nowhere. I knew all that and hoped that my story would rise above the rest.

Patricia listened intently. She did not bring other staffers into the meeting like Paula had, and I took that as a good sign. Patricia is the editor, so I figured she'd have the most say about what gets published and what does not.

When I finished speaking, she asked me who this “prominent figure” was. I was hesitant, of course. At that moment, I still felt that I was betraying Paula, and now I felt that I was betraying Ted.

“It's Ted Haggard,” I told her.

She either has a great poker face or what I said just was not shocking to her. She did not visibly react, though she did know who Ted Haggard was. Maybe I watch a little too much television, because the one moment of drama I was expecting never happened.

She made a photocopy of the envelope, and I provided her with a copy of the voice mails. As she handed the envelope back to me, I started having more guilty feelings.

“Patty, I am talking with a television station about this,” I confessed. “Don't do anything with this just yet, okay?”

Again, either she has a great poker face or what I said was a nonevent. She said yes and didn't flinch. Without saying much more, she thanked me for my time and, well, that was it. She was pleasant, sure, but much like a job interview, I left her office not knowing if I would ever hear from her again.

Once again, I felt defeated. I knew my expectations were
high, but I wasn't prepared to have them shot down so quickly and thoroughly. I knew Paula and Patricia were no strangers to the court system, but it angered me that nowadays everything has to involve lawyers. I knew neither of them were blowing me off, but both clearly felt that something was missing, and apparently the three of us combined couldn't figure out what it was.

 

Does the public really have the right to know?

This was the question that most concerned Patricia when she thought about my story, I learned from her later. She said she'd found me to be believable. From the first, she found my story interesting enough to schedule our meeting, and afterward she felt our meeting had been worth it. She had done many stories on public figures having affairs, and during the meeting she told me how my story indeed had potential to be something that the public had a right to know about.

But after our meeting, she couldn't quite get her hands around the story. The story was of interest, but not because two men and sex were involved. A decade earlier, if a public figure turned out to be gay, it would be news. Nowadays, if someone turns out to be gay, she told me, “it's not newsworthy at all.”

For her, the story wasn't even about the fact that Ted paid me for sex, although that did make the story better. Ted was clearly a national figure, but if the only compelling facts were that he was married and hired a male escort, the story still might not rise to the level of something the public needs to know.

Years earlier,
Westword
had reported a story about then-governor Roy Romer of Colorado and his longtime affair with his former deputy chief of staff. What made the story compelling for Patricia wasn't that it was the governor or that he
was having an affair. It was that he was having an affair with someone on his payroll, which was funded by tax dollars.

What made my story fascinating for Patricia was that Ted Haggard had a long history of being antigay and making antigay remarks in public. There were some legal issues involved, but for Patricia, here was a well-known homophobe engaging in homosexual activity, and that was what made it newsworthy.

I was relieved that she saw my story the way I wanted it to be seen. But she still needed more evidence before she could go to press. While she appreciated the voice mail tapes and the envelope, she, like Paula, did not feel that there was enough evidence. She felt that there was still no smoking gun or, in her words, no “smoking penis.”

“This is going to be a ‘he said, he said,' so you need a credible first ‘he said.'” She got that first credible “he said” from me. From that point on, however, it seemed that my story would run out of steam, just like it had with Channel 9. Even if she had everything I'd said vetted and then took it down to Colorado Springs to confront Ted, the story might still go nowhere, she told me. If Ted flat out denied everything, that could stop the story in its tracks. Another possibility, she warned, was that Ted and his handlers could keep putting her off until after the election or longer, effectively killing the story until something else happened. That could go on indefinitely.

Now I was really feeling defeated. Twice up to bat and twice I'd struck out.

I called Patricia a few days later, but no plans were afoot. She was still interested, she assured me, but that's about all she had to say.

I think Patricia would have loved to run with the story, but
she ran into some logistical challenges as well. Being a weekly paper, she got only one chance a week to break news. She could break a story online but preferred to put her banner stories in the print edition first. My story clearly could have been a banner story for her.

In another e-mail to her, I asked her again to hold everything until the TV station I was working with made a move. She told me she would not pursue the story until I told her it was okay.

My moods were still all across the board. One minute I was convinced that my story was solid and that I just needed to get it to the right reporter. The next minute I was wallowing in self-pity, convinced that I was dealing with a force larger than life, a man who had all the media, and perhaps even the world itself, in his back pocket. All I could do was curse Ted, but even that did nothing for me.

That afternoon, the sun was shining again. It was a perfect day to go for a walk in the park, so I took a long lunch and saw a client later in the afternoon. I have a friend in Buffalo, New York, whom I had been meaning to see for some time. When I got home, I called him to ask if I could still go see him. He said sure. He was happy that I was coming for a visit. Then I left a message for Patricia, saying I was going out of town for a few days and asking her not to do anything with the story until I got back.

In New York, walking around Niagara Falls, I told my friend in a very roundabout way what was happening. I wished I could have told him that I was an escort and that Ted Haggard was a client—perhaps we could have strategized together—but I didn't. Instead, I told him that if I went through with what I was thinking of doing, he might see me on the national news.

“Really?” my friend replied. “Well, good luck with everything.”