I Had to Say Something (28 page)

After he ended the interview with me, he talked with an evangelical pastor about why homosexuality is so important to them. Tucker said how he first felt sorry for Ted, but after Ted did an interview in his car with his wife and three of his kids, “[he] decided he's a pig. Anybody who would use his family at a time like this, bringing further shame and humiliation upon them is beneath contempt.”

The guest reverend went on to urge Ted to “come clean,” adding that “the gospel is as sharp as a two-edged sword.”

On the way home, the limo driver told me he'd watched me on the monitor, and he thought I'd done well. That made me feel very good.

I got home and the phone calls kept coming, but that may have been because my voice mail box was full. By chance, one of the calls I took was from NBC's
Today Show
. They wanted me to appear on their Saturday program and offered me a flight and hotel accommodations. I have to admit that I was flattered by the offer. I was getting the sense that maybe the world really did want to hear my story. How could I not be excited—and feel better about myself?

After saying yes, they called back fifteen minutes later with my flight information and to tell me that a limo was coming in thirty minutes to pick me up.

You could hear me scream as far away as New Life Church. I wasn't screaming with joy but with panic, because right in the middle of everything, I now had to pack and quickly leave town, something I wasn't sure I should be doing right at that moment.

I went into a frenzy. I laid out a suitcase and started throwing all kinds of things in it. I was so tired, and my brain was fried. I don't remember what I packed, but I hoped I would not forget something important, like my migraine medicine.

The limo arrived, I grabbed my suitcase, and the phone was still ringing. By the time I got to my hotel in New York, it was almost one in the morning eastern time. NBC put me up at the Waldorf-Astoria with a few hundred dollars of room service. I was starved, so I ordered about seventy-five dollars in food that night. As I ate, I tried to check messages on my home phone's voice mail. Before going to bed, I took one of the nicest showers I have ever taken, and it felt good. Maybe I had made the right decision after all.

It was not long before my wake-up call at five in the morning, leaving me with just three hours of sleep. I ordered eggs and oatmeal, ate, and got dressed, stopping just long enough to check in with my mother to see if I was still doing the right thing.

On the set of the
Today Show
, everyone was nice, but it felt weird being interviewed while everyone on the street could stare through the window in front of me. I kept being pulled in and out of the green room for segment teasers for my upcoming interview with Lester Holt.

It went quickly, and soon I was back at the hotel. I had a radio interview for about thirty minutes. Then it was time to pack again. The requests for interviews still kept coming, including
People
magazine and
The Advocate
. I told them I would call them when I got back to Denver.

While I was on the plane, New Life Church issued this release:

Paula called me when I was on my way home from Denver International Airport to tell me what had happened.

“You mean they fired him?” I asked her.

She confirmed this, and I lost it right there in the limo. In the past seventy-two hours, I'd had little rest, been called names, failed a polygraph test, and it was simply overwhelming for me. To hear that Ted had been removed from New Life Church created additional guilt for me. I felt this mess was all my fault.

I still had Paula on the line. She patiently waited until I was a bit more composed, then she told me that Ted was going to address the members of New Life Church the following day at the Sunday service.

“He's going to speak to them? In person?”

“We don't know,” Paula said. Her careful way of saying things was starting to wear me out, even though I understood why she was like that.

I wondered what he might say. Was there going to be any reference to me? And if there was, would he be apologetic or vengeful? Was he going to call me a dirty lying whore?

By the time the limo pulled up to my apartment, it already felt like a month had passed. In less than a week, the whole world knew my tale of sex for sale and my client's meth use and the pastor with the big smile.

Even worse, the whole world knew that I was forty-nine, just one year away from being eligible for membership in AARP. Most people think I'm much younger, so some friends asked me why I gave out my real age. Like I could hide that from the press!

I had scheduled three or four radio interviews for that night and more the following day. I had little sticky notes plastered all over the walls, reminding me of when someone was supposed to call for an interview. Some ten different gay media outlets were trying to get my attention, too. Maybe I just can't say no to anyone if they treat me nicely. I also enjoyed the attention, to be honest.

But it was starting to overwhelm me. Some guidance and support would have meant so much to me. I thought that perhaps a media person from a gay organization would have contacted me now that I'd single-handedly brought down one of the most powerful gay bashers in the country. Well, I had started all this on my own, and it looked like I'd have to finish it on my own.

 

Sure, I'll do an interview. No, I did not sell him meth. Yes, I had sex with Ted Haggard. Why would I lie about that? Yes,
Mike Jones is my real name. No, I don't have a partner.
Did I forget to tell them that my mother was Shirley Jones?

“Mike, can you do another live interview with Rita Cosby?” the caller asked. Before I could say no, the caller said a limo would be at my apartment building at 8:30 the next morning. Just then, I looked at the clock and noticed that it was almost midnight. I had been up for almost twenty-one hours straight. As much as I hated to, I decided to take a sleeping pill and hope that I didn't wake up with a migraine.

 

Even with the sleeping pill, I still woke up around five o'clock. How odd that on this big day for New Life Church, my phone was not ringing. I figured everyone was waiting for Ted's letter. Thank God I was not, for a change, the center of this media circus.

I took the opportunity to check my e-mails, the first time in days, and, wow, there were hundreds. People had found my old Web sites and sent messages. The messages came from gays, straights, married people, singles. Some were hateful and a few were rather threatening, but most were supportive of me. These letters of support raised my spirits tremendously. In fact, I printed a few of them and pasted them around the house to cheer me up.

I showered and got ready for Rita Cosby. It seemed that she was trying to time her interview with me with the reading of Ted's letter to his congregation.

The whole world stood still, it seemed, when a gentleman approached the lectern at New Life Church and read Ted's final words as Pastor.

I have been permanently removed from the office of Senior Pastor of New Life Church. Until a new senior pastor is chosen, our Associate Senior Pastor, Ross Parsley, will assume all of the responsibilities of the office. On the day he accepted this new role, he and his wife, Aimee, had a new baby boy. A new life in the midst of this circumstance
—
I consider that confluence of events to be prophetic. Please commit to join with Pastor Ross and the others in church leadership to make their service to you easy and without burden. They are fine leaders. You are blessed.

 

What a well-written letter
, I thought. It certainly pulled at the heartstrings, as was evident by all the crying and all the tissues being passed around inside the church.

Yet the more I thought about the letter, the more hollow it sounded. Where were the specifics? He used words like “dirty” and “dark.” What the hell did that mean?