Happy. Gay. American: when Jim McGreevey came out--and announced he'd resign as New Jersey governor--it was the end of a long, painful story of lies and secret liaisons, which he details in a new book. His new story: settled, partnered, happy.

Life for Jim McGreevey has completely changed since August 12, 2004, when he came out as a "gay American" and announced his resignation as governor of New Jersey. Then still married to his second wife, Dina Matos, McGreevey faced what he alleges was an extortion attempt from his former male lover and employee, Golan Cipel. Once the shining star of the Democratic Party--considered by many a favorite for the White House--McGreevey saw his personal and political lives reduced to shambles, thanks to the double-barreled scandal surrounding his decision to date and then hire Cipel, whom he met on a business trip to Israel.

Today, the 49-year-old former governor lives far out of the spotlight on a quiet tree-lined street in Plainfield, N.J.--a town heralded as a "gay suburb" by Gay.com (a division of The Advocate's parent company). He shares his three-story Georgian-style home with his partner, 42-year-old investment company CFO Mark O'Donnell; the couple's first date was last November at Advocate sister publication Out magazine's Out 100 party in New York City in November 2004. He and Mark now help raise McGreevey's 4-year-old daughter, Jacqueline, who lives 20 minutes away with her mother but spends every other weekend in Plainfield. (McGreevey's older daughter, 13-year-old Morag--who lives with his first wife in Canada's British Columbia province--made an extended visit during the summer.)

"I'm now in a loving, committed relationship in a home filled with friends, my daughters, and my family," he says. "It's ended up in a good place."

As McGreevey prepared to launch a book tour to promote his just-published memoir, The Confession (Regan Books, $26.95), which he wrote with journalist David France (Our Fathers), he invited The Advocate to his home for a candid talk about the secrets that accompany life in the closet and, more important, the grace that comes when one finally "grapples with those secrets in an honest, open way."

Most people say "I'm gay" when they come out. But you said, "I'm a gay American." What made you choose those words?

I used the words "gay American" not only to say who I am as a person but to recognize my belonging to a nation--to a people--that historically has moved in the right direction on civil rights, the present administration notwithstanding. So saying "I'm a gay American" is similar to saying "I'm an Irish-American," a Cuban-American, or an African-American. It is a sense of identity--to say that I'm gay but that I'm also American--and to say that proudly, unequivocally, and forcefully.

You know, it's wonderful and refreshing to be open as to your sexuality, your identity, and also to belong to a greater community. I have a source of pride in my country and in its traditions and its values, and now I recognize, by sense of obligation, that I am who I am and that I can say that proudly and without shame.

Coming out can be such a frightening process, but it must have been really scary to do it on national TV--with your parents and your wife at your side. What was more difficult, the press conference or telling your wife and parents that you're gay?

The personal part was far more difficult. But as everyone who has traveled that road knows, once you cross the divide there's peace and personal acceptance. I was blessed because I had acceptance from my family. My parents were extraordinary--loving and demonstrative. And my wife was, in a very difficult moment, loving and supportive. It was obviously difficult. But going to the podium and reading the speech was a moment of grace. It was a gift, after all those years, to simply state who I am. And the wall came crumbling down. It was publicly painful, but there was also a wonderful moment of personal acceptance--of overcoming the shame and overcoming lessons that I had incorporated and that I had learned.

Have your parents or wife spoken to you about how difficult it was for them to be up there with you during that press conference?

Everyone comes to grapple with the difficulty of the circumstances in their own way. More than discussing it directly, there's been a process of healing, a process of accepting and understanding that life changes. For my parents, it's about loving Mark and being in our home and sharing dinner and time with our daughter. For Dina, it's about raising our daughter in a loving, nurturing way and to understand the importance of giving her a healthy, supportive environment. It's accepting the change that is perhaps the most difficult. But once you recognize that change is inevitable in life--and embrace that change--it becomes enjoyable. It becomes part of the mystery of life.

I think a lot of people who watched your press conference thought you were quitting simply because you are gay. Is there any truth to that?

Definitely not. I think that when people understand the circumstances and the potential of the [Golan Cipel] lawsuit, then they understand what was at stake. It would have been practically impossible for me to govern effectively while litigating a lawsuit. I took an oath, and I took it seriously--and I also understood that I had done something wrong. I had a relationship with someone who was an employee of the state.

But what if you took the possibility of litigation out of the picture--could you have governed effectively as an openly gay public official?

Ultimately, there will be an elected gay governor someplace in America. In New Jersey there is such an outpouring of human decency and human kindness--from the gay community as well as the straight community. And that's what was so powerful about writing this book: I grappled toward authenticity and, at its core being, started living the life I was meant to live. I want people to understand that the closet is an unhealthy place and that secrets don't miraculously disappear. The day will come when there is a gay governor--when someone says proudly, "I am a gay American, and I seek the office of senator or governor."

As governor you were opposed to same-sex marriage, correct?

Yes.

Are you still?

Of course not.

Was your position on marriage as governor based on your effort to stay in the closet?

Yes.

So do you think New Jersey would be a different place today for gay couples if you hadn't been a closeted governor?

No. The civil unions bill that we passed [in January 2004] was [one of the first] in the nation. It was a major, almost Herculean effort, and my chief of staff, Jamie Fox [who is openly gay], deserves the lion's share of the credit. Jamie would have made Lyndon Baines Johnson proud with his old-fashioned legislative wrangling--and it worked.

So what's happening with marriage rights in New Jersey now?

There's a lawsuit being decided in the [state] supreme court, and the decision most likely will be made right after Labor Day.

And what do you think is going to happen?

I'm always an optimist. I'm always hopeful. I think the supreme court will do the right thing.

And then what happens?

Gay marriage in New Jersey.

And the legislature won't try to overturn it?

The legislature won't want to do anything. And Governor [Jon] Corzine will respect the constitutionality of the court's actions.

You talk a lot in the book about how, as you were growing up, you realized you were gay. There was the time at Boy Scout camp when the other boys called you "fag," and then the adolescent sexual encounters with other boys, among other experiences. These are almost universal experiences for gay men--but you didn't come out like most gay men. Why not?

I remember being a child and listening to those boys call me names. And there was almost a trigger mechanism that made me react the way I did: I had to be straight. That's what I thought I needed to do to survive that episode. I can remember it as if were yesterday, and as I think back today, I remember it as one of the defining moments of my life. I said to myself, Damn it, I need to build this facade and make sure that my reality is never penetrated again. So I worked hard at it--ever since then.

There were painful periods when I would ask myself, Can I sustain this? Can I humanly, spiritually, intellectually continue to carry this burden? Is it the right thing to do? And everything within my experience told me that it was. The church that I loved told me that it was unequivocally the right thing to do. Homosexuality was a sin. So when I was 7 or 8 years old and I was reacting to my peers at Boy Scout camp, reacting to the church's teachings, and reacting to the things you read at the library--that homosexuality is a perversion and a psychiatric illness--I knew I needed to change it, I needed to closet it, I needed to condemn it. I just couldn't accept it. That wasn't an option.

But then there was your friend Brian, with whom you had a brief and secret affair when you were in high school. You write about how he grew up to be an openly gay man in a healthy gay relationship. What was different for him?

Brian made a decision to move away after college to another place. We had the adolescent beginnings of a relationship, but then he continued to understand that he was gay and he made the decision to move away--and that gave him the freedom to be in a relationship, to put down roots in comfort and security, and to eventually tell his parents--but not until after he was solidified in a relationship.

So do you think things would have been different for you if you had moved away to go to school in San Francisco?

Yeah, but I loved New Jersey. I loved playing baseball. I loved my friends. I loved bicycling up and down the streets in Carteret, N.J. I belonged here. It was a classic, all-American boyhood experience with one very big exception.

So you went on to find great political success, got married, and then--as you discuss candidly in the book--broke down every once in a while and, in time, had sex with "scores" of men in roadside rest stops or other cruisy areas. How did that fit with your resolve to stay in the closet?

It was a break in the wrong discipline. As a young child, and then as an adolescent, I thought I was doing the right thing. I wanted to do the right thing, as Andy Tobias says in his book [The Best Little Boy in the World]. So I was working diligently with every fiber of my being to be straight, and at the same time there was this natural desire for companionship, for love, for physicality. And what happened was that because I couldn't--or thought I couldn't--express myself in an open, healthy, integrated way, I engaged in actions that were shameful--or, I mean, that were shameful for me.

Were the encounters always anonymous?

There were times when ... They were never healthy.

Were they safe?

Yes. Yes.

You wrote about getting an HIV test and your fear during the wait for your results. Had you been careful?

Yes. Yes. I was smart.

That must have been a concern for your wife after you came out to her.

No. She understood I was always prudent.

A lot of times people get arrested--or worse, attacked--in sexual situations like that. Were you ever afraid?

I knew it was fundamentally stupid and unhealthy and shameful and wrong. And I think one message of the book is about authenticity, acceptance, and being integrated. Hopefully, today there are places in America where young gay men and women can discover their sexuality in the same way straight people do. And I hope the book helps remove the need for dark places.

Is there a message in the book for adults who are on the "down low" like you were?

I guess the message in the book, for both gay and straight people, is the need for self-acceptance and the need to be whole--not to accept the premise of the divided self. When I engaged in behavior that was duplicitous, it was ultimately personally destructive. I'm not in a position to give advice. I can only say that, for me, it was destructive to not live an integrated life.

So what was it about Golan Cipel that made you want to pursue more than an anonymous encounter with him?

I was attracted to his knowledge of both international and national affairs and the fact that he was both engaging and thoughtful. It also had to do with us being in a place that was completely unexpected. [McGreevey met Cipel on a business trip to Israel prior to being elected governor.] In New Jersey I was married, had children, and was an elected official.

So that goes back to your earlier question about Brian. Brian moved away and at some point felt a greater acceptance of himself, started a relationship, and then came out to his family.

To a certain extent, I was in a different place, a different time, and in those circumstances there was greater openness and fluidity.

One of the most profound parts of the book for me was the admission that you initiated your sexual relationship with Cipel while your wife was in the hospital recovering from the C-section birth of your daughter Jacqueline.

The distorted, sort of shameful world of the closet is the inevitable division and the attempt to contain parts of your life in separate and distinct boxes, which inevitably collide.

Did you realize how wrong it was at the time?

At some point, during the course of writing the book, I had an opportunity to understand and reflect. But while I was living life and, as I describe, "managing my sexuality," there was little--if any--reflection.

I was attempting to manage my homosexuality. And that produces divisive, currosive, and shameful behavior based on an effort to maintain distinct, separate worlds.

I also found it interesting that toward the end of the book you express the desire to apologize to Cipel--but not to your ex-wife Dina.

I've already apologized to her.

Has she forgiven you?

I think it's an ongoing journey for us all. It's been a period of change, a period of transition, a period of growth, and also a period of acceptance.

And you and your ex-wife are raising your daughter Jacqueline together, correct?

Yes, she's about 4 1/2 now. [Laughs] The other day she said, "Daddy, I like Mark better than I like you. And I said, "OK," and not that I'm concerned with that, but "Can you tell me why?" She said, "Because Mark said I could have a cat and a dog."

He's tremendous with Jacqueline, makes her pancakes on Sunday morning before church, and is just so attentive. My older daughter, Morag, was down from British Columbia this summer, and she, Jacqueline, Mark, and I spent time as a family--it was healthy and nurturing and giving and everything that defines a family: sharing, laughing, and making sure we got to church on time.

Do you think you'll ever run for office again?

Probably not. I see myself more in the role of an advocate, particularly on children's issues.

Is that what you're doing now?

Yes, I've been in China to help build an American university there affiliated with Kean University [in Union, N.J.]. I also recently went with David Mixner to the South--to [research poverty in] Appalachia--and took another trip to New Orleans with Share Our Strength, which is a national antipoverty organization. The sense of hope and optimism people have in New Orleans, despite the utter inability of our government to effectively respond, is amazing.

In your book there is a profound quote by Armistead Maupin: "My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make the same mistake yourself. Life's too damn short." You were governor of New Jersey and have two beautiful daughters. Do you feel that the 47 years you spent in the closet were lost years?

I had some wonderfully challenging experiences and loving relationships. But all through that time I was denying a whole aspect of my being. At the end it had been a tremendous journey. I mean, now I'm in a loving, committed relationship in a home filled with friends and with my daughters and family. So it's ended up in a good place.

But as I say in the book, if I had known then that I would have to spend my life engaging in that duplicity, I probably would have never rationally made the choice to do so. The road should not be so tortured. The road should not be so painful.

Part of the reason I wrote the book was to talk frankly and directly about the need for authenticity and honesty in one's personal life and in the American political landscape. And I wanted to speak to the young Jimmy McGreeveys out there--to tell them that being gay is natural, it's God-given, and if that's who you are, then be it, grow in it, and celebrate it.

THE ADVOCATE Poll

Would you vote for Jim McGreevey for governor or president if you had the opportunity to do so?

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By Jon Barrett Photographed by Michael Edwards

Barrett is a New York-based journalist and former senior news editor for The Advocate.