he night before the pinnacle of his National Football
League career, Roy Simmons was already a wreck. Among the posse
of some 20 family members and friends he had invited to Tampa to
watch him play in the 1984 Super Bowl were his three current lovers
— two women and one man. They were all staying at the same hotel,
and each required attention that even Mr. Simmons, a 290-pound offensive
lineman for the Washington Redskins known for his speed, found exhausting.
To keep his furtive gay life a secret, he had cultivated a reputation
for being the life of the party. He constantly juggled deception
and compartmentalization, while placating those of both sexes closest
to him.
The pain and the shame that Mr. Simmons now says he felt were eventually
inflicted on others, in the way he disclosed his sexuality. One
day in 1992, years after his retirement from the N.F.L., he appeared
on national television on "Donahue" with a former girlfriend to
discuss what he had never told her (or almost anyone else): that
he was gay.
To former teammates and to friends and family, including the estranged
mother of a daughter he had fathered, the show was jaw-dropping.
One of Mr. Simmons's younger brothers was watching and burst into
tears. But even as Mr. Simmons's disclosure stunned those closest
to him, he dropped out of sight.
Then in 1997 he got the news he dreaded most: he was H.I.V. positive.
Now, after living privately with the condition for six years, Mr.
Simmons has decided to discuss it publicly for the first time, on
the eve of World AIDS Day tomorrow. The only other professional
team athlete to admit having H.I.V. is Magic Johnson, the Los Angeles
Lakers star.
Mr. Simmons, 47, said he wants to reach athletes who may still
be in the closet and as tortured as he was. Even at a time when
the right of gay couples to marry is being affirmed, as in Massachusetts
two weeks ago, and when gays are visible in most professions and
in entertainment, men's professional sports remain a fortress of
denial.
Mr. Simmons is one of only three N.F.L. players known to have publicly
discussed being gay — all after retirement. The others are Dave
Kopay, who announced his homosexuality in 1975, and Esera Tuaolo,
a former nose guard who retired in 1999, after nine seasons, and
revealed he is gay last year on the HBO show "Real Sports."
Mr. Simmons would never have dreamed of declaring himself gay during
the four seasons he played for the New York Giants and the Redskins,
for fear of destroying his career.
"The N.F.L. has a reputation," he said, "and it's not even a verbal
thing — it's just known. You are gladiators; you are male; you kick
butt."
His isolation was compounded by the stigma of homosexuality among
blacks, he said. Like many black men who simultaneously cultivate
a macho, hyperheterosexual image while living what they call "the
Down Low" — a deeply hidden bisexual or predominantly gay life —
Mr. Simmons simply could not come out of the closet. He lived a
dual life, attracted at times to women, and he believed that by
admitting he also liked men he would be rejected by his family,
teammates and coaches.
The refusal of some black men to be forthcoming about their sexual
preference for men, or even to wear condoms during sex, is thought
to be spreading AIDS among black women at an alarming rate. Black
women represented 64 percent of all new AIDS cases among women in
2001, according to the federal government.
By the time Mr. Simmons learned he had the virus, he had already
contemplated suicide and had been in drug rehab twice. He had thrown
away chances to shine on and off the field, had lost all his money,
had lived for a period on the streets. ROY SIMMONS was reared in
Savannah, Ga., primarily by his maternal grandmother, Loulabelle
Simmons, who worked as a housekeeper. He lived with five brothers
and one sister in a narrow row house on the city's west side.
One day when he was 11, he said, a woman on his street asked him
to to vacuum for her. She left, but her husband was there. As Roy
was leaning over to do the vacuuming, the man bumped his behind.
"Then he called me in the bedroom, turned me around on the bed and
pulled my pants down," he recounted.
Mr. Simmons said no one had ever warned him about inappropriate
touching or neighborhood predators. "I wasn't educated," he said.
"I wasn't told how parents tell their kids today."
