Coming Out to Play, page 16
When Alicia got me on the phone she asked if I’d posted the letter as a “big fuck-you to everyone,” which it wasn’t, and I tried explaining. I said, “It didn’t have anything to do with you. I wasn’t thinking about you guys at all. And I’m sorry I wasn’t, but I was so miserable and just wanted to be free to express myself.”
What I failed to consider when I posted my letter was that in choosing to come out of the closet in such a public way, I outed my family. Just because I was ready to let everyone know I was gay didn’t mean they were prepared for or welcomed the kind of public attention that followed. I was the public person. I was used to it from soccer, even if I’d never talked to the press about being gay. But now my family was in the spotlight for something that was still new to them and I hadn’t even bothered to give them a heads-up or the chance for them to share their feelings with me about my decision. I could argue that I just didn’t anticipate all the media interest, but I should have at least considered the possibility and warned the people closest to me.
I’ve had to accept that what I did—or at least the way I did it—was wrong, thoughtless, and totally selfish. I hope my mother and sister and the rest of my family all know how sorry I am for thinking only of myself and for putting them in the position of having to fend off the press because I wanted to go public but didn’t feel ready to face the media’s questions myself.
Scott was right that the reaction to my letter was crazy. I got thousands of emails and calls, and the media people were contacting Leeds, Stevenage, the Columbus Crew, and my family, but no one from the press managed to find me. Not that anyone needed a comment from me to report the news that I’d come out. Very quickly the story was everywhere, and virtually all the news reports were positive and supportive. Within days of my coming out people would recognize me on the street or in coffee shops and say, “Congratulations!” and ask me questions.
In the days after posting my letter, I had some breathing room to absorb what had happened and to begin reading through some of the tweets and messages. I heard from former teammates, friends, and thousands of complete strangers; from children struggling with all kinds of secrets and parents struggling to accept their gay children; from gay people trapped in heterosexual marriages and straight supporters who felt compelled to reach out to me because my story touched them or inspired them in some way.
I remember being so shocked by one email I received from a married gay man. He said, “I’m gay and married to a woman and expect I will always be. No one but you knows that I’m gay. I’ve attached a photo of my wife and me with our three children. I admire your courage.” I received a lot of those kinds of notes and it made me realize that I was hardly the only gay person who had lived such a lonely and isolated life.
Virtually all of the notes I received were supportive, and I even had one from a Catholic priest that was the complete opposite of what I might have expected. The subject line read: “So sorry that the Catholic Church wouldn’t support you during your youth.” He went on to write: “As a Catholic priest significantly older than you are, I’d like to state how saddened I was to read about your years growing up in the Church and getting such a negative message from it about yourself when what you need to hear from the Church was just the opposite. You need to hear how much the God who created you loved you and cherished you beyond your wildest dreams.”
That email was breathtaking. Coming from a Catholic priest, that meant a lot to me, although by this time I no longer considered myself Catholic because the Catholic Church was uncompromising in its anti-gay views. So how could I be a part of a Church that thought I was defective? What I had come to believe was that I was gay because God created me this way and that he had a reason for making me this way. I remember thinking, Okay, this is going to be hard and a lot of people won’t believe you were created this way, but this is not a weird thing, it’s simply who I am. My Church may not accept it, but I do, so it’s time to move on. I still consider myself a Christian and have a strong faith in God, and while I’m happy that the new Pope has said comparatively accepting things about gay people, I still don’t see a place for myself in the Catholic Church.
I was totally astonished by how many people I heard from and the range of people who contacted me. In fact it was so overwhelming that I ignored a lot of what came in and often didn’t respond to emails and tweets. But I remember hearing from CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and Gavin Newsom (the former mayor of San Francisco, who is famous for issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples before it was legal to do so in California); and Andy Cohen from the Bravo network tweeted a supportive note, too.
I also got tweets and emails from all kinds of gay rights organizations and I heard from Rufus Gifford, who is gay and served as President Obama’s finance director on his campaign and has since been named U.S. ambassador to Denmark. The funny thing is I was so out of the loop on gay stuff that I didn’t know who a lot of the people were who wrote to me.
One note that had a big impact on me came from my national coach, Bob Bradley. He wrote to me and said, “I’m so proud of you. To step out and do this, to be strong enough to make a statement and show who you are to the world, that’s amazing.” I really didn’t expect that from him because he’s older and very traditional, although I never heard anything homophobic from him. I also heard from his son, Michael, who played on the national team with me, and he said, “I’ve known you for a long time and respect what you did.” I’d lived with him in Florida when I played on the U-17 national team and had heard him say homophobic things, so I didn’t know how he would react. Getting that supportive note from him was a surprise and it meant a lot to me.
I also heard from Sigi Schmid, my old coach from the Columbus Crew, who texted me and said, “Don’t retire from playing because you came out. If you want to play, you should play. You’ll be accepted.” Sigi’s new team, the Seattle Sounders, posted a short video on YouTube in which four of the guys on the team, along with Sigi, talked about their support, and their teammates’ support, for me and my decision to come out. It was really incredible.
The outpouring of support from the world of professional soccer was beyond anything I could have expected. There were encouraging messages from lots of my former teammates, including some from my former Leeds United teammates. Darren Bailey, the director of football governance and regulation for the Football Association in the UK, told the Columbus Dispatch newspaper: “Whether Robbie stays in the game or steps away for a break he has our full backing.” The Dispatch also published a statement from the Chicago Fire’s head coach, Frank Klopas, who said, “Yesterday I thought he was a very good player and I still think that today. Should Robbie want to return to the game, we would still be open to him being part of the Fire.” Longtime U.S. goalkeeper Kasey Keller said what I was hearing from more than a few U.S. soccer players: “The bravery of Robbie Rogers is commendable, I hope he realizes that he doesn’t need to retire. He will be more supported than he knows.”
U.S. Soccer, the official governing body Major League Soccer, couldn’t fit everything into one tweet, so here are the three they sent out:
U.S. Soccer @ussoccer Statement on @RobbieRogers: “As a Federation we support all our athletes who have had the courage to address this deeply personal topic.”
U.S. Soccer @ussoccer statement contd: “We are proud of Robbie. He has been an outstanding representative of our National Team program for many years.”
U.S. Soccer @ussoccer “. . . We support him and wish him great success in the future.”
In addition, my old team the Columbus Crew put out a statement: “Robbie Rogers was a valuable member of the Columbus Crew and a dedicated community ambassador during his time with the club. The organization wishes him every success in his future pursuits.”
A couple of old teammates, Colin Clark and Marc Burch, who’d recently gotten in trouble for using homophobic slurs (both were suspended for three games), sent out supportive tweets. Marc wrote, “So much love and respect for my fellow Terp and friend @robbierogers hope to see you on the pitch again soon!” Colin wrote, “The courage @robbierogers has shown coming out is of the class most men can only dream of. I was lucky to call him a teammate. I hope his bravery helps pave a path for others to know they don’t need to hide.” Like I’ve said before, lots of people who reflexively use anti-gay language aren’t really anti-gay.
One of the best texts came from my dad, who wrote, “I’m proud of you. When you came out, you scored the ultimate goal.” He later told me that I was the bravest person he knew. You can imagine how good it felt to hear that, especially given what painful memories I have of my dad yelling at me for not being the kind of boy he expected me to be.
Reading through lots of the emails and tweets and listening to the messages and watching the video clips from just after I came out publicly, it almost feels like I’m reading all the nice things they say about someone after they’re dead. But fortunately I’m still here to be reminded how wrong I was about what the reaction to me would be if I ever told the truth about my life. The whole experience has been beyond humbling and heartening.
It’s funny. You would think that with all the notes and messages and phone calls that came in I wouldn’t notice the one that I didn’t get. But there is one coach who had been an important mentor, who helped guide me throughout my career, and who I thought I’d hear from but didn’t. He helped advise me when I was first considering going to residency in Florida when I was in high school, and later I had the good fortune to play for him on several occasions. It really saddened me that even after I wrote to him twice he was silent. I can’t help but wonder why. I guess everyone has their own issues.
Even after coming out publicly, I was still thinking I’d fade away into a normal life. But that clearly wasn’t happening, and with so many requests for interviews I started thinking that I couldn’t continue with the silent routine. I was even offered £30,000 in the UK to give a newspaper interview, but money wasn’t the issue for me. It was about me being comfortable and feeling ready to talk to a reporter about my story, so I said no to the money.
Part of the problem for me was that I didn’t trust anyone and feared that the media would try to spin my story to suit their needs. Whenever reporters write anything about anyone, I’m always worried about how it will be changed. Maybe they’ll use a quote out of context, or maybe they just won’t understand, maybe I didn’t articulate it well. But I felt like I didn’t have a choice. So with advice and help from my agent and some of my magazine friends I chose to do interviews with the New York Times and the Guardian, which is based in London. Before the actual interviews, I asked to talk first with the reporters off the record so I could get a sense of them and they could get to know me a bit and see that I didn’t have any agenda other than to talk about my experiences. Also, I hoped that if they got to know me a bit, it would be harder for them to write a negative story, at least that’s what I hoped.
In advance of the interviews, my agent’s PR company wanted to prep me, and I argued with my agent because I didn’t want someone telling me what to say. But my agent insisted, and after asking me three questions the PR people realized that I could answer the questions on my own. I was a little nervous about the whole thing, but I went into it knowing that I was just speaking for myself. I speak from the heart. I think about what I’m going to say and I say it. I’m not worried about holding back and I don’t have anything to lie about. Not anymore. So I figured there was nothing they could ask me that could catch me off guard.
At the Guardian I met with a few different reporters who had reached out to me and decided to work with Don McRae, who is a beautiful writer. One of the first things he told me was that his daughter had read my letter and that she started crying. We sat for two hours and talked. Don and I also did a Google Hangout session, so people could watch it online. It was perfect.
After the two articles were published simultaneously on March 29, 2013, the response was really positive. Tons of emails came in with messages like: “Thanks for representing the gay community with class.”
It is funny when someone says, “Representing the gay community . . .” or says, “Thanks for giving gay soccer players a voice.” I can’t take any credit for playing either role because I don’t represent the gay community and I’m not giving anyone a voice other than myself. If anything, I like to think that I’m speaking for myself and for all people who feel like they’ve been discriminated against. That’s a role I’m happy to embrace.
CHAPTER 13
NOW WHAT?
With the two big newspaper interviews behind me, I really thought that I was done. I’d said everything I wanted to say, answered all the questions I was asked, and now I could quietly go back to being a regular person. Well, get to be a regular person for the first time. My plan was to head home for a visit, stay a couple of months, return to London, and then start fashion school. A new beginning. But things didn’t turn out as I’d expected and I didn’t go back to London. Instead, I found a very public and incredibly rewarding life at home in California, one with real purpose that I’d never thought was possible when I spent all those years hiding. But I’m getting way ahead of myself. First, I had to get home, and even that turned out to be anything but a private moment.
The first stop on my trip from London to Los Angeles was New York City. Arnaldo Anaya-Lucca, the head photographer for Ralph Lauren, the clothing company, had asked me to come by to meet with the Ralph Lauren team. They were thinking of using me for one of their advertising campaigns. So I arranged to stay with a friend who had an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, right by Central Park. It couldn’t have been a more perfect location because I could take my new dog on long walks and explore the park together. I’d always wanted a dog and loved Scott’s dog, Dougal, who was a dachshund/miniature poodle mix. Coincidentally, one of Dougal’s brothers was still available, so I adopted him and named him Jeffrey.
Up until this point in my life I’d never stopped to take a real break for myself and just chill. When you’re a serious athlete with the goal of playing professional sports you never take a breather. You’re taught to go, go, go. If you take a break you’ll lose your edge—and your momentum. So from the moment I first started kicking a soccer ball on the sidelines at my sisters’ games until I retired from professional soccer, I’d never stopped playing, training, competing, and pushing myself toward the next level. Now all that was behind me and for the most part it was fun and it was great to live without constant pressure. If I wanted to go for a walk in Central Park with Jeffrey instead of working out, I went for a walk.
The meeting at Ralph Lauren’s flagship offices on Madison Avenue was exciting because I love Arnaldo’s photography and thought it would be great to work with him. But it was also totally embarrassing. You sit in a room and everyone looks you over like you’re a lamb chop and gives you compliments. For example, one woman said, “You’re so beautiful!” To try to get the focus off me because it made me so uncomfortable, I said, “Here’s my dog”—I had Jeffrey with me—“isn’t he cute?” That just seemed to make things worse. I haven’t heard from them since the meeting, but maybe there’ll be an opportunity to work together in the future.
While I was in New York, my agent asked me if I would go on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, and he also told me that ABC’s Nightline was interested in doing a story and wanted to fly home with me to California and record me seeing my family for the first time since telling them I was gay. Without really thinking about it, I said yes to both.
With the Anderson Cooper interview, I wasn’t at all nervous until I walked onto the set. Not because it was my first live television interview since coming out, which it was, or because it was Anderson Cooper—I knew he was gay and also figured there wasn’t anything he could ask that I couldn’t answer. It was the bright lights. I felt like I’d walked into an interrogation room. But it went well. Anderson was really nice and asked about why I came out, what it felt like to hide my real self from everyone, including my family, and what it was like to hear my friends in the locker room say derogatory things about gay people; and I talked about what it was like to grow up without any gay role models in professional sports.
Anderson also asked if I felt pressure to play soccer again because people were urging me to go back. I surprised myself by saying that I still loved soccer and that there was a good chance I might come back to it, although it wasn’t something I was seriously thinking about at that point beyond maybe doing some training with the LA Galaxy. I explained that I really needed a few months to hang out with my family, surf, and just relax before I did anything. What I didn’t say was that soon after I came out publicly, Bruce Arena, the coach for the LA Galaxy, had sent me a message that if I wanted to come to a game or a training I should feel welcome. He said, “Robbie, we’ve known you for a while, and we know you’re a good person, and we’d love for you to train if you ever want to.” So going back to training was already something I was thinking about. Now that I didn’t have to play and didn’t have to worry about hiding the real Robbie Rogers, I started to miss it.
