My Life on the Line Read online

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Introduction: Crypt Keeper

  Chapter 1: Different

  Chapter 2: The Beard

  Chapter 3: Award-Winning Performance

  Chapter 4: The Waiting Game

  Chapter 5: Welcome to the NFL

  Chapter 6: The Losers' Ring

  Chapter 7: The Ghost of Injuries Past

  Chapter 8: Total Shit Show

  Chapter 9: They Know

  Chapter 10: My Coaches and Me

  Chapter 11: My Final Off-Season

  Chapter 12: Completely Addicted

  Chapter 13: Dear Mom. Dear Dad.

  Chapter 14: Someone Has Been Watching

  Chapter 15: Getting Caught

  Chapter 16: On My Deathbed

  Chapter 17: The Longest Drive

  Chapter 18: The Rainbow Tour

  Chapter 19: A New Low

  Chapter 20: Coming Out, Interrupted

  Chapter 21: The Plunge

  Epilogue

  About Ryan O'Callaghan

  Copyright & Credits

  About Akashic Books

  This book is dedicated to all of my friends and family who have supported me over the years and helped me put my life back together. I now see that your love was always there.

  I've written this book for all of the people who find themselves in dark places. When the people around you tell you they love you, they mean it. I hope my story brings that truth to light for you.

  —Ryan

  Introduction: Crypt Keeper

  We've been planting trees all afternoon, and I'm beat. It's an unseasonably warm day in May, so I'm sweating even worse than usual. Dustin brought a bunch of willow trees to plant around the lake at my cabin. He's a freaking plant whisperer. The guy loves nature and hard work as much as I do. There we are in the middle of the off-season doing hard, manual labor. It feels good.

  I have the muscle, so I do the digging. Dustin Colquitt is our team's punter for the Kansas City Chiefs, so he points out spots around the lake that he thinks will be good places for the trees. And yeah, he does some of the digging too. Shovel in hand, plant, scoop, throw. Plant, scoop, throw. Plant, scoop, throw. It's a lot easier than blocking 280-pound defensive ends. After the season I had, it's a lot more enjoyable too. An injury and an idiot coach put me on the bench for most of the previous year. Now we're on strike and the league has locked the players out over some bullshit, so we're not able to go to the team facility. The only thing that wasn't a mess for me with the team that season was my paycheck. I had finally had a big payday. That made it possible to buy the property and build this cabin. I need the place to escape more than anyone else knows.

  "Okay, bring it over," I wave to Dustin and my best friend Brian. Brian and I had been two musketeers in high school. Our teenage pact was that if one of us made it in football, the other would come along for the ride. It was a good deal for him in high school since he wasn't exactly going to the NFL anytime soon. We had drifted apart while I was in college, but my word is my word. Plus, Brian is a resourceful guy to have around. When I landed my first NFL contract, I had officially made it. And so Brian came along for the ride.

  It's the last tree, and Dustin wants to "do the honors." He lifts the five-foot willow and drops it into the hole. He and I push the dirt over the root ball, Brian soaks it with the hose, and we all back away.

  On paper, Dustin is exactly the kind of guy I try to avoid: a superreligious Bible thumper. It's no secret what guys like Dustin think of a fag like me. If only he knew. But something about Dustin disarms me a bit. Sure, he is praying and preaching all the time, but he has this way of making me feel like I matter as a person. I never go near the church stuff with him, and maybe he sees a non-Christian like me as a challenge, a guy he has to help "save" to get on God's good side. Whatever it is in his head, I always have a good time with him despite all the God stuff. Still, he is just about the last person on earth I'll ever tell my secret.

  When Dustin isn't leading Bible study in the locker room, we're talking about how to improve the land on my property. It seems every day in the Chiefs locker room we are talking about nature. He is out at the property whenever he can be. Between football and his family, he doesn't have much free time, but like me, he gravitates toward the land. The land is his escape too. A couple weeks earlier when I mentioned planting some trees, he knew exactly what to get. These gorgeous willows. He is an artist with this kind of stuff.

  "This is what I miss," Dustin says, beaming at our achievement, looking over the lake and the trees he'd brought, now standing on the shore of the lake. "In ten years these willows are gonna be the most beautiful things on this property," he adds, throwing back a swig of beer.

  "Second," Brian snorts, a chuckle bubbling out. "In ten years I hope his wife is more beautiful than those trees."

  That gets a laugh from Dustin.

  Should I respond? Add to it? Just agree? If I say the wrong thing it could blow my cover. Or raise eyebrows. What would a straight guy say here? What would Dustin say? He's superreligious. And I'm a football player. They're not even thinking about me being gay. At least, Dustin isn't. Is Brian? I'm not sweating about Brian. What should I say that doesn't sound like I'm trying to figure out what Dustin would say? I got it.

  "Amen." I glance at Dustin. Was that it? Did I get it right? Shit, did I blow it? Too cute?

  "Aaaaaaaaa-MEN!" Dustin takes another swig, still admiring his contribution to the property.

  Phew.

  Brian jumps in: "If we're gonna get the fish today, we gotta go before they close."

  Dustin's second brainstorm is to get a bunch of algae-eating fish for the three-acre pond on the property. The lake is so full of algae that from the satellite view you can't even tell there is water. Dustin said these fish—koi or some shit like that—would take care of the problem. I swear, when he's done in the league he'll run a landscaping company.

  "You guys go ahead," I say. "I'm gonna work inside."

  In a flash they are in a white GMC Sierra 2500 Denali headed for town. While the truck is registered in my name, I let Brian use it like it's his. He is the only one who ever drives it, so I think everyone assumes it is his. I've always had big trucks. At my size, they just work a lot better than a BMW or Jaguar or some of the other cars the littler guys on the team drive. Plus, the big truck says "straight." That is as important to me as the fit of the cab.

  As they head off down the driveway, my shoulders relax, my smile fades. While I genuinely enjoy spending time with both of them, it is also exhausting. Being with anyone is exhausting. I have to be "on" all the time, constantly building the character I am playing in my own life, burying my deep, dark secret for the fun-loving, rich NFL player living out all of the fantasies of his fake adult life. It is when I am alone that I can ditch the act, left with the depression that grows every day I get closer to the end of my career.

  The sun is just setting, so I go inside to tackle the next project. The dogs, Rodger and Taylor, nip at my heels, already looking for an early dinner, as I walk up the steps of the front porch.

  In a rural area of Independence, Missouri, the cabin is as rustic-looking as I can get it without it looking like a shack. Double glass doors open up to a small first floor with an outhouse–sized bathroom complete with a fake indoor tin roof and cedar-shake siding. The vaulted ceiling makes it feel a lot bigger than it is. Up the spiral staircase is the loft-style bedroom that extends out over part of the porch. I modeled it after the hunting lodges I'd seen in Northern California all my childhood.

  I walk in the doors and click on the stereo. Jason Aldean, one of my new favorites, pipes through the speakers. What I love about country music
is the melancholy attitude so much of it has when it's done right. Not that poppy shit you sometimes hear today. I'm talking real, solid country music. Jason Aldean hits it with every song. There's a loneliness about his music that speaks to me. Loneliness always has.

  Plus, I love the stories country music tells. Sure, those stories are about beer, trucks, dogs, guns, tractors, and girls. But I drink a lot of beer. I own two trucks and two dogs. I have a bunch of guns. Hell, I even own a tractor I've spent hours riding, moving around dirt and building roads that crisscross my property. The only thing I don't have is a girl. All the swooning and singing about girls just makes listening to country music that much better for my image. Gay guys listen to Madonna. I listen to Garth Brooks.

  I drink beer in part because that says "straight" too. I already downed a six-pack this afternoon, so I dive into the small fridge for more. I crack open a can of Busch Light and guzzle it in a couple swigs. Our backup quarterback, Brodie Croyle, has gotten me drinking that stuff when we go down to his cabin on off days. I open another one and start in on that.

  Finally I come to the real reason I sent the guys on their way. I open a drawer and pull out my bottle of eighty-milligram OxyContin. I used to keep weed out here, but the league put a stop to that. Instead I'm now downing enough painkillers every day to kill the average person. At six foot six and 330 pounds I'm twice the average person. I don't want Brian or anyone else to know just how many painkillers I'm doing, so the guys heading to the store is the perfect opportunity. I crush the pill on the counter and snort it.

  Aaaaaahhhhh. Peace.

  I relish being alone out here. It's just me, the dogs, some beer, the painkillers, and whatever project is next. I always need a project. When I bought the property, it was forty acres of impenetrable wilderness. The property had been used as a Christmas tree farm, so there are gorgeous pines all over, along with pockmarks dotting the land where stumps were pulled. I've built roads, cleared the lakeshore of trees, planted deer plots, erected a fence and a bunch of other shit. When Dustin or a neighbor isn't free to help, it is perfectly isolating.

  Keep busy, keep moving. What's next?

  I've just installed the gun cabinet and I brought some guns here from my house in town. I've been collecting them for a while and by now I have amassed a huge stockpile of weapons. Collecting guns is a hobby of Brian's that I've gotten a bit hooked on. I stacked the ones I brought in the corner this morning so I can shine them up before putting them in the case. I have enough for me and a dozen friends to trudge into the snow chasing the deer. I grab a rag and some gun polish and sit on the couch next to the guns. One by one I rub them to a shine. Always have to make sure the guns look good. They are part of the show.

  Truth is, I hate deer hunting. The idea of sitting in a tree and waiting for a deer to come eat at a food plot I've set up is literally one of the stupidest things I've ever heard in my life. My buddies don't think so. Killing things is part of being a man. One time Brian shot a deer out here. Bad shot, hit it in the shoulder but didn't kill it. We had to track that thing and put a few more bullets in it before it would go down. Chasing that wounded deer, as it felt the entire world closing in on it, knowing we were out to get it—that fucking broke my heart. I'll never let Brian or the other guys know, but I felt that deer's pain. It brought me back to the first time I shot a deer, when I was a kid.

  It was cold, hunting season. When I pulled the trigger and that deer went down with an audible thud, my dad was as happy as I'd seen him. Killing deer was a rite of passage for the O'Callaghans. I was suddenly a man. But when I walked up to that deer's dead body, I swear it was staring at me, right into my soul, this innocent animal that had just been wandering around looking for something to eat. I was out there killing deer so nobody would think I was gay, taking something's life just for show.

  So fucked up.

  When I finish polishing the guns, I set each one carefully in the gun cabinet.

  The time is coming when I will finally use one of those guns on my property. My injuries are mounting. Chiefs coach Todd Haley already has a role in taking away my starting position, a mixture of superstition and his tiff with our general manager, Scott Pioli, who brought me over from the New England Patriots. I figure I have at least a few years left in the NFL, though. With the dirt I have on one of my coaches, maybe a little more.

  Once my NFL career is over I'll get in the truck, drive to the property, open this gun cabinet, and shoot myself in the head.

  I'm not building a cabin. I'm building a crypt.

  Nobody wants a fucking faggot around.

  Chapter 1: Different

  I'm in the NFL, playing for the Kansas City Chiefs. I have a beautiful property with a cabin I love. A kick-ass truck. Two great dogs. My neighborhood takes pride in me simply living there. When I talk, people listen. And when I wear that Chiefs jersey, everybody wants to be around me. I have the money to do just about anything I want, whenever I want. Most guys in America would kill to have the life I have. I'm on top of the world.

  Yet I'm still that little gay kid who grew up in the middle of nowhere, scared quite literally to death. The secret that I buried inside of me at a very young age is something disgusting, unacceptable, deadly. No matter who I am or what I accomplish, the revelation of that secret will destroy my life and push away anyone who learns it. Being gay is death.

  * * *

  In the early nineties, before I was even a teenager, gays were the butts of jokes on TV, in movies, and in any conversation around the house that needed a punch line. I did not hear a positive word said about a gay person throughout my entire childhood. Even unknowingly, the way my mother talked about the gay doctor she worked for hit at my core. She never said anything hateful about him. Heck, he was her boss and she knew he was gay. But she would talk about him dying soon in a matter-of-fact way, like all gay men die young. She'd share secondhand stories of his gay parties with his friends in a way that told me they were, like every other gay man, quite simply signing their own death warrants with a stream of endless drugs and sex. My mom's comments were the nicest I ever heard about gay people, even though they were just matter-of-fact about death and drugs. For everyone else, gay guys were the "fags with AIDS" down in San Francisco who seemingly everybody in my formative years just wished would go away. I heard something like that message all the time.

  I grew up in a man's-man family. The O'Callaghans were spread all across Northern California from the biggest cities to the smallest towns. My dad, his cousins, and their wives and kids were all traditional American families. "Red-blooded Americans." The men worked in mills and firehouses, the women made dinner and took care of the kids and maybe had a small side job. There was a mold for what each of us was supposed to look and act like, and there was simply no breaking the mold in my family.

  I saw my extended family a lot, and every gathering reinforced what kind of O'Callaghan I was supposed to be. Our family barbecues were often at Hendy Woods, a state park two hundred miles south full of redwood groves. It was like venturing onto Endor. I hated it. Not because of the place, which was very cool. Even back then I loved nature. But those family barbecues, reuniting with O'Callaghans, as well as with my mom's side of the family, were boring as fuck. They reminded me every time what an outsider I was in my own life.

  For starters, I had no cousins who were my age. They were all teens or infants. The park was a potential playground with giant, hollow redwood stumps large enough to sneak into. But no one wanted to play hide-and-seek. No one wanted to climb rocks or splash in ponds. Instead, everyone always broke right into their typical gender roles. Without fail, the women would prepare all the food while the men shared their stories, trying desperately to impress one another over cans of beer. They never talked about run-of-the-mill topics like politics or movies. Sometimes sports would enter the conversation, but generally it was an afternoon of one-upmanship, where each of them would take turns trying to impress the other guys with a story about a new toy o
r property he bought or how manly he was.

  I always thought my dad was quietly envious of the money my uncles had. They would casually drop hints about things they bought or trips they'd go on with their families. There was a simple ease about their lives, being able to buy whatever they wanted, that my dad seemed to yearn for. It was a lot harder for my dad to build wealth. Among his cousins, he was the only one who didn't grow up around money. His parents were dirt poor. I mean dirt poor. He started helping to support his parents when he was twelve. He simply started from a much tougher spot.

  As I approached my teenage years, my place at these reunions was set. Despite feeling more comfortable slicing tomatoes with the women, I had to stand around with the beer drinkers. The "fags with AIDS" were, for whatever reason, also a popular topic.

  "So these two gay guys meet on the street," my uncle John started the conversation with a joke like he always did. He was a firefighter in San Francisco all through the AIDS crisis. He had story upon story about helping gay guys, none of them positive.

  Here we go again.

  "One of them is blind, and they go back to the blind man's apartment," he continued, grinning ear to ear, anticipating the punch line that would again prove his manhood. "The blind man asks the other guy if he wants to play a game. The game is to shove stuff up the blind man's ass, and he'll tell the other guy what it is."

  It almost always had to do with putting something up some guy's ass.

  "The guy grabs a kielbasa, shoves it up the blind man's ass, and of course he knew what it was. Then the guy grabs a rolling pin. Same result. So then he goes to the bathroom and grabs a . . ." Uncle John held his beer bottle with both hands moving it up and down, to simulate using a plunger in a toilet.

  "A plunger," my dad said.

  "Oh, you've played the game before!"

  Laughter ensued. Looking back, the joke is kind of funny. But for them, anything that made fun of those fags with AIDS in San Francisco was a testament to manhood that resonated with every single man in my family.