The Last Temptation of Ted Haggard

What his wife’s book didn’t do was settle the question of Ted’s sexuality or give insight into how it plays out in their marriage now—whether Ted still battles the same urges that got him to Mike Jones’s massage table. And if so, does he tell her when it happens? Does she worry that he’ll lapse again or that after everything they’ve been through, he’ll pull a Jim McGreevey and leave her for a man?

When Gayle leaves to pick up lunch from a nearby Italian joint, I mention that I visited Mike Jones in Denver. Ted tenses and preemptively begins debunking Jones’s claims again—no sex, no repeat massages, no kinky stuff. He admits that he bought drugs from Jones “five or six times” but maintains that he wasn’t an addict.

“Sometimes I’d throw it away,” he says. “Other times, I’d go someplace and masturbate and use it. But it was for masturbation. And that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been real clear. I don’t want to stand up publicly and say, ‘Hey, I’m a masturbation guy!’

By Kevin Roose, GQ