Simmons taking long road back

OAK BLUFFS -- As the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks depart for Detroit tomorrow in preparation for Super Bowl XL, there will be plenty of concerns for coaches Bill Cowher and Mike Holmgren, but perhaps none quite as daunting as worrying what their players will be doing in the days leading up to the biggest game of their lives. NFL history is littered with Super Bowl casualties sucked in by the excitement and the nightlife and the adulation.

Roy Simmons knows all about that. He was an offensive lineman and special teams player for the Washington Redskins in 1984, the year the Redskins played the Raiders in Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa. In between devising blocking schemes for running back John Riggins, Simmons said he tackled other weighty matters such as where he could score some good cocaine and how he was going to juggle his time among three lovers -- two women and a man -- all of whom were staying in the same hotel in Tampa.

Here is Simmons's account of the night before kickoff: ''The drinks and drugs never stopped. My little entourage and I skipped out to all the bars in town and I saw my teammates out all over the place, too. Everybody was drinking hard! I saw a few of the Raiders out as well, and they weren't taking things any easier. The whole thing was [expletive] insane."

This is one of the many snippets of Simmons's insane life that is chronicled in his newly released book, ''Out of Bounds," which details a scarred childhood, a voracious drug habit, and a secret life in which he hid his homosexual tendencies from his teammates, his family, his girlfriend, even his daughter.

This story does not have a happy ending. Simmons blew all his money, ended up homeless and HIV positive, and he writes, turning tricks on a street corner to fuel his drug habit. He was so desperate for crack, he pawned off his roommate's antique grandfather clock, a family heirloom. His lowest moment came in 1993, when he stood perched on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge, trying to come up with a reason he shouldn't jump.

''My grandmother always said suicide is a sin," he said. ''That's what stopped me."

Simmons is trying to repair a life -- and body -- ravaged by abuse, some at the hands of others, but most of it self-inflicted. The book is one of the many steps toward coming clean.

''If I was on the outside looking in at [my story], I'd say, 'This man has got to be crazy,' " Simmons admitted earlier this week during an interview on Martha's Vineyard. ''I've been through a lot."

Simmons, 49, says his problems began when he was 11, alleging he was raped by his neighbor, a meticulously dressed postman who was well respected in the community. Simmons reported his harrowing experience to his grandmother, who was raising him, but no charges were filed. As those around him reacted to his trauma in hushed tones, Simmons was left to harbor a shameful secret alone.

''You tend to say, where was everybody?" Simmons said. ''My mother was away. My father was never around. My grandmother worked all day. We were a poor family that didn't have any men in our lives. There was no one strong enough to stand up and say, 'This is wrong. I'm going to do something about it.' Everyone just figured if it was my word against his, no one would believe me.

''The problem was it left me with, 'What did I do wrong? Is this my fault?' "

Simmons says he began having secret sexual encounters with other boys as a high school student. He went to Georgia Tech on a football scholarship, and clandestinely frequented bath houses, hoping his teammates would not discover his double life. That pattern continued after he was selected by the New York Giants in the eighth round of the 1979 draft. While Simmons thrived under coach Ray Perkins, who once declared he ''just might be the best athlete on this football team," his life off the field began spiraling out of control. He was introduced to cocaine by a teammate, he says, and it soon became his best friend.

It was a friend he was willing to share. Simmons says he hosted a toga party in the early '80s with a guest list that included the New York Jets, the New Jersey Nets, and the New Jersey Generals.

''That's a whole lot of testosterone under one roof, so I had to be prepared," Simmons wrote. ''I made sure all the bedrooms had locks on the doors so people could go in, close up, and get to it [sex] . . . cocaine, reefers, uppers, downers -- you name it, it was on the coffee table, laid out like a buffet."

Simmons lasted three seasons with the Giants. During that time, he says, he had a brief sexual encounter with a teammate after a night of partying. Perkins hauled him in on more than one occasion and warned him his extracurricular activities could derail his NFL career, but Simmons didn't listen.

By 1982, strung out on drugs, Simmons announced he was taking a year off from football. He spent the next 12 months working as a baggage handler at Kennedy Airport, but his meager salary didn't match the more than $1,000 a day he estimates he was spending on cocaine.

He returned to the Giants the following season, but Perkins was gone, and a wary Bill Parcells had taken his place. Parcells had watched Simmons from afar as the defensive line coach and had identified him as a bad seed. So Parcells cut him.

''Looking back, he was correct in what he saw," Simmons said. ''I just didn't like the way he went about it. I was angry at him for several years. Whenever one of his commercials came on, I changed the channel. I hated him.

''Playing for the Giants meant so much to me. I didn't want to play anywhere else."

Simmons signed with Washington in 1983, and, he said, began free-basing cocaine, often with teammates.

''Drugs numbed my pain," he said. ''They numbed my anger. They took me out of myself."

They also rendered him ineffective on the football field. He was out of the NFL a year later. He briefly made news again in 1992 after appearing on ''The Phil Donahue Show" to reveal he was gay, but soon he was just another forgotten professional athlete who allowed drugs to destroy his dream.

By 2003, he was broke, homeless, and sick. His longtime friend, Jimmy Hester, brought him to Martha's Vineyard to heal, at the Holistic Retreat in Vineyard Haven, a facility run by Dr. Roni DeLuz.

''I'm reading Roy's book now, and all I keep saying is, 'Who is this guy?' " DeLuz said. ''This is not the Roy I know. When he first came here, he came here to die. His legs were so swollen he couldn't even walk up a flight of stairs. He had sores all over his back and his legs. But he was gentle, kind."

DeLuz put him on a 21-day program of vitamins, vegetable juice, and health foods. She worked on cleansing his kidneys and his colon, as well as his mind. The swelling receded, the sores disappeared.

''And then he started talking," DeLuz said. ''About the rape, which obviously was painful. About everything. I have watched him grow stronger."

Simmons joined the Apostolic House of Prayer in Oak Bluffs. He sang in the choir and was baptized in the Atlantic Ocean. Pastor Marcia Buckley marveled at his transformation.

''Roy has a soft, soft way about him," Buckley said. ''But it's a struggle for him. The type of background he has makes it difficult to overcome some of his problems.

''I think this book, aside from helping other people, has been wonderful therapy for him."

Simmons approached commissioner Paul Tagliabue's office about coming to the Super Bowl to speak to current NFL players about being gay (''there's so many more guys than you think," Simmons said), about drug abuse, about being HIV positive, about being sexually assaulted. He received a polite letter declining his services.

''I think the NFL is afraid of him," said Hester, who serves as his publicist. ''But this book isn't about a bunch of men wearing tutus saying, 'Be out in the NFL!' Roy isn't a gay activist.

''His story is about sexual abuse, and addiction, and hiding your true self. He just wants to help someone deal with it a little better than he did."

The battle is far from over for Simmons. He worked in a Long Island halfway house, but suffered a relapse. He has been able to go two years without drugs, but presently has only been clean 25 days. He is in therapy, and trying to make a connection with his daughter, whom he all but abandoned during his drug-induced years. He knows he has hurt countless people, and is trying to fix it one person at a time.

The book, he said, is cathartic for him. But he has already braced himself for the fact not everyone will appreciate its contents.

''I'm sure there's going to be a lot of 'Why didn't you tell me,' or 'How dare you?' or 'Man, you're messed up,' " Simmons said. ''I understand. It's not anything I haven't already said to myself."

Jackie MacMullan is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail address is macmullan@globe.com.