Freed of a Secret’s Burden, a Soccer Player Looks Ahead

The computer document was named LetterOfLife. Robbie Rogers, a former member of the United States national team and a professional soccer player in England, wrote it one night last December, pounding on his keyboard while sitting in bed. When he finished, he saved it on the main screen of his laptop and it stayed there, for more than two months, while Rogers alternately pondered it, ignored it and agonized over whether he could make it public.

Finally, on the afternoon of Feb. 15, after getting a push from several of his closest friends — “I was talking about it again and they told me, ‘Post it, or shut up about it!’ ” Rogers said through a laugh — he did just that. Rogers posted LetterOfLife to his Web site and, in doing so, revealed to teammates, coaches and fans everywhere that he was gay. “Football hid my secret,” he wrote. “I realized I could only truly enjoy my life once I was honest.” He also announced that he was retiring from soccer, despite being only 25.

In the weeks since, Rogers has stayed out of the spotlight. Letters and e-mails and texts have flowed in from North America, Europe and Asia, and Rogers has been grateful for the support. But there has also been a growing wonder about whether Rogers will consider continuing his career, making him the first openly gay male athlete to play in a major American team sport.

Rogers, in an interview from his home in London, said he understood the questions. There are a handful of individual athletes, like the boxer Orlando Cruz, who have come out as gay while still active in their sports. And there have been several team sport athletes, like the N.F.L.’s Esera Tualolo and basketball’s John Amaechi, who came out after they were retired.

But even as the United States’ sensibilities toward gay rights have evolved, a gay male athlete has yet to come out while still going to work in the charged locker-room environment of major professional team sports. Given the evolving feelings about gay rights, it seems inevitable the barrier will be broken — and, to many, Rogers would be the perfect one to do it. Rogers does not rule out the possibility. But, he added quickly, it is not a priority for him. He said he hoped that “people will understand that I need to be a little selfish about this.”

“I’m definitely not closing any doors,” he said. “Maybe I will go back. Right now, I’m just happy to be out and being honest with people. But just because I’m out doesn’t mean I’m 100 percent healthy. It’s been 25 years that I haven’t been myself. Twenty-five years of lying. That’s really, really hard.”

Unlike some gay athletes who had been out to friends and family for years before coming out publicly, Rogers kept his sexuality a secret from everyone. His parents did not know. His brother and three sisters did not know. His best friends did not know.

A native of Southern California, Rogers said he suspected he was “different” by the time he was 10 and knew for sure he was gay by age 14. Yet he was so scared of anyone finding out that he did not even write in his diaries about his feelings; he was worried someone else might read them.

“I’m a Catholic, I’m a conservative, I’m a footballer and I’m gay,” he said, trying to describe his fear. “Imagine living all that time with just a cramp in your stomach. I kept thinking, I hope I don’t do something that makes people wonder, is Robbie gay?”

He added: “I was never close to coming out before. Never. I never went to any gay bars, never hooked up with a guy. It was so unhealthy and so bad that I felt this way. Two years ago, I would have thought that I would never come out during my entire life.”

That notion was hardly far-fetched, Rogers said. After all, he had kept up appearances for so long: in locker rooms for club and national teams; on campus as a student at the University of Maryland; and then for years as a professional wing while playing in Major League Soccer and overseas for Leeds United and Stevenage in England.

He talked about girls. He even dated girls. “I’m not a virgin,” he said plainly, describing how he tried to have a long-term relationship with a girl in college that, he realizes now, “was just me being in love with the idea of being like my brother and sisters who could get married and could have kids.”

About a year and a half ago, he said, his fear turned into frustration. He realized he had never been able to feel complete happiness or joy because he always felt that he was hypocritical; as an example, he recalled, he felt little desire to celebrate after winning the M.L.S. championship with Columbus in 2008.

“Instead I just sort of went home and lay around,” he said. “Everything was like that. I thought I’d be so happy. But I felt like it wasn’t that way, like it couldn’t be. It was like you can’t totally appreciate it because you’re not being real.”

Last summer, Rogers finally accepted who he was and told someone he was gay. “Technically, the first person was some girl I met at a bar,” he said, laughing. “I told her I was gay, and she still tried to hook up with me. It was weird.”

Starting in October, however, he came out to his family. His older sister, Alicia, was the first relative he told, and he was so nervous that he initiated a Skype conversation with her, told her that he had sent her an e-mail and then instructed her to read it and immediately Skype him back.

“I thought about flying home to tell everyone, but I just needed to do it and get it off my chest,” he said. “The only time that I really cried during this whole process is when I told my mom and she just said: ‘Robbie, I don’t care. We love you.’ ”

By January of this year, Rogers began telling close friends. Sacha Kljestan, a midfielder on the United States team who plays professionally in Belgium, visited Rogers in London a few weeks ago — the pair went to a pub to watch the Tottenham-Arsenal match together — and Kljestan said he had never seen Rogers more at ease.

Like many others, though, Kljestan wonders about whether Rogers will return to the game. When Rogers told him that he was gay and planning to retire, Kljestan’s first reaction, he said, was, “Robbie, you don’t have to do that.”

“I want to keep him playing because I think he’d be a huge role model,” Kljestan said in an interview last week. “But I also want him to be happy and do it for himself, not because it’s something for other people.”

If he ever does return to soccer, Rogers said, it would almost surely be in M.L.S. While many European countries are more progressive in terms of gay-rights legislation, Rogers says the sports culture in Europe may lag behind that of the United States, especially in soccer.

Rogers noted an odd dichotomy; a number of his teammates in England reached out to him with supportive texts or e-mails after he came out publicly, but many of those same teammates participated in locker room banter that “could really be pretty awful,” he said.

“I’m not going to name names — it’s just that pack mentality,” Rogers said. “I remember hearing some of them talk about the possibility of gay players and saying things like, ‘If gay footballers can shower with us, I want to shower with girls.’ And I’m just thinking, ‘Dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about.’ ”

He added: “I’ve showered with guys my whole life. And never once have I been excited, like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s time to shower with the guys.’ It isn’t that way. There’s no interest. You don’t think of guys on your team that way. You just don’t.”

Rogers noted, too, that it is easy for others to say he should simply keep playing or to say that the sports culture is ready for a gay male athlete to play in a major team sport. Yet of all the e-mails and texts he received, none — zero — were from other active soccer players revealing that they were gay.

“I don’t think football is homophobic,” Rogers said. “But clearly there is something there. Because no one reached out. Not one other player said he was gay. So there’s definitely still work to be done, right?”

Rogers is still figuring out what comes next for him. He has been accepted to a program at the London College of Fashion and is the co-owner of a fashion brand, Halsey. He plans to do charity work and travel (including an extended visit to the United States), but is not yet sure what his long-term future will hold.

The uncertainty does not bother him, he said. Maybe he will become the first openly gay soccer player to break the mold. Maybe he will never play again. Right now, he simply feels relief that he was finally able to show the world the words he wrote one night while in bed.

For years, he thought he would die with his secret. Now, he has found the liberation that comes with sharing his LetterOfLife with the world.

“I’ve played in Olympics and won championships,” he said, “but I’ve told people, forget all of that: telling my family was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. And posting that letter was second.”