Evangelist's gay escort signs for explicit tell-all

MIAMI - Gay ex-escort Mike Jones has signed to write a sexually explicit memoir about his relationship with fallen evangelist Ted Haggard.

"It's going to review my encounters with Ted and other people who are similar," Jones told The Miami Herald from New York.

"It's not a book about bashing Ted at all. It's humanizing him as a person with feelings and emotions and desires," Jones said Thursday. "I'm going to be explicit as far as what happened in our encounters, but not to rip him apart or be mean to him. He's a man who has faults like all of us."

Jones, 49, won't say how much the book deal is worth.

Just before the November election, the muscular massage therapist went public and told the world that he had a three-year relationship with Haggard - married president of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals, a confidante of President Bush and a leader in the anti-gay political movement.

Haggard, 50, paid $200 cash per session, "plus tips," said Jones, who said he also helped Haggard buy methamphetamine.

At first, Haggard denied knowing Jones. Within days of the scandal breaking on Nov. 2, Haggard amended his story, saying that he had paid Jones only for a massage and that he did buy meth - but that he had thrown it away, unused. Haggard soon resigned from all church leadership positions and publicly called himself "a deceiver and a liar."

Seven Stories Press plans to publish the still-untitled book in June. "It was Mike's courage and strength of conscience that ultimately led him to come forward about the hypocrisy of Haggard's life," publisher Dan Simon said in a news release. "We're proud to be publishing this important story from an articulate and brave man."

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(c) 2006, The Miami Herald. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.