And I remember putting my face into my sleeping bag, trying to muffle my cries and my tent-mate said, 'Jim, don't worry about it, they're just jerks.' But I thought to myself: No. McGreevey's a faggot.' He doesn't like girls, he's a homo.

'I thought maybe this is surreal, maybe it's just my fear and then I heard it: 'McGreevey's a queer.

'Homo, queer  and these are words that terrified me,' McGreevey said. As he drifted off to sleep, he overheard a number of other boys seated around a nearby campfire, use a variety of epithets to describe their belief that McGreevey was probably gay.