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Esera Tuaolo hid his homosexuality throughout his career in American football, but is now relieved that he can tell the truth about himself and his family.

'What is my life like?' says a beaming Esera Tuaolo, father, lover, homemaker, 22-stone former American footballer for the Minnesota Vikings turned professional singer and aspiring actor. 'My life right now is wonderful.'

In my defence, I should point out that last summer Esera Tuaolo's life wasn't so wonderful. Last summer he was on a rafting trip with his partner, his children and his in-laws, when he was recognised by one of the other rafters. 'He was a Vikings fan,' Tuaolo recalls, the smile suddenly disappearing. 'He was being very friendly but I felt trapped. I started lying, my partner had to lie, his parents felt terrible. It hurt, man, really hurt. We couldn't be the people we really are. When we got home we decided it was time to tell the truth.'

The truth was that he was gay, that he had been in a seven-year relationship with Minnesota businessman Mitchell Wherley, whom he calls 'my husband', and that they were the adoptive parents of two-year-old twins, Mitchell and Michelle. 'The truth was I wanted to be happy. Completely happy.'

His mind made up, Tuaolo did a few carefully-chosen, high-profile interviews with the straight and gay press, and sat back and waited for the backlash. It didn't take long. 'I don't want to know what so-and-so did with his wife last night, so why would I want to know if he's smoking the pole,' said Marshall Faulk of the St Louis Rams, perhaps the greatest player - if not the most tactful soul - in the modern NFL. 'A lot of guys would be upset, particularly because football players shower together. For many players it's distressing to know that the guy you're sharing soap with is gay,' said Leroy Butler, a former teammate of Tuaolo's.

Believe it or not, Butler thought he was being supportive, which tells you everything about attitudes towards homosexuality within American professional sport; a world where nothing - not jail, not drugs and certainly not rampant heterosexual adultery - can threaten a career like the 'stain' of being gay. No wonder Tuaolo waited until he'd been retired from the NFL three years before coming out.

'If I'd done it while I was still playing I would have put myself at risk. I've been around the NFL long enough to now that people put a bounty on opposition players' heads. If word had got around that I was gay, there's no doubt someone would have offered money to have me taken out on the field. It was a choice of either putting myself in danger or saying nothing.'

Tuaolo chose silence, along with copious amounts of alcohol and painful - often pitiable - attempts to convince his team-mates that he too was one of the lads. 'When we'd go to strip clubs, I'd always make sure people saw me leaving with a woman. Thankfully, when I got back to the hotel or wherever I was usually too drunk or too exhausted to do anything,' he says.

In some ways Tuaolo's is simply the story of a young man growing up in Hawaii, trying to come to terms with his sexuality. 'I knew from an early age I was gay but it wasn't the time or the place to say anything to anyone, not even my friends or family,' he says. He didn't have his first meaningful sexual relationship until he went to college in Oregon, where he was - literally - the team's poster boy. Tuaolo carried his secret into the professional game, where he carved out a reputation as reliable but unspectacular pro who never quite lived up to his early promise. He played in the 1999 Super Bowl for the Atlanta Falcons, losing to the Denver Broncos. 'I didn't really want to draw too much attention to myself. I just did enough to make sure I made the team,' he recalls. 'If I sacked the quarterback I'd go to bed worried sick that someone would have recognised me and told the newspapers about me.'

Tuaolo's life changed completely when he met Mitchell Wherley at a city nightclub in 1995. 'We swapped phone numbers. I didn't give him my real name.' The two men were an item within weeks, and Wherley took Tuaolo home to meet his family. Tuaolo finally felt secure enough to come out to his own family and friends, though not to anyone in the NFL. When Wherley went to games he sat in he section reserved for girlfriends and wives. He was introduced as a 'business manager'. Tuaolo's constant moves around the league helped maintain this charade, not least because the couple never had the chance to put down roots.

'The longer this went on, the tougher it got,' Tuaolo says. 'I'd see the other players with their wife and family and homes and dogs. I saw all these people with their white picket fence lives and I wanted what they had.' A public declaration was out of the question, and not just because of the NFL's bounty hunters. There was the issue of money. Tuaolo was brought up in poverty and his wages helped lift his family's living standards. 'I would have been run out of the game, no doubt about it.'

None of this is to argue that homophobia is the daily currency of an NFL locker room, he adds, but nor is the locker room a place where sexuality is discussed with tact and sensitivity. 'People are always asking me how many other gay players there were in the NFL. I know I can't be the only one, especially when you think that 10 per cent of the population is gay. That means there should be five or six on every team. But other than me, I don't know of one.

'Mind you, there were always loads of rumours about certain big-time players being gay. People would go round the locker room, point at other players . They'd point at me and say, "Hey, you're single Esera, you could be one. You could be the fucking faggot."'

With that Esera Tuaolo lifts his massive, frame off the couch and walks to the kitchen, where he gathers one of the twins in his arms. They look out on the garden and its white picket fence. 'Little did they know,' whispers the proud father. 'Little did they know.'

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