Carly's Drug Horror: Simon’s Gay Ex-Husband Cheated With Men On Crack Binges
Jan. 20 2017, Published 10:02 a.m. ET
Carly Simon thought she met her perfect match in poet Jim Hart after her messy split from fellow singer James Taylor. But the couple’s dream wedding soon spiraled into a nightmare marriage.
In his upcoming memoir, Lucky Jim, onetime Harvard professor Hart reveals he quickly became addicted to dangerous drugs including crystal meth and crack cocaine after discovering he was attracted to men — all while married to the You’re So Vain songstress.
Following their 1987 wedding, Simon, now 71, and Hart traveled between homes in New York City and Martha’s Vineyard with celebrity friends including the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Diane Sawyer, and President Bill and Hillary Clinton.
But as the marriage began to crumble 13 years later, Hart realized he couldn’t ignore his long-held feelings for men. He began to frequent gay strip clubs, bathhouses and chat lines.
After meeting up with a man named Roberto from a gay hook-up line, Hart threw away more than 20 years of sobriety from substances and tried a hit of “rock,” or crack cocaine, for the first time.
“The effect was immediate,” he writes in the tell-all. “All pain was washed away…I could feel my salvation.”
The very next day, the businessman got his own dealer.
After months of secret drug binges, Hart finally came clean about his double life to his wife.
She immediately sent him to a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts for treatment.
Friends including Alec Baldwin and Michael J. Fox called with well wishes for his recovery.
During a couple’s therapy session, Hart confessed his infidelities.
“Yes, I was unfaithful to you,” he recalls telling his wife. “I’ve been having sex with men!”
Rather than scream and cry, Simon responded by patting her husband on the head.
“She didn’t want me to feel any more guilt than I already did,” Hart says.
In a sad twist, the writer relapsed by shooting crystal meth at a casino after five months of rehab.
“The desire to escape was more powerful than the cure,” he explains.
After years of discord, Simon and Hart eventually divorced in 2007. Soon after, he got sober again, and found love with an addiction specialist named Robert.
In 2015, Simon called her ex “a great friend,” but did say she wished she’d known about his sexual preferences before the marriage.
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“His boyfriends would call up here crying,” she said.
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