Eric Massa Profiled in

Former congressman Eric Massa from New York, who resigned amid charges that he tickled and groped a male aide, speaks with Esquire magazine in a new profile. Among other things, Massa reveals that he struggled with drugs and alcohol and admits that he considered killing himself twice after he left office.

As The Washington Post reports, "the magazine reveals the meeting in an astounding story now hitting newsstands. Author Ryan D'Agostino stayed overnight at the congressman's Corning home during the week of his resignation, the revelations of sexual harassment allegations from male staffers, and Massa's lashing-out at fellow Dems for supposedly plotting to destroy him. In a somewhat sympathetic story, D'Agostino reports that: Massa told him he twice tried to kill himself, or mulled it anyway, after he left office; Massa told him he once sleepwalked to the Washington Monument in a a booze-and-Ambien haze and had to call aides to get him; At the end of the winter meeting at Esquire, Massa turned to D'Agostino with "a mischievous glint" and asked, "What are you, seventeen? ... You better watch yourself around gay bars, my friend. It could get interesting."

Weeks before the scandal hit, the Post reports that Massa secretly went to the Esquire editors with a claim that former vice president Dick Cheney was urging Gen. David Petraeus to run for president.

Read the Esquire profile of Massa here.