Charlie Sheen Drops Major Revelation in Memoir
Charlie Sheen is getting real about his life in two new projects that are launching back-to-back: his memoir, The Book of Sheen (Sept. 9), and the Netflix documentary, aka Charlie Sheen (Sept. 10). In both, he talks openly about the sexual experiences he had with men, revealing parts of his story that he kept private for a long time.
“I flipped the menu over,” he says in both the book and the film, referring to the moment he decided to explore beyond the relationships he had with women. Charlie emphasizes that he is no longer in hiding. “I’m not going to run from my past, or let it run me,” he insists. Instead, he focuses on acceptance and honesty.
In that documentary, when the guy in the chair asks Charlie when it clicked to talk in public about sleeping with men, he shoots back, “Liberating. It’s f—ing liberating… you just say the stuff. A train didn’t smack the diner. A piano didn’t drop out of nowhere. Nobody busted in the door and shot me.”
Earlier today on Good Morning America, Charlie gave a recap. He said the experiences kicked off during the crack years. “That’s what sparked all of this,” he tells the camera. “When I was clear-headed between hits, I kept hunting the same question: what the hell just happened? Eventually you wave it off and say, so what? Some of it was odd. Most of it was f—ing wild, and here I am, stacks of memories later.”
That wildness also handed him another card to shuffle: the HIV card. Charlie kept it close at first. Folks in his hotel room spotted layers of pill bottles and snapped pics. Then out came the blackmail: “Pay, or the internet gets this.”
He settled things up front, but the rest happened on the Today show in 2015, when he shared he was living with HIV. “I can promise you I never transmitted it, and I’m living proof it’s possible,” he explains softly. Now he’s releasing a book and a documentary, and the motivation couldn’t be clearer: he wants to give the full, undelayed version of himself without anyone else’s edits.
“You’d be surprised how many dunks I bounce,” he jumps in, reminding that his memory ain’t always reliable. For the last eight years he says he’s made step after step to apologize and to disentangle the messes he made during the addiction years. All that honesty, he laughs, and still nobody asked for the files.
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“I’m in the tape replay booth now, not on the field. We all play a part,” he points out, but he isn’t rewriting history with self-pity. If he can regret his live tiger-blood tour after that famous 20/20 interview, then it’s because he’s found the discipline to take blame where it’s due, the long road to accountability that nobody else can walk.
“Honestly, that tour pulled off only because no one wanted to say no. I’m no martyr, but when the tour bus pulls in I wish someone within earshot would’ve tapped the brakes. I studied every spots-in-the-mind handbook, and ‘let’s profit off emotional wreckage’ still isn’t listed under ‘Best Strategy,’” he shrugs.
Now, Sheen keeps the volume down. Bizarre headlines feel like leftover pizza—there, but mostly unappetizing. For the past years, the only company in his living room has been the TV and his kids. After divorcing Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller, he’s treated romance like a land-mine zone on a video game—approach only when fully powered up.
He chuckles, “The dashboard lights say ‘Single,’ but it’s a government-mandated traffic signal no one believes. I got the girls when the twins aren’t here and the twins when the girls aren’t. No one’s reserves spared a seat, so the lenses in the rear-view just flip around and call it a date. I spent days planning court assignments; heart-meeting got outsourced because I needed to soar and to learn that throne empties when you’re the only one left in your sky.”
Asked if that throne’s ever up for tenants again, he nods. “Sure,” he grins, “but the lease has no ring and only a cautious ‘maybe’ tag appended in the fine print.”
