WASHINGTON -- Amid his year-by-year narrative of his complex relationship with Roger Clemens and performance-enhancing drugs, Brian McNamee weaved in a tale of two wives. He said it was his own wife who nagged him into keeping evidence that has become crucial in the trial of the storied pitcher, and it was a request from Clemens' wife that led to what McNamee called a "creepy" injection scene in a bathroom.

Clemens' longtime strength coach testified Tuesday for a second day in the perjury trial, pushing his running total to roughly 10 hours on the stand, including the first few moments of what portends to be a grueling cross-examination that will continue Wednesday. The broad outline was familiar from McNamee's previous statements: He said he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone in 2000 and with steroids in 2001, and he gave Debbie Clemens a shot of HGH in 2003. That was in addition to the testimony he gave Monday, when he spoke of a series of steroid injections he said he gave Clemens in 1998, when he was pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays.

He went on to describe his marital problems, money problems and the legal mess that came about when he got entangled in the federal drugs-in-sports investigation that led him to become a reluctant but cooperating witness against one of the most successful baseball players of all time.

"It destroyed me. It killed me. ... I put myself in a situation where I had to do this," McNamee said. "I had to tell the truth."

Some details were new and fascinating, especially hearing them spoken out loud in a courtroom with Clemens sitting a few feet away. At one dramatic point, the adversaries were actually both standing, when McNamee rose from the witness stand and identified Clemens with an outstretched left arm: "He's right there with the brown tie." Clemens looked straight at McNamee, stone-faced and silent.

McNamee is far and away the government's key witness, the only person who will claim firsthand knowledge of Clemens taking performance-enhancing drugs. The former baseball great is accused of lying when he told Congress in 2008 that he had never used steroids or HGH.

McNamee again gave vivid and colorful details about injections. He appeared less nervous than he did on Monday, and his voice rose as he spoke of marital problems that he said developed in part because of his relationship with Clemens. The time away from home training Clemens meant McNamee didn't have time to take his wife and children to water parks and other family outings, he said, and his wife was concerned that her husband would become a fall guy at Clemens' expense.

"You're going to go down! You're going to go down! You're going to go down!" Brian McNamee said his wife, Eileen, told him in the "middle of a battle royale" argument.

McNamee said he thought "she might be right," so he kept the needle, swab and cotton ball from a steroids injection he said took place in Clemens' New York City apartment in 2001. He said he put the items in a beer can that he salvaged from the recycling bin in Clemens' kitchen -- a means of protecting the used needle from accidently stabbing himself -- and brought the can home. It was put in a FedEx box and kept in the house, an effort to "keep the home front nice and smooth," McNamee said.