Me (15 page)

I believe one of the factors that contributed to the rumors about my sexuality was that people maybe thought my image as the “Latin lover” was excessive. In other words, perhaps they thought that everything I did—the way I danced, the lyrics to my songs, my sexy onstage moves—was nothing but an attempt to conceal my homosexuality. And this is where I feel the need to clarify: I am the artist I am thanks to the many experiences that have influenced me along the way, and this has absolutely nothing to do with my sexuality. Even though I know very well that all my music and performances have a “sexualized” component, inasmuch as I dance with women, move my hips, and enjoy the rhythm, that doesn’t mean it is an expression of my sexuality, regardless of whether I feel attraction for women or for men. When I am onstage, I am always looking for a way to connect with the audience, and if I discover a hip movement or a dance step that people like or get excited about or that gets them going, then I am going to continue doing it. It has to do with the very nature of performance and seducing the audience, which has nothing to do with my personal life.

When I am onstage, I am
working
. I do it with dignity. I do it with respect. I do it because I like what I do and because I want other people to like my music and my performances. In countries outside of Latin America, Latin culture has always had a very sexualized connotation, but that sexiness that others seem to perceive is completely normal for those of us who are from that part of the world. The movements of salsa, merengue, and cumbia exist in all our countries.

Perhaps the moment that encapsulates this whole issue about the rumors and the damage they were causing me was a now infamous interview with Barbara Walters. Renowned for her interviews with some of the most famous and powerful people in the world, she has the unique ability to extract personal details that have never before been revealed. My interview was aired on the night of the Academy Awards, on Sunday, March 26, 2000. At the time I was probably one of the most recognized people in music; and because of all the media promotion I had done for the past four or five years, I was completely overexposed. The album
Ricky Martin
and the song “Livin’ La Vida Loca” were still selling like hotcakes, and at the time I was also on a world concert tour. The Barbara Walters special was a much-anticipated segment on TV on a night that has one of the largest numbers of viewers all year.

The interview was conducted in Puerto Rico. After walking a bit on the beach, we sat on a porch for the interview. She asked me questions about my success, my life as a singer, my family, and like the good investigator she is, when I least expected it, she point-blank asked me the question I feared most: She asked me about my sexuality.

I responded the same way I always answered the question: I told her that this was a private matter, and it was no one else’s business. But instead of accepting my answer and moving along with the interview, she stubbornly continued to dig. To a certain extent I can understand that she was just doing her job, but she pushed me pretty hard, maybe thinking that she would be able to get some kind of on-air confession from me for the show. I don’t know. But the fact is, I didn’t give her what she wanted.

I stayed firm with my answers—as much as possible—but I remember that my vision went blurry and my heart started to race. I felt like a boxer who had just been hit with a decisive punch—staggering and defensive, but already knocked out, waiting to fall. But I did not fall. I don’t know how I did it, but I stayed strong. Now, as I write this, I laugh, and I’m not sure if it’s a nervous laughter or if it is that with a bit of distance I am amused by the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation. The fact is, all I can do is laugh.

Years later, Barbara admitted that perhaps she should not have asked me that question and regretted having done so. Even though the past is the past, I greatly appreciated the gesture, because it means a lot to me that she understands that I simply wasn’t ready. Even though all the rumors were out there, things were still not clear in my mind, and coming out of the closet simply wasn’t an option. The external pressure only served to increase my angst, and instead of bringing me closer to my moment—the day when I would feel comfortable to reveal my truth to the world—it distanced me even more. Every episode such as this made me bury my feelings deeper, in an attempt to continue to drown out my pain.

Today I think about how easy it would have been to say yes, and feel proud of who I am. Even though I never really lied, I did dodge the question, and I was very clumsy about it. Now I see that it was so simple, that I was drowning myself in a glass of water, but back then I did not see or live through it that way. It doesn’t matter how I look at it—the bottom line is that it was not my moment. Why? Because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.

The truth is that it was not just for me that I remained silent. Although I accept full responsibility for my decisions, I also felt that I needed to think about how my actions might affect my family, my friends, and all the people around me. I have always taken care of those around me, and I do it because I love to do so. That’s how my life has always been, and it genuinely makes me happy. Some people think it’s not healthy to be this way, and I agree. It’s something I have to work on, but that’s just the way it is. It is clear to me that what I do inevitably has repercussions on other people’s lives, and in that moment I felt that if I spoke about my sexuality, people would reject me and my career would likely be over. And if my career was over, who was going to support my family? Now, many years later, I realize how absurd it is to have even thought this, but that’s how I saw it then. So I continued having relationships with men, but I always kept them hidden. It infuriated me to think that people thought they could walk into my house and see who was in my bed. Regardless of what my sexual orientation may be, I should still have a right to my privacy.

All the pressure from work as well as the media started to become so oppressive that the stage was the only place where I could feel any sense of peace. But after a while, even that started to lose its appeal. For the first time ever, even onstage, I often felt uncomfortable, unsatisfied, and empty. I did not understand why I was doing what I was doing. That’s when I said to myself: “Wait! Hold on a moment! This is the only thing you really love to do, and even here you’re starting to feel bad? It’s time to stop.” Performing onstage was the only thing I had left, the only thing I loved about being an artist, and I was even starting to lose that.

I don’t know if the general public felt it, but I’m pretty sure they did. In other words, if someone saw one of my concerts in New York or Miami that took place at the beginning of the tour, when I was enjoying myself, and then saw the same show in Australia, when the tour was starting to wrap up, they would have definitely noticed the difference. By the end, I was there and I was doing my job, but the whole time all I was thinking was, “I cannot wait for this to be over so I can just go home already.”

All I wanted to do was sleep. I wanted nothing more. So the moment came when I took Madonna’s advice and disconnected. We were in Australia and the next stop was Argentina. A stadium full of people awaited us in Buenos Aires, but I canceled it. I just couldn’t take it anymore. This was only the second concert I had ever canceled in my life, and the first was due to illness.

Everyone in the band kept asking, “But what happened? What do you mean we’re going home?”

“Yes,” I’d tell them, “we’re going home. I am totally beat; I simply cannot take it anymore.”

“But, Ricky, we only have one more week left of the tour,” they would say to me. “Come on, it’s just one more week.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have made that extra effort and forced myself to use every last bit of energy I had left. But this time it was different, and I knew they would never be able to convince me. I simply did not—could not—go on, and there was not a soul in the world who could convince me of the opposite. All I wanted in that moment was to go home.

I guess it was an anxiety attack. I was tired of everything, and not even the stage was enough to remedy my discomfort. If I didn’t want to do the shows anymore, what was the point of it all? I had to stop, because who knows what could have happened to me had I gone on for even one more week at that pace?

I had been working practically nonstop for seventeen years—but the last four had been brutal. First came the tour for
A medio vivir
, then
Vuelve
, and almost right away came the Grammy Awards and all the craziness of “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” Four years of touring is a lot. It made complete sense that I was feeling this way.

Besides, I didn’t like who I was. I didn’t like what I was feeling. I started to behave in a way that I had never done before. It’s not that I showed anyone disrespect; I didn’t scream or yell or do anything like that, but I did begin to lose my discipline. I would arrive late. I played with other people’s time. I remember once I was doing a tour through Germany and I had an event at nine in the morning, and I showed up very late in the afternoon. Maybe for other artists that’s no big deal, but for me it is. Everyone has their own standards. To me, not showing up at rehearsals or for an event, that’s when I can’t sink any lower.

So I stopped working. I went back home and isolated myself from the world. I moped around my house and had very little sense of humor and no patience. I would spend entire days at home in my pajamas—which for me is totally out of character, as I have always been quite active, energetic, and wide-awake early in the morning, always ready for the day ahead. But at that moment I wanted nothing to do with schedules, obligations, or appointments. All I wanted was silence.

Now that I look at it, I see that time as the beginning of my metamorphosis. I began to evaluate what I wanted out of my life, what I needed and what I did not. It was like a rebirth. And within that rebirth it was as if I was also going through a process of spiritual detoxification in order to come back to the basics, to return to the calm. I was ceasing to be the person I had been for those last few years, to become a new me. I found it to be a very interesting process, but those who knew me best, my closest friends, simply could not understand what was going on.

One day a close friend came to see me, and shocked to see what was happening, she yelled at me, as if wanting to wake me up from the stupor I was in.

“You’re screwed up.”

“No!” I yelled back. “This is how I am! If you don’t like it, leave!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she replied.

At that, I hurled a glass that crashed against the wall and shattered into tiny little pieces. It sounds silly, a single act of desperation, but the effect it had at that moment in my life was totally unexpected. Instead of scaring my friend into leaving, I was the one who was shocked: The explosion gave me an emotional jolt. In the shards of glass I saw scattered on the floor, I saw what was happening in my life. If I did not do what was necessary to fix this right away, I too would end up shattered in a million little pieces. I didn’t recognize myself in such a violent gesture, and I understood that the problem was even more serious than what I was willing to admit. It’s one thing to be famous and another thing to be totally controlled by fame. Being famous can be a very positive thing, but being controlled by it is not in the least bit positive. Even though I thought I was escaping it all to be myself, my erratic behavior was proof that fame was still controlling my life.

I don’t have any regrets because everything that happened was meant to happen. Did it hurt? Definitely. But I learned a lot. And that’s what is important.

TODAY I CAN Say I have forgiven myself for allowing myself to sink so low. There are still moments when I think about how I let my life become so out of control, how I allowed myself to be seduced by the fame. Maybe I could have acted and done things differently, but that was the lesson. I needed to face all the challenges that came my way in order to move forward on my spiritual path. I arrived where I did to learn a lesson and not make the same mistakes in the future.

But to come to this understanding I had to hit the bottom of the barrel, according to my standards. This is where I began to look inside to find the path that brought me to my awakening. When that glass shattered against the wall, I saw it all. I immediately began to repair all the damage I had done to myself. It was time to make some major changes. I stopped seeing the people who were a negative influence on me, I got back to the gym, and I meditated a lot. I did a thorough cleanse and embarked further on my spiritual quest. I needed to leave all of the material stuff behind—the cars, the houses, and the private jet I had bought myself—and walk on foot where no one knew who I was, and if they happened to recognize me it wouldn’t mean a thing. I had to reconnect with that six-year-old boy inside of me and, as a matter of priority, make him happy again.

I asked myself: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my mission? My happiest memories in life are from my childhood. The time I spent with my father. Going for coffee with my grandparents in the afternoons. Being with my grandmother in her living room as she worked on one of her projects. Listening to music with my mother. Thinking back on those simple times that were so happy, I realized what I needed was to go back to the beginning. I had to go back to being a little boy.

I started to practice martial arts, and within six months I became a bit obsessive: For breakfast, lunch, and dinner I lived and breathed capoeira, a martial art from Brazil. It combines the elements of music, play, battle, and dance. It was like being a kid again. I went to a capoeira academy where people from ages eighteen to forty practiced. But when we were training, we all turned into kids.

I also set aside some time to travel. Along with some friends, I traveled across the United States in an RV. Of course, we could have done the trip in a high-end luxury tour bus, with a chauffeur and every amenity imaginable. But I said no. I didn’t want that. First of all, I wanted to drive. And I didn’t want to have anything around that reminded me of my work. If I had decided to travel on a big beautiful bus, I’d again be reminded of the crazy tours and having to rush from concert to concert.