Me

adolescence, a very important phase in the evolution of any child. But it was also important because of the sense of discipline it instilled in me and the professional growth I experienced. What I learned there undoubtedly created the foundation for everything that came afterward. I never would have arrived at where I am today had it not been for everything I saw and learned with Menudo.
    Now, as I write these pages, I see that I had a very intense and unusual adolescence, but I can guarantee that back then everything seemed to flow quite naturally. In the midst of this chaos, I never ceased to be a young boy with needs, curiosities, fears, and the questioning that is normal for any boy that age. Somehow or other I had to become a man under the hot lights of the stage, far away from my parents, and in the gaze of thousands and thousands of people. We were boys of only fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years, and we had about 250,000 girls throwing themselves at us. Was I ready to fill this role? Although back then I would have said yes, I later found out that I was far from being ready.
    When I got to Menudo, I didn’t know anything about sex, which to a certain extent was perfectly normal, given that I was just twelve years old. But more than anything, in my house sex was never something we would discuss. Incredible, isn’t it? Today I find it very funny. My father is a very handsome man—a man who has lived and had his fair share of romances and today has a beautiful woman by his side. I am sure he could have taught me a thing or two about sex. But with all of that—be it because of modesty or shyness—in my house that was not a subject that was ever touched on.
    He probably thought I was too young back then to have this information, which I understand, but the truth is that sexuality was a subject that was already coming at me from all angles, be it from television, conversations with friends at school, or older cousins and siblings. Today, children are that much more exposed to this type of content than the generations of the past. With the Internet, just the tap of a key can bring you into a world you had never imagined. That’s why it’s important to know that when your son comes to you with a question like the one I came to my father with back then, it is almost guaranteed that he already knows the answer: What he wants to see is how you are going to answer it. The child is testing the waters to see how cool you are. This is why I think it is crucial to speak to your children openly, so it is you who gives them the information they seek and not some total stranger.
    In my family, communication has always been very open. I have always had great communication with my mother, and nowadays my communication with my dad is exemplary. But sex was just not something we could talk about back then. My father is an incredible human being. He is a professional psychologist and he has a very particular way of looking at the world, very open. Everyone loves him. For many years he worked with institutionalized people in Puerto Rico, and God knows what kinds of stories he must have heard. But I am convinced that it is because of these experiences and because of his special soul that he is so kind to the people around him. He has always been a person who has dedicated himself to his family, and my relationship with him today is a testament to all that he gave me and continues to give me. I am thirty-eight years old; my father is sixty-one; and even though we were not together for a large part of my adolescence, we have made up for lost time and today we are very close.
    Anyway, even though I was a big star back then because of Menudo, I was a late bloomer. Many of my friends had already played the role of heartbreakers and had even been with girls. All of them, actually, except for me. In other words, of all my friends I was the only virgin, and I received constant pressure from them. They would ask me over and over again: “When is it going to happen? When are you going to be ready?” Until the day finally arrived when I had sex with a girl. She was nice, but my decision had a lot more to do with the pressure I felt from my friends, as well as simply the pressure in our society that says a man is never supposed to say no if he is given the opportunity to have sex—even more so since I was a part of Menudo, and there was an unspoken understanding that the most successful of us was the one who got the most girls. I knew