Me

a film, interview questions generally revolve around the actor’s role in that project, the film’s subject matter, and the on-set experience; there is a countless number of subjects that can be explored without having to make the artist’s personal life the central topic of the conversation. However, when it comes to a singer, there is a much smaller range of topics to be discussed, and the conversation tends to focus on the artist’s personal life, which is ultimately the inspiration for his or her music. The questions tend to be more personal in nature, especially when, as in my case, the music depicts themes of love and romantic disappointment.
    Since I never said no, there were interviews with me in every single magazine, on every television show, and in every newspaper. My videos were on MTV every ten minutes. In the interviews I said very little about my private life, and since what I did say gave them very little to talk about—I was a healthy guy, a hard worker, with no vices—I suppose there were some members of the press who were intent on discovering my “dark side.”
    And that’s how the rumors started. I have no idea exactly how they began, or who may have said what, but the fact was that stories started to crop up in the tabloids saying that I had been with this or that guy—ironically, none of them was true, even though I was, in fact, having relationships with men. I understand that rumors sell magazines, and often this is what people want to read, but the truth is that the invasion into my private life hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t understand why I had become the target of so much speculation. All I wanted was to continue with my music and live my life without anyone meddling. I had naively believed that despite being a celebrity, I still had a right to my privacy.
    The rest of the world didn’t think so.

THE COST OF DENIAL
    IN TRUTH, THE problem was not so much that there were rumors going around about my sexuality. The real problem was that I myself did not know how I felt about the subject. Even though I had relationships with men after separating from my first love, I still was not ready to accept myself as gay. My moment had still not arrived, and even though we all know now that the rumors were based on truth, the reality was that in my mind it was still not a fact. It was a topic I constantly struggled with, one that caused me a lot of pain and anxiety. And every time someone wrote in an article that I was a homosexual, or each time this was asked of me in an interview—and not very subtly—it pushed me further away from my truth. The rumors and questions only increased my insecurity and my self-rejection; they reminded me of all the reasons why I was uncomfortable in my own skin. At times I felt I hated myself. Because it was always presented under such a negative lens, as something scandalous and bad, it reinforced my desire to deny what I was feeling. And since at that moment I was so far from being ready to come out, the only result was that the whole thing caused me a serious amount of pain.
    Years later, a biographical documentary was made about me for television, and they interviewed a lot of people from the industry, as well as music journalists. In that piece, they said something I think is very astute: When such a huge phenomenon as Ricky Martin hits the music world, it attracts a great deal of envy and a lot of hatred as well. It’s sometimes referred to as “player hating.” Joe Levy, who was the editor of Blender at the time, couldn’t have said it better: “When a pop star is too well-dressed, too well-groomed or is too perfect, it is as easy to hate him as it is to like him.” It’s possible that some people wanted to dig up some gossip about me, or say something that in their eyes might be negative, for the simple reason that they didn’t want me to do well. Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that for me it was a time of great anguish.
    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