La vida

So, it's something like "official" now.

As TMZ reports with its customary understatement, subtlety and supreme tastefulness, "Ricky Martin -- 'I Am a Fortunate Homosexual.'" Well, Twitter me timbers! I think the only thing this headline really proves is that pigs can indeed fly. Finally.

For years, I've had a soft spot in my heart (but maybe not other anatomical areas) for Ricky. After all, let's review the facts: cute face, sexy body, those dance moves, that smile, the stupidly fun/outrageous songs which, as it happened, defined one small niche of a musical era. But most of all, those eyes. Ricky's eyes betrayed something worth paying attention to, usually something sad and painful.

Somewhere in the '90s, I went to a gigantic Ricky Martin concert, at which I was fortunate to have a spectacular seat near the stage (thanks to a very close friend, who was in charge of operations of the arena at the time). By the way, Ricky's opening act was an extraordinarily forgettable young woman by the name of Jessica Simpson.

At any rate, Ricky was in the habit of singing with a plastic bottle of water nearby, which he would partly drain and then ... throw at someone in the audience. The fans loved it, of course. Ricky's own water bottle.

Ricky finished a song, and to put it mildly, I had no idea what was coming. He looked straight at my face and threw the half-filled water bottle directly at me. Even at a distance in an arena, he was a good shot.

Rarely have I been quite so pleased to get showered with water (well, in public, at least), in spite of the fact that I was wearing suede. The woman behind me caught the water bottle, which didn't matter to me, and I suspect she still has it enshrined somewhere in her home. Maybe she has flowers in it.

I just felt glad to be part of Ricky's act. After all, like most things in life, it was all an act. The whole thing. None of it was real, and it wasn't meant to be real. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that we're all "players," for better or worse, and it's all a matter of "presentation" in this life. Reality is a silly farce. What we interpret as truth or reality -- for Ricky Martin or just about anyone -- is a joke. At any rate, I'm glad for Ricky, even if we may believe that his irrelevant revelation today is a decade or so late. Whatever.

But maybe we're all a little cleaner now.