E. Simms

Dear E. Simms,

Partial credit for Ricky Martin's spectacular performance at the Grammys must go to the stage directors, who brilliantly used space and lighting to create a minimalist pyramidal design. This was television at its finest, with superb camera placement and shot selection in the production booth. Martin looked as if he were channeling thunderbolts from the top step of a murky, rain-lashed Mayan temple.

My first doubts about Martin began almost immediately when Grammy host Rosie O'Donnell -- that viper masquerading as a sunny populist -- made an affected demonstration about him before the echoes of his music had faded. O'Donnell's ostentatious enthusiasms are usually the kiss of death, just as her PC animosities (like her screechy rudeness on her talk show last week to guest Tom Selleck about his National Rifle Association ad) automatically create sympathy for her victims.

Martin's Grammy tour de force gave me momentary hope that current Latin music might produce another Desi Arnaz -- a sensual golden fox whom his children's home movies show was even more ebulliently attractive off-screen. But my partner, Alison, sounded an early warning about Martin as we watched him on a subsequent "Saturday Night Live," where he seemed stiff, nervous and off-kilter. "Something's not right," she said ominously. "No real men will ever respect a guy who moves his hips like that."

Since we are both longtime idolators of the hip-swiveling John Travolta of "Saturday Night Fever," "Grease" and "Urban Cowboy," I've been steadily pondering the Martin paradox. There's something uncontrolled and vaguely queeny about Martin's pelvic gyrations that wasn't part of the Dionysian tribal humping of the early, ecstatic Elvis Presley or the lascivious Tom Jones. There's also an unsettling disconnect between Martin's Latin body language and his WASPish, sanitized teeny-bopper persona, which would fit right in on "The Donna Reed Show."

Martin lacks the louche, brooding, seductive, heavy-lidded magnetism of men of the world from Cesar Romero and Ricardo Montalban to Julio Iglesias and Antonio Banderas, with their languid bedroom eyes. Alison says, "The great Latin lovers had something to offer women. Martin's stuck on himself. He just wants to dance alone." Martin's cutesy, plastered-on, Ken doll smile -- he seems to have only one facial expression -- gets boring very quickly.

Your evocation of the soulful George Michael (born Georgious Panayiotou) is compelling -- but to Martin's detriment. Michael's simmering inner conflicts and ethnic complexity showed through, while Martin seems to be wearing a brittle mask.

Whether or not Martin is gay or bisexual didn't concern me until I saw entertainment news footage of him posed on a couch and awkwardly embracing a delirious girl fan (winner of a meet-the-star contest). "What a lunk!" I said to myself. "This guy's in over his head." Hence I noted with interest the May 21 report by the New York Post's Page Six about an unnamed magazine's ferocious "internal debate" over whether its recent cover story should reveal the sexual orientation of a "closeted hunky pop star" who "regularly makes the rounds with boyfriends in South Beach." Martin was at that moment plastered on the cover of the May 24 Time, so it was hard to avoid thinking about him.

Would an admission of gayness hurt a young male singer's career? Of course it would: This junior Adonis type requires the electric charge produced by the mass projection of adolescent girls in erotic hysteria. Elton John, after his sham marriage, could afford to be openly gay because he caricatured himself as a sad-sack clown, crying through his sequins. Pretty boys, with their androgynous glow, have a more direct and dangerous sensual appeal. If Ricky Martin turned out to be just another buff gay clone, he'd cut himself off at the knees as an international artist. Current gay male culture is too shallow to provide the kind of psychological development that a performer needs.

The Rock Hudson PR Peter Meter suggests that panicky record-company execs are even now beating the bushes for a Martin gal pal to stop the rumor hemorrhage. What malleable princess will get the tiara? Stay tuned!

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