Luis corbacho It is like a surgeon used to focusing on others and, in turn, has no shame or fear of operating on himself. In his role as a journalist and interviewer, he is the typical professional. But every time he writes fiction, with his own undigested stories, he climbs onto the operating table and buries the scalpel. With precision, he dissects her contradictions, desires, and frustrations, scoops up the pus, and dries her sweaty flesh. In “I don’t want to be ricky martin“(Ediciones B) goes hard into the suit tailored to his ideals and recounts his sentimental bond with a diplomat, a love definitely interrupted by the pandemic. He confesses that he went from being Susanita to not wanting to be Ricky, Ricky not the one with the hip roll in “Living la vida loca” but the one with the postmodern version of Charles Ingalls, father of a family with a white T-shirt, jeans and smiles, many smiles .
News: Can we say that the novel speaks of new normalities: the one that occurred due to the pandemic and the one that concerns the life and mandates of gay culture?
Luis Corbacho: Of course, I am 43 years old, when I was young, there was no family model. The gay man who wanted to get married and have children had a wife. Now the model has changed and I say about Ricky Martin because he is a model of perfection. That it is possible, it is good and we appreciate it, but that each one chooses what they want to do. I was the most Susanita in the world. The pandemic came and made me realize that I had a lot of things beyond that.
News: You expose yourself in your privacy in a brutal way, right?
Corbacho: When I write I don’t realize it, I realize it when it comes out. It’s like he’s going into a kind of ridiculous trance. There were a couple of my previous very scandalous books, one lowered the candidacy for president of Peru to Jaime Bayly. A friend tells me that thanks to the fact that I vomit everything and it is like a therapy, I do not get sick. This book was sitting in quarantine to write a few things, and it was coming to life alone.
News: Did your ex reproach you for something?
Corbacho: He was re-discussed, I offered to read the book and he didn’t want to. He was very scared because he’s a diplomat, and given my background (laughs), but I explained that it’s about me, I’m not talking about his psychology, his inner life. The one who is exposed is me. I do not expose anything to him because I love him. Unlike my ex (Jaime Bayly) who yes, I wanted to destroy him.
News: It was revenge.
Corbacho: Yes Yes. I don’t know if I would now, but when you’re younger, It is a literary revenge, he deserves it because he did it with other people.
News: Surviving a relationship like that must have been a litmus test.
Corbacho: He grabbed me when I was 22 years old, I was a boy from San Isidro who had never dated anyone, I went to Miami with him, and there was psychological abuse. He had a very big situation of abuse of psychotropic drugs, I don’t know how he is alive; Many friends or therapists tell me that it is very rare to have survived that and not have taken drugs.
News: Perhaps the worst substance was that of that intoxicated bond, with a person who has the gift of the charismatic.
Corbacho: SBut there I discovered a gift of mine too, because there Jaime’s mother is like a kind of Amalita Fortabat, he was on the campaign trail, Keiko Fujimori was involved, they didn’t expect me to be able to do everything I did. And I don’t think I even realized it because I was in San Isidro writing barbarities on a computer.
News: Did it bring you any collateral damage?
Corbacho: Many threats but none materialized. They were from his environment, it was tremendous.
News: In the book, he says that, when the show on stopped for the quarantine, it was relieving not having to be raised to the ideal of perfection.
Corbacho: Yes, of course, I could pretend to be royal, saying that my life is how it looks on Instagram but no, the reality is that the thought behind that perfect IG account is: “They are going to invite me on a trip so I’m going to upload a photo ”, as tiling as it sounds, it is real and telling it exonerates you a bit.
News: He says that in life he is a turtle and as an interviewer he is a peacock. Did the exposed Luis threaten the professional Luis or do they feed back?
Corbacho: A thousand times he threatened. I know that being the way I am, there are a lot of things that I give up. I could try to exploit my role as a driver, however there is one thing about the stupidity of family channels that amuses me. I’d rather be a bit countercultural; I am not interested in marginality because I always want to be within the system and that is like the internal quilombo. It’s not that they all suck an egg from me; I work with brands, in a lifestyle magazine and then it’s a constant reconciliation. Now I’m lowering my pompadour a bit too because I want to continue billing and live well.
News: The pompadour of the counterculture?
Corbacho: And you saw that now We are in an era of enormous cancellation and absolutely nothing could be said, you cannot make a joke and, although I celebrate that minorities are protected, I have been criticized for making gay jokes, it is as if Moldavsky could not make Jewish jokes.
News: So much discursive correction ends up being a new mandate?
Corbacho: Clear. A monster of political correctness is createdIt is being seen a lot in networks, now they are all environmentalists and from the “bodies”, the extreme, and those who are not like that are demonized. If there is someone who is going to advocate for rights and equality, it is me, because I am a minority, let’s start from that base and from there I can laugh at things, let me laugh.
News: What battles are you willing to give now and which ones are you not?
Corbacho: I’m not interested in being famous, I have it re clear and it is re liberating.
News: When did you realize that?
Corbacho: Now since I was famous.
News: You don’t want to be Ricky Martin either, who do you want to be?
Corbacho: (laughs) A happy guy, nothing more.
News: Is there happiness?
Corbacho: I think that peace of mind and tranquility have a lot to do with happiness.. The closer you are to that, the more at peace you are with yourself and the happier you are, in quotes.
