All your life, you’ve done what other people expected you to do. You’ve dressed the way they thought you should, uttered the things they deemed fit for you to say, and acted in a manner in which they approved. In short, your life is not your own.

You’d like to change things, wake up one morning and find the world suddenly tilted on its axis, different from how it was when you went to sleep. In odd moments you think about what it’d be like to do exactly what you want, when you want, and how you think you’d like it to be done. You fantasize about taking control of yourself and your career and your voice. Sometimes you lay awake and plot revenge against everyone who’s ever tried to harness you, tried to snap a leash of authority on your collar of fear and obligation. But for all your day dreaming and night dreaming and all around outrageous reflections, there’s really nothing you can do. You feel like a trained monkey and what’s worse, you actually are one too.

Most days, you just want to get out and do something silly, something everyday, something that reeks of normalcy. Like ice cream. You’d really like to stop at a random Baskin-Robbins and try all 32 flavors by little pink plastic spoonfuls, until the staff there is so frustrated by your indecision and almost-grown-boy antics that you end up just buying a waffle cone of mint chocolate chip, which was what you wanted all along.

You listen to the others’ tales of buoyant youth, you listen so intently that your eyes squint at the corners while you concentrate on absorbing every word that leaves their lips. You like to hear about the way, on hot summer days in the city, merciful firemen would open up the hydrants on Joey’s street, providing an inner city oasis, an escape from the sweltering heat of Brooklyn. Whenever Joey tells that story, you can practically hear the shrieks of childish laughter and the cold, refreshing spray pelting your ankles, your shins, your tapping feet.

You like listening to Chris’ accounts of the Salvation Army Christmases of his youth, because it seems as if you’ve always had everything you’ve ever needed and you can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be poor. You don’t mention this secret, seemingly sinful longing to know childhood hardship to the others, though, because the one time you’d mumbled a bit of it to Chris, he’d scowled and told you to shut the fuck up, you may be beautiful but you’re brainless. Still, you like hearing of his family’s migratory habits, moving from city to city, everything packed up in an old Volvo. You’ve never ridden in a Volvo, before.

JC doesn’t have many good stories to tell, but Lance has a few. Mostly, he talks about high school and how much he liked calculus but hated physics, how he used to make out with girls, and occasionally guys, behind the school gym. A funny feeling wells inside your chest and deep in the pit of your stomach whenever Lance reminisces because you’ve never really been to a regular school and he has, so you think you might be jealous. Sometimes you wonder where the expression, “green with envy” came from because you’ve never felt very green, just red and hot and then there’s that stinging behind your eyes whenever you dwell too much on all that you’ve missed.

Eventually, that shameful covetousness turns into something more, transposes into an emotion that’s akin to anger, but white hot. Burning. You start to think that maybe you’ve played this charade long enough, that maybe it’s time you begin to do things the way you want to do them. You’ve never been very courageous, but in the darkness of your bunk, you get a little brave. Even though you’re simply pondering a mild act of rebellion or two, or maybe just the general concept of it, you feel punchy. And before rolling out of your cubbyhole to face the day, you work hard at saving up those bits of strength, hoping somehow that they’ll all mount up, like scraps of tinfoil rolled into a big crumply ball.

You spend a lot of time thinking about all the things you’ve done that you didn’t really want to do. It’s like picking at a scab, you just can’t bring yourself to stop, not even when the sting of pain comes sharp and fresh in your mind. You’re not quite sure how it happened, but it seemed as if one day you woke up and suddenly had a girlfriend. A pop star girlfriend. All you could remember was drinking a little and dancing a lot and laughing too, because she’s got a good sense of humor.

Then, all at once, your picture is on the front page of the entertainment section under a tawdry headline. In the photo, you’re kissing her, and that makes you feel uneasy because the article skipped right over “implied relationship” and went straight to “practically engaged.” The author didn’t say anything about how you’d kissed her because her lips reminded you of JC’s and you’d had to, *had* to find out whether or not they were as soft as you thought they’d be. But no, the article didn’t saying anything about that because how could the author have known what was running through your head when you did? You take the spark of anger that flares and add it to your growing collection.

You can’t help but remember the time when you were young, younger than you are now, and your mother caught you staring at another boy in the hallway at a Disney audition. She’d asked what you were staring at, and you’d told her you were watching that cute boy in the Mickey Mouse Club jacket who’d come through a door marked, “studio.” She had paled a little and told you it wasn’t polite to gaze so fixedly at another person, and goodness, look at that pretty girl over there. You, of course, looked at the girl she indicated but the little female had been blond and they boy you’d seen had had wavy brown hair. At the time, you weren’t sure why that fact was important, but now you know.

You’re tired of pretending you don’t prefer men to women, tired of picking up cute latinos and wiry, cocoa skinned boys, and achingly beautiful young blond men in the lobby of whatever hotel you’re staying in. You feel sort of cheap and a little dirty, whenever you take a waiter or a bell boy or even a fan up to your room. You wish you didn’t have to pay them to keep their mouths shut after, either. You don’t mind parting with the money, so much as you mind having to tell yourself over and over that it’s their silence you’re buying when really, it’s your own.

All of this floats around in your brain like sea foam capping the endless waves of the sea, until one day, the tide comes in. Later, you’ll imagine that the catalyst might have been the empty bed in which you awakened, or the echoes you heard swelling inside yourself.

But now, when you face yourself in the mirror, you know with sudden clarity that you want out. Not out of your career, or your life, or any other trite condition, but out of your prison, the one you helped create. You’ve come to realize that every time you stayed silent when you should have spoken, every time you gave into something on behalf of your all important image, you erected another bar of the cell in which you’ve become trapped.

So you stand there, in the middle of a spartan hotel bathroom that smells as impersonal as it truly is and look yourself dead in the eye as you reach blindly for the razor located in your shaving kit. You flip the switch and feel the compact little bundle of machinery buzz and vibrate in your hand.

Your jaw clenches. You take a deep breath and with a steady hand, you sheer a line straight down the middle of your scalp, from forehead, to crown, to back. Soft, corkscrew curls fall like autumn leaves, dropping onto your shoulders and then to the counter below. You survey your bold handiwork, savoring the victory each shorn curl brings. The ugly taste you’ve held in your mouth for months on end slowly fades, replaced by something less foul, semi-sweet.

You shave the rest as methodically as possibly, with a calm that is equaled only by the ocean before a storm. With careful swipes of the blade, your trademark is broken, your tethers snapped. It is a small act, one that will bring ramifications larger than you think it probably warrants. But buried deep inside, there is a foreign feeling, something you haven’t felt in a personal context for so long, you’re only half believe it’s there: pride. You are satisfied with yourself, the decision you’ve made. The suffocating weight that’s been pressing on your chest for far too long has momentarily lifted and you think maybe you know what it’s like to feel as if you own yourself, every *bit* of yourself. It is a glimpse of so many possibilities.

Along with the pride comes a stab of fear. You wonder what *they* will think; not the masses, nor the media, your management. No, you wonder what the four other essential men in your life, your best friends, will say. Will they care?

You’re nervous, so you pace the length of your room a while before finally deciding to summon the ball of courage you collected and seek one of them out. There is only one person who even enters your thoughts, and it is his opinion that is most important. Before you can talk yourself out of it, you go to his room and knock on his door.

You’re not sure what reaction you were expecting, but when he opens the door, his jaw becomes unhinged and drops open far enough that he looks a little like a fish and not at all like the composed man you’ve come to expect. His eyes wander over your head and he says nothing. You start to worry.

JC?

Justin.

You hate it.

No...No, I just. it’ll take some getting used to, is all.

Go ahead.

Can I? I mean, I can?

I know you want to.

I do.

So, go ahead.

It’s....soft. and prickly.

I know.

Do you, uh, like it?

I didn’t do it because I thought I might like it.

Oh.

I didn’t think about it, really.

I guess not.

But, I just. Well. It’ll grow back.

Do you want it to?

I. I haven’t made up my mind, yet.

JC smiles at you, finally, and wraps his arm around your neck, using the crook of it to pull you close. You hang on tightly to him, pressing your head against his chest, your ear against his heart. You’re a little taller than he is, so you have to stoop down a bit but you don’t mind. You barely even notice. His hand is petting the back of your head in smooth, rhythmic motions.

He pulls back, framing your face with his hands. He levels his intense gaze at you, staring so hard you think for a second that maybe his eyes will bore smoldering holes right through your skull. A slight smile, and suddenly he’s kissing you. His mouth is gentle, the kiss chaste. Your lips are pliant beneath his and you’re sharing breath. There is no lewd quality to his kiss, just the meeting of your mouths and his palms cupping your cheeks.

He pulls away. You feel bereft.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells you, “what I think. I’ll take you any way you are.”