Growing up, there were only two things I wanted: fame and JC Chasez. I got the first before I hit puberty and it’s lasted up to this very day. The latter...well, let’s just say that I haven’t been successful at everything, at least not at seducing JC, a man I knew when he was still only Josh and nothing more than a boy with funny hair who could do a perfectly terrible impersonation of a brainless surfer.

We met on the Mickey Mouse Club -the hip “new and improved” version, that is. I was only ten or eleven at the time, but even back then I knew without a doubt that JC was to become my own personal hero. And he did.

I don’t remember why he ended up coming to my defense, but I think it might have had something to do with Dale or Tony or one of the other older kids in JC’s set. It’s a little hazy, but from what I can recall, a bigger, tougher kid shoved me up against a wall in the hallway outside the tutoring center, upset because a few of his lines had been reassigned to me, and I was just a cute sprite with curly hair and a quick smile. When the boy hauled back to send his fist into my face after connecting with my shoulder, JC appeared like a savior from the shadows. He barely glanced at me before quietly telling the bully to let me go. I remember him stepping in between the two of us, putting himself bodily in my defense, and I think maybe it was then that I became his life long devotee. Whether or not it was sheer luck that led him to me in my moment of need didn’t seem important at the time. I never did find out why he did it. But I’m glad he was there.

After that, JC went about being JC and I took it upon myself to tag along in his wake. For a week, I didn’t think he even noticed I was there, but when he realized that I wasn’t going to lay off any time soon, he started saying things like, hey, kid and smiling at me. I could have died, I was so happy to be considered cool enough for him to associate with.

Little did I know, JC wasn’t like that. It didn’t take me long to figure it out; gradually, I caught onto the fact that JC was not in the habit of judging the people he came across, he simply treated everyone the same. Much to my chagrin, I reached the conclusion that he wasn’t favoring me by allowing me to follow him around, he was just letting me exist while he went on his merry way. That was when I knew I would have to do something to distinguish myself from the pack, to let him know I wanted to be more than a person, I wanted to be his friend, his companion, his ever-constant sidekick.

So I did the only thing I could think of; I bugged the ever lovin’ shit out of him.

It didn’t matter when I began receiving annoyed glances from piercing blue eyes, I didn’t care if the only attention I got from JC was negative. All I knew was that he looked at me now, paid mind to me. I equated his sighs of exasperation and his what now, Justin? comments with friendship. I thought we had a good thing going until the day I pushed him too far.

JC was a fairly easy going guy, the kind of person everyone wanted to be around because he was fun and knew how to make a body laugh even when everything was going downhill. I can remember him helping costars learn their lines and practicing dance steps with those who needed it in the back corridors of the set. He seemed readily available, like someone had hung an open sign around his neck in invitation.

So, I didn’t think it would hurt matters when I decided to demand a little quality time of my own. What I didn’t yet understand was that everybody, even the terminally helpful, needs to take time out for themselves. And I guess that’s what you could call what JC was doing with Nikki in the supply closet.

It was a long standing and well known fact that Nikki and JC could have been more than friends if either one of them had ever stopped being charmingly polite and started getting aggressive. Maybe that’s what they’d finally decided to do when I found them, because Nikki was perched on a stack of crates, her legs wrapped around JC’s waist, and his hand high up on her thigh beneath her denim skirt. I busted in on them after being woefully shut out of the action. Wanting to know what was so special or so important -and, being a bit jealous- I flung the door open, then pelted them with the spray from my new Super Soaker.

I had expected JC to think the multi-colored plastic water gun cool and maybe even ask to have a go with it, but instead he yelped like a wounded puppy, Nikki screamed like a cat who’d had its tail trampled, and both turned an angry shade of red. JC pulled away quickly, zipping up his pants -at the time, I’d wondered why that had been necessary, after all they were only kissing and what did lip action have to do with one’s pants, anyway?- then storming toward me with a fury I’d never known. He shouted to high heaven that he’d kill me, rip me to shreds, then he snatched that toy right out of my hands and flung it into the far corner of the darkened room.

Tears welled up in my eyes because as soon as JC had started to shout, the others had come running. Fellow cast members, our tutor, and a production assistant gathered around, and though Nikki and JC had restored themselves to full dignity, they were both still incredibly pissed. I was humiliated in front of everyone, my hero having publicly berated me. I was also a little sad about my Super Soaker, it having been cracked in the fall against the cement floor. But mostly, I was mortified and saddened by the look on JC’s face.

I turned tail and ran, through the veritable labyrinth of a studio, out to the parking lot where I sat beside a dumpster near the sport court, and played with a basketball I found there. I sat for a long while, just staring at my dirty white sneakers and tossing the orange ball back and forth, from palm to palm.

He found me about an hour later, still gazing mournfully at my shoes and trying not to cry while I thought about how I’d never be able to face any of them ever again, especially JC. He didn’t say anything, just sank down along the wall beside me, taking the basketball from my hands. Without anything to occupy my nervous fingers, I began to fidget with the hem of my tee shirt.

“That really wasn’t cool, man,” he said finally. I nodded, mute. “Like, I was um...busy, you know? You can’t...you can’t go everywhere with me, Justin, okay?” Again, I nodded. “I mean, I know you...uh...like me, or whatever? Because you think I’m like, a cool guy? But. See, sometimes people just want to be alone with another person. Ever hear the expression: two’s company, three’s a crowd?” he asked. I shook my head. “Well, that just means...shit,” he sighed. I looked up at him finally, wide eyed. JC’s brow was furrowed, as if the search for the right thing to say was paining him.

“I didn’t know you could yell so loud,” I told him softly. JC looked surprised that I’d spoken, then regretful.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Sorry, I. I just got a little angry. Er, upset.”

“I’m sorry. For what I did,” I told him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Real sorry.”

“Me too. I shouldn’t have been all in your face, because that’s like, the wrong way to handle it.”

It was my turn to sigh and I nodded sagely. “I shoulda waited to show you my new Super Soaker.”

He laughed then, as if that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and rubbed roughly at his forehead with his hand. “God, kid. What am I gonna do with you?”

I thought about that for a minute. “Well, wanna play some ball?”

JC shook his head. “We have to get back, it’s almost time to start filming. But later, okay?”

“Okay. Is Nikki very mad at me?”

“She’ll get over it, trust me.” JC smiled, slinging his arm across my shoulders and pulling me tightly to his side. I couldn’t help grinning like a fool because suddenly, everything was right in the world and JC was back up on his pedestal where he belonged.

I stayed close to JC all throughout the years we played our bit parts on the Mouse Club, and when the news came that the show had been canceled, I was sad only because it meant that I could no longer be his shadow.

We parted ways, then, with him getting a job at Universal and me working the child talent circuits. I still had enough “cute” left to last another year or two on kid shows and the like, but somewhere in there I realized that I loved to sing more than anything. I was content to grow up in the acting industry; however, what I really wanted was to be able to sing all the songs I heard on the radio to a live audience. The MMC episodes had always been prerecorded, so we never got to experience the reaction our performances elicited from the crowd at home. But with a vocal career, I knew instant gratification was a part of the job and that appealed to me to no end.

So, when JC approached me several months later with a proposition to form an as yet unnamed vocal harmony group, with a silly guy who claimed he was 25 but acted eight, I accepted.

Looking back, I know JC kept me as sheltered as he was able, shielding me from as many of the harsh realities of life as he could. I’m grateful for what he tried to do, not because it let me hold on to my innocence -I didn’t- but because of what his actions meant. At the heart of it all, I could go to sleep knowing that even though my mom couldn’t be on a bus in the middle of Switzerland with me, JC was and he loved me in much the same way. That knowledge got me through the long nights when I laid awake missing home and it gave me the courage and comfort needed to be able to get out of my bed and climb into JC’s. He grew used to me, I think, because after a while he barely even woke up when I lifted the covers, he’d just slide over a little and shift so he could wrap an arm around my shoulders before going right back to sleep.

Chris was apt to give me a hard time at first, because he’s so much older than I am and that made me an easy target. Unfortunately, even at the ripe age of fifteen, I hadn’t yet learned how to take a joke or field a person’s teasing for any length of time. I grew fond of the words fuck off and as hard as everything seemed, I know it could have been worse if JC hadn’t discreetly told Chris to lay off like I know he probably did. As the months passed I matured a little, Chris and I became friends, and my fondness for JC outgrew hero worship and charged straight on into something else, entirely.

We had just performed on Christmas Day at Disney World when I realized I was in love with him.

It wasn’t any one event or quality or memory with JC that attracted me to him in the first place, and it wasn’t any single thing that made me fall head over heels for him. If I had to name something as the cause, I might say it’s the way a simple touch from him will set me at ease when I’m jiggling my leg nervously beneath the table in the middle of a press conference. I might say it’s how, when we share a bag of Gardettos, he lets me eat all of the cheesy bits because he knows I like them. I might also say that it’s the way he just looks at me and somehow knows exactly what I’m thinking without me having to say a word. And then there’s the way he doesn’t seem to mind that sometimes I call him just to hear his voice and talk about nothing in particular.

It was because of all of this, and more, that I finally decided to use the set of balls I’d been given and devise a master plan of seduction. As it turned out, it’s a lot harder to seduce someone than it sounds. Double the difficulty for us, because when we’re not sleeping or eating, we’re performing; when we’re not doing any of the above three, we’re trapped on a bus, covering the miles between one city and the next.

When I think of romance, I think of roses and champagne and lobster or steak for two. But all of those things are pretty much impossible to get your hands on when you rush, rush, rush all day and zonk out at night. The one time I had a few minutes to sneak away into a hotel’s gift shop to take a peek at the flowers they had in stock, I realized that I didn’t have any money to buy anything, anyway. It’s funny but, when a person becomes famous, they grow so used to having everything taken care of for them, to being constantly surrounded by handlers and managers, that the concept of money becomes nearly obsolete. I didn’t yet have my own credit card, so I had to settle for just day dreaming about what JC’s reaction would be if I gave him flowers.

In one of my fantasies, JC laughed. He practically busted a gut laughing at me for presenting him with a handful of posies because men don’t buy other men bouquets of sweet smelling blossoms. The possibility of his finding comic relief in my attempts had never before crossed my mind, but thereafter continued to haunt me.

I knew JC was not entirely straight as a nail because one night I saw him locking lips with a guy in the back corner of a VIP booth in a random club. For his part, I don’t think JC saw me notice the fact that he was snogging with another man - a very cute Latino man. He was drunk, as were we all, but that was no excuse. Rather, I saw it as proof of his long repressed sexuality. JC, it was soon revealed, was bi.

It so happened that I was not the only Syncer to see JC tonguing that guy at the club. Joey brought the subject up the next day when we were all lounging idly in the back of the bus, either battling it out on playstation or acting as spectators.

“Let’s talk about sex,” Joey had proposed calmly, as though he were mentioning the weather. Lance blushed and tried to become invisible in the corner because that was the sort of thing he did back then. Chris paused the game, saying,

“I think you’re right, Joe. It’s time we told our boys about the birds and the bees.”

We all laughed, but Joey shook his head. “Seriously. I just think there might be something some of us have to say and like, this is as good a time as any. We agreed to be up front with one another, right? Well, let’s do it.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Joe, but you’re not my type.” That was the perfect thing for Chris to say because it broke the heavy, contemplative silence that followed Joey’s words, and it made us all lighten up; Lance even giggled.

“Um, I think I know what this is about,” JC said quietly. I thought maybe I knew, too. “I’m...” JC rubbed the back of his neck and squinted up at the ceiling. “Uh, well. I guess I’m not exactly straight.”

“How can you be not exactly straight?” Lance asked softly.

“I’m bisexual.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry for like, putting you on the spot, man,” Joey said softly. “But, after last night, I thought maybe it was something we should know. And um...maybe management?”

JC nodded, as if he’d already thought along the same lines.

Chris wiggled his eyebrows. “So, what happened last night?”

“I met this guy at the club. We got a little, uh-”

“Friendly?” Chris asked with a comical leer.

“Frisky,” Joey corrected with a smile. “Damn, C. He looked good, you know?”

“Anything you wanna share with us, Joey?”

“Nah, I’m like, 85% straight, man.”

“What the hell is that? You can’t break your sexuality into percentages!”

“Sure I can. Like, the 15% of the time I don’t notice women, I think about what would happen if I ever had to have a sex change. So, I scope the guys - just in case, of course.”

“Oh, of course.”

This would have been a perfect time for me to bring up the fact that I didn’t think I was exactly straight either, but I was still reeling from JC’s admission which suddenly made it seem as if my devious plan of seduction wasn’t quite so far fetched after all.

This time, instead of pondering the purchase of roses or a Hallmark card, I decided to take an active approach. My plan, which was sketchy at best, recipe for a disaster at worst, was to ambush JC at the first available opportunity and plant a big wet one on him. Well, that was easier said than done.

Every time an opening presented itself, I managed to chicken out. For a while there, I was forced to content myself with staring at the photo of JC and I that I’d taped to the ceiling of my bunk once I’d cut the other three out of the picture. In the shot, JC had one arm slung around my neck and the other wrapped around my waist. He was making a god awful face at the camera, probably his poor attempt to look like he was some sort of strong man tackling me, but the wide grin on my own mug spoiled the effect and JC just ended up looking goofy. Sometimes, I’d touch myself while gazing up at that photo; afterward, I’d feel guilty and a little dirty.

I’ve never had a great sense of timing, which is probably why I chose to make my move when I did.

The other guys were all asleep when I rolled out of my bunk around two in the morning to use the bathroom. I had to pee something fierce, so when I tried the door handle and found it to be locked, I was irritated beyond belief. I rapped a little on the door and hissed for whoever was inside to hurry the fuck up.

I might have stayed agitated and sour if JC hadn’t been the one to open the bathroom door with an apologetic expression.

“Sorry, man,” he whispered. “It’s all yours.” He made as if to inch past me, but the hallway was narrow and he ended up pressing against me as he attempted to slide by. His eyes were droopy, barely even open, and when he gave me a sleepy smile, I couldn’t resist.

“JC,” I croaked, laying a hand on his arm to forestall his return to his bunk. His look turned inquisitive while he cocked his head a little to the left and that was all it took.

Without knowing how or when I moved, I suddenly found myself kissing him. I’d pressed him back against the tiny section of wall next to the bathroom and I vaguely remember the sound the back of his head made as it hit the faux wood panel finish. I kissed him like a man gone mad, frantically covering his mouth with my own, then licking and lapping at his lips as if I couldn’t get enough. And I couldn’t. I could hardly believe I was there, kissing him like I’d been wanting to for nearly as long as I could remember. When I pulled his bottom lip between my teeth, I realized he wasn’t kissing me back, not like I wanted him to be, not like he had in my day dreams, not at all. His arms were hanging limply at his sides, his hands nothing more than lifeless appendages of flesh and bone.

My heart suspended itself in my chest, I held my breath, and for one long moment, the world tilted crazily on its axis. Oh fuck.

“Oh, fuck.”

I may have thought the words, but I didn’t say them aloud. JC did. Only, he didn’t utter them with the sense of awe and reverence with which I had mentally spoken them; his version had more of an oh holy hell, fucking shit quality to it. As if that weren’t enough, a look of near revulsion flickered across his features and he stood there staring at me like I’d grown another head.

My jaw worked open and shut several times until I simply backed away three steps and shut the bathroom door behind myself. Turning my head, I saw my reflection in the mirror and thought inanely that I looked like a stunned fish. I sat down on the toilet lid, then ground my fists into my eyes to stop the god awful stinging sensation prickling the backs of them. I wasn’t breathing any easier than I had after kissing JC, though it was no longer a result of arousal, it was from repressed sobs lodging in my throat. I faintly heard JC himself knocking softly on the other side of the door, calling my name and asking if I could please come out there, just for a minute. I ignored him. He persisted until someone -I think maybe Chris- asked him what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I heard JC say in a low voice.

“Then shut the fuck up.”

So he did. I heard JC shuffle back to his bunk, heard the squeak of the mattress and the rustling of sheets, then nothing. Half of me wanted him to come back to the door to try to get me to face him, but the other half was thankful to be left alone to deal with this ultimate humiliation.

I don’t know how long I sat there thinking about how things would never be the same again, how he probably wouldn’t even talk to me, how the others surely wouldn’t once they’d found out what I’d gone and done to mess everything up. I sat there long enough that I ended up falling asleep on the lid of the toilet, curled up as much as humanly possible, my head leaning crookedly against the wall.

I woke up with a crick in my neck and a painful pressure in my chest. My entire body ached from the position I’d slept in, and I still had to pee.

I took care of business, then pushed the door open a crack in order to peek out. The sun was just rising and the guys were all still asleep, Joey snoring away completely oblivious to the major blow my life -not to mention my ego- had suffered. I crept down the aisle, scooting quickly past JC’s bunk. He’d drifted off with his privacy curtain wide open, probably waiting for me to get up the courage to go back to bed. I sniffled, then climbed into bed.

I did a remarkable job of avoiding JC on the bus that day. We were in the midst of a travel period, covering the stretch between Los Angeles and Seattle. We’d driven through the night, of course, but still had most of the day to go and we weren’t even across the Oregon border, yet. JC, I knew, would not want to embarrass me in front of the other guys so I found that all I had to do was make sure I was attached to at least one of them for the duration of the day. I couldn’t bring myself to look at JC, even when he sat down next to me after he woke up. I found a convenient excuse to move under the pretense of borrowing one of Lance’s CD’s. I ended up cat napping on the couch with Lance, and the two of us stayed up that night to watch a movie. JC finally gave up, going to bed with a soft “goodnight” and a sigh that sounded strangely sad, for someone who hadn’t been the one humiliated.

That night, the bus driver pulled over at a rest stop, as was his routine. He and the other drivers had taken up stopping somewhere in the middle of the night to stretch their legs and walk a bit before settling in for that long haul between one AM and morning. I disentangled myself from Lance, then snuck up to the front of the bus.

“Hey, Barnie.”

“Hiya, kid. Whatcha need?”

“Actually, I was just wondering if I could get out here? Just for a bit?”

Barnie frowned. “I dunno, Justin. Security’s bus is running a little behind and I’m not qualified to-”

“Oh c’mon. I’m nineteen, for god’s sake. I just wanna shoot a couple of hoops at that court over there, okay, man? Look, nobody’s around. No one cares.” Barnie still looked a little hesitant. “Help a brother out, Barns.”

“What the hell. Yeah, go on. Just stay close, okay? My ass would be grass if you went missing, you got me?”

“I gotcha. And thanks.”

My basketball, the one my step-dad gave me for my fourteenth birthday, was pretty beat up. Most of the black scroll lettering and brand name print had been scuffed off, leaving just the orange rind-textured ball itself. I loved that ball like I’d managed to keep on love nothing else because it added an element of normalcy to my otherwise hectic and ever changing lifestyle. In a way, it was just like JC.

“Hey.”

I jumped a little, having been in my own world as I sat on the ground, leaning back against the pole of the basket and tossing my ball from palm to palm. I didn’t bother to look up; I already knew who it was.

“Hey,” I said softly.

“Not getting much play in, are ya? I mean, it’d help if you’d at least dribble the ball or something.”

“Not really in the mood.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Just thinking. Listen, could you....could you go away? Please? I...I want to be alone. Just go back to bed. Please.”

He didn’t say anything, just came closer and sank down beside me. He leaned back against the pole too, and from his angle, his shoulder overlapped mine a bit. He took the ball from my hands. “We need to talk,” he told me.

“I....no. We don’t. There’s nothing, um. Nothing to talk about because. There’s just not. I get it, okay? I’m like, sorry. Real sorry.”

“Oh. Well, then I guess we have a little bit of a problem.”

“No, it’s cool. I just.....we do?” I asked, rubbing my nose.

“Yeah. Because, um. I’m not.”

“Not, what?”

“Sorry.”

“Oh. Well, you don’t have to be. I-”

“Justin, I’m saying I liked it.”

He cut me off and I was left with the rest of my apology hanging off the tip of my tongue and a funny look on my face that I realized was probably the same “fish expression” from the night before.

“I like you, Justin,” he admitted quietly. “If you had given me half a chance last night, I would have been able to tell you that.”

“No,” I shook my head. “You were totally grossed out. You should have seen yourself, JC. You...no, there is no way you liked...”

“Yes, I did, Justin,” he laughed, “Believe me, I did. I just...you gotta give me time to react. You can’t just lay something like that on someone and expect them to be eloquent about it.”

I didn’t say anything for several long moments. JC sighed while I fidgeted.

“You know,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, we could try again.”

“I’m fucked enough,” I mumbled.

“You’re not fucked hardly enough,” he muttered back. My head whipped around to face him. He smirked a little, as if he knew I was inwardly wondering whether or not he really *did* just say that. Then he whispered, “You wanna do it? Or should I?”

I swallowed what felt like a wad of cotton and felt my brow furrow as I thought about it. All at once, he was kissing me. I guess he took my hesitation for a sign that he should be the initiator, because I barely had time to close my eyes before his tongue was licking at my lower lip, teasing my mouth apart, and slipping his warm, wet self inside. I stayed oddly still until I’d gotten used to the feel of him, then some of my eagerness and fervor came rushing back and suddenly, I was kissing him, too.

I heard the ball drop from JC’s fingertips as he raised both hands to my face. He cupped my cheeks softly between them, his thumbs tracing circles on my skin. I could feel his eyelashes leaving butterfly kisses on my face and as I wound my arms around his neck, I realized his heart was beating just as fast as mine. He pulled me into his lap, and when we finally parted he drew our faces close together so our foreheads touched. That was when I noticed he’d slipped a hand beneath my tee shirt and was rubbing slowly in a circular motion. We smiled at each other in the moonlight.

“Believe me now?” he asked.

I could think of nothing else to do but kiss him again.

I had wanted to seduce JC, but I think he ended up seducing me, instead. It doesn’t really matter though, because when I was growing up, there were only two things I wanted: fame and JC Chasez.

I guess you could say I’m two for two.