JC bought his first camera back in 1997 from a shop in downtown Orlando, and at the time he considered that a huge expenditure at a whopping $175 dollars. No zoom lens, no flash. He taught himself how to use the aperture dial, and after a few months he was snapping pictures of everyone.
Now, in 2001, JC had converted his basement into a darkroom, complete with printmaking capabilities. He wasn’t really big on putting his pictures up around his house or letting people have them, so only now and then would they walk in to find an 8x10 of Justin brushing his teeth prominently displayed in the hallway or a little framed 5x7 of Lance and Joey asleep on the bus. That was his favorite place to take pictures, the bus.
"I just don’t understand," Lance said one day. "Why always the bus? We just walk around looking like shit and being gross and dirty." At the time he was sitting behind his laptop with his cell phone to his ear and JC’s zoomless old Nikon about 10 inches away from his nose. He could see the flecks of dust littering the lens.
"That’s exactly why," JC replied, and Lance heard the loud snap of the old shutter. "Because we look like shit and we’re gross and dirty. We’re real, Lance. Look into it."
That comment made Lance’s stomach drop down to his knees, but as soon as he prepared to respond he heard the president of Miramax Films speaking into his ear.
Real.
That was the first time Lance had ever had to think about realness. Not a superficial J.Lo on a motorcycle in rural Arkansas type of "real," but that deep philosophical shit that he hadn’t done so well in during his correspondence courses years ago. He wondered what JC meant by "real." Of course he was real in the existential way of thinking, they all existed, but surely there were other things to realness. There was the amount of money you have, the car you drive, the people you know, the places you’ve been -
And immediately Lance cursed himself because he knew that those weren’t the types of things that JC meant when he said "real."
JC was horribly passionate. He sang with his eyes closed and danced like no one was watching. He wasn’t ashamed of his apparent queeniness - the way he batted his eyelashes when talking or his love of fine food and Everything But The Girl. He made mounds of money but didn’t really keep up with his funds more than balancing his checkbook from time to time. He kissed babies. Babies he didn’t know. He loved europop and dance music, and he always gave beggars money whether they were drunks or junkies or whatever.
When JC said "real," Lance was sure that it wasn’t in reference to his bank book or his connections in Hollywood.
It was said again one day, while Lance was in the middle of turning his suite upside down while looking for his two-way pager.
"JC," Lance huffed while turning his backpack upside down, "have you seen my two-way pager? I’ve searched around this whole damn place-"
"Why do you even care about that thing?" JC mumbled.
JC was watching The 10,000 Dollar Pyramid on the Game Show Network. Cool as an apple. Lance looked up, dumbfounded. That pager had cost him about $300 dollars, and the names in it went from P. Diddy to Carson Daly to Denise Rich.
"If someone got their hands on it, Hollywood would grind my ass into kibble," Lance said, and he spread out the contents of his backpack on his bed. "Britney’s in there, the other guys are in there, Toni Braxton’s in there -"
Lance watched JC just huff softly and shrug, and that small of a gesture was enough to stop his words in their tracks. Lance’s eyes narrowed at his friend’s apathetic reaction, the pompous way he seemed to just not care about the world he was a part of.
"What the fuck’s your problem?" Lance said, and that made JC sit up quickly. He twisted around in his chair to look at Lance, who had scattered leaky pens and highlighters and paper all over a really nice goose-down comforter. "What’s this pretentious bullshit you’ve been pulling lately anyway?"
"What do you mean?" JC asked rather timidly. His feet were against the seat of his chair, knees pulled up close to his chest. Feet bare and complete with toe ring. Artsy earthy bullshit.
"Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m saying," Lance continued, and his voice rose just slightly above the tinkle of the Pyramid on television. "You think that if you take a bunch of artsy photos of superstars and leave your shoes in your backpack all the time that you’ll be more real than the rest of us? Oh please...you’re so predictable. You’re still a star and you’re still as fake as I am."
For a moment Lance thought JC might get angry over his outburst, his expression everything but that.
"Hold up," JC said as he stood. "What makes you think that you're fake?"
Lance looked down at the mess on the bed. A highlighter was bleeding onto the white comforter, and right beside it was his Samsung two-way pager.
"You said so," Lance said, and he picked up his pager and tucked it into the breast pocket of the jacket he hadn’t bothered to take off yet. JC’s brow knitted, showing his uncertainty as to what the hell Lance was talking about. "You remember - you took a picture of me on the bus and said that I wasn’t real."
JC huffed strongly and rolled his eyes, and he began to walk towards Lance. "I did not. I said that we all were real, but that you needed to look into it."
"Doesn’t that mean that I’m not real then? Whatever the hell that means..."
"No, not at all. I guess what I meant by that was that you just don’t realize how real you actually are." By this time JC had crossed the room, and he was getting so close that Lance could hear the crunch of the carpet beneath his feet. "Like...you have a tendency to worry too much about all that paper, shit like your pager...it’s like you forget about the fact that you’re a person, not just a celebrity." And by this time JC was standing right in front of Lance, and he was chewing his lip a little bit with thought. Lance almost wanted to tell him that he thought he was cute.
"You can’t get so caught up in the details, you know?" JC continued, and he reached out to brush lint from the lapel of Lance’s jacket. But he didn’t remove his hand when he was done. "Like...it doesn’t matter. The car I drive, what I wear around my neck."
And now JC’s hand was crawling up that lapel, curling around to the back of Lance’s neck and making the hairs stand up there.
"All that matters," JC continued, and he flashed a bright smile, "is what’s real. That’s you. Me. People."
JC leaned down and nuzzled Lance’s lips softly, and he pecked a small kiss there before bringing his other arm up and resting it against Lance’s shoulder.
"I like the real you," JC said, and they kissed again.
Lance was beginning to understand that philosophical shit that he hadn’t been so good at years ago.