By heidi
He remembers the first time he saw him. It was 1993 and he was visiting
his dad. They had been watching a basketball game -- Phoenix versus
Philadelphia. He remembers the teams simply because it was the season
that Phoenix had traded 3 or 4 players for Charles Barkley and gone on to
the Finals against the Bulls. He doesn't remember much about the game
itself but assumes that Phoenix won. It was the half time report that
had really caught his attention. Bill Walton, Bob Costas and some guy
who used to be a coach had been talking about a college football player,
and about how he had pulled out of the NFL draft. He probably wouldn't
have paid any attention to it other than they had shown a picture of the
player.
That one moment changed the rest of his life.
Justin was about to turn 12 at the time and was just starting to experience
his own sexuality. Being a typical boy, he'd compared himself to other
boys in the showers after gym class as well as looking at girls for the previous
couple of years. He had also discovered what a great friend his right
hand really could be. But as he looked at the picture of Kevin Richardson
on the TV screen, he knew that while he found girls to be pretty, it was
boys that made his body become excited.
He looked surreptitiously at his dad to be sure he hadn't noticed just how
hard Justin had become.
That night, after his dad had gone to bed, he had gone through the sports
pages of the week's paper and found several pictures of the quarterback.
Once he was back in bed himself, he did something he had never done before.
He beat himself while looking at pictures of a man.
A couple of years later he heard on the radio about how a modeling agency
was touring the nation looking for fresh faces. He begged his mom to
drive him to Nashville so he could check it out. The agent said that
while Justin was pretty, he was too young for what she was scouting, but
she had given his mother the name someone else. No matter how much
he had begged, he couldn't get his momma to go to New York to see Fatima
Robinson. "He was too young." The next summer he hitchhiked his
way to the big city. If he was lucky, he'd be able to meet with Ms.
Robinson. If he was really lucky, she might be interested in him.
If he was exceptionally lucky, he'd meet the man he fell in love with three
years earlier.
That day he was only really lucky.
Fatima loved the way Justin looked but was horrified to learn that he had
come to New York without any supervision. She called his frantic mother,
told her that Justin was fine, and that she would do whatever his mother
wanted. When his momma showed up, Fatima offered the modeling contract.
His momma knew that if he had run away once to become a model, he'd do it
again, so she read the contracts then signed.
Justin met Kevin five months later and knew without a doubt that this man
was meant for him.
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