Ray of Sunlight (24 page)

I still work with the landscaping companies—which now number more than fifty throughout most of New York. That alone would keep me busy and pull in a good wage. I love the work, but I wouldn’t be happy doing just that. Thus explaining all the other types of art I do.

My first love was doing portraits, though, and I still do those on commission. The only change from those early days is that, instead of getting fifty dollars per portrait, I make up to five hundred, depending on the number of people, or animals, in the portrait, and the customer. Some offer me more than I would have charged and usually I accept whatever they want to pay.

The one exception to that is Children’s Hospital.

I still go by there as often as I can, and do free portraits as part of a show, or part of their now annual Thanksgiving and Easter blowouts. Parents of the patients still ask for portraits to be done of their children or of other family members, and I never accept more than fifty dollars apiece for those. No matter what they offer. I feel I owe Children’s Hospital, in a way, and I know the parents of the kids there have more pressing things to do with their money than to pay me to do something I love to do anyway. I wouldn’t charge even the fifty dollars, but the parents won’t accept the portraits for free, unless I do them as part of a show. I do sneak in as many commissions from the parents as possible during shows, for just that reason.

I spend a lot of time going around to all the places where I’ve already done murals, touching up as necessary. They always pay me something, but I refuse to let Children’s Hospital pay for that, and I touch up their walls much more often… especially the front foyer. Any time it looks even the slightest bit faded, I touch it up. I keep CJ’s sunny face immortalized on the wall. The hospital has since, at my bidding, added a memorial plaque dedicating the wall to CJ, and I take every opportunity to tell new kids about the original Children’s Hospital clown.

I still do “clown” shows in CJ’s memory, but I don’t use face paint anymore. I do sometimes still dress in the over-the-top artist getup that CJ designed, just to feel close to him in some way. I teach the kids to paint or draw and have actually found quite a few budding artists that way.

I’ve started a CJ Calhoun scholarship to the Art Institute. I know CJ himself wasn’t an artist—not the painting and drawing kind, at least—but he was definitely my inspiration, and the only reason I became as successful as I am. The only reason I made anything of myself at all, for that matter. Sending kids to college each year in his name seemed like such a small way to pay him back for some of that.

I came out to my parents, and everyone really, after I started college and once I felt like I didn’t have to be dependent on Allen and Mom anymore. I made enough from my art, even back then, to get by without any help from them. I paid for room and board, and went to summer school, and there never seemed to be a shortage of people who were willing to let me crash for the few weeks here or there when the college wasn’t in session. By the time I graduated, I was pretty self-sufficient and got my own apartment.

I haven’t seen Allen since the evening I stopped by with the express purpose of telling him I was bisexual, and that CJ and I had been in a relationship. His reaction was just what I had expected. He cussed at me for a solid half hour, told me I was going to hell, railed about how “that queer” had corrupted me, then told me to get out and never come back. So I have never been back. It’s the one time I didn’t mind doing what Allen told me to do.

Pete and I have kept in touch, though. In fact, we’ve gotten quite close. I don’t think we could be any closer even if we were biological brothers. I owe that to CJ too. He brought us together, and helped me grow up to the point where, looking back, I can admit that Pete was never truly an enemy. I was just so angry back then that I thought everyone was.

Pete went to college at the same time as I did, of course, but majored in biology. He then went on to medical school and is now doing his second year of residency at Children’s Hospital in the oncology ward. He had always wanted to do something in medicine, but CJ and the whole experience with the kids at the hospital shaped his goal a little more specifically.

I had an unexpected reunion with my grandma about three years after I came out. She had heard that I moved out of Mom and Allen’s house and wanted to know if we could get together. I was still rather angry and hurt because she left me in the first place, but I couldn’t turn down a chance at another family member that I might actually get along with.

We corresponded for the rest of my senior year, and when I got my own place, Grandma came to visit. She was older then, of course, by almost a decade, but it was like we had never been separated in a lot of ways. We went skating—neither of us thought we were really up for skateboarding—and to movies, and we even went to see a KISS cover band. It was fun, and I really did like the music, but when they played “Beth,” I thought of CJ and cried. I spent the rest of that evening telling my grandmother about the love of my life. She had always known I was bisexual, so that wasn’t a shock to her, but, of course, she hadn’t been around when I came out, so we talked about that in general, and CJ in particular, and she told me she was sorry that she didn’t get to meet him. She said she thought she would have really liked him, especially since he had helped her favorite grandson find himself again. I was her only grandson, but I knew what she meant, and I agreed with her. I think she really would have liked CJ.

I’ve dated a couple of people since CJ, but no one measured up.

Terrence was physically similar to CJ, just not sickly, of course. He even had the really short, fuzzy hair that CJ had when he died. His personality was a little like CJ’s, which, I now admit, was probably the draw. But every time we talked, all my stories started with “When I was with CJ….” He took six months of that and then showed how dissimilar his personality was compared to CJ’s. He gave me an hour lecture on how he wasn’t CJ, was never going to be CJ, and didn’t want to hear about CJ anymore. He threw a bunch of stuff at me—both mine and his—and I just let him, because I knew, deep down, that I had been unfair to him. But, when he picked up the framed portrait of CJ and started to throw that, I told him to leave. He did and never came back. A friend of his came by to get his belongings a couple days later. That was when I was twenty-three. There had been no one before that, nor after until two years later.

Carla told me, when we inevitably broke up, that, having failed with someone similar to CJ, I had been trying to find CJ’s exact opposite when I started dating her. She was too. About as quiet and bland as CJ was loud and flamboyant. She was also self-centered where he had been anything but. We lasted two months before she left too. At least she didn’t try to destroy anything that reminded me of CJ.

I went on a couple of dates after that but never more than three dates with the same person. I never tried relationships after those first two.

I know it’s not fair to any of them, male or female, to compare them to him… especially to his memory, which, I can admit, if only to myself, that I’ve probably idealized at this point. But, my life is full without a full-time relationship, and my heart just isn’t ready to move CJ aside. It may never be, and I’m okay with that. I can still almost feel him beside me at times. It’s like he said in his letter. That love has to go somewhere, and I believe, if anyone could have, he actually
did
find a way to be with me.

My life doesn’t really have a routine. I do so many different things at different times, it’s always kind of up in the air. I love it that way. Routine is overrated.

But there is one thing that is always a constant. No matter where I’m living at the moment, there is a corner in my bedroom set up with CJ’s makeup table and posters. Most of the posters stay rolled up now, in a box of keepsakes that I just set near the table. But in every room I’ve ever lived in for the last ten years, the KISS poster and that first portrait of CJ in clown garb go up on the wall behind the makeup table.

His clown costume and wig hang on the corners of the mirror, and the letter he left me is always placed lovingly in the center of the desk, right where I found it after CJ died.

Pete says that’s not really healthy, especially ten years down the road. He says that I need to stop setting up the “CJ Shrine” everywhere I move. And I guess I can admit he’s probably right. Maybe sometime in the future I won’t need it. Most of the posters have already been eliminated from the equation, as well as the makeup that I used to set up each time. Maybe someday I’ll stop setting up any of it. Maybe one day, I’ll even get rid of the makeup table altogether. But I can’t see that day coming anytime soon.

CJ is too big a part of my life, of my heart, to ever let go completely. I know having his things around doesn’t really keep him around any more than my heart would accomplish all by itself. But, if there was one thing I learned from CJ more than just about anything else, it was to be yourself. Do what you feel you need to do. Make people happy, but keep yourself happy too.

And right now, remembering CJ makes me happy.

B
RYNN
S
TEIN
has always loved to write. Fan fiction, original fiction, whatever. While Brynn wrote in numerous genres—everything from mystery, to contemporary, to supernatural—she had always tended toward strong male characters. And then she discovered “slash,” male/male romance, and all those strong male characters were finally allowed to express their love for one another. It seems that there are always at least two characters clamoring to tell Brynn their story.

Brynn lives in Virginia with one of her two two-legged children, and two four-legged ones. Her supportive family encourages her writing and provides a sounding board for fledgling stories. When she isn’t writing, Brynn teaches children with special needs. In free time, when such a thing exists, she reads anything she can get her hands on, and haunts bookstores. She draws and paints, and enjoys the outdoors—especially if she can get to the beach—and is always thinking about her next story.

Please feel free to contact Brynn at any of the following:

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[email protected]

http://www.harmonyinkpress.com

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