Chapter 12
Hey Evan, Simon has a business meeting with Mr. Rodger and my show will be over in an hour. If you want driver can take you home. Logan informs. No problem, I can wait. You wind up the show and then we can go together. What will I do alone at home? It is better to be here with you. ‘As you wish’ he says and leaves. Again, I look at the painting and imagine Logan as a small boy. My eyes move to another painting of a beautiful woman holding a kid and his smile is just like him. Oh! I realise that this painting belongs to Logan again. Looking at one painting to another I see a painting of children playing in a garden, a boy drawing and siting by window side, a young guy kissing another guy. I wonder looking at the paintings that what’s Logan story. His paintings give glimpse of his life. May be one day, I get a chance to know his story. I murmur.
I see people going out and within few minutes the hall gets empty with hardly two or three people around. At the end, organisers only remain to close the exhibition and we both leave. Manager again greets and congratulates him for the spectacular show. Logan seems happy and contented. Reporters ask him questions and he quickly answer and finally we manage to sit in the car. He stopped the car near by sea where few couples were kissing, talking and families playing with their kids. We both sit near the sea shore silently watching the sea waves gushing to the shore. I look at him and decided not to disturb his silence so I remain quiet.
After fifteen minutes, he speaks, this show was very important to me. First time, I have painted my life in paintings and opened to the public. I was seven years old when my mother died due to clots in brain. After her death, for couple of months my father showered his love and care on me. Then a sudden change in his attitude hurt my heart. He started seeing another woman and they finally they got married and she refused to accept me and my father also agreed with her decision. She was a daughter of a rich man from a town in Maryland. She asked him to come to her place after marriage but without me.
One night, he explained me everything and he wanted me to understand the situation and finally, a seven-year boy understood his decision and he left me outside the orphanage with my things like bicycle, my birthday gift given by my mom and my drawings. I observed, his voice falls and a line of pain crosses his face but he continues to speak that in orphanage I felt very lonely. I always cried remembering my mother, her smiling face came in my dreams every day to console me. Gradually, I accepted the reality of life. Maiden noticed that I was good in painting and studies. So, she managed to get me enrolled in the school with fee concession. When I was seventeen, I got scholarship to study in ART college and I moved to Scotland and gave my bicycle to another kid whose parents died in an accident and his relative left him in the same orphanage. I notice each and every expression of his face.
He further says that in college, I realised that I enjoy the company of guys not girls. Because in school I was shy, shattered and sad so I didn’t talk much. Even in the orphanage I spoke less and was really disturbed to hear every orphan’s painful story and thought that God is cruel towards kids like me. I met a guy name Jink, he is bisexual and he was my first crush, he smiles. He kissed me for first time and I felt like being in heaven. As you saw in that painting. Yes, so you were the one in the painting. I reply. Things were going fine but I when got admission in university. We decided to break up and he chooses a slim, skinny beauty for himself and her name is Stella. In university, I met Lucas, and had a wonderful relationship with him but I broke when he indulged with some lousy drug addicted people and forced me to give money as I was doing a parttime job along with my studies. Firstly, I gave but later refused and asked him to take medications but instead he beat me badly. One day, when I came back from work, he came with four or three goons and asked for money and when I refused, they beat me hard and two of them molested me. Somehow, I managed to run and for the first time I abused and called them bastards. For few days, I managed to escape and after exams I moved to Connecticut.
My life was mess, I was afraid of facing the people with low self-esteem. One day God pitied on me and one of my professors in university reference helped me to get my first job in an art school. From there, I slowly moved on but till day I see nightmares and to cure, I started taking therapies. Finally, I got a chance to have my first art exhibition and it was a big success. After that I had one show after another. People adored my paintings and in one of the exhibitions I met Simon, he is business minded but a nice guy. He looks calm. What about your father? I interrupt and say he never approached you. One day, some time back, I saw him with his new family and when I approached him, he refused to recognize me as if I was a stranger to him. His eyes fill with tears and his voice grumbles. That day, I realise that this man who is my father is selfish, self-centred, and cruel. He never came to meet me in the orphanage and when I used to call, he refused to speak to me. When I was sick and wanted to meet him and insisted maiden to call him. He shattered my all hope and warned not to call again. That night, I cried bitterly and my heart broke into thousand pieces. The pain I felt was in fact more than the pain I had of my mother’s death. I wish my mother would be alive then I had enjoyed a peaceful and calm life. I become an adult at the age of seven. Tears drop from his eyes and to console him I touch his face. With the touch of my fingers, he loses his control and hugs me and I too hug him tightly just to make him feel that I understand his pain. After a while he releases himself from the grip of my arms and looks into my eyes and I couldn’t resist myself and start kissing him fervently as I want to the taste the bitterness he has in his life. My tongue twists in his mouth and he doesn’t stop me.
