After the chaos, the screams, and a hundred prom kids running through purple and pink lights, and after a little persuasion, I convinced the ghosts of the 1913 flood to come down to the floor to talk to me, to us. They descended from the ceiling of my niece’s high school gym through the cardboard stars hanging on fishing line, carrying their own river haze with them, until they all dangled just above the floor. One of the spectral women looked around the gym. “The water was up to the ceiling of the house. We were all asleep. It was so fast. The water.”  One of the kids said that the flood had killed over 900 people in several states. “We were dancing around the barn just the night before.” She looked at the faces of the kids in bright prom dresses and tuxedos. “Like you.” She looked back at me, and the room just stayed quiet for minutes. Kids held each other. No one moved. The ghosts floated in ripples… like they were in water. “It was right here,” she said, moving her hand across us all, as if the gym had been a barn, a field, a house. “I’m so sorry,” I told them. They stared at us. They were waiting for me to tell them what to do now, now that their whole world had ended in a night, a night that they seemed trapped inside forever. I didn’t know what to tell them. I looked at all the faces of the kids, some of them drying their eyes from their own fear. They’d expected to have the best night of their lives. Now they were talking to ghosts—ghosts who had been their age when they died. I didn’t think I would have the right words to comfort her—after so much time, but I tried. I looked at her, “Well, you’re here with us tonight.  Do you want to— do you want to dance with us?  We could all dance with you.” Some of the kids nodded. She stared at me in a hundred years of pain and loss, her face blank. “Yes,” she said, and she drifted down those last few inches, settling like a rock at the bottom of a lake, and her toes touched the dance floor for the first time.

When he said, ‘surprise them” and “spice things up,’ of course I led him to the beard oil. All three of them liked strong scents, but lately he just felt like something was missing in the kissing. So, all those small animals he killed was his way of trying to improve his smell, but, of course, the neighborhood couldn’t tolerate any eventual assault on their pets. I introduced him to all the scents I had in stock. He sampled patchouli, Happiness (a citrus blend), Rose, Lavender and Vanilla, Daddy (a version of Smoke and Leather), Dusk (a spicy musk) and Bergamot Bear (green tea and elderberries). He liked them all. And eventually decided to rub some of all of them in different areas. He said his mates would then get to rediscover him in stages all over his body. I smiled at his thoughtfulness. Finally, like a good friend and his first hairdresser would, i suggested some hair gel which he used to turn his hair into waves of black meringue. When he was finished, I gave him a variety pack of scents in a small bag.  ‘They’re gonna love you, ‘ I told him. He grinned, and walked out into the night, his fur radiating a whole summer of desire.

Contrary to popular belief, unicorns are not hung up about your sexual status.  I know we’ve been taught that only people who are sexually “pure”…a “virgin” … can get near them. That’s a bunch of hogswaller. Unicorns, like any magical creature, want to feel safe with you. They detect kindness, not virginity. Some old religious dudes who were frightened of the powers of women and sex decided they would make this unicorn a judge of the goodness of people based on their own stringent rules about sex and the body. They quarantined this beauty behind a fence of abstinence to keep the joy of your own body away from you. Look at me in this moment. She doesn’t care about whom I’ve loved, or slept with, or played with, or enjoyed… she just wants fresh mangoes. And she will make Ugly Mouth and Happy Eyes and come right to you just to have them. She will be your best friend because you gave her something she loved, not because you denied yourself something you would love.

Sometimes we just want to connect to someone, reach out and touch them.  We are so afraid of being rejected, though, of making someone scared of us. We crawl back into our hiding places and lay low. Tonight I pull out The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, one of my favorite books. It’s about reaching out in your isolation. And I give it a good read out loud—not trying to pressure him, but give him the space and comfort of a voice to know I’m here, and I’m not afraid of him.  No one should be afraid to reach out when they are lonely. And slowly, as I read about Mole and Rat and Badger who meet and become friends, that hand that just wanted to say, I am here, I am always here, stays on my arm till I finish a chapter and then slips back down as I turn off the light.

Well what was I going to do? Disappoint a whole nest of Vampires? So I got out my facepaints (I keep a set in the glove compartment of the truck) and set up a little booth. I mean, they’d all been through Halloween for centuries and not one of them had gotten their face painted? You should have seen their excited pale faces lean up to my brush and hear them say, “Oh, I want a Luna moth.”

You are cordially invited to “The Further (Queer) Adventures of Yukon Cornelius,” a solo art show by artist
Jerome Stueart, reimagining the boisterous red-bearded prospector from the 1964 Christmas special, “Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” as a gay man whose whole life is helping monsters, “Hiddens,” adapt to the world of
people around them. This exhibit of giant-sized acrylic paintings and smaller watercolor paintings examines
queer life and issues through the lens of monsters and heroes. Stueart, a World Fantasy Award nominee in
Short Fiction, has written stories to go with some of the paintings which you can read through QR codes on the
paintings or hear in a reading Sunday afternoon as part of an artist’s talk. Yukon Cornelius was created by
Romeo Muller and is in the public domain. A special wall will celebrate Muller, a gay Jewish writer who penned
many well-known, well-beloved movies. Event is FREE and open to the public. Light refreshments served.
Mature Content.

Thursday night: Soft opening 7:00-8:30pm
Formal Opening: Friday night, Dec. 16 ~ 6pm to 8:30pm
Light refreshments! Come join me!

Saturday, Dec. 17 ~ 12-5pm ~ Gallery is open!
Sunday, Dec. 18 ~ 11-4pm ~ Gallery is open!

Artist talk at 2pm there, but also broadcast on Facebook Live
or through ZOOM.


Where: Dayton Society of Artists, 48 High Street (in St. Anne’s Hill, Dayton)
with ample parking available across the street.

Note: Stories associated with the paintings will be up on HERE on this website
starting December 10, if you want to read stories ahead of the show!

There’s nothing quite like a morning swim with baby kraken. They follow me even in the bay, swimming out of the protection of the Atlantic and their mothers. They are adventurous and playful and bigger far than me, and while their tentacles wrap around my leg occasionally, they don’t pull me down. This one has already been tormenting local fishermen, drumming on the bottom of their boats, reaching for their nets. They’re too frightened of her to do much but take pictures, so for now she’s relatively safe. Eventually, she’ll learn to love the depths even more than the surface. You can only be fascinated by something that isn’t for you until you find the things that are for you. Loud frantic fishermen out of reach won’t seem as interesting once she hangs out more with the cool sleek creatures of the deep.

___________________

Here begins the “The Further (Queer) Adventures of Yukon Cornelius,” the series of paintings I did reimagining the prospector from the Rankin/Bass 1964 Christmas Special, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” written by Romeo Muller as a gay man whose life is helping “Hiddens” (the world calls them Monsters) adapt to the often fearful Humans around them. It’s a chance for me to write about queer issues through monsters and heroes. There are about 45 of these, I believe. The solo art show happens Dec 16, 6pm EST at the Dayton Society of Artists, 48 High Street, Dayton OH. I’ll try and create a video of the show before we have to take it down so I can have a record of the show as it was up.

You’ll notice that the text under the pictures gets longer and longer as we go. I’m a short story writer… so these excerpts just started forming into stories.