character :: Valentino Rio
Valentino started caring for children as a child himself: and when the abuse and neglect became too much, he did the right thing: begging for a teacher to take himself and his two little sisters somewhere safe. When the state came to the rescue, Valentino just knew something better waited for him just around the corner. Foster home after foster home agreed to keep the trio together, but when a forever family finally came along – a hitch in the plan developed. The young man considered himself to be an expert eavesdropper, and the words were unmistakable through his foster’s thick oak door: ‘only enough money for two children.’
Valentino knew what to do. After all, the girls were 3 and he were 9: only he would remember them together, only he would remember the hungry nights of standing on top of milk crates to cook for them, and only he would remember the drunken home that had allowed a child to raise his sisters. But it were his cross to bare, and bare it he did for the 9 long years in foster homes, group homes, and finally lonely freedom. It’s not that no one wanted Valentino, of course: it’s that a home simply didn’t exist for a personality this big. Or, at least, this is what he told himself.
is to lose yourself
to the service of others.
-Mahatma Ghandi
But success comes from struggle for a man like Valentino. Filled with a passion borne of pain, he entered society a man determined to make a difference when he aged out of the system. While most of his classmates became victims to the crisis of puzzling themselves out, Valentino became a victim to his study: and by the time he had graduated with a degree in social work – he had realized that his dream came at the cost of his youth. He never got to be a kid, and the cards were stacked against him from the start.
He found himself an opening at the local CPS office, where he met all manner of people. Some good, bad, with fair and ill intent. But something was still missing for Valentino, who never quite had time for working out his own inner quirks. The birth of his alter-ego came by total accident, shopping for discount clothes to donate to a foster home he knew could really use them. He bumped into a man rummaging through the plus-size women’s clothing; and in a thick Georgian accent, a woman erupted from the man’s throat to beg Valtino’s pardon. That night he took the man out for dinner and discovered a side to himself that had been seeking an opportunity to blossom: his drag alter-ego Yeor Valentine.
Valentino thrived as he scoped out the drag scene in his hometown. He met so many supportive people and finally a creative outlet presented itself…but the more the empathetic man talked to his new community, the more he saw a trend: there’s simply no support for gay teens who find themselves either abandoned, neglected, or under state asylum because of abuse. On all spectrums LGBTQA+ children were harder to find homes for – and a switch turned inside of him. He had to do something, and his pageant buddies agreed: the plans for the Rainbow House were born.
After many donations, years of preparation, and the undying support of his drag club’s members, a little office space downtown became a safe haven for not only the kids, but for Valentino as well. He found himself alive with every at-risk youth he collected into the program, and for the first time in his life, he felt “right”. He is doing something, and with every successful adoption, he could see it in the eyes of his kids. And “his kids” they became, even when came along a foul-mouthed little man named Tyler who was sure to throw every slur under the sun Valentino’s way. But with love, patience, and caring, even this young man found a perfect home…and with enough time, Tyler’s closeted sexuality that had caused him such pain eased it’s death grip on the little man’s life. Valentino couldn’t be happier.
Now, Valentino spends all of his time on his kids and on his weekend stress-relief. While his efforts to find a partner may end in disaster, he has high hopes that his big heart may be shared with a lucky man or woman out there who supports his cause and his lifestyle. I wonder who that person may be?
