CONNECTIONS PAGE |
&& the basics
full name: alfonso adrian morales
age: forty-four
gender: cismale
birth date: june 6th, 1981
hometown: greenville, north carolina
occupation: owner of the lilypad theatre
sexuality: homosexual
neighborhood: cresthill meadows
Alfonso Morales was born in the warm, humid embrace of a Greenville, North Carolina summer day. His parents had both served in the Air Force for their careers and their life was as structured as they came. Early mornings, polished shoes, and quiet prayers before dinner were things that were entrenched in their lives from the start. Alf himself was disciplined to a point, willing to be the model child as best as he could, but it was clear even from a young age that his exuberant personality clashed with the rigors of military life.
Though his father was never harsh, he was stern, and Alf found himself struggling to live up to the expectations the man had. His mom was his escape, her gentler personality giving him space to express himself away from the pressure of being his father's shadow. Between his mother and his best friend of his youth, Anthony Blake, Alfonso was able to find himself, while still balancing his desire to be the young man his father wanted him to be.
All of that changed when his mother passed unexpectedly, a heart attack that came from a previously undiagnosed heart defect. Alf was just ten years old when his mother passed, the loss cracking open the foundations of their small family and leaving both Alf and his father weary and heartbroken. Unable to deal with the grief living in Greenville, Alf's father up and moved them across the country to the small town of Kismet Harbor. Out of nowhere, Alf lost every source of stability in his life - his mother, his best friend, and the home he had always loved.
Life in Kismet was different. It was peaceful and slower paced. His father opened his own welding business, working mainly on repairing boats at the marina. His energy was poured into the molten steel and early morning labor, unsure of how to raise the son that he was now left with. His father was a religion man. He was strict, orderly, but still loving in his own stoic way. He was also very clear about what he believed a good life should look like and for Alf, that life looked entirely different.
At school, he was a firework. Alf had a big laugh and a bigger heart. He made friends easily and was always the first to lend a helping hand or a kind word to anyone who needed it. Alf was drawn to the life on the stage, living for the school plays and local theatre productions where he could just for a moment live life through the lens of some other character. At home, though, there was a disconnect. His father couldn't understand his love for the theatre and it caused a growing friction between them. A friction that only grew as Alf got older and worked towards figuring himself out as a person.
Several years into their lives in Kismet, things changed again. Alf's father met a new woman and remarried, expanding their small family with two new additions. A kind, steady stepmother and a younger step-sibling now built upon the previously broken household. The house became a home, more nurturing than it had been with just Alf and his father, but the undercurrent of expectations never shifted. Alf would work at the family business, would be a man his father could be proud of. So, when he graduated from school, he did just what was expected. He picked up the torch and became a welder by trade, working alongside his father, despite his heart being elsewhere.
His joy over the next decades of his life came in pockets. The late-night rehearsals, painting sets, time spent volunteering in the various community theatre productions that were his lifeline to maintaining some small level of happiness. It wasn't enough, but it was all he had.
Years were spent toiling along beside his father, the light in Alfonso dimmed to an almost unrecognizable degree. And then, his father fell ill. The hard edges of the man who had raised him softened as questions of mortality sparked a change in him. One night, sitting side by side in the hospital, Alf's father offered something he never expected from the man. An apology. He told Alf that he'd spent too long trying to shape him into someone he wasn't and that he loved him exactly the way he was. It was the cathartic release that Alfonso needed to finally feel that he could be his real self.
When his father finally passed, he left the welding business behind to Alf, not to keep, but to sell, with the instructions expressly written to take the money he made and pursue his dreams. With the inheritance and his father's blessing, Alf finally took the leap he'd be dreaming of since he was a young boy and he bought the Lilypad Theatre to renovate and turn into a vibrant haven for the arts.
Alf has owned the theatre now for five years and he is the beating heart of the town's art scene. He wears many hats, sometimes a director, an actor, a stagehand, but also a mentor, a friend, and a man who is finally ready to be himself.
