The Cry of Wolves

Michael Donohue

Description

The Cry of Wolves

Michael Donohue

Novel : 312 000 letters, 56 000 words

Paul Kelly escapes his backward small town in Ireland for the bright lights of New York only to find himself in a state of paralysis. Desperate to move forward, he embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery through New York's music, fashion and nightclub worlds. While dealing with his present predicament he must also confront the psychological ramifications of growing up in a homophobic culture. He finally accepts that the vindication he seeks for his past suffering is unobtainable and likens himself to a wolf howling on a wasteland, his cry for justice everlasting.

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Sujets

• Romance
• BD Erotique
• Romance érotique
• Nouvelles de genre
• Romans de genre
• Erotisme
• Homosexuality
• Homosexualité
• Fiction
• Sexualité
• Littérature

Informations

• Publié par: Éditions Textes Gais
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9791029401176
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Cry of Wolves
 
 
Michael Donohue
 
 
 
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter 1
 
 
Paul Kelly brushed past two homeless alcoholics guarding the entrance to Fourteenth Street subway station and joined the other immigrants crowding onto the uptown Number 6. As he squeezed in between a large Latino woman and an elderly Chinese gentleman, also en route to service rich America, he was careful to avoid their gaze of commiseration. For two years now, he’d been opening and closing the front door of a residential building on East Seventy-Third Street – a doorman. It made him cringe to think of his time there, the betrayal of his own ambition.
It appeared, he admitted, a great beginning, just what he needed to get on his feet, save a few dollars. The pay was very generous – there was no denying this – but it felt as if he was being showered with gifts for bowing and scraping to people who weren’t his superiors, but who, more often than not, acted as such. For some employees, mostly elderly gentlemen who had been in the Service and non-English speaking immigrants, the job could be described as a godsend, offering a generous salary for little toil invested. But for an educated, white guy in his early twenties like Paul, it was ‘loser’ territory. (Twenty-third Street Station.)
His cousin secured him the position through a friend who worked for a real estate corporation, and Paul, who was staying with his cousin at the time, felt obliged to accept. He didn’t think too deeply on the subject. Back then, he believed he’d just sail up the corporate ladder, people opening doors and offering him opportunities from all angles. From his doorman position he felt it was only a short elevator ride to the penthouse, unaware that this ease of passage was reserved for the exceptionally talented or for those who had inherited the privilege. Paul was one of those destined to use the stairs. (Twenty-eighth Street Station.)
Following a year with his cousin (she had insisted on him staying to help her over a broken heart), he found a beautiful two-bedroom apartment with a colleague in a pseudo-Irish community in Queens. This he soon realised wasn’t his scene: bars throbbing with Irish music, small talk on street corners concerning Irish football results and shops selling Irish newspapers was hardly his idea of experiencing The New World. Fortunately after six months his Polish roommate returned home and Paul found a studio for himself in the East Village in Manhattan. For the first time he was happy where he was living, and it was one of the reasons he felt the limitations of his current job so keenly. (Thirty-third Street Station.)
The main obstacle in his career path was his uncertainty as to what field to enter. His last few years in secondary school proved lethargic and he had only gained entry to a commercial college. Taking a Marketing course, he intended to complete his first year certificate, move on to the diploma, then transfer to university for a degree – the roundabout route. However, having spent most of his first year masturbating in the male toilets to homoerotic images some budding gay porn artist had executed on the doors of several cubicles, he realised he would have to confront his homosexuality before it confronted him. (Grand Central Station.)
Admitting his sexuality in Ireland wasn’t a possibility. He was so frozen, so welded over with fear, that for Paul to come out would have been... Well, he just couldn’t imagine what they would do to him. His youth had been haunted with images of the town parading up to his front door, dragging him from his bedroom – as his parents watched in shame and horror – and parading him down the main street while his friends and neighbors jeered from the sidelines. His genitalia would then be chopped off in a public execution and he’d spend his life as a sexless cripple, forever disfigured for his crime. While this wouldn’t have happened – though at the same time his town wasn’t completely safe for queers – Paul had been unable to see through the ball of fear that had rolled up inside him. (Fifty-first Street Station.)
He knew his career would be in business, imagining himself as a Media Executive or running a fashion label or leading advertising campaigns. He was open to pretty much anything besides, ‘Hello Mrs. Bernstein. How is your ball of fluff you call a dog? And I’m not allowed ask you how you are, because that would be too personal coming from a servant. And you really think I’m a piece if shit, don’t you? The funny thing is I probably have as much money as you, except you’ve been living here for forty years and your rent is less than mine. And I’m so fucking bored, I’m going to explode!’ He’d been there too long. (Fifty-ninth Street Station.)
Of course, like all men Paul was responsible for his own fate. What was the use of him getting angry? Nobody cared. If he didn’t want to do the job anymore, he would just be replaced as if he was never there. But where was he to go? This was the scary part. Something was keeping his hand on the door handle. (Sixty-eighth Street Station.)
 
*
* *
 
The buildings rose before him like spirals of achieved dreams. He liked to stroll up the remaining few blocks, admiring the wildlife of the Upper East Side. It was obvious that in this part of town wealth was the fashion, one being instantly recognisable as someone who lived in the buildings or who serviced the rich in them. And if social inequality was highlighted, racial inequality was also prone to rear its ugly head. He had often observed black nannies pushing Aryan children in prams, but there were no black people living in his building. African Americans who were successful lived further up Central Park on the Westside, and, of course, were greatly outnumbered by their white counterparts. Paul had never thought of himself as part of this underclass, but since his coming out he was beginning to feel a solidarity with his disaffected ‘brothers and sisters’. If blacks were discriminated against, gays were somewhere further down the scale. To say one was gay was to encounter a begrudging acceptance from the world.
His parents had hit the roof on hearing their first born, their first contribution to the continuation of mankind, their great hope for the future, was a poof. His mother, a staunch Catholic, took to bed and couldn’t get out for a week. His father took the trouble of writing him a stern letter, warning of the dangers of AIDS and of growing old ALONE. Paul later learned his dad was about to fly out and bring ‘his son’ home, the inference being that someone had ‘got to him’ in New York. Fortunately he thought better of it, but still never quite accepted the truth, believing Paul’s sexuality some kind of cosmic error, a possible miscalculation of the Gods, or a freak of nature occurrence in which his sperm had been infected with this toxic substance – something beyond his responsibility.
Paul, deeply hurt by their response, refused to answer his phone for two weeks. Though harsh on his parents this let them know that if they didn’t change their tune, they wouldn’t be talking to their son at all. Then there was the inevitable tearful phone call with his mother.
— I love you, son.
— I love you, too.
— We can work it out.
— There’s nothing to work out.
— Maybe you’ll keep an open mind?
— What for? Nothing’s going to change.
— You never know what God has around the corner for you.
— I’ll make my own decisions about my future, thank you.
In one fell swoop, Paul had gone from being the golden boy to the rotten egg. Where once his praises were sung around coffee morning tables in the neighbourhood, now he was a change of subject. His existence had become the colour of Moira’s new dining-room curtains, his dreams the fact that Helen was having a Tupperware party next week, his romantic prospects the bad spell of rain they were enduring. Paul was in New York where they, his parents, would prefer, if the truth were known, he would stay.
Their reaction was a revelation. They were far more interested in how his homosexuality was going to affect them! Not once did they empathise with him, or ask him how he was feeling, or as to when he knew. His New York experience was proving no different, their main preoccupation being the kind of job he was doing or aspiring to do. They never mentioned rents or living expenses, or how the hell he was managing to survive in a foreign city on his own, so far away from home. He concluded that they’d always been like this. First it was Paul of ‘four grade A’s’, then ‘Captain of the school soccer team’, and now the ‘Marketing Executive’.
Achievement? Yes, he wanted it. But it had cost him. It was all he was to them.
 
*
* *
 
The locker room was littered with pictures of naked girls.
Paul’s eyes were drawn to two co-workers who were already changing into their uniforms. He dared not look for a moment longer than he should, just long enough to store their naked torsos in his memory, to be revisited in later private moments. He’d always been a spy around men. He’d grown up in their company, fought with them, played, smoked, studied, showered, always so achingly close, but so far. This was no place to indulge his fantasies. One false move could blow his cover and then he would have to leave. These colleagues weren’t any more enlightened than the baying mob Paul had left behind in Ireland. His main gripe was how they viewed gays as freaks, somehow weird, different. It was almost as if he was an alien species with two heads, three eyes, webbed feet and a tail swinging behind him.
As a rule, people didn’t bother him much. He didn’t give them reason to.