Sarah Black: Wolf
July 4, 2007
God Damn it! If they do not stop playing with my databases and losing my posts I will hurt someone. I swear. Now where were we? Oh yeah, this crap.
Wolf by Sarah Black
From: Torquere Press
Dr. Jake Miller has cut himself off from the world after having contracted HIV while whoring around in the national park bathrooms while supposedly doing his job as a Park Ranger. Seems the jerk gave HIV to his wife too who is not happy with him over this fact. Out of his three kids his daughter Lisa is the only one that will still talk to him, the wife and his two sons will have nothing to do with him. I wonder why?
Unfortunately Lisa decides to run off to help a troubled family of wolves in the nearby Gila National Forest. Her college professor Dr. Nathaniel Briggs calls Jake up to get his help in finding her. Turns out Dr. Briggs is also HIV+ having contracted it from his lover who later committed suicide.
If you think for a minute this is a light hearted romp of a Gay Romance I have some Russian novels I can review that will leave you in stitches.
This is an early story by Sarah Black and once I read the blurb for this one I knew I had to read it. Let’s just get this out there. I have been HIV+ since 1989 so this story was just begging for me to read it.
Jake rubbed down between his eyes. Was he getting a migraine? He needed to take some aspirin before they left.
“She telling everyone?”Nathaniel shook his head. “I don’t think so. Besides, people are so wrapped up in their own pain, you know?” He shrugged. “They don’t have room for anyone else’s burdens.”
Jake got to work on his breakfast again. “What did she…?”
Nathaniel got up and went to the stove, poured another cup of coffee. “I think she only told me, Jake. And she told me that you picked up HIV somewhere, and nobody knew you were sleeping with men until you gave HIV to her mother, who is dying because of it. And the rest of the family, and all of your friends, have ostracized you. You’ve put yourself into voluntary exile, in punishment for your sins.”Jake nodded, his food abandoned. “That’s about the size of it.”
This was the first warning sign. I love imperfect heroes with dark pasts and guilt. This however is not much in the past here. In fact, it is still going on and he seems pretty comfortable with his daughter running around the campus telling everyone his life story.
That sucks in my book. I would smack her one just for making my HIV status the topic of her conversations but add in the whole betrayal thing and man. I would be most angry with her.
Jake nodded, a little reluctantly. “I am, because I’m sure there’s a reason I should be. I just can’t imagine what that reason might be. I keep thinking I’ll figure it out, why I need to keep living. They’ll lose the life insurance if I shoot myself. I don’t know. And Lisa’s mother is not dying, unless she’s dying of spite. She’s taking the medicine, too, and enjoying being a feminist martyr. I’ve ruined her life several other times before this. But giving her HIV, that was a big one, no question.”
As I was saying, I love dark imperfect heroes but not one that calls the mother of his three children a “feminist martyr” because she happens to be a little pissed at him over his betrayal of their wedding vows and the little fact he gave her a terminal illness. How am I supposed to want to see this jerk in a new relationship? This is a Gay Romance right?
“I know this is awkward for you, Jake. I’m sorry. I know so much about you, so much personal stuff, and you didn’t have any say in it. I feel like you’re a really private person, and the dog just got into the laundry basket and dragged your dirty underwear out into the middle of the living room.”
Jake smiled. “I think I’m just used to being alone. I’ve never taken my medicine in front of anyone else, not even Lisa. My ex-wife, now, she probably takes her AZT with a video camera rolling.”
“What do you mean? Come help me with this firewood.” They walked back over to the downed tree and started breaking the smaller branches over their knees and feeding them into the fire.
“She tried to convince the DA to arrest me for attempted murder. She’s video-documenting the course of her illness and death, in case they ever change their mind and decide to toss my sorry ass in jail.”
Nathaniel looked up, surprised. “Are you kidding? Why does she think you gave her HIV, anyway? Maybe she gave it to you.”
“I don’t think so. I never saw her when I was out trolling the park for a quick blow job. Besides, we were just acting out our assigned roles, you know what I mean? Our lives have been set in stone since we were teenagers.”
Nathaniel shook his head. “Tell me.”“I was seventeen. Her mother called me to get over there quick, the rabbit had died. I walked into her house. Gail had flung herself face down on the sofa, sobbing like Scarlett O’Hara. Her father’s glowering from the corner, balling his hands into fists. Her best friend’s perched next to her, stroking her hair and making all these soothing little noises. And that’s what it’s been like between us since. She’s the victim, I’m the asshole who ruined her life. So it was really no big surprise for either of us when I gave her HIV.”
“Trolling the park for a blow job? That sounds real lonely, Jake.”
Jake turned away, and his voice sounded like he was strangling. “That’s what I really regret. I can’t get it out of my mind. I think about those guys. Some of them were so young, and I didn’t even know their names, most of the time. Tad, Todd, I never cared. I hope I didn’t make any of those guys sick.” He cleared his throat and looked up.
“If we don’t get this fire going and change the subject pronto, you’re gonna be eating peanut butter crackers for supper.”
What The Fuck? Hey! Wow, wait a second!
First off this jerk, this doctor, this scum bag, has no fucking clue there are these things called condoms available over the counter at most corner 7/11s? Is protection from pregnancy and STDs the little woman’s job in his opinion? I mean, with that “feminist martyr” crap he is spouting I get the feeling that Dr. Jake Miller is a chauvinistic PIG FROM HELL. Not to mention all the self hate he displays for only a brief mention of all the men he probably infected also. All those men he was so hot for when he should have been home taking care of his wife and kids.
The first kid was a mistake. I can handle that. The second kid and the third kid were what? Forced on him by the eeeeevil bitch that trapped him into marriage? This with his continued harping on how she is somehow overreacting to HIS betrayal of their marriage, HIS giving her a terminal illness, and HIS public shaming of her by having “come out” in such a fucked up way.
Altogether this guy is a royal fucking jerk. At no time in this whole story does he admit just once he should have talked to her and been honest about the fact he was bi-sexual (The kids… I mean three, come on, catch a clue.) or gay *snort*. At no time does Jake really state he is responsible for the mess his life has become. Again and again I get this feeling he sees himself as yet another unfortunate victim when he chose to act in the way he did. There is no personal responsibility here for his own actions, no feeling that he honestly regrets anything but getting HIV and getting caught. Otherwise he feels he is spotless. What an asshole!
Let’s look up the definition of Involuntary Manslaughter for shits and giggles, shall we? (an unintentional killing but with a willful disregard for life) Oh yeah, I think Jake with his little “Condom? What’s a condom?” problem needs to be a little less nonchalant when it comes to the legal ramifications of his irresponsible sex practices. If she dies he could fall under this in a court of law. He most likely will not, but he could, it is possible. Where is the motivation here for him to change his love of strange sex in bathrooms with other men when he figures out he is not going to die tomorrow? I think he will not, not with the drinking and the denial and I hate to think he probably will infect others eventually.
Do not get me wrong after ten years in the Navy I can handle the fact male sexuality is not black and white. That due to our culture’s prejudiced nature married men suppress their sexual attraction towards other men all the time and in doing so find relief in the local public restrooms and parks. Hell, I have even been there. But… I do not lie to myself. I take responsibility for my own actions and try to live my life so I have as few regrets as possible. Not disavow my mistakes like this guy is doing and blame peoples negative reactions towards me on some stupid conservative pablum like a gay Rush Limbaugh. If I know they have a good reason to hate me, I will freely admit it has nothing to do with my being gay or HIV or whatever. If I make a mistake I try my best not to depend on shaky justifications and face the truth.
Grade D. For the simple fact I could not possibly ever want to see this asshole fuck anyone else over in another relationship with the admitted lies and demeaning attitude towards women he displays. It shows there are probably other deeper issues that simply do not make him a prize catch for anyone gay or straight.
What do other people say…
TwoLips Reviews
Joyfully Reviewed
Coffee Time Romance Reviews
Fallen Angel Reviews
First of all: a misogynist bitter about his HIV infection yet guilt-ridden over what he might have done before discovering it is too dark and imperfect, but a vampire (HIV metaphor) who actually kills people and can’t help it (metaphor not for misogyny or bitterness, but actual forcible spreading of infection), like in half of the romance novels you review, is OK? Maybe you’re taking this too personally.
I think that what I see in the quoted sections above, which I assume you have selected as examples of why you don’t like the character or the book, is a very reasonable portrayal of someone who’s learning to live with HIV, completely unable to cope with the notion that he did it to himself, in an environment less supportive than San Francisco, and I certainly know gay men who are way more misogynistic than this guy based on the quotes in your review. (My partner is one of them, and what I see of Jake up above reminds me very much of the vital, sexy, deeply flawed rural men with HIV whom my partner was counseling back when I met him. To an uncanny degree.) I had never seen a character in one of your reviews that I feel like I may have already met and hung out with, until the day this review went up.
Not all gay men have a support system that they can, or even want to, fall back on, and gay men (or MSM, as it sounds like Jake might think of himself if he thinks about his sexuality at all) outside of big urban areas might as well be back in 1987 like when my first lover got diagnosed.
Not to mention that this book appears to tackle the very real phenomenon of gay men stuck in loveless marriages as a result of heterosexual experimentation, and then ending up the “bad guy” in the eyes of family, press, and the law. Most of them do not get to move to Chelsea or the Castro and start with a clean slate. Even the fathers’ rights groups poop on them regularly. Most of them have to live with their mess, paying tribute every month to the very person who trapped them for 18 years or more. Some, like maybe this character, embrace the idea that it really is all their fault and maybe they’re just bad.
I seldom read romances myself, but I think it’s refreshing to see a book aimed at gay men with a gay protagonist who’s so unlikable and forthright. Maybe it’s a sign that gay romance novels are starting down the path to actually becoming literature rather than just a way to pass the time. Or maybe the author just finds this kind of man deeply sexy and sympathetic, as I do myself.
In conclusion, I have no use for a romance novel where the protagonist is an angelic, selfless hero or a silently suffering martyr. Neither one is sexy and neither one would resonate for me. It sounds to me like she’s setting this tragic, broken character up to redeem himself and find peace, if not happiness.
If I were the bodice ripper type, I’d totally be checking this one out.
Well, I think you are right I handle reading about Vampires a bit different than I handle HIV. Probably because I have been HIV+ for a long time and seen all sorts of real life issues around it also because Vampires are fictional.
Yes, you are right I relate my own real life HIV status to the story and yes that is going to color my opinion.
I also in real life do not date men I know are married for the same reasons I do not give them much slack if they are caught as so many of the gay men of a certain age I have spoken to can tell you. I do not think of them in any way a “victim”. They made choices, maybe bad ones, but still choices and as I said there are condoms for use at any drug store, there is always honesty and communication that can change the course of your life. So I find their excuses and their lies to their wives about who and what they are doing sad and abusive and plain demeaning. Most seem motivated from their illusion of how the little women is some fragile creature unable to handle harsh truths of real life. Something I was raised to understand was inherently sexist and insulting. Then there are the ones simply unable to handle the very thought of divorce or what it would do to the kids despite what they are already doing to their families.
The final thing is this is supposedly a romance story, a work of fiction that provides what is called an HEA (Happy Ever After). The hero in the story should be someone who has come to terms with his mistakes if you are writing him as having made serious ones. I would expect him to be handling those mistakes in a way that makes you, the reader, root for him to have another chance at a romantic involvement, not to further fuck up his life and someone else’s in the process. I do not find it good I spent most of the story questioning Jake’s integrity.
You might be right, in that his views are somehow more realistic for some sad isolated immature man in denial of the calamity of his own creation. He could very well simply need counseling and support.
But… I have all sorts of issues seeing him as gay romance material no matter how unrealistic that is.
Now about…
Gay Literature I find is in reality mostly a critically unsupported pile of books with more histrionics than actual story depth. Most (Patricia Nell Warren, Gordon Merrick, Andrew Holleran) I have read once and put away as figments of a certain time. Like milk by products they have exceeded their “use by” date.
You might be surprised what is currently available even in Gay Romance that excels far past the abilities and talents of those critically acclaimed authors and their overly hyped books.
And I think (still having not read more than your quotes and the author’s excerpt) that maybe not making him standard gay romance material raises this book above the level of cookie cutter boy meets boy, boy betrays boy, boy ends up with boy anyway stuff. This guy is sad, angry and tragic - he doesn’t show the shallow kind of impotent rage frequently created by half-baked plot setups, but seemingly endless despair and bitterness that comes from knowing you created all your own problems no matter how you try to shift the blame or rationalize them. He’s a real character, not just a literary blow-up doll meant to be paired with another just like him.
Is it even really meant as a romance? The excerpt the author chose on her homepage makes me think she’s trying to stretch her legs a bit (though looking back, it seems you weren’t all that impressed with her other work, so maybe writing in a way that doesn’t appeal to romance fans is her thing), and the store she chose to sell it through lumps romance and drama together. “Romance” and “love” appear nowhere in its description, and it paints Jake’s new potential relationship as a B-story.
I even think the wolf in the author’s excerpt is meant to be a metaphor for Jake himself, and the conflict between him and Nathaniel is really telling. This looks to me like more of a coming-to-terms and getting-on-with-your-life book than a falling-in-love book.
Also, vampires may be fictional, but so is this guy. Sure, there are real guys who cheat on their wives, and I have no more sympathy for them than I do for their wives when they’re left in the dust. (Still screw ‘em though. The guys, anyway. In this day and age they’re the only ones you can be almost sure won’t start text messaging “miss u” 10 times a day after you’re done with them.)
But anyway, there are also guys who pass on their “gift” in exactly the way vampires do, minus the goth trappings. Since the metaphor is so transparent, I see them as being equivalent. I know I walk into a bar nowadays and wonder which guys are “vampires” (the ones who won’t tell you beforehand and will always be fresh out of condoms) and which aren’t. You do that after the number of near-misses I’ve had. I feel like I should be carrying a wooden stake. Metaphorically speaking.
Maybe this is one of the rare examples of a gay love story meant to appeal not to mainstream urban gay men, but to those among us who can’t stand the cities and all that comes with them. In this I include the people who would blame a gay man for caving into the very real societal pressure they can’t imagine and then basking in schadenfreude when his witch of an ex-wife makes a fool of him in public. The kind of people who can’t in a million years understand why the rural HIV-positive MSM’s can never, ever get some “counseling and support” without ending their lives as rural MSMs and turning into just another gay guy from the city.
To someone like them — maybe someone like you — Jake is someone to scorn, not adore and want to help. To me, he’s me…. if I’d come out just a few years later or hadn’t beat the odds when that rubber broke.
We’re not all Castro clones anymore, not even on the internet. This romantic character may not be romantic to you, but speaking as someone who’s had more romantic encounters with men from the woods, the mountain and the trailer park than men from the bars and community centers, I can tell you the character and his situation are about as romantic as I’ve ever seen in one of these things. If I could be sure I wouldn’t be supporting DRM, I’d probably have already sprung for the $2.49 — I assume it’s a novella, or shorter — so that my partner and I could find out what happens.
Who knows, maybe this book sells better to customers in Montana than in South Beach. It already does more for me than Mr. Benson — closest thing I’ve ever read to a gay romance novel — and I’ve barely read any of this one.
Well, I personally after so many years of being infected and watching a lover die I would not call HIV a “gift” nor would I equate a horrible terminal illness with some silly mythological fiction of immortal life after death.
That’s just me.
I would not personally generalize rural gay men by saying they all think the same way any more than I would generalize that urban gay men all think the same way. A couple of my lovers with a heavy rural upbringing (Wisconsin and North Carolina) have been far more intellectually and socially sophisticated than I myself. So I think I can go out on a limb and speak from personal experience when saying there really is not much difference in this day and age. Most folks I know can and do afford a college education and travel to gain experience. Was both Sarah Black’s main characters in this story not a doctor? Would Jake’s personal values not be judged by those attributed to an educated person?
Honestly, I bought this book from a “gay romance” site. That might be a negative in your book but that is what I review here, That is what I read, That is what the book was sold as. So my critique of it on that basis, as a Gay Romance,stands. If Sarah Black wants make the excuse that she wanted to “stretch her legs” and expand her vocabulary writing-wise I strongly suggest she first display the ability to enunciate within the given format she is writing in and then I am all for dazzling me with her brilliance to reach outside of said format as long as she labels and sells her books as such.
I think the main point being if she does not want to be reviewed as a Gay Romance then simply do not sell it to me as a Gay Romance.
Sorry to interrupt the exchange of comments, but I read some quotations that catched my attention.
First of all, I must say that I’ve not read the book, and my only information is the one exhibited in this page.
Now, I can tell that the character, in my opinion, is a bit too whinny. The sentence where he says that her wife is the victim and he is the asshole that ruined his life… too much. I mean, he is supossed to be a DOCTOR!!!!! How on Earth can he be so careless. And of course that he fucked up her life (although I do not like any kind of martyrs, they bore me). If I were the wife, first of all I would cut something that hangs, and then I would ask for divorce. Really, all this lies in society make me sick.
And please, be responsible for your actions, but do not be hypocritical: why have two more children? What is more, why on Earth get married? I do not remember it well, but I think that there was a case in Italy where the husband had to pay a compensation to the wife for hiding that he was gay! Maybe, that reflects that women do not like to be lied, and you know about scorned women… Everybody has its problems, I will be the first one to support those discriminated (I can’t stand it), but please, I can not respect those who lie to their partners that way. Nobody obliges you, it is a free choice, so do not put me through a nightmare because of you.
In a romance, I will apreciate heroes that have a past, a psichology, motives and so on, but not someone simply irresponsible, shallow and whinny.
Finally, I must say that I find it difficult to believe that in these days, where STD’s are such a problem, specially the HIV, a character that is supossed to have some knowledge (doctor), is so careless. Even it is fiction, what kind of message does it leave? When governments and organizations do their best (in some countries, and despite the interference of people such as the church) to reach everybody with the information, and prevent the spreding of them!
PS: in the internet days, differences between towns and rural villages are reduced. I for example reply from Spain.
Oh no interruption at all, in fact you pointed out the exact main issue I had.
Romance is a format with a few hard rules that require a believable and responsible hero.
Not someone desperately flawed and unlikable. I found the hero here both flawed and unlikable.
The sad thing is…
This book could easily have been corrected in editing had the whole topic of the ex-wife been left unmentioned or unexplained. It was a short story and did not need so much background information relayed in detail. I am sure it was thought to give the story a controversial tone but instead it poisoned the character badly.
Hmmmm, this is definitely a book that I won’t be picking up.
I don’t get Jake’s problem. Men leave their wives and children all the time. Shit, most of my friends who had their parents get divorced wished that it had happened sooner because they could tell that something was wrong. Unhappy parents=unhappy children. If my Dad gave my mother a terminal disease, cheated on her, lied to her constantly throughout their entire relationship, and had the immaturity to make remarks insulting my mother because she is pissed? Then I wouldn’t talk to that bastard. He basically made sure that my mother would be stolen away from me way to soon. I would have to see my mother every day and wonder if she would make it to my graduation from college or my wedding. You know, if he had some balls and some decency, then Dr. Jake would have broke it off with his ex-wife when he realized that he had a thing for cock before he started giving out diseases (to apparently young men who probably don’t know any better and who will spread HIV) and kids were born. I would be pissed if I was her. Knowing that her husband had cheated on her many times with many people without protection, gave her a disease, and now she has to wonder what she did wrong. Jesus. Just reading the excerpts ticked me off. This isn’t a real story, but from the comments above and my own experience just show that there are assholes like that who can own up to their own mistakes and blame everyone else. Straight or gay.
My sister got chlamydia from her boyfriend of six years and she didn’t find out until she had to be rushed to the hospital because of it. She had apparently had it for a few years and this guy was the only one she had slept with. In fact she lost it to this bastard when she was sixteen and he was twenty-one. She can’t have children because the disease and the infections scarred her insides. And, you know what happened when she told the bastard? He said it was her problem. She had ditched him a few months before so he was already in a relationship with another sixteen year old girl. He was twenty-seven! Karma got him in the end though. He’s now a meth dealer who samples his product too much. Thats what should have happened to Dr. Jake in this book instead of giving him his happily ever after with some poor schmuck who should have known better.
No wonder you are pissed off about this book! I’m mad and I didn’t even read it! Sorry for the TMI and long comment!
Well you know someone out there gave me HIV. I like to think whatever sex we had was worth it and the poor bastard did not know his situation either.
In fact if it is that NYC bartender I am thinking of OH BABY! OH MY! Hung like a… and he knew how to, well you know, use ever fucking inch. Anyway, that is how I just get over it and consider it all living and learning.
But I wonder… Would Jake Miller consider me a “feminist martyr” when I took that kitchen knife to his whoring balls for doing to me what he did to her? Because you know all is fair in love & war.
LOL I have so much fun with you blog! No going around things. Please, keep on the same line. Hugs