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Story

Island Paradise – Part 2: Chapter 07

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 7: Carefully Review Your Vocational Options

Next morning, I dunno, I actually felt better about goin to class.  You know when somebody says you should “get a life”?  But now it was like, yeah, I do have a life.  You can’t see it, cuz it’s outside of all this annoying shit I’m doin around here, but I do have it.  And my life could actually end up in a different place.  It probably won’t, but it could!  Just reading that SLP stuff—that was so hot!  In high school the English teacher talked about “escape literature,” which was supposed to be bad, but I didn’t think so.  Would I like to escape?  Hell yes!  Give me more of that stuff to read.

So that night I started reading through the Volunteering thing again, and doing it real slow this time, just to enjoy all the fantasies.  I noticed a lotta shit that I didn’t see before.  Like in the INTERVIEW step, when you read over what they said, they didn’t say they’d be asking what was your opinion about anything.  They didn’t say they were gonna “counsel” you or “advise” you or make some “suggestions” to you, the way people always did with me.  Especially my dad.  Have I told you I wished he’d been more of a man?  But anyways, they were inviting you to the interview so they could find out whether you would fit in, and then they would TELL you.  Also, when you got to the end of a Step where you were supposed to click the button to submit whatever kind of stuff they wanted from you, there was something like, “You will be notified whether you have permission to advance to the next Step.”  In other words, you weren’t in charge, they were.

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Story

Island Paradise – Part 2: Chapter 06

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 6: That’s Five Small Steps for a Man

So wow, and it only took me half the night.  If this is what “research” is like, forget it.  But here I was in the SLP arm of the Bureau of Such and Such, and I started dissecting it (clever medical image, right?):  Home, Mission Statement, Goals, Officials, Statistics, Invest in the SLP . . . .  Finally, there it was: Volunteer for the SLP.

So what did I see when I clicked on that?  Big headline, brown letters (natch!):

COMMIT TO SERVE

DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

 

Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it!  Patrick thought I didn’t.  Even I thought I didn’t.  But how would I find out?

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Story

Island Paradise – Part 2: Chapter 05

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 5: The Benefits of a College Education

So that was my last night at the Explorers Bay Resort.  I was sorta sad that I wouldn’t see Patrick and Dobie again, but I was sorta glad too.  Well, not “glad,” but I knew they didn’t really care about me, and actually why should they?  I was a new guy to have sex with and get money from, and that was OK, but there would always be another one.  They were living in their own world, and I was just somebody that showed up for a while.  And as far as missing them when I was gone–after all that sex, I felt like I’d never need to have sex again.

Ha! That was funny!

But fuck! I’d learned a lot.  Next morning, I was watching my dad arguing with the guy at the desk about the vodka that was charged to my brother’s room and watching my brother lookin all dark and, like, resentful about the lie he’d told when he said he never saw it and watching my mom going, “Come on, the limo’s waiting, come on now,” and everybody looking all dorky and stupid in their St. B tees and their high-priced sandals, and the slappies standing in their places lookin totally chill in their browns and their boots and their not-my-problem tude, and you could see their dicks under their shorts just lurking and lolling around after whatever went on last night and looking forward to whatever was gonna go on tonight.

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Story

Island Paradise – Part 2: Chapter 04

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 4: What I Saw from the Coffee Deck

The Coffee Deck was a place where you could sit in a chair and look out to sea.  Coffee was served from a cart at the entrance.  At the other end of the resort, the beach came right up to the “facilities,” but this end was on a hill, and the hill was all rustic with brush and shit.  If there was a trail down to the beach, nobody’d put up a sign for it.  But anyway, Patrick said to get there early, so I did.

When I arrived—at 7 a.m.!—there was nobody around except me and an old waiter manning the cart.  When he brought me my coffee he said, “It is unfortunate, sir.  They are working down there—underneath us.  Making the trail.  They do it every day. Often there is noise.  If so, you may wish to return in the afternoon.”  Then I heard it—the noise of men cutting and whacking and shoveling and hauling, somewhere beyond the polished rail that ran around the Coffee Deck.

I leaned over the rail, and I saw them—slappies, a whole crew of them.  They were dressed like Dobie and Patrick, but they were working at stuff that had nothing to do with queer boys from North America who did housework in the morning and sex in the afternoon.

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Story

Island Paradise – Part 2: Chapter 03

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 3: Sentimental Education

So I’d got up in the morning so bored I could hardy drag myself to the shower, and by fuckin five in the afternoon I was lying on the bed, thinking how easy it turned out to be to get a cock into your hole, and how easy and AWESOME it was to get your cock into some other dude’s hole, which is something I NEVER could picture that I would EVER do!  Ever!!!  Well, I could picture it, but . . . .

Dinner that night was . . . different.  I used to be kind of ashamed of my parents, who were, like, about 20 years older than they really were, and that’s why they went to resorts like that, so they could be around the other old people.  I don’t think I knew exactly how I felt before, but now I did, and when I looked at them, it wasn’t like they were even my parents, you know?  I’d just got misplaced somehow, and ended up with them.  But mainly I was looking at all the dudes in brown uniforms running back and forth, taking out the plates and filling the water glasses.  Fuck they were hot!  I wondered who they were screwing, out behind the kitchen or wherever.

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Story

Old Warrant

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By Hung in Handcuffs

I thought I would just be able to slide through that minor traffic ticket with a quick guilty plea wearing dark jeans and a bright white polo before catching the NE Regional to meet up at my buddy’s house to hang out. I was a young guy — and it was just usual traffic court so I would apologize, pay up, show the judge respect and call it a day.

Turns out there was a change of plans, there was a severely overdue fine from a parking ticket I had gotten back in college during finals that had somehow slipped my radar. Awkwardly the judge informed me that I was automatically remanded into custody since it was an outstanding warrant, in front of a packed courtroom of people who forgot to update their tags or had minor speeding tickets.

Shocked, I allowed myself to be quickly handcuffed behind my back before almost forgetting my bag. Still stunned, I quickly nodded back at my backpack sitting under the chair I had been waiting in for my ticket number to get called.

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Story

Island Paradise – Part 2: Chapter 02

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By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 2: Quaint Local Customs

You don’t need to be on St. Bevons very long before you know they have all different races there.  So Patrick was some kind of Asian and the other one–Dobie, like it said on his shirt–was white.  Not surprising.  And they have their own accent or dialect or whatever.  I mean you hear it but not from the ones that have any money, lol!  Patrick had it, but underneath you could tell that he had to be an American.  Same for the other one.  You knew it by how they said things.  Like when Dobie said, “Yeh, we be outta you way soon sir.”  These guys on the island, like cooks and so on, always said “waaaay,” like it might go on forever, and when they got to something like “sir,” it was “sirrrr.”

But these two guys didn’t sound like that.  They sounded like I sounded when Dan took me to his room and gave me a beer (thanks, Dan–finally!) and I did my imitation of islan’ talk till he told me I was drunk and I should knock it off.  So you can learn to talk that way, but you might not be perfect.  Anyhow, Dobie and Patrick pulled off the bedclothes and brought in some new sheets and fluffed up the pillows and went in the bathroom and scrubbed and flushed and mopped and sprayed, and all the time they were chattering away in islan’ but the way they cranked their shoulders and slung their butts was totally USA.

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Story

Island Paradise – Part 2: Chapter 01

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Island Paradise

In Two Parts

By Joshua Ryan

PART 2

 

Chapter 1: A Great Place for the Whole Family

Hey, what’s goin on?  I’m not an interruption–I’m Joel, and it’s my turn to talk.

You don’t know me yet, so I’m wondering how to introduce myself.  I guess it doesn’t matter.  Just think of me as the Boy Next Door.

You know the type.  I’m sorta tall, and sorta blond, and I was sorta popular in school.  Picture me raking leaves in the front yard, wearing a red flannel shirt, with a light blue tee underneath it.  I was never behind any white picket fence, but my family lived in a pretty good neighborhood and I went to a pretty good school, which means there was zero crime and only a couple fistfights out behind the gym.  Lack of tradition, lol!

Anyway, I went out for sports and was good in English and real good in math.  Dan—he’s my older brother—went to law school, so my parents thought I should go to med school.  The summer after my junior year in high school, my dad’s friend Dr. Lowery got me a volunteer gig at the hospital, which meant following the doctors and nurses around while they did their things.  When they were with a patient I had to say—“Hi, I’m Joel, I’m a volunteer, just learning stuff”—and the patients were always nice about that.  The nurses and doctors weren’t always nice to each other, but they were nice to me.  I wondered how I would feel if people actually weren’t that nice.  Maybe it would be more interesting!  Don’t ask me whether I wanted to be a doctor.  I don’t think I did, but I guess it was as good as anything.

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