I like it! Right away there are some surprising bits. First the nurse is a male, not female. Like that as it turns us on our head, and immediately makes the story more 'real'. Then the lot of bad choice in a world where he doesn't have any... great paradox.
The second part is trying to be funny, but there are some awkward bits that made me stumble. When your wife is an ice queen, your best friend a sociopath, and "your" pimp owns your dad... who is "your" pimp? The guy is a nurse, so whey does he have a pimp... so confusing. Why not just "a" pimp. Might be more easy to read.
Also, ice queen and sociopath are so.... cliche. They don't say much. Just like you did with the pimp owning your dad description, can you find similar short ways of describing the ice queen and the sociopath? Ways that demonstrate their behaviour, rather than labeling it. Best if it's a strong evocative image, and also best if you can write parallel.
eg. ...your wife sleeps in the living room, your best friend kills dogs for fun, and a pimp owns your dad.
Thanks for your feedback
He's a licensed nurse by profession, but can't practice under current circumstances as half his people had to learn to take care of themselves, and the other half expects such work to be voluntary given the circumstances. Hence he has made different "choices", which also stuck him with said pimp.
I picked the profession for him for 3 reasons. One, the character was originally based on a crush I had in real life, who was going to become a nurse. The other is that I simply admire nurses for the intimately and inherently nurturing, kindly work they do. I wanted this caring nature to be part of the character's personality and couldn't think of a better profession to represent that. Especially since he's too young to be a vet, and animals kinda didn't feel right for him.
The third reason is that I wanted him to be the opposite of the macho man. Nurturing, gentle, sensitive. For one, because I like men like that. But also, the character is Arab, a culture which my own people, for whom I have mainly written this book, parade around as the bad guys, and his profession helped me as an anchor to write AWAY from the stereotypes Arab men have to deal with. I often worried that any anger outburst, any time his hand slipped (across a face), any time he shut down his wife in an argument or kicked a dog, readers already prejudiced against Arabs might feel reinforced. I hated the thought of creating another cliché for racists to gobble up. Where I'm from, negative stereotypes against Arab men are more prevalent than anywhere else, and I didn't want to risk feeding them. I can literally NEVER date an Arab man without my friends and family warning me that I'm signing up for domestic abuse, simply because the dude is Arab/Bedouin/Druze.
As for the ice queen and sociopath, I admit those are a copied sentence from my tiny flyers that can't hold much text...
