Brontez Purnell, whose “explorations of blackness, queerness, maleness, and Southernness take sharp, confident turns between raunch and rhapsody,” has been publishing, performing, and curating in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than ten years. He is the author of the cult zine Fag School, frontman for the band the Younger Lovers, and the founder and choreographer of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. He is the author of The Cruising Diaries, Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger, and Since I Laid My Burden Down.

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An excerpt from Since I Laid My Burden Down:

Before DeShawn left for Alabama and before his uncle’s death, others had gone. For instance, Arnold was dead. Dead, dead, dead as Latin. He sank with the Titanic. He flew the coop. That monkey had gone to heaven. It seemed that all the wild men around him were dying faster than he could keep track. Arnold was not the first, but he was of note.

DeShawn received the message on the morning train, on the way to classes in Oakland, and he hopped on the next train back to nowhere. There was nowhere to mourn the dead boy. Arnold had not lived in any one place for long, and had pulled so much shit that no one really loved him that much anymore. Or maybe they were waiting to love him again after he climbed out of the hole he had dug himself. Like he would appear out of thin air, a magician’s assistant with a tiara and a sash that said “Healed” or something. The dead boy died before completing that magic trick. He would be that type of memory: one to forget. Three days of crying ensued and then a phone call. Arnold’s final roommate called DeShawn and asked very sweetly if he would clean the dead boy’s room. DeShawn said yes.  Read More