Johnny Would You Love Me if My Dick Were Bigger Read online

  Published in 2017 by the Feminist Press

  at the City University of New York

  The Graduate Center

  365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

  New York, NY 10016

  feministpress.org

  First Feminist Press edition 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Brontez Purnell

  First printed 2015 by Rudos and Rubes Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First printing June 2017

  Cover and text design by Drew Stevens

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

  ISBN: 978-1-9369-3214-6

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger b/w Sex with Junkies

  Why I Am a Restaurant Worker

  My Gay Uncle

  Positive Results

  Shit, Poop Dick, Vomit, and Other Unfortunate Circumstances

  Experimental (Porno), Trash, and No Star

  An Intervention

  The Assignment or Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger: Part 2

  How to Survive Shitty Men and How to Survive Being a Shitty Man*

  The Politics of Bug Chasing

  Tour Diaries: Texas

  Science Fiction/Competition Fiction

  Tour Diaries: Seattle

  True Love

  Entrepreneurship or The Recipe for Lemonade

  Writing Exercises*

  Deep Witchcraft: House of Prometheus

  More Bathhouse Diaries

  The Ballad of Mr.

  Newest Dances: Floor Work

  Tour Diaries: Denver

  Trio in Southern Gothic

  The Brothers Off the Block

  Tres Flores

  The Problem with Comedy or Why I Am Dead Fucking Serious

  Healing

  Natal Chart

  Deep Witchcraft and Pot Reviews

  Juvenilia: Writings from Fag School #1

  Juvenilia: Writings from Fag School #2

  Juvenilia: Romantic Follies

  Blackout Reviews

  Nightmare Party Reviews

  Cruising Reviews

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS

  ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS

  JOHNNY WOULD YOU LOVE ME IF MY DICK WERE BIGGER B/W SEX WITH JUNKIES

  I was an American Waiter bored at work. I had been suffering from an acute depression for two and a half years. I woke up from a twohour nap and was about to miss my 12:05 a.m. BART train to the city. I never slept because I knew I was meant to be tired. I woke up feeling like God had punched me. I put on facial moisturizer and left the house without jerking off. I had worked for way too long at the diner and was privy to some pretty tawdry bullshit.

  In that movie Milk I had seen how SF was once a bunch of dudes with beards (or mustaches) and flannel. Clone core. I hate nostalgia. This was not a blip on the cultural screen; this bullshit was still happening. Daily. Every night before my shift I light a prayer candle, sprinkle goat’s blood over my altar, and say my chant: “I will fuck, kill, and eat all you Castro debutante bitches.”

  All night they play the same shit on the jukebox, and after years of repeated listening I finally allow myself to say it in my head: I fucking hate the Smiths. Every time I hear them all I picture is Morrissey alone in a room crying and jerking off simultaneously.

  Sometimes I don’t know if I feel like I don’t fit in because that’s what’s actually happening, or if I’ve been a punk so long that I really don’t know how to fit in, or if it’s a straight-up combo of the two. My therapist really fucks with me about it. She says shit like: “Is it hard being one of the few black fag boys in a sea of white boys?” and “Is it hard being poor in such an affluent city?” and “Do you feel like these factors affect who you date/who will date you?” I always want to ignore questions about race and class because the true answers to these questions never seem to work in my favor, and also I feel like if I can just ignore it, it will (hopefully) all go away.

  Those true answers are no less true than the answers I have come up with, those being: that I do not not fit in because I’m black; I do not not fit in because I’m poor; I don’t fit in because I want to fucking kill and I want to find the boys that feel the same way I do; I know that they are out there.

  I don’t date anyone, and all the couples come in on Saturday night. I hate seeing couples because they make me feel lonely. I’m not discouraged overall, and I’ve fucked too many people’s boyfriends to question my desirability, but my inner child won’t let me not feel like something unfair and conspiracy-like is going on here. Maybe it’s the way I dress. On my way to pick up a burger, I look in the fulllength mirror on the way to the kitchen, and after dissing the clone boys I’m ready to admit some things about my fashion victimness. I dress like an asshole Berkeley student from some undecipherable decade midcentury. I hate nostalgia. I’m talking awkward glasses, anonymous black shoes, plain white tee, and fucking khakis. Like, who the fuck wears khakis? I basically dress like I did in grade school, and I’m now ready to forgive all the bullies for kicking my ass. I look like a dweeb. But if you dress like a nerd, people give you the once over and never really guess that you’re falling apart on the inside. Or that you want to kill. Camouflage. Urban camouflage. The ultimate problem with dressing like a child from the sixties (and being black) is that you can say to yourself “I’m dressed classic American” or “I’m a modernist” or “I dress like the black dude in Weezer.” The problem is that the rest of the world doesn’t have that much art, and all those Eastern European/Australian/Midwestern/Clone Core tourist assholes who pollute the restaurant see is Urkel. Steven fucking Urkel. It always hurts. This bitch called me Urkel one night and I almost cried, but then I remembered that it was the future and I could certainly get away with slapping a white woman. I didn’t though. Like, what if she slapped me back? What then? I had no time to entertain a standoff.

  Fifteen assholes walk in the door and I have a panic attack. Ten more walk in behind them and, as is always the case in my life, I ignore my own emotional needs for a job well done. The rush leaves and then shit really hits the fan. Michael walks in with Johnny. Me and Johnny fucked a week ago and I even told him he didn’t have to use a rubber so he would like me more. I felt bold enough to ask why he didn’t call me and he said plain as uninked paper “Because his dick is bigger.” I wanted to be mad but knew that you can’t really argue with that reasoning. My mom had a saying for worrying about things you can’t change: “Your arms are too short to box with God.” Apparently, my dick was too.

  Fuck this. I’m getting high. I bought some shitty coke from the cook, got off at 5:00 a.m., and went straight to the parking lot of the Travelodge in the Castro. But wait! This isn’t shitty blow! This is good blow! Or speed? I’ve never felt like this. Sweating, short of breath, dick rock hard, and lonely. So fucking lonely. I meet this guy who looks like he’s tried every drug ever offered to him. He takes me to a room in the Lodge that he’s sharing with some other dude and that shit looks like a tornado had hit it. Nasty stuff everywhere, it looked like I could actually get bitten by a snake if I walked in. He says we don’t have to stay and that he lives in the Fill
more. On the walk to his apartment I learn:

  1.He’s a drummer.

  2.He’s into jazz. Really into jazz.

  3.He plays drums in a jazz band in Berkeley.

  and

  4.He likes to shoot up.

  Before we walk into the apartment he casually says “I need to shoot up before we fuck.” At first I pause out of modesty but then remembered that I can do whatever the fuck I feel like. It’s too late to try to fuck someone else; this ship was sailing. He puts on a jazz record and dips his syringe into a cup of water and says “Don’t drink out of this cup,” and even with the very limited knowledge I have of his “lifestyle” I remember the thought bubble above my head reading DUH BITCH.

  We started fucking and like the animal I am I got right the fuck in there. I was like “Yeah, take all that little dick ya fucking junkie. You ain’t got no future and neither do I!” (giggling in my head like a little school girl the entire time) when all of a sudden he was like “My roommate lives down the hall. She’s chubby. We can fuck her too.” Ewwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!! Did he really fucking just say that??? But then there’s really no fuel left to be scandalized when your barebacking some junkie you just met. Fuck it. Charge it to the game. Or not. This dude was clearly an asshole. The sun had come up and he told me he liked the way I dressed and that we should be boyfriends. I took a mental survey of the scene around me. I was in the Fillmore with my junkie, jazz drummer boyfriend, fucking to jazz records dressed like an asshole Berkeley student from the fifties. Dude fuck that. That’s some beatnik shit and I hate nostalgia. I ran out of the apartment completely naked.

  EPILOGUE

  Three days after Johnny told me he loved Michael more (because his dick was bigger) I began to get all affected. First I started binge eating, then I started cutting myself, then I took control. I did some yoga, rinsed out my ass, moisturized, put on a pair of black Calvin Klein mesh briefs, black Levi’s skinny jeans, monochrome black Adidas, black gloves, black faux football face paint (like Left Eye from TLC—RIP) and a black skullcap. A gold chain and one diamond earring. I sprayed on some Calvin Klein OBSESSION. I either looked like a hip cat burglar or a member of the Black Bloc. It was time for justice. I got a black bag and put in a black rope with a grappling hook attached to the other end and a brick with a note attached. I snorted some X (left over from the night before) for a calming effect, and hopped on my bike en route to Johnny’s apartment. I locked up my bike and shimmied up the side roof ladder to the top of the fourstory apartment building, from there I took the grappling hook and rappelled down the side of the building till I was on the ground looking up at his second-story apartment window. (I could have just walked to the other side of the building from the sidewalk but I was addicted to the drama of the grappling hook.) I said a prayer to Ogun (the African god of war), and with solid aim and dexterity threw the brick through Johnny’s window, laughing my ass off as I ran back to my bike. I imagined the look on Johnny’s face when he took the note off the brick, revealing the message (written in crayon) “JOHNNY WOULD YOU LOVE ME IF MY DICK WERE BIGGER?”

  (Two months later Johnny forgave me and threw a brick through my window with a note attached that said YES.)

  WHY I AM A RESTAURANT WORKER

  I really hate my therapist. Like, really. The subject of this session was supposed to be “Why I Am a Restaurant Worker” and why I can’t find the inclination to switch to another line of work. But then, of course, the conversation degenerates into my absent father and how I was molested. Every session dissolves into my absent father and me being molested. So boring! (In the head of the therapist there was this invisible golden string that linked a profession where you’re essentially performing to being an actual performer to this need for attention which goes back to my absent father and me being molested. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.) I can’t believe I pay twenty-five dollars sliding scale just to be fucked with, but I do it cause none of my friends will listen to me bitch anymore so I have to pay someone. This is called “what the fuck?” I’d really only worked in restaurants, and ultimately knew it suited me best. I was a nervous soul. I never sat still much. I liked standing on my feet, being present and engaged with people (or charmingly aloof), and flirting with people for tips. Despite everything I knew about the world around me, I still had a genuine love for humankind (I wasn’t sure how, I just felt lucky that I indeed did). I liked eye contact with strangers. I liked being a focal point. The times being what they were, everyone I knew was either a server, a bartender, bar back, hooker, porn star—sorry porn actor, or an office worker. I never really fucked with computers so I stayed in restaurant work ’cause that’s where I started.

  There was the barbecue and catfish restaurant many of my distant cousins worked at. Such and such barbecue that took its name from my hometown in Alabama. I could wear whatever I wanted there. The floor and kitchen were huge and a general sense of unruliness went. The restaurant was thirty years old and had two locations, one off the highway and one a mile and a half down (the original location). My family ate at the original every Sunday after church as a tradition. I worked at “the new one” as it was called. I was a busboy and prep. Every weekend I made upwards of eighty (fucking) gallons of sweet tea.

  I leave reeking of buttermilk, onion powder, and cornmeal mix, or rather, hushpuppies—what that combination is called when fried together. I get sexually harassed by this boy I went to kindergarten with before I switched schools; this big white mean redneck motherfucker. His nine-month-pregnant girlfriend worked in the kitchen with him, big-bellied, sliding on the greasy floor. I worry about her a lot. He’s a dick. He calls me faggot a lot and always talks (specifically to me) about how big his dick is. This one time he gets me in the bathroom, turns out the lights, and grabs my dick. This other time while peeling onions in the kitchen, he slaps me in the nuts so hard I can’t breathe and crouch down on the greasy, wet floor for a full minute. I was relieved when he left to join the army. (Though now, years later, I miss him every day.) It’s in the same restaurant I meet Jamie. Jamie is this big ol’ redneck girl. Six foot, 230, like big. Now as a teen, I am somewhat of a misfit, 265 pounds, five foot seven, nerd glasses, and this weird affected valley-girl accent from listening to too many Bikini Kill records. (I hold on to the accent cause it’s a cool/useful way to disarm the redneck clientele.) Did I mention my child-bearing hips and girly ass? Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty fucking hot. Jamie loves me—especially my child-bearing hips and girly ass. Lesbians love that shit. Perverts. She can’t keep her hands off of me. She always tells me how much she loves my child-bearing hips and girly ass and how hot I am. She tells me that I’m hot so much I actually start to believe it. It makes me slightly uncomfortable, but when you’re young attention feels good and she’s not some creepy dude. She says, “You know you’re gay right?” And it makes everything okay. She talks a lot about getting fisted and I’m not really sure what she means. She checks out nearly everyone, and I remember wanting to be the type who could check out anybody. It seems romantic. She sneaks me into my first gay club at seventeen and that “do you think you’re better off alone” song is playing. She drinks and fucks a lot. She’s super Christian (somehow) and actually slaps me for saying goddamn this one time. We have so much in common. We’re chubby, andro-ish, both abuse survivors, and both very, very stuck here. I often wonder what ever happened to her.

  Every spring there are Civil War reenactments up the road near Tennessee. The participants eat at the restaurant afterwards as a tradition. I’m serving sweet tea to a room full of men dressed like Confederate soldiers and it hits me—I have to get the fuck out of here. I decide to move to Chattanooga. My last night of work, somehow (something that, years later, is still really unclear to me) a rumor gets spread through town and to my very Christian family that I’m joining a cult up by the Tennessee line near the mountains. My aunt comes one hour before my shift ends, and tells me I’m going to be institutionalized if I try to move away. One hour later thirteen me
mbers of my family show up with cameras and Bibles. I try to get into my friend’s car and my family attacks me and my friends. I’m being pulled out of the car and my cousin is punching me in the neck. “Have you forgotten God? Have you forgotten how to pray?” she says as she’s beating my ass. All the trashy waitresses are outside smoking and watching the whole thing. The cops show up and shit gets even more stupid. My mom relays her version of my life story to the cop, and the redneck asshole looks me up and down (in that “tsk tsk wayward son” kind of way) and says “Wish my son got to go to college for free” (I know what he secretly means by this, and it stands true to this day that I’ve never seen one red fucking cent from that United Negro College Fund). I know this peckerwood can fuck off, but I decide not to talk shit to the white man with the gun. Even in the face of all this trauma, I know this is all called “beside the point.” I’m eighteen and allowed to go and my fearless punk friends, though beaten and harassed, are still waiting for me (even though the cops fucked with them), and this is why I still fuck with punks (in the good sense, not like the cops did) to this day. I remember thinking Holy shit, I’m really out of here. They deliver me to Chattanooga the next day and I immediately get a job at the Pickle Barrel—another fucking restaurant.

  Today, my mom and family still laugh their asses off when someone asks “Whatever happened to your son who ran off with those white devil-worshippers?

  MY GAY UNCLE

  It was five minutes before 8:00 p.m.; I was almost done with my shift. Afterward I was to meet my uncle and his husband for dinner in the Western Addition. My uncle had worked in the same diner as me in the eighties. He had moved from Oakland when he was sixteen (“I was too girl for Oakland”) and into an apartment at Eighteenth and Collingwood in the Castro. He said on a good Saturday night he could just wait on his second-story balcony until the bars let out and throw down his keys to cute passersby without saying a word. Sounded rad to me!