Brontez Purnell Is Making A Beautiful, Bloody Mess
The Poet and Punk Icon Challenging Queer Paradigms
- Interview: Daniel Spielberger
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: Brontez Purnell
“We didn’t come here for all this!” Brontez Purnell exclaimed, commiserating over the bout of chilly weather that had stricken California. Our defeated laughs spilled out of the Zoom squares. The artist was in Oakland while I was in Los Angeles, and on that Monday morning, both places were aggressively not sunny and idyllic. 100 Boyfriends, Purnell’s new novel, explores this unique pang of feeling disappointed by California. Set across the Bay Area, Europe, and Purnell’s home state of Alabama, his book is named after the ghostly sense that old lovers are ever-present. In short stories and vignettes, he spotlights gay men who seek adventure and validation from sex, and frankly shows how these hook-ups illuminate class, race, and age-related power dynamics. The language is visceral and kinetic; a warm, inviting chaos that holds plenty of insight into heartache and lust.
Over the years, Purnell has expressed a punk ethos through writing, spearheading a contemporary dance company, and directing numerous films. Whether it’s collaborating with Telfar on a line of t-shirts and hoodies, or staging a performance art piece at The Broad, his work is untethered to the rigidity of genre. In 2018, he won a Whiting Award for Since I Laid My Burden Down, his debut novel that he’s now adapting for the screen. Later this year, Purnell’s rock band The Younger Lovers is releasing an EP produced by Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong.
Despite the constraints of the pandemic, Purnell maintains a fan of DIY tactility. Currently, the artist is working on the fifth issue of his cult zine Fag School, compiling it on a typewriter and mailing it only to people who personally ask for a copy. “Access has destroyed a lot of the power of communication, a zine in this climate has even more historic landmark value…. the revolution will not be digitized,” he tells me.
Cheerful and irreverent, Purnell refers to his followers as “the boyfriends” and his new book as a movement—“We stand a better chance of surviving if we’re all dating.” After I asked him what he meant, he said, “You could take it to mean anything you want.” Every movement needs a manifesto, a call-to-action and instruction on how to enact a revolutionary ideology—with its seductively energetic prose and well-rendered odes to raw physicality and joyful spontaneity, 100 Boyfriends is a guide to celebrating one’s voice.
Daniel Spielberger
Brontez Purnell
How did 100 Boyfriends come together? What went into it?
I run a dance company and I’m a performance artist. I did a solo dance piece called “Bombs Uber California”—it was this internal landscape piece about moving to California. Originally, I did it in San Francisco and there was a bunch of wall text. The text from that dance piece is what eventually became 100 Boyfriends. This book was supposed to be all prose poetry and I was shopping it to people because I wanted to get my beat poet on. But shit changed, and then I got the Whiting Award and FSG called up and said, “Do you have any manuscripts?” I showed them the beginning of 100 Boyfriends and from there it morphed into what it is now.
So 100 Boyfriends was originally a text that was in conversation with dance. Do you plan that multimedia conversation out? Or does that happen more fluidly when you're choosing to tell a story through a medium?
It’s both. You see what needs to be born and make allowances and you filter it out. A lot of however my art gets born is kind of this conversation that I have each and every day. I'm constantly talking to it. It's like a plant that you talk to and water. You go up to that motherfucker and you’re like, “Hey baby, what do you need today? You need a little sunlight? A little water? A little love?” You listen to your child and you make adjustments accordingly.
How does 100 Boyfriends feel different to you than your previous writing?
It doesn't have that frantic breakneck pace to it — that kind of voice that you can get away with in your 20s, it's definitely evolved past that. It's probably one of the most deeply reflective things I've ever written.
One of my favorite stories from the book is “Mr. Raleigh vs. The Gym.” The narrator draws this comparison between how an older gay man's younger boyfriend is unfaithful but evasive to how white men institute imperialism through pleasantries and manners. I was struck by the passage, “Polite lies are how men conquer, saying empty things while physically cutting their opponent’s throats through unseen actions.” Can you elaborate on drawing parallels between sex and larger historical phenomena?
I think that kind of illuminates it. It’s very rare that a guy who is fucking you on the side and wants you to just be a sidepiece is gonna come up to you and say, “Hey, I'm fucking you. But don't expect anything out of me. And we don't talk in public.” In situations where it turned out I was a sidepiece and should have known the whole time, these boys spin all this romance in my ear, making me feel so special, but I didn't really mean nothing to them. In order to get the sweetest part of my sex, they had to make me believe that somewhere I was centered. The second you ask for more, you're being crazy, you're being needy, you're infringing on their boundaries. When really, if you're having sex with someone, you feel the need to be publicly acknowledged by them. It’s basic human decency to campaign for your own rights and your own sense of self. I've been in that situation way too often so these days, as I hit middle-age, I'm just like, to quote Matty Luv from Hickey: “Give me what I need or get the fuck away from me.”
Through the writing process, and reflecting on these relationships, are you able to zoom out on how these power dynamics are present in other aspects of life, and of history?
It's inherent in motherfucking everything. It doesn’t take some crystal ball or lots of deep reflection to see fucking white supremacy or patriarchal supremacy in every fucking mode of interaction in our lives. Maybe it's just glaringly apparent to me because I've never been one of the winners in those systems. It's really surprising how many people are like, “Brontez, I've never thought about it that way.” I'm just like, most people don't fucking think of a lot of shit, and that’s why queer literature looks a goddamn mess these days. So y'all need to pay me more for spelling it out.
In your story, “This Day and Many More,” the narrator watches a French queer film and gets frustrated with how losing one's virginity is depicted as beautiful and romantic. He compares it to how when he lost his virginity, his white sheets ended up looking “like a murder scene, like someone just slaughtered a cow.” Do you want to elaborate on this disconnect in queer culture, of idealization versus the reality?
Most of what gets represented is a mess. My problem is that it’s never a bloody mess—as messes should be—it’s that they are bloodless. It’s the most pristine, clear-cut, palatable thing in the world. It's as if we’re still making art hoping that we can reach that crossover straight audience somewhere. I get it cause with queer shit, people don't want to always be defined as that evil lavender menace, the castrating-ass lesbian, or the super fucking flaming homo, even the most annoyingly woke non-binary—people fear being cast in this light, which I don’t. I write from the gay ghetto. I've been ghettoized. My world is gay as fuck, I’m not trying to interact in straight people's world at all. I just don't care. There are more than enough things in popular gay hegemony that are talking to that. I really revel in the idea that this is for me and my peeps. This is for me and the 12 messy drug addicty, sex addicty ass bitches that I fucking kick it with. I’m not afraid of gay being a dirty word again. If you don’t like that, that’s fine, don't interact with it—you can go get validated by virtually anything. But this is for us.
I like the phrase “bloody mess.” Who are some early influences or other artists you look to?
I would say ThugPop, Jeremy O. Harris, Shayne Oliver, and Telfar. I’ve known Telfar since 2005 or 2006 in San Francisco. I used to interview him for my old zine Fag School. I’ve known that queen for fucking ever. Sometimes when I watch Telfar, Jeremy, or ThugPop do their thing, I'm just watching this intense sense of Black queer joy. This unspoiled, Black fucking joy. Being in the punk world, I’ve been too surrounded and inundated with white people thinking that they can tell me what to do. Watching them has been just so amazing. Also, in this way, I get to re-come into myself and realign my own vision. I’m very much loving our moment.
Daniel Spielberger's writing has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Interview Magazine, Playboy, Vice, Business Insider and other outlets. He's currently an MFA candidate at CAlArts's Creative Writing Program.
- Interview: Daniel Spielberger
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: Brontez Purnell
- Illustrations: Sierra Datri
- Date: April 5th, 2021
