3.5
Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger
ByPublisher Description
“Brontez is a raw tongue of flame blazing through all the blatant fakery and insincere bullshit of today’s gay/music/human scene. This audacious non-memoir burnt the hair off the back of my neck and had me rolling with glee.” —S.F. Bay Guardian
A dirty cult-classic put out in a small batch by an underground publisher (Rudos and Rubes) in 2015, Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger recounts the life of an artist and “old school homosexual” who bears a big resemblance to author Brontez Purnell. Our hero doesn’t trust the new breed of fags taking over San Francisco, though. They wear bicycle helmets, seat belts, and condoms. Meanwhile, he sabotages his relationships, hallucinating affection while cruising in late night parks, bath-houses, and other nooks and crannies of a newly-conservative, ruined city.
Furiously original, vital, and messy, this funny “non-memoir” uncovers a revelatory truth for the age: there are things far scarier than HIV.
A dirty cult-classic put out in a small batch by an underground publisher (Rudos and Rubes) in 2015, Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger recounts the life of an artist and “old school homosexual” who bears a big resemblance to author Brontez Purnell. Our hero doesn’t trust the new breed of fags taking over San Francisco, though. They wear bicycle helmets, seat belts, and condoms. Meanwhile, he sabotages his relationships, hallucinating affection while cruising in late night parks, bath-houses, and other nooks and crannies of a newly-conservative, ruined city.
Furiously original, vital, and messy, this funny “non-memoir” uncovers a revelatory truth for the age: there are things far scarier than HIV.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesJohnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger Reviews
3.5
“Written by California-based queer artist, writer, and musician Brontez Purnell, this spectacularly-titled gay non-memoir (his own words) almost gave me metaphorical whiplash when reading it. As depicted in fast-paced vignettes, he is someone who would have been called "raw" or "unlikeable" protagonist in literary fiction, depending on who you ask. He is a self-described ride-or-die bitch, a gay man who knows how it feels to live in the fringe, being very different from typical trendy big city gays: black, working class, punk, fat but somehow not qualified to join the bear community, and made a lot of brash choices akin to self-destruction. He never holds back, being frontal about sex, drug use, toxic relationship, and living with HIV.
However, between the seemingly crass paragraphs and language, you will start to see the heart of his writing: how gentrified cities affect local queer culture. How his body shape and skin color still affect him when exploring relationship or even just displaying his body in supposedly safe and accepting queer media.
There are surprising amount of profound tidbits between the crassness. One that really hit me was about his experience visiting a clinic where he was told he was HIV positive. When the HIV counselor asked how did that happen, he held himself back and started telling a lie about being cheated on by a monogamous boyfriend. Why? Because only then she looked like she was ready to treat him like a human being. The way he talked about being HIV-positive and connecting it with his first bareback experience is surprisingly also the most poignant, romantic part in the book.
"Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger" also reminds me of "You Exist Too Much" by Zaina Arafat, a queer Palestinian-American writer. The main queer characters in both books are likely to irritate people because of how crass they are, and how many foolish decisions they made in life. However, the crass honesty, the rawness, also feels liberating.
The whole book truly feels like the writing of someone who no longer gives a fuck in the world that tries to dictate what freedom means despite keep preaching about it. This is reflected in the seemingly chaotic vignettes. Sometimes it's good because I could just read one or two chapters without worrying about keeping up, but sometimes it also means I lost the "current" that I need to continue with the reading. However, returning is always a rewarding experience, especially when you start contemplating the heart, the romantic soul, and the yearning underneath the crassness and the biting words.”
About Brontez Purnell
Brontez Purnell has been publishing, performing, and curating in the Bay Area for over ten years. He is author of the cult zine Fag School, frontman for his band The Younger Lovers, and founder and choreographer of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. Formerly a dancer with Gravy Train!!!, a queer electro indie band that gained national prominence in the mid-2000s, Purnell's other prominent artistic collaborations include his supporting role in the queer independent feature film, "I Want Your Love" (Dir. Travis Mathews, 2012).
He was a guest curator for the Berkeley Art Museum's L@TE program in 2012, awarded an invitation to the 2012 Radar Lab queer arts summer residency, honored by Out Magazine's 2012 Hot 100 List and 2013 Most Eligible Bachelors List, and most recently won the 2014 SF Bay Guardian's Goldie for Performance/Music.
He was a guest curator for the Berkeley Art Museum's L@TE program in 2012, awarded an invitation to the 2012 Radar Lab queer arts summer residency, honored by Out Magazine's 2012 Hot 100 List and 2013 Most Eligible Bachelors List, and most recently won the 2014 SF Bay Guardian's Goldie for Performance/Music.
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