4. Though I’m a fag, I think semen is stupid. Three seconds after climax I’m like, “Get it off of me. Get it OFF! GET IT FUCKING OFF!” I feel all covered in bullshit like I’m on that show Double Dare. MY MAIN PROBLEMS WITH BOY CUM: 1. It’s sticky. 2. It clumps in the shower, and 3. It smells like the inside of a dick. I went home with this creepy pagan who wanted to do this “cum ritual” whatever. We didn’t even fuck! We just jerked off on each other and sat very still. SO WEAK. Was he making this shit up? I wanted to die, but said nothing because I also wanted to fit in though this was my own personal hell. It reminded me of this job I once had. It was described to me as “the last functioning peep show in America” where you put quarters into the slot and the screen goes up like in that Madonna “open your heart to me” video or whatever. I greeted customers, escorted the girls to and from the booths, and I was a jizz-mopper. The girls were mostly cool, moms, cokeheads, women’s studies majors, and good old reliable punk girls (my favorite). All body types. One dancer wore this slutty boob shirt and matching hat that read “Harvard Medical School.” I asked if she went there and she said no, but that she had always wanted to. The place was special ’cause it boasted the only strippers union in the world, but there was drama when I worked there. It was explained to me that the company became a co-op which they say dissolved the union (no need for a union if everyone is part owner), but people were still paying dues and getting ripped off. There was an article in the paper, and it was fucked up ’cause some of the girls’ real names got printed in the paper. It was up in the air. I wasn’t going to work there long enough for this to be a concern. I asked the head Madame if I could blow guys off in the booths if given the chance. She told me and the other fag that worked there that the official position of the company was that we could hook up with guys, but we couldn’t make them cum (when they cum they stop spending money). I only hooked up with one guy and spent the majority of the time opening all the booths to that hot-boxed jizz smell hitting me in the face. I almost killed that asshole who said “you gay boys must love this job.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRONTEZ PURNELL is author of Since I Laid My Burden Down and the zine Fag School, frontman for his band the Younger Lovers, and founder of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. He lives in Oakland, California.
ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS
SINCE I LAID MY BURDEN DOWN
Brontez Purnell
DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?
A raw, funny, and uninhibited stumble down memory lane, Brontez Purnell’s debut novel explores how one man’s early sexual and artistic escapades grow into a life.
BRONTEZ PURNELL is author of Since I Laid My Burden Down and the zine Fag School, frontman for his band the Younger Lovers, and founder of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. He lives in Oakland, California.
BLACK WAVE
Michelle Tea
It’s 1999—and Michelle’s world is ending. Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it’s officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird.
While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and meta-textual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility. But as she tries to make queer love and art without succumbing to self-destructive vice, the boundaries between storytelling and everyday living begin to blur, and Michelle wonders how much she’ll have to compromise her artistic process if she’s going to properly ride out doomsday.
MICHELLE TEA is the author of numerous books, including Rent Girl, Valencia, and How to Grow Up. She is the creator of the Sister Spit all-girl open mic and 1997-1999 national tour. In 2003, Michelle founded RADAR Productions, a literary non-profit that oversees queer-centric projects.
THE COSMOPOLITANS
Sarah Schulman
A modern retelling of Balzac’s classic Cousin Bette by one of America’s most prolific and significant writers. Earl, a black, gay actor working in a meatpacking plant, and Bette, a white secretary, have lived next door to each other in the same Greenwich Village apartment building for thirty years. Shamed and disowned by their families, both found refuge in New York and in their domestic routine. Everything changes when Hortense, a wealthy young actress from Ohio, comes to the city to “make it.” Textured with the grit and gloss of midcentury Manhattan, The Cosmopolitans is a lush, inviting read, and the truths it frames about the human need for love and recognition remain long after the book is closed.
SARAH SCHULMAN’s love of New York is evident in The Cosmopolitans, her 10th novel and 17th book. Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUNY, her honors and awards include a Guggenheim in Playwriting and a Fulbright in Judaic Studies. A well known literary chronicler of the marginalized and subcultural, Sarah’s fiction has focused on queer urban life for thirty years. Her nonfiction includes The Gentrification of The Mind, a memoir of the homogenization of her city in the wake of the AIDS crisis. Her plays and films have been seen at Playwrights Horizons, The Berlin Film Festival and The Museum of Modern Art. An AIDS historian, Sarah is co-founder of the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace and is faculty advisor to Students for Justice in Palestine at the College of Staten Island.
ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS
The Feminist Press is a nonprofit educational organization founded to amplify feminist voices. FP publishes classic and new writing from around the world, creates cutting-edge programs, and elevates silenced and marginalized voices in order to support personal transformation and social justice for all people.
See our complete list of books at feministpress.org
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