Since I Laid My Burden Down

by Brontez Purnell

  The incident was in Mr. Nash’s social studies class. Mr. Nash was lovingly teaching revisionist history and skirting around the subject of slavery, though DeShawn couldn’t tell if it was for his sake or Mr. Nash’s. In the middle of his Southern-fried bullshit soliloquy, Mr. Nash looked directly at the class and said, with sympathetic eyes, “You know, this whole slavery thing has been really blown out of proportion. Think about it chullrin’—if you paid a thousand dollars for a man, would you treat him bad? That was a lot of money back then!” DeShawn let out a deep sigh and stopped listening. That was his fatal mistake.

  Mr. Nash was red in the face and teary-eyed as he talked about the “war of Northern aggression,” and side-eyed DeShawn doodling in his notebook. He slapped DeShawn’s desk, startling the boy half to death, and proceeded to go in on the young artist.

  “Boy, you are just doodlin’ away! Just doodlin’! DOODLIN’! If you applied yourself you could be the next Martin Luther King Jr.!” he said, whole-heartedly proud of himself.

  “But I don’t want to get shot in the head,” said DeShawn, rather sheepishly.

  “GET TO THE OFFICE! YOU’RE GETTING A PADDLING!”

  DeShawn was well into his twenties before he learned that corporal punishment was some bullshit that mostly went down in the Deep South; all his adult friends who grew up in California winced at the mere mention of it. DeShawn also marveled at how much of his young adult life was spent in a room getting spanked by a dirty old white man; by eighth grade he had been paddled some fourteen times. This was, he was certain, how he came to like this kind of scene. The main thing he took away from the Alabama Public School System was how to bend over and take the goddamn abuse. As an adult, this behavior had earned him coin one summer in San Francisco, but during his adolescent life it was mostly, quite literally, a pain in the ass.

  The plot thickened.

  The principal of the school was a goddamn queen from hell. He was an old-school faggot (meaning he had a wife and kids). At every pep rally he would put on a wig, impeccable makeup, white go-go boots, and a school sweater and pretend to be the new sex education teacher, Poopsie. DeShawn and his entire eighth grade class would go totally fucking bananas when he said “sex education.”

  The principal knew DeShawn’s family all too well. He would say the same bullshit each time he paddled DeShawn. “Now DeShawn, you know that your great-granpappy used to raise chickens for my family. He stayed on our property for years,” he would say in his high-pitched, musical Southern drawl. DeShawn vaguely remembered this property, as his great-granddad died when DeShawn was only about seven. All that was left of the old man’s existence were photos and the old cinder block house in which he’d lived. Trees were growing through it now. DeShawn stared at the Principal’s face. Oh shit, thought DeShawn. He’s about to start crying again.

  Sure enough, he did.

  The principal started in with a face full of tears, “DeShawn, boy, I loooooooooved yo’ granpappy, I swear fo’ God, I looooooooooved yo’ granpappy. I stayed by his side every day for years. He would take me off fishing and hunting.” He would go silent and stare off into the distance after this part, and then came the part that always made DeShawn’s skin crawl. It was the way he always punctuated his speech: “You know, DeShawn”—long, sentimental pause—“You sure do look just like him.” Wink.

  DeShawn was too young to conceptualize the term “eye-raped,” but surely it just happened.

  In his later years, DeShawn began to wonder just why this spooky-ass cracker “loooooooooooooved” his great-grandfather so much, and was certain he didn’t want to know. He related this story to his older cousin, Tyrone, on the bus ride home.

  “Aw, man,” said Tyrone, shaking his head in disgust, “that crazy-ass faggot still say all that bullshit? He started crying too! Didn’ he!” Tyrone was not having it. “Listen, he used to say that shit to Coby, LaMont, Jacob, Lulibelle, LaKeisha, Andre, Shantesa, Shavonne, NaTasha . . .” He began to list off their twenty-three other immediate cousins, and DeShawn stopped paying attention.

  DeShawn would have another notable interaction with the principal near the end of the semester.

  One afternoon, DeShawn jumped off a school bench to watch five girls brawl, and in doing so dropped the precious contents of his pocket: his 1995 Luis Royo X-Men Spring Break trading cards. The cards depicted renditions of Iceman, Bishop, Wolverine, Archangel, and the rest in tiny, slutty swimwear on the beach. All DeShawn knew was that looking at these comic book men in their underwear made his dick rock hard.

  He heard through the grapevine that a teacher had picked them up and put them in the principal’s office. He went to the principal and explained what he lost.

  “Oh,” said the principal, queerly, “you mean those cards with all the muscle men in their gymmie shorts? I saved them for you!” He went to retrieve the cards. “Now normally that type of thing ain’t allowed in school, but I’ll allow it this time,” said the principal, winking. It was a different kind of wink—a loving one. DeShawn remembered it as an “I know you’re queer as hell and it’s okay” wink. In a way, DeShawn missed his creepy old principal.

  DeShawn sat at his mother’s kitchen table, stoned off his ass, eating Lucky Charms.

  “All these goddamn memories,” DeShawn said between spoonfuls of pure sugar.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DeShawn was sifting through his mom’s junk drawer. He had decided to journal and was looking for a pen.

  The drawer seemed holy to him.

  While looking for a pen, DeShawn found a curling iron from the forties that had been in his family for generations (it was a high school graduation gift to his mother from his great-grandmother, and she had used it to straighten her hair before church since before god knows when), a pack of cards (his mother played competitive Spades with the other women in the neighborhood), old mail, bobby pins, old phone cords for a landline, and a baby picture of his younger brother. But the best find was a Polaroid of himself. It was taken in Texas nearly fifteen years before. He was wearing a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt (for whatever reason, he hated Guns N’ Roses), hooker shorts, and standing by a van in a gas station throwing up a peace sign. He had to have been eighteen, but looked younger. He was still youthful and unassuming. It was like he was seeing his own ghost.

  Around the time DeShawn turned eighteen, he realized the state of Alabama wasn’t big enough to hold what was inside of him. The last boy he touched was Skylar. His awkward preteen years bled into his awkward teen years, and now high school was over. Thank god. As near as he could tell, all DeShawn wanted to do was fuck boys and play in bands. That seemed as good a life as any, and he had set his eyes on the promised land: California.

  An older punk gave him a copy of an underground music zine, Maximum Rocknroll. It was the 1992 “Queer” issue, and in it DeShawn saw a black drag queen in a cop outfit wearing a strap-on and faux fucking an underground genius punk porn director. “I have to get to California!” he screamed out loud on his porch, where he was secretly reading the contraband magazine, which his mom surely would have taken if she had found it.

  DeShawn started subscribing to Maximum Rocknroll, as it had a personals section for kids looking to meet pen pals, and also one for kids who made zines.

  It was a good five years before the computer age would kill the whole vibe of American youth making punk-rock Xerox connections, before people spilled their life in public posts, and before all this tawdry bullshit. DeShawn, like all the other maladjusted fuckheads he knew, spent hours on click-and-bang typewriters and even longer hours at Kinko’s, stitching together all the random thoughts in his head. The zine was both a document and a calling card. It provoked the question, “What does your zine say about you?”

  DeShawn met Kelly though zines. Kelly lived in Mobile, some six hours away. He made a zine about wanting to kill his parents and the president at the time, George W. Bush. It was pre-9/11 kicks at its finest. Kelly called DeShawn one day and said, “I’m blow
ing this joint. You wanna move to California with me?”

  “Yes,” DeShawn replied immediately. The farthest west DeShawn had ever been was Arkansas.

  He hitched a ride down to Mobile with some punks he knew and got to Kelly’s dad’s house. Kelly informed him that the van they would be driving had a broken speedometer, no license plate, and no registration. In the van would be Kelly, his younger brother Jason, DeShawn, two dogs, guitars, records, bikes, and other things that would be impounded for life if a cop stopped them.

  With two hundred dollars among the three of them, the men set sail.

  Thirty miles outside of Mobile, Kelly fell asleep at the wheel and hit the side of the bridge, resulting in a flat tire. The three men got out to inspect the damage. They were slow to register that not one of them had ever changed a flat tire before.

  Two burly rednecks stopped to help and, upon moving closer to the group of punk boys in distress, froze dead in their tracks. It probably never occurred to the boys that they dressed a bit like hookers. DeShawn was wearing a sleeveless crop top featuring a black Mickey Mouse, and jean cutoffs so short the pockets were hanging out, as well as his balls. Kelly, not one to be outdone, was also wearing a crop top with a lipstick emblem on it, purple denim hip-huggers, and a studded white belt with a buckle that read (in rhinestones no less) “Baby Girl.” The rednecks stopped because, from the highway, the boys appeared to be slutty girls that needed help. In true testament to either Southern politeness or the power of just being too weird to fuck with, the redneck men shook off their repulsion and helped the young men with the tire. Within half an hour, the three were back on the road again.

  By nightfall they reached Houston, and DeShawn realized that it was really happening. He saw the western expansion of the night sky, and Alabama was becoming this background static that was farther and farther behind him. He was leaving. And, in fact, had left.

  The second tire blowout occured mid-Texas. The three spent Saturday night sleeping in a Walmart parking lot, waiting for it to open so they could buy a new tire and fix the spare. Morning came and it was revealed that this particular Walmart didn’t open on Sundays because of some blue law. They decided to walk the dogs and wait in the parking lot until Monday.

  Pastor Sam rolled up on the three men in a minivan and said that there was an open Walmart fifty miles away. He would drive two of them there if they gave him gas money and donated a small fee to the church he was trying to start in his native Mexican border town hours away. The three men agreed and within a few hours they were waving goodbye to Pastor Sam and speeding back down the highway.

  It was a peaceful trip after that, save a run-in at a Whole Foods in New Mexico where they tried to scam sandwiches and were caught.

  DeShawn was behind the wheel when they reached the sign at the Arizona border that read Welcome to California. He almost didn’t believe it. He would forever remember the couple hundred wind turbines spinning near the southern border. The stark look of it stuck with him, as he had never seen wind turbines in a cluster before. It marked his mind. Things must be different here, he thought.

  One more night of sleeping at a rest stop outside of LA, and then in the morning, they reached Oakland.

  Kelly shook DeShawn something awful when they entered the Bay Area. “DeShawn! Look! It’s the Dublin BART station! We’re almost home!” DeShawn, not knowing what the fuck Kelly was talking about, rolled his eyes and went back to sleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DeShawn arrived in California mid-October, in a van full of weary travelers. His first home was a warehouse in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. The singer of a local dyke band led the house, and he felt at home. He often slept on the roof of the warehouse and was amazed at the sight of the fog rolling in from the Bay. It amazed him for the rest of his tenancy.

  DeShawn was walking up San Leandro with Kelly’s dog one day when a Goodwill truck honked at him and the driver pulled into an alley. The driver got out on the passenger side, his dick rock hard and exposed, and beckoned DeShawn to come over to him. DeShawn tied up the dog and gave the man a blow job in the truck. It had never occurred to him that a man would be so horny that he would behave this way, but it was just the beginning.

  Two months later he moved to a new warehouse near the Alameda border. It was madness. It was a huge complex, sort of like punk rock dorms. Twenty kids lived there, and shared two kitchens, three living rooms, three bathrooms, a patio, and a huge carport where the house hosted punk shows for bands and stocked a vending machine that served beer for seventy-five cents. DeShawn crashed in one of the living rooms and sometimes slept on the unfinished wood floor, coughing sawdust through the Hello Kitty sheets he laid on the ground. All he could think about was how this place felt like heaven.

  He made friends with all the random punks, drunks, and midnight philosophers, and even started a fling with a straight speed addict that lived down the stairs. Boys were proving to be a danger.

  DeShawn would make a weekly pilgrimage to the Eagle Tavern in San Francisco, get wasted to all hell, and meet the wrong types of men. It was thrilling until the day Todd and Aaron showed up. They were these two white twinks who seemed fine at first, but proved evil. They all became friends too quick, and the next week the two came to DeShawn’s warehouse to visit and smoke weed. Todd was the more forward of the two, and talked slick to DeShawn about his anatomy. “Damn, you’re thick,” he said as DeShawn was bent over, rearranging vinyl LPs in a stack on his bedroom floor. Aaron chimed in. “You wanna come with us to a cool spot in Orinda?”

  “Sure,” said DeShawn not really knowing where Orinda was but trusting the two for no good reason.

  They set off in Aaron’s car, with DeShawn in the back. The trip was taking longer than he expected, and before he knew it they were parked in some forest in god knows where, hiking through the woods.

  “Let’s stop here,” Aaron said deviously. DeShawn was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

  It was hard to see in the dark, but from what he could make out there seemed to be a cluster of trees with netting interlaced between them, and the figure of a man facing them, touching himself, and standing very, very still. DeShawn stopped dead in his tracks.

  “What do you think you see?” asked Todd with this smile on his face.

  It then occurred to DeShawn that he was in the woods of Orinda with two boys he barely knew and he was no longer in control. Why had he trusted them?

  “I don’t like this. I wanna go home,” said DeShawn in probably the most serious tone he had ever used. Aaron and Todd put their arms around his shoulders on either side and walked him back to the car.

  “It’s okay, DeShawn, we were just trying to scare you,” said Aaron, somehow lovingly. He never spoke to either of these boys ever again.

  Some time later DeShawn met Mark, this cute black boy who lived up the street from the warehouse. He was walking to Popeyes when the boy called out from his porch, “Hey you! Come here!” DeShawn saw that the boy was handsome and obliged.

  Mark lived with his white daddy. Not “daddy” in the biological sense but “daddy” as in the older gentleman he was fucking for money, love, and attention (though not in that order). Mark was keen on DeShawn’s ass, “Damn, you’re thick.” DeShawn shrugged; he had heard it all before.

  Mark introduced DeShawn to his daddy. The man explained, “Ever since my divorce from my wife I prefer the company of black men. My kids are grown, so I can do whatever the fuck I want.” Though he seemed harmless, DeShawn still made it a point not to be left alone with this man.

  Mark and DeShawn would fuck in the basement of Mark’s daddy’s house, between impromptu voguing battles and ogling 50 Cent on BET.

  “Would you fuck that nigga?” asked Mark.

  “Dude, I would TOTALLY fuck that nigga. I would let him get me pregnant—with twins,” said DeShawn between puffs of the biggest fucking blunt, like, ever.

  The two would sometimes discuss politics. “I hate the KKK,”
said Mark. “Oh my god, I totally hate the KKK too!” squeaked DeShawn.

  Eventually, Mark got more into speed and the two boys didn’t talk so much anymore.

  Years later, DeShawn saw Mark in downtown Oakland, spun off his ass: shirtless, underwear and crack poking out of his cargo shorts, violently playing with his nipples at noon, and in broad daylight, humping a pole near Broadway and nineteenth. He was all turnt up.

  Four years after that DeShawn saw Mark again downtown, pushing a stroller with three children very close in age.

  “I just moved back from Kansas,” Mark explained. “I’m a father now,” he added.

  DeShawn nearly shit himself with disbelief. He didn’t judge Mark, he just thought about how funny and intense it was to witness the seasons of someone else’s life. A week after the stroller incident, he saw Mark at the bathhouse, and they had sex. The whole time DeShawn wondered who the hell was keeping Mark’s kids.

  Some months after seeing Mark, DeShawn went to a “Gay Shame” protest. The political group was in the Castro protesting something or another (it was always something with them). That’s where he met his future heartache.

  DeShawn was fucked-up on MDMA, with a group of equally fucked-up queens, when an Indian man with a German accent, holding a camera, came up to him.

  “I saw you dancing at the beginning of the protest. You are so lovely. I would like to paint you,” he said. “My name is Michael.” DeShawn was too young to understand this would be the beginning of the end. He obliged the man, and the years with him poured away like so much sand, the potential sifted into nothing at all.