Since I Laid My Burden Down

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Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell

“DeShawn had his theories about it all. He would look at any moving body of water, a breeze stirring dead leaves, or a person singing to themselves in public, and he would get it. It wasn’t hard to be reminded of God, or whatever the fuck one calls it. The feeling was everywhere; the problem was the million other moments of the day lacking this scale of epiphany.” (153)

A restless longing in your veins can lead you to all sorts of things! For DeShawn, Since I Laid My Burden Down’s protagonist, it drives him away from his Alabama home, all the way to California in a van-ful of punks. It leads him through a decade of fucking in bath-houses and alleyways, living in punk warehouses, getting attention as a rising artist, and never falling in love. And then that longing—inextricably paired with the death of his uncle and the suicide of a former lover—leads him back to Alabama.

Even though DeShawn’s original departure from Alabama could be seen as an escape, his return doesn’t read as re-internment. Rather, there’s a free-wheeling range of pleasure and pain endemic to his hometown, and he experiences all of it vividly: the joy of seeing his nephew run through his grandmother’s garden of sunflowers, the humor of remembering old dramas in the church and witnessing new ones, the pain of confronting complicated past interactions with molesters, (pseudo-)boyfriends, and relatives— not to mention the similarly ambivalent pleasure and fun of new hook-ups— and the billowing opportunity to reflect on his life.

Purnell’s writing style is buoyant and straightforward. Dynamics of race, queerness, and other political or identities-based concerns are laid out quick and simple, so that there’s neither PC showing off nor avoidance/elision. The book is gloriously rude and sexy; nothing is spared for the sake of politeness. This revelrous inclusivity also opens up space for talking about the things that don’t feel so good, acknowledging that the ache of loss, dysfunction, and abuse is part of life’s fabric and can’t be excised.

I wasn’t sure, exactly, what burden DeShawn had laid down by the end of the novel but, through the process of reading it, I felt some burden lay down in myself. The longing/eros in life is what’s important, and the intensity of feeling, and the acceptance that it won’t be perfect...so it might as well be wild, free, passionate, and fearlessly connected to others.

Subjects this book includes which some readers may be sensitive to: racism, abuse, suicide, death.