100 boyfriends

Filmmaker, dancer, musician, performance artist, Whiting Award winner, one of the New York Times Magazine's "32 Black Male Writers of Our Time"—Purnell has it all. His queer characters move from the warehouses and upscale bars of Oakland to Alabama's farm towns, trying not to sabotage themselves. With a 25,000-copy first printing. Copyright 2020 Library Journal.

This stunning collection of vignettes from artist, punk rocker, and Whiting Award winner Purnell (Since I Laid My Burden Down) forms a delightfully crass, kaleidoscopic worldview. Each story introduces new heartbreaks and reminders that moments of intimacy often end in loneliness. In "Boyfriend #666/The Satanist" the narrator describes disappointing sex with a man referred to as "Trench Coat Mafia dick." In "Boyfriend #4/4/The Drummer" the narrator tenderly asks, "What else is a boyfriend for but to share in mutual epiphany?" Whether falling apart during a punk band's tour of Europe ("Do They Exist If No One's Watching?"), searching for sex in rural Alabama ("Hooker Boys (Part Two)"), or sifting through a wealthy man's drug stash in Hell's Kitchen ("Boyfriend #100/The Agent"), the characters are joined in their vulnerability and constant longing. The raw, confessional voice in "Meandering (Part Two)" demonstrates the collection's best quality, as the narrator remarks on the secretive delight of sex with strangers. Purnell brilliantly immerses the reader in Black, queer desire with humor, self-awareness, and just the right amount of vulgarity. Agent: Julia Masnik, Watkins/Loomis Agency. (Feb.) Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly.

"An irreverent, dirty, and profoundly intimate collection of vignettes exploring gay male desire, loneliness, sex, and self-sabotage"--

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. One of Buzzfeed's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2021, NBC's 10 Most Notable LGBTQ Books of 2021, and Pink News' Best LGBTQ Books of 2021. "This hurricane of delirious, lonely, lewd tales is a taxonomy and grand unified theory of the boyfriend, in every tense." —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times"I loved this book—raunchy, irreverent, deliberate, sexy, angry, and tender, in its own way." —Roxane GayAn irrerverent, sensitive, and inimitable look at gay dysfunction through the eyes of a cult heroTransgressive, foulmouthed, and brutally funny, Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends is a revelatory spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting the urge to self-sabotage. As they tiptoe through minefields of romantic, substance-fueled misadventure—from dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama—Purnell’s characters strive for belonging in a world that dismisses them for being Black, broke, and queer. In spite of it—or perhaps because of it—they shine.Armed with a deadpan wit, Purnell finds humor in even the darkest of nadirs with the peerless zeal, insight, and horniness of a gay punk messiah. Together, the slice-of-life tales that writhe within 100 Boyfriends are an inimitable tour of an unexposed queer underbelly. Holding them together is the vision of an iconoclastic storyteller, as fearless as he is human.