Jonny Appleseed

Jonny recalls an anecdote from childhood. At 11, his cousins gave him rum at a family gathering. Jonny got sick and threw up in his grandmother’s old toilet. When his vomit wouldn’t flush, he panicked and scooped it into the toilet tank.

In Winnipeg, where Jonny moves when he leaves the reservation, gay men find each other for casual sex and dating on the apps Grindr and Rez Fox. On Grindr, men often fetishize Jonny because of his Indigenous/NDN racial and ethnic background. Jonny finds the practice of gay men classifying themselves as animals humorous, especially given the religious significance accorded in his community to communication with animals. The “bear” classification reminds Jonny of the 19th-century Cree leader Big Bear.

Jonny remembers the first time he had casual sex with a white boy who came to a party on the reservation. The boy looks out of place—too formal in a tie and jacket—and he drinks red wine while the others drink beer. Jonny chats with him and they cruise each other. Despite his nervousness, Jonny follows the boy out of the main party room and into the basement laundry room. Jonny performs oral sex on the boy. The narrator describes the scene with ceremonial imagery.

Chapter 3 is a brief, lyrical vignette where Jonny is homesick for life on the reservation. He claims that "two brown boys can't fall in love on the rez" (27) and compares home to a dandelion.

Chapter 4 is another brief, lyrical vignette, this time about Smiling Steven, a man on the reservation who sat at the entrance and waved at everyone coming in. Smiling Steven is gone. The narrator directly addresses the reader and wonders whether the reader is still listening.

Jonny establishes a morning routine in Winnipeg: smoking, coffee, breakfast. Overcast weather makes him feel homesick. As he smokes, he spends time with a pigeon who roosts on his fire escape. Jonny sees the pigeon as a kindred queer spirit.

A man on the dating app Grindr messages Jonny for sex. As a sex worker, Jonny makes money messaging, camming, and occasionally meeting up in-person with clients. He considers whether this particular client will be worth the money. Most of the time, he profits off of clients' fantasies of Indigenous men; he dresses up in costume as members of other Indigenous tribes. For this client, he dresses up as Catwoman; the client dislikes this and wants him to dress up as an Indigenous stereotype.

As a child, Jonny goes camping with the family of his friend, Tias. They swim out into a lake for hours, until they're exhausted. When they come back to shore, Tias tells Jonny about his sister, who was kidnapped. Jonny makes a joke about the kidnapping, so Tias punches him. When they return to the campsite, Tias’s parents are worried at their long absence. They punish the boys by sending them to bed without supper. Jonny realizes he loves Tias.

Jonny finishes with his client from Chapter 5 and begins an extended meditation on ingenious Indigenous bartering systems for goods from Wal-Mart. As an adult, Tias has sex with Jonny, though Tias does not describe himself as gay. At the very end of the chapter, almost as an aside, Jonny narrates that his stepdad has just died.

Jonny describes one of his recurring dreams, of an apocalyptic ocean where dead animals are left by the tide. A giant bird picks him up with its claws, but not high enough—they will both soon be carried away by a giant wave. Jonny climbs onto the bird’s back and soothes it. They make it through the wave and find on the other side several figures from Cree culture: “the Fur Queen and Whiskey Jack waving us home” (47) as well as a thunderbird and Nanabush (trickster spirit).