Brandon is a miserable teenager. He doesn’t like his peers and he doesn’t like himself. When we first meet him in 10th grade he is incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin; and while he isn’t exactly a loner he always feels alone. Brandon is starting to suspect that everybody sucks. His head is filled with referential information from years of television, video games, and comic books and, though he realizes this doesn’t make him a great person, he feels it makes him better than the Abercombie and Birkenstock garbed douche bags that define his generation. If only he had the magic red boomerang he could bash their heads in—but alas this is not a fantasy tale. In lieu of assault with fictional weaponry, Brandon slowly finds some kindred spirits in like-minded nerds, a girl that’s willing to tolerate him, and gets to play the geetar in a rocka and rolla band (that doesn’t have a singer). Everything seems to be going his way—but how come he never seems to get a break from the bullshit?
“Ten Years Gone: Pomp and Circumstance” is the first installment in a trilogy of novellas following the protagonist, Brandon, from age fifteen to age twenty five. Pomp and Circumstance covers age fifteen through high school graduation at not-yet-eighteen. It is chocked full of turn of the millennium pop-culture and nerdom references and fast paced comedic dialogue. “Ten Years Gone: Pomp and Circumstance” deals with the trials and milestones that all teenagers encounter with introspective prose, retrospective wit, and an anecdotal narrative tone befitting of an it-sort-of-happened-like-that memoir that never fails to entertain.
I was under the impression that high school was going to be like a spin-off of elementary school—as if the cast was changed but the protagonist (me) had remained the same. We would have wacky high school adventures and hi-jinks, and our teachers would be colorful characters, not unlike those loveable misfit pedagogues on Saved by The Bell. Come to think of it, I thought high school was going to be Saved by The Bell. It wasn’t.
Continue Reading 1. Assimilation is Futile
I’d play Super Nintendo, instead of doing homework, until I got picked up at the apartment around 6:30 or 7:00. In retrospect, if I had been less awkward, I would have been getting laid and doing drugs left and right—I had an apartment all to my own when I was fifteen! What an asshole—I must have preferred getting a high score to getting high and scoring.
Continue Reading 2. Misery Needs Company
There was no concrete reason for Adam to pawn Rachel off on me over the Internet other than his low tolerance for girls and their intrinsically annoying nature. As our collision course zeroed in, the reasons became less important. It is interesting to note that I had not met this girl—shit, she lived two counties over from me, which, when you are fifteen, might as well be fifteen states.
Continue Reading 3. Awkward Introductions
As a teenager you start to understand the real fun of New Year’s-it’s a time when, most likely, your curfew will be lifted and you will be able to, at least, hangout with a shitload of friends. I was going to do something—sitting in the basement staring at the same picture of Robert Plant wasn’t an option this time around.
Continue Reading 4. Y2K
Whenever I take a walk in nice weather I try to fly. I’ll close my eyes in a warm breeze and try to push every molecule of my body upward. I feel a lightness in my blood that really makes me think I can do this impossible thing. It never fucking works.
Continue Reading 5. Spring Forward, Fall on Your Face
What? No art this week? Pre-order the ebook version of “Ten Years Gone”, which will feature exclusive, never before seen art from the insanely talented Ben Silberstein! Summer was the hard earned time of freedom and bountiful nothing—the hard earned parole of the high school student. It’s the freedom from homework and deadlines, tests and [...]
Continue Reading 6. Screw You, 56
The sun had barely risen and was hanging low and red like a bloodshot eye. Summer was the hard earned time of freedom and bountiful nothing—the hard earned parole of the high school student. It’s the freedom from homework and deadlines, tests and assessments, and most of all, bells. Nothing could change that immutable fact. [...]
Continue Reading 7. This is the Summer of My Discontent
The smell of the new school year is always the same: textbooks, cleaning products, and the tail end of summer—ocean breezes and aging leaves. No matter how much you may hate school, no matter how often you may cut school, and certainly no matter what year it is, you always will go to the first day of school. While I was no seasoned cutter, and was starting to hate school far less in strong and steady punctuations, it didn’t mean I wanted the summer to be over.
Continue Reading 8. Big Mac Attacks and Shottys
Synagogues tend to be very pretty places, but I have always found them to feel a little sterile, a little lifeless, and, for the most part, routinized to death. The melody of Jewish ritual is ancient and beautiful but also melancholy and haunting. A good cantor will lead a congregation with vigor and joy appropriately—though some prayers require a cadence that is pensive and reflective. All my years of Jewish Day School had prepped me enough to enter a Conservative Jewish flock wherever it may graze—provided it was Ashkanazi; it was and we are, so I was gravy.
Continue Reading 9. Tithings and Tidings
It was an odd emotion I was experiencing at that time because, firstly, I hadn’t yet decided if I was going to cease and desist attendance yet, but also because if I did, I was sad about it in a way I hadn’t expected. Just a few months back I had been busting my ass in non-compulsory summer school just to leave that pile of bricks and pricks behind. Now, here I was being rejected and ejected from the building—unjustly as a matter of fact—and I felt a little sad about the whole thing; more than a little sad actually, but not outright down about it. I had seen a possibility to correct failures past.
Continue Reading 10. From Invisible…
Even though I was a dead man walking, and my entire academic social life was meeting an impending Armageddon, I felt a burgeoning freedom within the multi-layered teenage repressions of my soul. The binding of my burrito of angst and loathing was loosening! The tortilla of civility was unraveling! The ground beef of judgment and righteous indignation was spilling out! The tomato of obligation was decomposing! Very soon. those for whom I held a spicy guacamole of contempt would need a plate and fork to swallow the super-sized telling-off that was coming their way!
Continue Reading 11. …To Invincible
Sure, I could play video games all day, or watch movies, or futz around on the interwebs, but to what end? It gets boring being by yourself, in the house, with nothing on TV, and no money. Even as an only child, a creature of imaginary play and solitude, it got pretty old pretty fast. The only super awesome part was waking up just about whenever the fuck I pleased while nobody was home. A savvier teenager would have been sexing, drugging, and rock and/or rolling all day. I wasn’t even watching porn.
Continue Reading 12. Game Changer
Also, the band teacher, Mr. Barrie, was very interested in having me join the band because I had mentioned that I could read in four clefs. This was more bullshitting. To this day I can’t actually sight read music. I knew where C was on a treble, bass, alto, and soprano clef which meant I read those clefs about as well as the soldiers who found the Rosetta Stone spoke hieroglyphics. Either way I was accepted into the marching band which was awesome because “marching” actually constituted my gym credit. The band almost never marched.
Continue Reading 13. Brandon Beach Memoires
This was a rather introspective thought on my part. I may not have been happy in this school from the jump. The school was hardly Saved by the Bell either. Sure the teachers had their moments of zany, but that was more because of the circumstance of having to deal with the Board of Education and their bullshit more than anything else. Of course, some of them were probably justifiably insane. My adventures were not any more whacky than they had been before. I was just having them on a different backdrop.
Continue Reading 14. Street Gangs and Vikings… Sorta
Being entirely new to the prophylactic acquisition game I knew only two things—buy Trojans because they don’t break, and don’t ever buy only condoms. Both of these things were actually false, and through various experiences in both my life and the lives of others I knew I would find out why in the coming years, but for now, for me, these two truths about condoms were axiomatic.
Continue Reading 15. De-Base-Meant
Seven Hundred and Fifty Dollars payable to the Order of Brandon Melendez. $750.00 As I stared at my first paycheck of the summer, I wondered exactly how I could hope to spend all of this money. I couldn’t even think of ways to do it…well, sure I could. Comic books. Fancy dinner with Rachel. Pot. [...]
Continue Reading 16. Gone To Pot
Note: This is a special art-only edition of Ten Years Gone: Pomp and Circumstance.
Continue Reading 17. September 11th, 2001
Initially, I had anticipated slowing down my pot smoking during the school year and relegating it to weekends—however this was not the case. I ended up smoking pretty much every available opportunity. Since the city was in ruins and America was at war, I didn’t see much of a reason to not be high. I was scared to death they were going to open the draft and I was gonna be a foot soldier; which if they had dressed me in a purple and black ninja outfit might have been ok but Talbian ain’t no Turtle. Every day before class I got toked up and either got a ride, took the train, or took a cab to school—it depended on how high I got and how late it had become.
Continue Reading 18. Slips Before Falling
I had been trekking up and down Mott Avenue for years now, as if every step added length to my ponytail and every passing day had changed some of it hues. Sometimes with ripped clothing, other times less, with a guitar, without. I could walk the street on autopilot—which, incidentally, was how I was able to read Anthem and walk home and not slip on the ice on the ground. I knew where ice did and didn’t live with primal prescience.
Continue Reading 19. Swords and Sorcery and That Smell on the Bus
Of course, now Williamsburg is a wretched hive of snark and villainy where plaid clad, horn rimmed-fad, perpetually sad lads named “Tad” and “Chad” walk around saying things like “rad” ironically, while swearing that the music they like isn’t bad. Back then though, nobody knew that it was going to become the 21st century equivalent of The Village with half the flash and none of the substance, and going there was more about “why ever?” than “why, what’s going on?”. The only thing I can say to hipsters is that I was going to Williamsburg before it was cool.
Continue Reading 20. With the Christmas Lights Out
These weren’t the roosters I was expecting—like Foghorn Leghorn or that chill motherfucker on the cornflakes box. These sons-of-bitches sounded like angry, alien, ankle high killer creatures. Like the imps from Doom were right outside ready to chainsawed down as they bloodied me until I used my unholy “IDKFA” strength to become a god.
Continue Reading 21. Three Flights and a Funeral
I felt like I just got hit with a giant Green Lantern boxing glove. I blinked my eyes feverishly. I squinted. Ran my thumb and index fingers across my brow and past my eye lashes and pulled as if that would make what I heard be unheard. I shook my head, I popped my jaw, I cracked my knuckles. I was trying to make sense of the whole thing, but I couldn’t. I was having a hard time processing what she was saying to me. “Garflicke zee dangi dooli suuum, girshamliak zunga sinfda zoohk….”
Continue Reading 22. The Bomb and The Prom
On Wednesday it was yearbook signing day. All the graduating seniors assembled in Gym B and signed yearbooks. I was surprised at the number of signatures I was able to get. Some were from people that I truly liked, while others were from people that I considered to be peripheral. What surprised me was just how many people asked to sign yearbooks with me. However, I was under no delusions that lead me to believe contrary to the fact that people will ask anyone to sign their yearbook. If Hitler was there, he probably would have signed Mel Brooks’ yearbook—it’s just the nature of the end of high school.
Continue Reading 23. Pomp and Circumstance
