Member-only story
My Name is Not Brian
A Micro-Memoir
Adjusting to a new school is tough. Moving from Brooklyn to North Hollywood the summer before 8th grade is tougher. It was a lesson in humility. The inherent awkwardness of this age was not lost on me. I was a character in a story I was unprepared for.
No one talked to me for several days. Maybe it was my hair. It’s hard to remember how many minutes I sat by myself, at school, in silence, with widespread activity all around me. Just not including me. Then Brian talked to me. He was new as well. Two lost souls with bag lunches on a fiberglass bench.
Brian knew one person. Someone who belonged there. They had just met. He introduced me. It turned out, David lived around the corner from me. For some unknown reason, David invited me over that day. Maybe it was the blue corduroys in 100-degree heat that made him feel bad for me. I was a stray dog looking for someone to pet me.
I walked to David’s house that day after school and rang the bell. Corduroy-legs sweating. Teen armpits awash in pubescent anxiety. But there he was. He wanted me there. Things were looking up. Then he introduced me to his mom.
“Mom, this is Brian.”
I was now Brian. I couldn’t correct the first person who wanted to be friends with me by telling him that he didn’t even know my…
