My Trip To JJ’s (a childhood memory)

 

This was written as part of an experiential writing class at UMass. I really liked it and wanted to share it here.

My Trip to JJ’s

There is a story from my childhood that my family often shares. My mother used this story before as a creative writing exercise. To help recall this memory and put it in my own perspective, I first sought out my mother’s version of events.

Currently my mother is in the hospital with post stroke dementia and we haven’t found a long term facility for her yet. Naturally, I fell into a rabbit hole as I picked up this box of notebooks and papers that I have. I found the folder containing my mother’s writing which included stories from a correspondence course she took with the Institute of Children’s Literature. I found her teacher’s comments to be critical in a way which I disagree with and not constructive and encouraging. The letters and typed assignments were dated 1985. The story I was looking for was written years later after that correspondence class (I was born in 86).

I found it, after combing through some very interesting pieces. It was handwritten on white stationary in blue pen ink. The first lines were, “On a windy day in March, I found myself paralyzed with fear. The fear of losing my five year old son.”

To put you into my head space, I was playing outside in the front yard. My sister Sarah, had let me go outside and although, I’m sure she said to me to not leave the front yard, I have a mind of my own. My sense of independence and ability to think and act on my own was clear at that moment.

I suppose I was feeling bored. Both siblings were inside. I enjoyed playing outside and usually I would play pretend. I often acted out movies and TV shows. I don’t recall what I was doing or playing, but at some point the interest in that activity stopped.

I knew where my parents were—or I thought I did. On Saturday mornings they went to the high school, which was just down the road from us. They went for weekly exercise, either walking, running or jogging. I had been there before and I knew how to get there. If I had wanted to join them or see what they were up to all I had to do was go for a walk.

There was no sense of danger at the sight of cars, probably because it was easy to just avoid them and not get hit by one. There was a song we learned in pre-school. “You’ve gotta look both ways before you cross the street…left…right…” I remembered the song and I looked both ways. There were no cars when I crossed the street to get to the high school. I walked around the parking lot and couldn’t find my parents. I didn’t see them in the field.

I crossed the street again. I looked both ways. Left…right… no cars were coming. I was on the sidewalk and I kept walking. I might have been confused about which direction to take to get back to Furrowtown Road and Garden Ave. where my house was. Probably not though. I probably wanted to go to the convenience store JJ’s. They had candy there.

When I got to JJs, a woman spotted me and asked if I was lost. I said “yes” and told them my phone number. The woman took me inside and I called and talked to my sister. My sister, when she recalls the story, has told me that the woman who found me was the parent of one of her friends. 

My mom wrote in her version of the story, “Gary [my father] got in the family van and took off to ride around the block searching for our small child. I cryed [sic] out in vain.” The story continued and she wrote, “as we both pulled into the driveway, my daughter came running out of the house. She said that Bryan is at J.J.’s store.”

My dad showed up at JJ’s to take me home. My parents told me they were worried and I didn’t understand. Worrying meant they were afraid something could have happened to me, like maybe I would be hit by a car. I knew to look both ways though and they should have known that too. It didn’t make sense to me that anybody would be worried.

I knew to give my telephone number to the person that found me. According to my mother’s story, “Bryan had just learned his phone # 3 days prior to his adventure.” She then concludes the story by bringing religion and prayer into the conversation, which is where she loses me as a reader. She says, “I knew the lord was watching over my son that day. I knew my prayers found him safe.” As a writer myself, I would not have taken this particular angle, regardless of my own personal beliefs.

What seems to be at play here is that I had a developed sense of self and independence, making a conscious decision to leave the house of my own free will. Then you have the memory recall that allowed me to cross the street. Formal education does come in here as I remember the song from pre-school and the activity along with it. This singalong activity contributing to my knowledge is an example of learning occurring in a complex social environment—in a classroom with other children. I had been to the high school with my parents before, which means that active learning was at play before in the times when I had followed my parents on their walks to the high school. Building on prior knowledge of the space around me—the familiar streets, familiar buildings—I was able to navigate through the situation.

They used to sell “grab bags” of candy at JJ’s that also sometimes included a small gumball machine style toy like an army man. I hope I got a grab bag that day.

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Friendships and Fog (an excerpt from my unpublished memoir)

January 2026

Back in November, I started writing a memoir. I was bored because I wasn’t being challenged in school at HCC and the teachers weren’t assigning me enough homework. In 4 weeks, I had 18 chapters reflecting on my life from childhood up until now. I have yet to publish this manuscript. When consulting with my teachers they suggested that I self-publish and self market it. That’s what I did before. I had little success with that. There are reasons why my indie career didn’t take off. There are things I can do differently now with better technology. I now have better cameras and a better computer to edit on, for starters—which means I can create better video content.

The question is, what sort of content should I produce, now? Before I come up with that answer, I’m going to start with publishing a few excerpts from the above mentioned unpublished memoir titled ‘Arrogant Brat Child’. The 18 chapters I wrote can be read as stand alone essays and all together the manuscript is one long essay. The best parts of the memoir, to me are the parts that describe my artistic process and how certain pieces were created. So, a good place to start, to give readers a taste is with this chapter (chapter six) that leads into the creation of the Orien books:

Friendships and Fog

Of the friends I’ve made over the years, Dan stands out because he was my high school best friend and my first roommate. We kept in touch even when we were no longer living together and still get together on occasion. I attended his wedding a few years ago and can call him up any time for a hike in Stanley park. It’s actually easier now because he ended up moving to my hometown in Westfield and that’s where he lives with his wife. Our friendship stands out because it lasted the longest—but there’s one small difference between Dan and my other close friends, especially the ones I made when he moved out. Dan is my only close male friend. All of my other close friendships have been with females.

The other most prominent friendship in my mind, the one that I always thought of as Dan’s successor, was my friend Devon. She was female and yet what we had was always just a friendship and it worked so well because of it. We were both cis/hetero and of the opposite gender, yet despite what Billy Crystal said in the movie When Harry Met Sally about sexual desire getting in the way of hetero male/female friendships, it doesn’t have to be a problem, if you don’t let it. It is only a problem to people with very narrow and stereotypical views on love and gender roles—but it’s a generational thing and a lot of it has to do with how culture used to be and how the older generation was brought up. 

    Rather than go on a rant about baby boomers and their heteronormative views, let’s just stick to that facts, which are that the best friendships I’ve had over the years have been with the opposite gender. So, let’s start with Devon. In order to do that we need to backtrack a little. Devon started out as my co-worker at Friendly’s in South Hadley, right at the time I moved there. I was on a fixed schedule for Mon-Fri from 11am-4pm. I worked alone and my job consisted of rotating and cleaning the syrup pumps, in addition to the usual soda fountain duties of making sundaes and handling takeout orders. Many of the employees at night were not aware of my actual job of cleaning and maintenance. It was assumed that I stood around all day, since I worked the slow shift. 

Devon and I met in my first week when I was told about the Friday-after-school rush. When the middle school in South Hadley would get out, the kids walked over to Friendly’s and filled up the whole restaurant. Devon’s shift started at 2, but I had been working alone the past week and was a little unenthused about working with someone else. We didn’t hit things off from the start. These things develop over time. We really started talking and getting along more once Devon started serving and would serve during the day while I worked the sundae counter.

Devon defended me when the night crew would throw out nasty comments about me. There seemed to be some day crew/night crew feuding going on at that restaurant and they were under the impression that I did not work as hard as they did. Devon fixed that. Devon knew I walked back and forth two miles from my apartment every day and she had seen me clean the soft serve machine and disassemble and clean the syrup pumps. I kept our work station clean and sanitary. The other crew members didn’t even wear gloves. 

One day Devon gave me her old MP3 player so that I could play music on my walks to work. This began a sort of tradition that would continue of Devon gifting me her old tech (she would later give me my first iPhone). 

    My new appreciation of music led to the end of my second room-mate situation. I would come in to Friendly’s and complain to Devon and another server whom I had made close friends with about roommate number two. The key complaint: I was rediscovering music now that I had an MP3 player and yet my room-mate didn’t share that interest. When I tried talking about music with him, he had not heard of The Doors or the Who or Led Zeppelin. I had mentioned one time (with beer in hand) that I used to, on occasion, but rarely, smoke weed. My room-mate’s response was: “Oh, you used to do drugs…”

I wasn’t what you would consider the coolest kid around. To a true punk rock kid I would have been considered a poser—and yet compared to my room-mate, I was Sid Vicious. I had to shake him loose, so I could reevaluate myself and consider my identity as an artist. This had a lot to do with adopting the punk persona, although my style wasn’t necessarily punk if you really want to get specific. I was a nineties grunge kid. So, I got back in touch with that. Over time.

I had come up with an idea of how my dream girl might look. She would be a punk rock girl. My high school crush from Northampton had a punk vibe. I came across a picture of a girl who fit the exact description I had in my head and it was in a flyer for Kohls that we were looking at during a break at Friendly’s.

“Devon, I found a picture of my dream girl,” I told her.

“Avril Lavigne?” She said.

I looked at the picture and I looked at Devon and said, “Oh…yeah. I like Avril Lavigne.”

I ended up downloading Avril Lavigne music onto my MP3 player and decided I was going to start seeking out female rockers. Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crowe became part of my playlist along with music from Hole, Blondie, Madonna and lots of one hit wonders from the 80s and 90s. The character of Holli Belle was starting to form in my mind.

Holli Belle is the manic pixie dream girl that I invented for the novel Orien and the League of Artists—but before Orien and the League of Artists came Orien Battles the Fog-devils. So, let’s talk about the fog and the fog-devils, by talking about what they represent in reality. The fog is depression. We all go through it. For some it’s severe enough to be a clinical problem. My mother is an example of someone who struggles with clinical depression as a result of bipolar disorder.

It was a topic that came up frequently with myself and Devon. Devon became someone to whom I could talk openly with about my own struggles with loneliness and depression.

I wrote a poem titled “balloon” that was inspired by a conversation I had with Devon. It started when I messaged Devon that I was upset with how a cook (who was a bit of a bully) was making fun of his girlfriend who had buzzed her hair. The girl that had done this, had just lost her father and was going through grief. Her boyfriend was mocking her and telling everybody to check out her hair.

The shaving of the hair to deal with depression and grief to me I thought was similar to self-harm. I had known a girl, an online friend, who used to e-mail me back and forth who confessed to me about cutting. I didn’t know this girl very well. I didn’t know her at all. I only knew her online through a poetry website. That girl was also going through a loss. The loss of her mom. 

In the poem, “balloon”, I used the visual of a person with balloons attached to their head as a metaphor for grief and depression and the emotions felt when a person is so hurt that they seek some type of release is symbolized in the poem as severing the ropes to these balloons.

The girl with the buzzed haircut, we later found out turned to heroin. Before I knew that though (and even after and for a good many years) my heart went out to her. I connected with her on a deep level and wanted to do something. It bothered me that her boyfriend was treating her the way he was. It bothered me that boyfriends, all of them, seemed to never understand and never do the right thing. It didn’t seem fair that someone like her wasn’t with someone like me, who would actually care about her and love her.

All of these emotions that I was feeling were, for me, released and took on the form of a book titled Orien Battles The Fog-devils.

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Balloon is one of my favorite poems that I’ve written. It’s usually the first video I show people when I tell them about my old YouTube videos. Now, you, my reader, whoever you are, know why.

Watch the video for Balloon here.

Context is important to understanding the Orien books. It’s one of the reasons why I never knew how to market them. To understand me personally and know the events that inspire my books is key to understanding and enjoying them.

Orien Battles the Fog-Devils is available to buy on Amazon here

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Thanks for reading!

Bry

Orien and the Meta Nature of My Indie Writing Career

 Orien and the Meta Nature of My Indie Writing Career

By Bryan Paul

Disclaimer: This essay contains topics involving bullying and suicide which may be triggering to some readers.

Over the summer, I was taking an online class in Sociology and at one point I was reading the textbook and came across a passage that caught my attention, distracting me from concentrating on my studying. I became lost in my own thoughts, remembering a time when my inner thoughts, observations and fantasies were brought to life on paper. 

The passage that caught my attention was in a blurb on Chapter 6, pg. 151 of the textbook “An Introduction to Sociology, 3rd edition”: 

“Cyberbullying first made international headlines in 2010 when a fifteen-year-old-girl, Phoebe Prince, in South Hadley, Massachusetts committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied by girls at her school.”

I was living in South Hadley at the time when this happened. I wrote a very grim poem in response to this event, which can be found in my book Playground and also in a clip from a radio interview on YouTube. Over the years I’ve had mixed feelings about the poem and considered the possibility that the graphic imagery was too exploitative-however, I will say, in my opinion, it’s not as irresponsible as the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why which tackled similar material but I felt was more focused on shock value than raising awareness.

The bullying event also served as inspiration for the backdrop of my book Orien and the League of Artists which was meant to be a sequel to a fantasy book I previously wrote titled Orien Battles the Fog-devils. The previous book leaned heavily on fantasy tropes. In an attempt at world building, I borrowed ideas from Harry Potter and decided that there should be an evil sorcerer, similar to Voldemort lurking in the background and a fantasy creature similar to the dementors called a fog-devil.

When it came to writing the second book, I had a different idea in mind, which leaned in on the meta aspect of the main character. ‘Orien Sage’ the poet and dessert crafter from the Angeline Village was Bryan Paul the poet and sundae artist from Friendly’s in South Hadley, MA. The choice to make the book self aware was deliberate-and a bit of a problem, because it limited my readership to those who were in on the meta commentary, which made it difficult to market.

I thought that if I incorporated socially relevant topics such as bullying, suicide, substance use, social media, the fear of missing out and everything that I had taken notice of as a resident of a small town in Western Massachusetts, that I would have created something powerful, that might even get me some attention. 

I’ll admit, though it was a little shameful of me to consider my own fame and recognition as motivation for tackling topical subjects-however, I tried to approach the topic of teen bullying as observed by the protagonist Orien Sage, an older 2nd person observer, with care and kindness. My heart was in the right place as can be observed by this passage:

In Chapter II, pg. 41 of Orien and the League of Artists, Orien is listening to the radio in his quarters and stops the dial at a news program:

“She was an above average student and she was very creative and liked to draw,” said the voice of a man and Orien couldn’t help feel a connection to whomever they were talking about.

”Were you a witness to any mistreatment?” The interviewer asked.

”I’m sorry to say, I witnessed more of such than I’d like,” the man, who Orien now guessed was a teacher, said in a voice that was gravel, a very sad, serious voice…

Orien sympathizes with Neomi (the bullying victim) and later in the novel (big spoilers ahead) he identifies with a young girl who posts poetry in a webgroup known as ‘the League of Artists’, which is the Promythica equivalent of a social networking platform. The poet, Loria, is revealed to be one of Neomi’s bullies.

I was throwing everything I could at the wall with that book, to see what would stick, including using the Harry Potter tropes and creating a cult of death eater-like followers of an unseen evil sorcerer named Dasahd. There was even an attempt to go full villain at the climax of the story, essentially turning Loria into Draco Malfoy or even Tom Riddle. 

I still feel it’s a shame that this piece of work (which is not perfect and honestly more art than literature) never got its due, which is why it’s come down to me putting in the extra time and effort to analyze my own text and say: “hey you out there, reader, this is what I was trying to do…”

I like how the book opens with Orien riding his mini speeder to the steamee parlor, but part of the problem with what I was doing was that the charm and appeal I was going for was dependent on the reader knowing who I was and the fact that I was the narrator.

Chapter I, Pg. 8 reads:

The bell jingled as he let himself in. He saw many scholars sitting with books and drinks, many ladies, some of which, busy with studies, others conversing amongst friends, but no one was grasping to the paperbound book ‘Harmoni’-copies of which sat unsold on the shelf in the corner no longer in view of the customers.

The lady at the money counter had hair of pitch black and nails to match. She sat at a chair absorbed in her own reading-a worn paperbound copy of the popular romance series ‘The Nightfall Chronicles’ in which a peasant lady of a modest nature becomes romantically involved with a noctornahl, a seductive creature of the night.

Orien, as a scripter, had not the qualities of a noctornahl and its popularity suggested that a person of his type could never fully seduce a lady which was a sad thought, but he put it out of his mind.

”Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t notice you,” the lady said and she got up from her chair.

This was me commenting on the current trend of supernatural romance in fiction and media, that started with Twilight and continued to grow in popularity with The Vampire Diaries. It is also me commenting on my own insecurities, based on the ideal male image and stereotypes in the media at the time, as being represented by characters like Edward Cullen and Jacob Black.

The passage above is also based on the reality of me having my poetry book Felicity on display at The Thirsty Mind Cafe in South Hadley. While I feel it is a little ‘woe is me’ to bring up what I call the ‘starving artist’ syndrome, it sets up the character of Orien Sage in a way that I hoped would endear the reader to him (and me), if not for the whole undiscovered genius aspect, than at least for the overlooked sensitive soul aspect. 

Both myself and my fictional counterpart have the same issues and complexes that are common with underground and indie artists-not just poets, but also musicians. Music and musicians play a role in the narrative as well, with Orien trying to befriend a singer from his past. Holli Belle was designed to represent my dream girl at the time-except I wanted to be realistic and have the hero not get the girl.

Holli Belle as a symbol, rather than a character, represents the music scene as a culture filled with hyper-socialized people who smoke herbs and have fleeting relationships. Other characters criticize Holli’s alleged fast lifestyle, yet, Orien doesn’t, because he remembers her as a fellow scholar from his past at Penhaven Arts school.

The closing lines of the novel are:

She may not be in his league, it would seem, but there was a time when they were both scholars at the arts school and they were not so different, when they were both part of the league of artists.

There is a play on the phrase suggesting that a person is ‘out of’ someone’s ‘league’ and also a callback to the name of the social network platform used in the book. As an extrovert, Holli, is a different personality type than the introverted Orien and runs in a different circle than he does. I ask the reader to question what it means to be part of social groups and what they represent. Musicians thrive in being part of a collective, yet writers, like Orien, fly solo. Despite their differences, they share the same goals of wanting to belong and be noticed.

WORKS CITED:

Conerly, Tonja R, et al. Introduction to Sociology 3E. OpenStax, Rice University, 2021. 

Meyer, Stephenie. The Twilight Saga. Litttle, Brown and Company, 2010

Smith, L. J. The Vampire Diaries. 1st HarperTeen pbk. ed. HarperTeen, 2007.

Paul, Bryan. Playground: A Poetry Collection. KDP publishing platform, 2012.

Paul, Bryan. Orien and the League of Artists. KDP publishing platform, 2012.

Paul, Bryan. Orien The Arts Scholar. KDP publishing platform, 2014.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter Series. Scholastic Books, 1996

Yorker, Brian (creator), Asher Jay (based on a book by). 13 Reasons Why. Netflix studios production, 2017

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ORIEN AND THE LEAGUE OF ARTISTS is available to purchase on AMAZON