TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE (part 2)
The Proto Brando is an altogether more familiar figure. To the parent anxiously awaiting the emergence into full & final form of a son who has already passed through the egg, larva & pupa stages of the adolescence life cycle, there might almost be some relief when pupa bursts into imago & it’s pure Proto Brando. At least they’re in familiar territory. When the birth fluids dry & the creature raises itself into the perpendicular position (or as perpendicular as a Proto Brando, bound by the Rules of Cool, is allowed to stretch), the Presley sneer & the stiff-lipped, monosyllabic speech will conform entirely to type.
Utterances, however, will be rare. The daily pattern of simian sounds will occasionally incorporate primitive speech. Words such as ‘burger’, ‘money’, ‘cool’, ‘boring’, ‘why?’ ‘fucking’ & ‘fair’ (as in, ‘It’s not fucking fair’) will be discernible in the primordial yodel that is the newly broken voice of the PB.
Clothing will be pretty much the universal gathering of swathes of denim & man-mad fibres in dark colours around shoulders & hips. Jeans lopped off just below the knee will reveal downy legs & - curiously at odds with the attempts at hard man chic - short white socks. PBs may favour upper garments advertising bands that anyone over 18 would cross continents to avoid hearing. Mainstream choices might include Slipknot, Marilyn Manson or (now largely branded as having ‘gone commercial’) Limp Biskit. The cognoscenti will have ensured the prominent display of logos depicting the most obscure of death-metal outfits – Immolation, Incantation, Entombed, Cannibal Corpse - preferably with quotations from their lyrics that emphasise visceral imagery & the liberal use of profane language.
Activities will comprise a narrow range of options. When unaccompanied by others of their persuasion, 15-hour horror video/DVD marathons in their own rooms (reeking chambers lined & carpeted with enormous posters of the above-mentioned bands, unwashed laundry & pizza boxes containing crusts) are common. When mob-handed, long hours will be spent near municipal dustbins, burned out cars & bus garages, smoking & pushing each other over. When a girl is present, the PB will drape himself across her in the manner of one securing a life raft in a choppy sea. This involves wrapping all four limbs & any other remotely prehensile part of the body around the unfortunate girl. This anchoring manoeuvre has recumbent, seated, standing & even mobile versions. Curiously, conventional procedures such as kissing are relatively rare, although, if under scrutiny from fellow PBs, a certain amount of rummaging within upper clothing might be appropriate.
Within school, the PB will maintain minimum engagement with the approved activities. In lessons he will lounge at the back of the class, aiming constantly for the entirely prone position in spite of the physical constraints of chair & desk. When the teacher renders this impossible, he will lean as far back on his chair as he can until it falls over. Each time this happens he will laugh loudly (a strange, unsettling sound similar to that of the breaking of cheap crockery). Outside he will run through a permutation of options including the terrorising of younger students for their train fares, draping himself around girls, smoking & blowing the smoke out of the corner of his mouth or through his nostrils or both (preferably simultaneously), all of these procedures punctuated by liberal spitting. (NB It is essential that the spitting is not of the projectile variety. Phlegm must be pushed through pursed lips & allowed to fall. Only chewing gum may be expelled by force & then in such a way as to adhere to whatever is the target surface).
Fortunately, so taxing is the sustaining of this regime that by the late teens a period of semi-hibernatory torpor is entered (roughly coincident with final examinations) prior to the re-emergence of the adolescent in a form more recognisable as essentially human.
2:06:43 PM 
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