Being 14 sucks. Firstly, you’re stuck in the ‘burbs. Next, you think everyone doesn’t like you, even when you know you’re better than everyone else at just about everything. And third, there’s that small issue of a big secret. Catch up with all the previous episodes over there on the right-hand-side pane. And keep up. Jack’s just getting started.

13 April 1996

Yesterday, I saw Broken Arrow with Zach and Adrian. The Wicked Witch has been defeated! There was nothing that affected me. If there had been, I would’t admit it, of course.

Zach and Adrian laughed at me when I said my Mum didn’t want me to see the film. I could have said so many things to Mum. But I didn’t say a word. Cos I’m not dumb. It would have made it worse. Save it up, battle by battle. Mums work like that.

Anyway, we saw Miss Saigon last night. It was EXCELLENT. The staging was awesome. Helicopters. Huge movie screens moving around. FANTASTIC. The only thing that wrecked the night was Mum.

I whispered to her, ‘Wouldn’t you love to be on that stage?’ There in the dark, I wanted to leap. My mouth was wide open the whole time.

‘No’, she replied. ‘Not everyone is a show-off like you’.

‘What am I going to do with you’, she said after the show. To herself: ‘He’s not from my side of the family’.

She’s stuck with me doing drama, whether she likes it or not. She can go shove it up her arse. I couldn’t give a fuck in an elevator.

But I’ve had enough bitching. I can write about being sheltered, not having any public transport, later somewhere in the intriguing saga of this book.

Wouldn’t it be funny if one day I actually published this, when I’m 30 or something. ‘Growing up Australian in pre-Republican times’.

14 April 1996

School tomorrow. I bet I won’t sleep. I never do on school eves.

Anyway. Spoke to Zach again. Talked about nothing and hung up. Meanwhile, I was watching Party of Five. Great show.

I don’t know what to do about Snowy. I see him tomorrow for the first time in a few weeks. Feels like forever. I know that I should let go. I don’t know if I feel the same as I did before, in Year 7 and 8. But I feel something. When I sit next to him in class, something fills up inside. I want to touch him again. Maybe I’m just physically attracted to him, and that’s fair enough: his blond hair, his body, his legs, his butt. He’s so fucking sexy.

But there’s other things as well. His smile, and when I look into his green eyes I stop moving. But he keeps calling me a faggot. I know he’s gay too. He just can’t admit it. He’s such a dickhead. After everything that happened last year. I’m secretly laughing about him in my head. No. That sounds really stuck up.

I want to do stuff with him, to him. I want to love him, but I can’t because he calls me a faggot.

I wan’t to, but I can’t. Where have I said that before?

15 April 1996

School started today. I don’t want to write. So:

Adrian spread the rumour that I was spading at Easter camp (really pisses me off).

Adrian also spread the rumour that I was speaking about Snowy again, you know ‘isn’t he sexy’ etc. And Snowy won’t go near me now (really pisses me off).

Zach told the whole of his youth group what I said about homosexuality. Now everybody in the whole school, the world, knows I’m gay, or at least suspects it and I’m really pissed off and I want to die.

Go to Episode 5: Jack and Snowy, Sitting on a Train