Camps are finally out of the way and it’s the calm before the study storm. Four weeks from exams. Term 2. Year 9. Jack doesn’t know it yet, but in a few weeks everything will change – more than he or anyone else could have predicted. For now, there’s still time for Jack’s daily pre-school rituals.

24 April 1996

Life is but a walking shadow.
Macbeth

There are two ways my school works. Full on chaos and noise. Or extreme silence, like when class is on, or at night. School is made for hundreds of people, so when it’s empty everything is large and unused. It feels kind of wrong walking through school when it’s like this. But I like it. It feels like mine.

The day always starts the same way. I get to school at 7.30am before it crawls with yelling, running people. I put my bag in the locker room and organise my books into a stack for first period. Handball courts are still. Hallways are quiet. Classrooms are waiting. I walk to the rectangle playing field underneath the senior school where there’s a railing leading to the indoor swimming pool. I’ve started wearing my blazer because it’s colder now in April. The grass is bright because of the dew; when I pull myself up to sit on the rail, my pants get wet.

Snowy’s body moves in and out of focus because the windows of the swimming centre are foggy. It gets warmer and patches of clear glass get bigger, and I can follow red swimmers, a white swimming cap. I recognise his body; other guys on the swim team are more muscly, have bigger square pecs, bigger arms. But Snowy’s body is sexy – kind of simple or something. Everything looks right exactly where it is.

Swimmers have a weird way of standing when they get out of the pool. Like planes when they land. They look out of place. Their bodies don’t know what to do for a bit. Their shoulders bend forward, their bodies breathe. They go to the changing room swinging arms and shaking legs.

I wait.

‘Hey’. He smiles. T-E-E-T-H. My tummy: Aggghh, as Lockie Leonard would say.

‘Hi Snowy’. He drops his bag and shakes his hair on me. He smells good! Like a pool.

‘I finished my history study last night’. He sits on the rail. Whatever this feeling is, it’s great.

‘Only four weeks to go now’, he says. ‘I haven’t even started’.

‘Have you done your composition?’ I ask. ‘I’m performing mine tomorrow I think’.

‘No’. I like him without glasses. He’s blind. He looks smaller without them.

‘Mr Gorski told us yesterday he thinks in Latin’, I say. ‘Like whole sentences’.

‘Such a weirdo’. He ties his school tie. He does a simple knot like other sporty guys. I do a Windsor knot.

‘He nearly killed his neighbour’s cat after it maimed his poor pet parrot.’

‘He has a pet parrot?’

‘And a boyfriend. He goes to my hairdresser. He doesn’t know we’re laughing at him. But he’s getting better’.

We walk back to his locker room. It’s now really busy with people. You have to really push to get through.

‘You know the theme song to that?’, he asks. We’re talking about the TV show ‘Married with Children’. We aren’t allowed to watch it at home. But I’ve seen it at Snowy’s a few times. ‘Love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage?’

‘You can’t have one without the other’.

‘Yeah. Do you think that?’ he asks.

‘What?’

‘I don’t think you need to be married to be in love’, he said.

‘No’.

GUTLESS FUCK. But what if the conversation stops? What if I freeze up and stand there with nothing to say? I’m supposed to be this rock, this guy who’s out-going, who has opinions and everything. That all disappears.

We’ve started shaking hands like Year 12s do, like Zach’s brother does. I shake his hand and it fits. Snowy goes to talk to his friends.

‘See you in music’, he says.

When school is noisy, I could be anyone. Another set of shoes. When I see Snowy down at the tuck shop at lunch I turn around and walk the other way. Then I’m in my bed at night asking, ‘Why can’t I just tell him? Just do it’. But when I see him, it all goes out the window.

So when it’s quiet, that’s when I talk to Snowy.

25 April 1996

Anzac Day. I can’t feel any connection with the Anzacs and the diggers and the whole Anzac Day thing. Is that wrong? It’s 9.30. I’ve just watched ‘E.R.’ New John Marsden book out soon. That’s exciting.

I haven’t talked much lately. Used the excuse that I’m tired. Haven’t said that much at school either. I don’t know why I’m so pissed off and quiet. There’s always a war in my head, and a controlled exterior.

Dad asked my presence playing golf at the driving range. But I don’t like golf. It’s so pointless. A tiny ball, hit from 500 metres away into a tiny hole. Big deal.

‘Do you have a sport you like’, Dad asked in the car. ‘Maybe squash?’

I mean, do I have to like a sport? Is there a sport I have to like? Am I less of a man if I don’t like sport? It’s like he hasn’t raised me correctly, or something. That’s probably what he thinks. He acts so disappointed every time I kick a ball.

I’ve been seeing a lot of Jin lately, which is good. Talking to him face-to-face is like talking to Zach on the phone. Easy. We both have different friends, and different classes. But we’re making time to talk. I like that. I worry about him a lot.

Time for another secret to be disclosed. I wank. Yep. That’s right. I’m a faggot who wanks and listens to fine music. Really, once you’ve done it once, you don’t stop, you can’t. It’s an urge. I’ve wanked since I was in Year 6. Usually, I think about guys. Naked, giving me a blow-job, me touching their bodies, their large dicks, hard. They’ve got nice hands, but sexy bodies. Nice arses. I tie them up on my bed and slowly take each bit of clothing off until they’re naked, with a huge woody, erection, hard on. I kiss everything. And I suck their dicks and touch and stroke their chests, and we have sex.

Right it’s OK now. I’m done. That makes two today. One when every one was out.

That all sounds so harsh, so blunt. I don’t intend it that way. I’m shocked I just wrote that. The word wanking sounds so hard anyway. It wasn’t meant like the way it sounds. I suppose when you wank and write at the same time, you get a bit rough. Usually my fantasies are soft, kind of nice, and nearly always the same. Naked, tied up, oral sex. Usually with Snowy, usually in bed, but sometimes weird places like in a hammock, or in the bush in the middle of the trees, or I had one with a sleeping bag, and his body close to mine; first he gets into the sleeping bag, I take off his shirt then pull down his pants and stroke and touch all over.

Adrian says that masturbation and wet dreams are sexually immoral. God. What a life he’d have! I told him it doesn’t say anywhere you can’t wank. And wet dreams? That’s natural. A part of puberty. His argument was that it doesn’t matter if you can’t help it.

‘You can’t help lying, can you?’ he said. That’s when I really got annoyed with him.

‘Fuck you piss me off’, I said. I’m so fucking sick of him. It was lunch time. I went to find Jin.

I hope no body reads this. Ever. God.

To: Jack, from Jin
Re: The Band. Urgent. Uncensored.
25 April 1996

Right. About our band. Crunch time is here. I’ve been waiting for it to happen for ages and it hasn’t happened yet. So I’m going to have to put my foot down. I’ve turned down two promising offers in other bands because I think this one has the most potential. So now, it either happens or it never will. It has to be firmly given the go-ahead, and fully planned-out within the next month, or I’m afraid it never will. I am hoping its existence will be acknowledged by the school by the end of the year, and if possible by the end of the term. By now you will have realised the full potential of our band, as I have, and the urgency of this letter. Guard it well. This is what steps I propose we take.

Jin

Go to Episode 8: Port Arthur