“Fourteen, the complete diaries of a teenager in love”, continues. My favourite line from Jack in the last episode, was when he was gazing into his crystal ball: “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’”. Oh Jack. In this episode, it’s All About the Boy.

17 April 1996

G’day it’s me again. I didn’t write yesterday because I couldn’t be stuffed. Today was boring, punctuated by perving on Snowy in those jeans. Fuck.

We went to another boring Meet the Music Concert at the Opera House and we got to wear casuals. Snowy always wears great clothes. He was in jeans and a grey t-shirt. I wore skin-tight-too-small jeans that everyone laughed at and I was embarrassed, but who cares. I had my boots on that are meant for going out. And a green skivvy thing which I rolled down the top of because it made my head look fat.

I always sit next to Snowy on an excursion. Every one else was mucking up and the teachers kept on having to tell them to shut up. If I was playing violin down there I would want to stop the whole orchestra and yell SHUT UP at the top of my lungs. Everyone was noisy, but Snowy and I sat and watched and listened. There were moments when our legs touched by accident, then other times they touched deliberately to make some in-joke. Even in the dark you can see his hair.

The concert was so long. I thought a lot. There are so many things to say I don’t know where to start. I try not to think about you, Snowy. I try to imagine other people in your place like Adrian or Zach, to see if it is just you I feel this weird feeling for; I imagine doing things to them like I dream of doing to you. But it doesn’t work. It’s you.

On the train back, it was just me and Snowy in one seat. The rest of the class was further back. It was dark outside and the rain left steaks on the windows, but inside the train glowed blue. When Snowy smiles his dimples go really deep. I know the shape of every tooth. He smiled right then. T-E-E-T-H.

‘Can I touch your face?’ he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer and shoved his finger into the side of my nose and held it there for ages.

‘You’ve got heaps of hair on the back of your neck’, I said. I drew a long line from the back of his t-shirt right up to the top of his head. I kept my finger there on top like I was about to spin him around.

‘What about your eyelid?’ he laughed. I took his finger and put it on my closed eyelid and held it there, moving it around my eye. It wasn’t uncomfortable. I tried to keep my other eye open to see his face. I must have looked like a fucking dickhead.

Snowy drew lots of dots on my face with his finger, but softer this time. He has blond hairs on the tops of his hands.

‘Jack’s face’, he says. ‘Jack’s face’. I had that vomit feeling in my throat.

‘What are we going to do?’ I think. ‘What are you feeling? Tell me! I don’t want to waste this’.

My hand was next to his on the seat. For two stops he looped his thumb in my thumb.

‘There is a hole without you’, I want to say. ‘Even when I despise the extended times when you’re being you’. But then, like every opportunity before, I let it slip away like sand.

He does all these things that are so ugly, so fucking stupid, but then it’s just a small thing he does that makes me start to think of him all over again. There’s something I read once in a John Marsden book: once you tell someone the truth, they don’t know what to do with it, so they use it against you. Maybe that’s why I didn’t say a word.

18 April 1996

False alarm. Zach didn’t tell everyone in his youth group about me. FUCK. I panicked, then I didn’t sleep. It kept on going around in my head what might happen. I kept the light on next to my bed. I stared at this book, not knowing what to write. The light is old and gets really hot. I can feel it now picking up the hairs on my arms. The only other thing it lights up is half the Dead Poets Society poster on the wall above my bed. Robert Sean Leonard got to do everything he wanted in the movie. Then he killed himself. Great.

I imagined that after everyone found out I was gay, the world would split open down the middle, from Antarctica to the North Pole. From out of the centre, from all the secret hiding places, gay people would start taking over both halves. Then together they would restitch the earth into something better, but with a scar.

Zach did tell his youth group about some of my arguments against Christianity. But it’s been Adrian spreading rumours about me and Snowy. Today those rumours got worse. One minute I was talking about Snowy, then I was tossing off about him, then bonking him, and then I was doing it with him at cadet camp (even though I don’t do cadets), and then I was helping wank him in the dunnies at athletics camp (even though I don’t do athletics). What will it be tomorrow? It’s all a joke, I know. And I’m taking it that way.

But the funny thing is, I know it’s the whole and utter truth; I just told Adrian as a joke. Snowy and I have never talked about it (except a dumb note I gave him in Year 8, and then what he told me at my birthday party, and my book-length letter I wrote him, which the dickhead said he didn’t read, but I know he did). Apart from that, we’ve just ignored or avoided the whole subject; we both get shithouse uncomfortable.

It’s really fun to act like a raving homosexual around other friends, like ‘Hiiii’ in a sexy voice and touching them. It’s cool. And I can make sick jokes and comments filled with innuendo that paints me as gay. But so can everyone else. Everyone just laughs or plays along. It’s fun. (And you thought this stuff only happened at that school with the chapel!) But I can’t do that stuff around Snowy. When I do step over that line, into the realm of ‘me’, he calls me a faggot, and everything crumbles.

So why does he still sit next to me in most classes and excursions, and want to be with me and talk to me so much? It’s got to a point where nothing will ever happen, it can’t, it’s impossible. I want to give up hope, all the fantasies and dreams, all of it, and start again. Because it’s so old. I don’t want to be obsessed any more. I don’t want to think every second of the day about Snowy.

I can’t be his friend without being myself. And I can’t be a lover without being a friend.

Anyway, I’m exhausted and can barely stay awake. But I’d like to say two things. I love my Mum, I really do. Seriously. Because before in this diary, I’ve said really harsh things, and it’s plagued my conscience, because they’ve been really hollow. The second is about love as well. About how on ‘Party of Five’, the show was about ‘love’ being the greatest and most important adventure of all. And being loved is just about the best thing of earth. Everyone has to be loved, and give love.

I’m sad, because it made me realise if Snowy died tomorrow, I wouldn’t have done enough to keep that love. I could say I wrote that dumb letter. But I know that’s not enough. I need to do something, but what? Any suggestions?

Go to Episode 6: Diaries Are Gay