Sunday, September 26, 1999
Listening to: Lou Bega, "Mambo No. 5," still stuck in my head from last night

Homecoming dance was last night. I went with Brooke. As us.

She wore a blue dress her mom helped her hem and I wore my dad's gray tie, which he tied for me in the hallway because I still can't do it right. Then he took about forty pictures of us on the front steps and said, "You two make a nice couple." Brooke squeezed my hand, hard, the way you'd squeeze somebody's hand at the dentist. Dad thought it was cute. We both just smiled for the camera. I don't know when I'll tell him. Not yet. Maybe not until I'm living somewhere else. rainyday says I get to pick, and I'm picking later.

But the dance. We went with a whole group of band kids and we danced to every fast song, "Mambo No. 5" and "I Want It That Way" and that Ricky Martin one, and everybody screamed the words. When the slow songs came on, Brooke and I did the thing where you put your hands on each other's shoulders and rock side to side like two people waiting for a bus, and she kept making faces at people over my shoulder, and I couldn't stop laughing.

Two years ago at my first homecoming I spent the slow songs reading plaques in the trophy case. Last night I didn't go near the trophy case once.

I added a rainbow line to the top of the page. If you know what it means, hi. If you don't, it's just a pretty line.

It'll be a year on October 12th since Matthew Shepard died. I still think about him all the time. I'm still scared. I'm also, for the first time in my whole life, kind of excited about the rest of it.

Thursday, September 23, 1999

Spirit week. Today was Hawaiian Day and half the band came to practice in leis. NASA lost a spaceship at Mars today and my physics teacher spent the whole class kind of staring out the window like his dog ran away.

At dinner Dad asked who I was taking to homecoming. I said Brooke. He slapped the table and said "FINALLY!" and held up his hand for a high five, and I gave him one, because what else was I going to do. Megan rolled her eyes so hard I could hear it. Mom just looked at me across the table for a second longer than normal. I don't know what her look meant. I keep thinking about it.

Sunday, September 19, 1999
Listening to: nothing. I don't need anything. I'm just sitting here.

I TOLD BROOKE.

Yesterday was a marching competition, two hours away. We got a Superior again (!!!) but that is not the headline. Brooke drove us home in the Boat, which is her mom's old Buick, and we were the last ones out of the school parking lot, and she pulled into her driveway and turned off the car and the radio kept going for a second the way it does.

I had an index card in my pocket. rainyday said if I couldn't say it, I could write it down. I'd had it in there since Thursday and it was all soft on the corners. I said "I need to give you something and you have to read it in your head, not out loud." She said "Is this a love letter? Because gross." I said "Kind of the opposite."

The card said: I'm gay. I don't feel that way about girls. You're the first person I've ever told in real life.

She read it under the dome light. Twice. I watched her read it twice. It was the longest ten seconds of my life.

Then she unbuckled and hugged me so hard my seat belt locked. She said, "Corey. You IDIOT. Did you think I would CARE?" And then she said, "I'm so glad you told me. I'm so glad." And then she said, "Wait. How long?" And I said, "Kind of forever," and she said, "You've been carrying this around since FOREVER?" and started crying, and then I was crying, and we sat in the Boat in her driveway crying and laughing until her mom flicked the porch light on and off.

Before I got out she said three things. One: "New rule, you have to tell me stuff now. All the stuff." Two: "I'm not telling anybody. That's yours." Three: "Homecoming. We're going. Together. As us. And if anybody says anything, I'll punch them like the crayon kid."

I walked home. It's two blocks. I felt like I weighed about eleven pounds.

Then I got online and told the chat room, and PeachPit typed about four hundred exclamation points, and Toto said "there's no place like home," which was actually perfect for once.

Thursday, September 16, 1999

I've been trying to tell Brooke for two weeks. I've chickened out four times. Once I got as far as "Hey, can I tell you something?" and then when she said "Sure" I said "I think my valve is sticking." My VALVE. She looked at me like I had three heads.

The chat people are coaching me. PeachPit says just blurt it. Toto says do it somewhere you can leave if it goes bad. rainyday said, "If you can't say it, write it down. Nobody gives out prizes for saying it out loud." So I wrote it on an index card tonight. It's in my jeans pocket. Saturday.

Monday, September 13, 1999

THE BROWNS ARE BACK! And they lost 43 to nothing to the Steelers last night. My dad wore his orange hat and stood up for the entire first quarter, then sat down for the second quarter, then lay down on the floor for the third quarter. In the fourth quarter he said, very calmly, "Well. They're back," and went to bed. Megan and I laughed so hard we had to go outside.

Thursday, September 9, 1999

9/9/99! A kid on drumline went and got a Sega Dreamcast the second it came out and brought the empty box to practice to show people. The box. He brought the BOX.

I got my college applications in the mail this week. I'm applying to four: one in Chicago, two out east in big cities, and the big state school as a backup so my mom doesn't pass out. I want to study music, or maybe journalism, or maybe just be somewhere with more than two stoplights where nobody has known me since kindergarten.

All of them want an essay about "a significant experience that shaped who you are." I have exactly one significant experience and I can't write it. So right now my essay is about marching band, which is also true. Just not the most true thing.

Monday, September 6, 1999

Labor Day. No school, no practice, no dairy bar (it closed for the season Saturday, RIP waffle cones). Senior year started two weeks ago and I keep forgetting I'm a senior until some freshman calls me "sir" in the hall.

I'm first trumpet now and trumpet section leader. Our show this year is Santana, "Oye Como Va" and "Black Magic Woman," and there's a part where the trumpets get to play screaming high and the drumline goes crazy underneath us. When the crowd claps along on the opener at home games, it's the best feeling I know.

Saturday, August 21, 1999

Something happened at dinner and I need to write it down.

Megan asked if she could watch Will & Grace when the new season starts, because her friend watches it. My dad said, "Not in this house." And then he said, "I don't have anything against those people. I just don't want it shoved in my face. And I don't want my kids growing up thinking that's normal."

My mom said "Honey," in her warning voice. Dad said, "What? I'm just saying."

I put my fork down very carefully so it wouldn't clink. I don't know why that mattered so much. I ate the rest of my corn one kernel at a time and asked to be excused and went up to my room and lay on the floor with Buckeye until it got dark.

Around nine my dad knocked and asked if I wanted to come down and watch the Indians game with him. And I did. We sat on the couch and he explained the infield fly rule to me for the hundredth time, and he got me a pop without me asking, and he was just... my dad. The same guy who taught me to ride a bike. The same guy who hugged me when McGwire hit 62.

I don't know how to hold both of those at the same time. I logged on after he went to bed and rainyday said, "You don't have to figure your dad out tonight. You just have to get to the other side of this year." So that's the plan.

Saturday, August 7, 1999

Band camp is DONE. Five days of marching in ninety degrees. I have a farmer's tan that stops exactly where my T-shirt sleeves end. I look like a two-tone car.

I'm section leader this year, so I had the new freshman trumpets. One of them, this skinny kid with huge glasses, got put on third trumpet and looked like somebody had told him his dog died. At water break I told him third trumpet is where I started, and that you play the notes nobody hears, but if you take them away the chord sounds wrong and everybody can tell. He looked at me like I'd said something from the Bible. I felt about a hundred years old. In a good way.

Tuesday, July 27, 1999

Woodstock '99 ended with people setting fires, and it was all over the news, and at dinner my dad pointed his fork at the TV and said "THIS is what's wrong with kids today," and looked right at me. Dad. I scoop ice cream. I was in bed by ten-thirty on Sunday.

College brochures keep coming in the mail. I keep the ones from the big-city schools in my trumpet case, under the velvet. I take them out at night and look at the pictures of people walking around campus with their backpacks, and I try to picture myself in them. Just some guy. Just some guy nobody's known since kindergarten.

Sunday, July 11, 1999
Listening to: Megan, still screaming

The U.S. women won the World Cup yesterday! It went to penalty kicks against China and my sister Megan, who is twelve and plays fullback, screamed so loud on the last kick that Buckeye hid under the porch for an hour. She has now announced she's going to play for the national team. My dad said "that's my girl" about fifty times. It was a really good day in our house. I want to write down the good days too.

Older stuff:
January-June 1999 (the chat room, the prom I didn't go to)
1998 (tables! and the year I told myself the truth)
Fall 1997 (Comic Sans, age fifteen, beware)