Saturday, December 19, 1998
Mood: quiet. Listening to: the Messiah on the radio, Mom's station.

The House voted to impeach the President today. My dad watched the whole thing on C-SPAN with his feet up and kept saying "well, there it goes." I don't really know what I think about it. Mostly I think it's weird that the whole country has spent all year talking about something the grownups told us was none of our business.

Winter concert was Thursday. I got a four-bar solo in the jazz band piece. Four bars! I didn't crack a single note. Brooke whistled with her fingers from the clarinet section, which you are NOT supposed to do, and Mr. V. gave her a look that could peel paint.

I was reading back through this whole year tonight. In January I was a kid who thought getting a license was the biggest thing that could happen. This year I told myself the truth about something. I haven't told anybody else. But I told me. That's something, right?

Saturday, October 24, 1998
Mood: I don't know.

It's been almost two weeks and I can't stop thinking about Matthew Shepard.

There were candlelight vigils for him all over the country. I read about them on the computer after everybody went to bed. Thousands of people holding candles. Part of me felt better seeing that, and part of me thought, but none of those people are here.

Here's what happened here. Last Monday somebody in the band room made a joke about it. About the fence. I'm not going to write it down. Some guys laughed. Not everybody. But some. And I didn't laugh, but I didn't say anything either. I just kept putting my valve oil on like it was the most important thing in the world.

I hate that I didn't say anything. I also know exactly why I didn't. Both of those are true at the same time and I don't know what to do with that.

At dinner the other night it was on the news, and my mom said, really quietly, "That poor boy's mother." My dad said "Pass the salt." I passed the salt. I don't know what either of them meant. I keep turning it over like a rock.

Tuesday, October 13, 1998

He died yesterday. Matthew Shepard. He was twenty-one.

I don't really have anything else to say. I just wanted it written down somewhere. I'm scared. I'm sixteen and I live in a small town and nobody knows, and tonight I'm really, really glad nobody knows. I wish I didn't feel glad about that. I wish I lived somewhere where it didn't matter.

Friday, October 9, 1998
Mood: sick to my stomach.

There's a college student in Wyoming named Matthew Shepard in the hospital in a coma. Two guys beat him up and left him tied to a fence out in the country, in the cold, and they're saying on the news that it was because he was gay.

I saw it on the eleven o'clock news. I was the only one still up. I turned it off and sat in the dark in the living room with Buckeye for a long time.

We had a football game tonight and I marched the whole halftime show and played every note and I don't remember any of it.

Tuesday, September 8, 1998
Mood: STILL YELLING. Listening to: Dad and me, yelling.

MARK McGWIRE JUST HIT NUMBER SIXTY-TWO!!! My dad and I were both standing up in the living room screaming and Megan came downstairs in her pajamas to see who was dying. It was a line drive that barely got over the wall, and he was so excited he missed first base and had to go back and touch it! Dad hugged me. My dad doesn't really hug. That was cool.

Other news: junior year started two weeks ago. I'm SECOND TRUMPET now (resolution #1, DONE). Our show this year is swing music, big band stuff, and we do a thing where the trumpets stand up and swing the bells side to side and the crowd claps along. It's corny. I love it.

And Brooke is back!!! She got home from Florida the week before school. She's tan and she cut her hair and she talked for like three hours straight on my porch. I didn't realize how much I'd missed her until she was sitting right there.

Sunday, August 16, 1998

Band camp starts tomorrow. A whole week of marching on the practice field in the heat. I have never been so happy to be about to get sunburned.

This was the loneliest summer of my life. I mowed eleven lawns a week. I read four library books. I watched every episode of everything. I talked to Buckeye more than I talked to any human. Brooke wrote me letters from Florida, real ones with stamps, and I wrote back, but I couldn't write the thing I wanted to write, so my letters were mostly about lawns.

Tomorrow there'll be eighty people who have to talk to me whether they like it or not. Bring it on.

Wednesday, July 15, 1998
Mood: brave, I think. Listening to: nothing. It's 1 a.m. and everybody's asleep.

OK. I've been writing around this since I made this page. I'm just going to type it and then I'm going to leave it up and not delete it.

I think I'm gay.

I've never typed that before. I've never said it out loud. I've been thinking it since I was about twelve and pretending I wasn't thinking it. Remember in my very first entry, when I said the neighborhood was random? It wasn't random. I picked it on purpose, and then I told the Internet not to read into it. Ha.

I don't feel that way about girls. I've tried. I thought maybe if I tried hard enough it would kick in, like when you hold your breath too long and then gasp. It doesn't kick in.

Nobody knows. Not Brooke, not my parents, nobody. Just me and whoever reads this, and you don't know who I am, so that's OK.

It's really hot and really quiet. Brooke is in Florida at her dad's for the whole summer. I miss her so much. I'm going to go to bed now. My heart is going really fast. But I'm not deleting this.

Thursday, June 25, 1998
Mood: VICTORIOUS. Listening to: Goo Goo Dolls, "Iris", on the radio, for the hundredth time this month.

I FINALLY FIGURED OUT TABLES!!!!

That's why the page looks different. Goodbye stars, goodbye Comic Sans (Brooke said it looked like a birthday card for a hamster). Hello boxes! It took me three nights and I broke the whole page twice. If it looks messed up in your browser, I'm sorry, it looks perfect in Netscape.

Also my dad bought Windows 98 the day it came out, which was TODAY, and spent six hours installing it on the family computer. He was very proud. Now the desktop picture is clouds and everything takes one extra click. Progress!

Friday, May 15, 1998

We watched the last Seinfeld last night as a family. My dad laughed at the parts where people got yelled at. My mom laughed at Kramer. Megan fell asleep. I thought the ending was kind of weird, honestly, but I liked being all on the couch at once.

Bad news that I haven't written about: Brooke's parents are splitting up. Her dad got a job in Florida and he's moving there next month, and Brooke has to spend the whole summer with him. She told me on the bus and then made me promise not to be nice to her about it because she'd cry. So I just made fun of her shoes the whole ride. That's friendship.

Sophomore year is almost over. It went by really fast and really slow at the same time.

Saturday, January 24, 1998
Mood: LICENSED. Listening to: the Spice Girls, because Brooke controls the radio now that I'm driving her.

I turned SIXTEEN on Thursday! And yesterday I passed my driver's test! I parallel parked on the first try, and the lady from the BMV said "hm," and I have decided that was a compliment.

I don't have a car. I have permission to borrow my mom's car to go to band and to Brooke's and to the grocery store if somebody needs milk. I have never been so excited to buy milk. Brooke says I drive like somebody's grandma. I say I drive like somebody who wants to keep his license.

Also, every grownup in America is talking about the President right now, and every grownup stops talking about it the second a kid walks into the room. My mom literally turned off the TV when I came in last night. Mom, I'm sixteen. I have a LICENSE.

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