Sunday, June 13, 1999
Listening to: Smash Mouth, "All Star," which is on every radio station in Ohio at all times

Junior year is OVER. I am officially a senior. I don't feel like a senior. I feel like the same guy with slightly longer legs.

I got a summer job scooping at the dairy bar out on the state route. Five days a week, and I come home smelling like waffle cones. Buckeye follows me around the house like I'm a walking treat. The owner told me I have "a good scoop hand." I'm putting it on my college applications.

Brooke is only going to her dad's for two weeks this summer instead of the whole thing. I didn't tell her how glad I was about that. I told her it was fine either way. She knew I was lying. She always knows when I'm lying, except about the big thing.

The chat room is still here. They're still there. It's so weird to have people who know the realest thing about me and don't know what I look like, and people who know what I look like and don't know the realest thing about me. Someday I'd like those to be the same people.

Sunday, May 16, 1999
Listening to: Cher, "Believe." Yes. I know. Let me have this.

Junior prom was last night. I didn't go.

I told everybody I had to work, which was true, because I asked the dairy bar for the shift. Brooke went with a senior from drumline, as friends, and she came by the dairy bar in her dress before the dance and made me take a picture of them with her disposable camera. She looked amazing. She said "Come after your shift, you can wear your apron," and I laughed and said maybe, and we both knew I wouldn't.

But here's the good part. At eleven o'clock the chat room had a PROM. Somebody declared it, and everybody who was online typed what they were wearing. PeachPit wore a tux with a purple cummerbund. Toto wore overalls "because Kansas." I wore my dairy bar apron and paper hat, which got a big round of LOLs. Somebody typed song lyrics line by line and we all pretended to dance, like, "*does the sprinkler*" and "*spins into the punch bowl*." The moderator was the chaperone and kept typing "NOBODY SPIKE THE PUNCH" in all caps as a joke.

It was the dumbest, best prom that has ever happened. I didn't have to pretend anything. I laughed so hard I had to put my face in a pillow so I wouldn't wake up Megan.

Thursday, April 22, 1999

I don't really want to write about Columbine but I can't write about anything else.

At school Wednesday, teachers kept stopping in the middle of class and just standing there. My English teacher cried. Today they announced nobody can wear long coats to school anymore, and a kid in my chem class who wears his grandpa's old coat every day, just because it was his grandpa's, got sent to the office. He's the nicest kid in chem. He lends everybody his calculator.

Everybody's looking at everybody different. Like we're all trying to figure out who's dangerous. I get looked at kind of funny sometimes anyway, for being the band kid who doesn't have a girlfriend, and this week it feels worse.

I hugged Megan when she got home from school yesterday. She said "ew, why" and let me.

Saturday, April 3, 1999

Saw The Matrix last night with Brooke. WHOA. The part where he's leaning back and the bullets go by in slow motion, the whole theater went "ohhhh." On the way home Brooke kept doing the lean-back in the parking lot and almost fell into a Buick.

Also, tonight I told the chat regulars my real first name. Just my first name. They already knew I was 3rdTrumpet from Ohio, but now they know I'm Corey. PeachPit typed "COREY!!!! u look like a corey" which makes no sense because she's never seen me. It felt huge anyway.

Sunday, March 14, 1999
Listening to: TLC, "No Scrubs," on the radio, while typing

I want to write about the people in the chat room, since they're kind of the biggest thing that's happened to me this year.

There's a group of regulars who are on most nights after ten. I only know their screen names and their states, because those are the rules: no last names, no towns, no phone numbers, and no meeting up. The moderators are super strict about it and they kick you out if you break them. Honestly I'm glad. It makes it feel safe.

Toto is sixteen, from Kansas, and he makes a Wizard of Oz joke about every single thing. He's funny in the way where you can tell he got that way on purpose. Like me.

PeachPit is seventeen, from Georgia, and she is the loudest person I have ever met, and I've never heard her voice. She told her grandma last year before she told her parents, because her grandma "has seen everything twice." Her grandma said "Well, I figured," and then asked her to help shell peas.

rainyday is eighteen, in Oregon, a freshman in college. He's the one everybody goes to when stuff is bad. He came out to his parents last year and he says it wasn't a movie, it was just hard and slow and then it got a little better.

We mostly don't even talk about being gay. We talk about homework and our parents and Buffy and who has the worst little sister (me, obviously). But the other night I typed that I always make a joke when somebody asks me about girls, so they'll laugh and forget to wait for an answer, and three people typed "SAME" at the exact same time.

I sat there and looked at the screen and my eyes got all hot. I've spent my whole life thinking I invented that trick. I didn't. There are people in Kansas and Georgia and Oregon who do the exact same thing. I'm not the only one. I KNEW that, in my head. I didn't know it until now.

Saturday, February 20, 1999

OK, I did something.

A couple weeks ago, really late, I typed "gay teens" into a search engine. My hands were actually shaking. I cleared the history in Netscape afterward like three times.

I found a site for gay and questioning teenagers. It has articles and hotline numbers and stuff about coming out and stuff about NOT coming out if it's not safe for you yet, which I didn't know was allowed. And it has a chat room for ages 13 to 19, with moderators.

I lurked for a week. I just sat and read what people were saying and didn't type anything. They were talking about normal things. Somebody's mom found a letter. Somebody's cat threw up on their SAT book. Somebody was scared about going home for the weekend. It was so normal I almost couldn't stand it.

Then Thursday night I typed: "hi. im 17, from ohio. i've never told anybody."

And about five people said hi back at once. Somebody said "welcome." Somebody said "you just told us. that counts."

That counts. I've been thinking about that for two days.

Friday, January 22, 1999

I'm seventeen today! Snow day, too, so nobody had to see me get embarrassed when the band sang to me. Brooke came over anyway and we made a snowman that looks like Mr. V., with a stick for a baton.

Mom made my favorite, which is her chicken and noodles. Dad gave me a new mouthpiece and a card that said "One more year, then it's the real world, pal." He's excited because the Browns come back this fall and he already has his orange hat out. He keeps saying "the Browns are back, the Browns are back" like it's the Second Coming.

One more year. Then college. Then somewhere else. I keep thinking that.

Sunday, January 3, 1999

New year, new colors. I got rid of the "Mood" thing at the top of the entries. I read back through 1998 and my moods were mostly "I don't know," which is not really a mood.

Resolutions for 1999. Just one this time.

1. Find somebody to talk to. Somebody real. Even if it's just one person. Even if it's not somebody who knows my face.

That's it. Wish me luck, Internet.

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