Reggie's Journal - 3. Chapter 3

I think I’m going to throw up. I grabbed my journal as soon as I came into Mrs. Reynolds geometry class. She’s calling students to the board to demonstrate homework problems, but this can’t wait. I hope she doesn’t call on me while I write this.

Mr. Byrd knows I’m gay. I was going to white out those big bold words I wrote repeatedly about being gay, but I forgot. When he stood beside me and I started turning the pages of my journal, I froze when I came to the 6^th page and saw the words staring back at me. He had been chuckling about a comment he read, but he suddenly stopped when I turned to that page. I don’t know what to do. He patted me on my shoulder like he did last Friday, but I’m not really sure how he feels. What if he asks me about it? Hold on. Mrs. Reynolds just called on me to go to the board.

Okay, I’m back. I just made a big fool out of myself. I wasn’t paying attention when she called on me. When I walked to the front of the class, there were three problems on the board. I wasn’t sure which one she wanted me to solve. Naturally, I went to the first one. Wrong! She had asked me to work the middle one. To make matters worse, I couldn’t really concentrate, so I got the wrong answer. It was an easy problem and Mrs. Reynolds had to make some kind of a remark about me never considering a career as an architect. So now I’m sitting here feeling all humiliated. I’ll write more later.

I’m back. Could this day possibly get any worse? I’m in my French class and the bell is getting ready to ring, but I wanted to write this down because I’m so mad. Abe asked me in the hall after 5^th period if I was a fag. And he asked me when we were leaving class, so everyone heard him. He grabbed my arm and tried to stop me, but I pushed his hand off and hurried away. What is his problem? I thought we were friends. If I wasn’t so scared, I’d tell people that Stephanie is a slut because she forced me to feel on her, but that wouldn’t sound good. It would definitely make people think I’m gay.

I don’t know what to do. Ever since I started writing in this stupid journal, my life is beginning to fall apart. Mr. Byrd knows I’m gay, and now half my class suspects I am. The bell rang, so I’m going to put this thing away. I may just toss it out the bus window on the way home. It’s bringing me nothing but trouble.

WISHING THINGS WOULD BE BETTER TOMORROW

Okay, I’m back. It’s Sunday night, and I’ve just spent the worst weekend of my life. After what happened Friday at school, I came home and locked myself in my room. I haven’t done anything. My homework is still sitting on my desk, and I haven’t been on the computer or read a book. Except to go downstairs and eat dinner with my parents, I’ve stayed in my room. What’s funny, they didn’t even notice that I was upset. My father discussed his new book, and Mom talked about a college student who is observing her class.

I mostly sat at my window and waited for deer to appear in the backyard. I didn’t spot any. Then suddenly yesterday afternoon, I started crying. Tears just welled up in my eyes and I couldn’t stop them. I don’t think I’ve cried since I was a little boy. I’ve really never had a reason to. I don’t know why I started crying yesterday. Okay. Yes I do. This journal is about understanding ourselves better, right? So I’m going to put it here why I cried. Just like I did last week when I confessed I was gay. I still don’t know how Mr. Byrd is going to react to that. He seems like a pretty cool teacher, so I don’t think he’s going to think anything bad about me. I just hope he doesn’t make a comment in class some day like Abe did. I’m still mad at Abe. He was supposed to be my friend.

I think what made me sad was a phone call I got from Beverly Miles. I was sitting looking out the window and my cell phone rang. I’ve known Beverly since the first grade. She’s probably the smartest girl in our class. Mrs. McDonald said last year that she will probably be the valedictorian of our class when we graduate. That was last year when we were freshmen. Everyone hated her for a little while because we knew we had no chance to be valedictorian. Now we’re all trying to increase our grades so we can be salutatorian. Anyway, she called and we just chatted for a while. It was really weird because she’s never called me before. After we talked about our classes, she started getting really nervous. Then she tells me that if I needed someone to talk to, I could talk to her. She said she knows someone who is gay and he’s talked to her a lot. At first I didn’t know what to say. We must have just sat quietly for a minute without speaking. Then I hung up on her. I didn’t even say goodbye. I know she was trying to be sweet and understanding, but I didn’t know how to react. Now she’ll probably go to school on Monday and tell everyone about our conversation. Not denying that I’m gay is the same as admitting it, right? She’s smart enough to know that.

Sorry. I got distracted again. It’s just that Beverly’s call upset me. Okay. I was going to tell why I cried. After talking to Beverly, I went back to the window and looked out. I just sat there and an overwhelming sensation swept over me. I’ve never experienced something like that before. The next thing I know, I’m wiping tears out of my eyes. Okay. Here goes. I’m not going to write it big this time. I don’t want Mr. Byrd to be able to read it. I’m lonely. I know I said I wasn’t in the first entry, but things have changed. I always thought I enjoyed being by myself. I have my parents, and I have my friends, so I’m not really alone. Right? But then this weird thought entered my mind and I kind of got goose bumps on my arms. I realized I was facing a crisis in my life, and I had absolutely no one I could talk to about it. Not one person. Okay, Beverly asked, but she’s not that certain someone I can confide in. I can’t talk to Mom and Dad about this. I guess I can, but I don’t want to. I don’t have a best friend who I can run to with this thing. There’s not one person I can go to and say, “My life is crashing down around me. Can you help me?” Okay. I gotta go. I’m crying again. And I never cry.

I HOPE LIFE ISN’T A BIG JOKE BECAUSE I DON’T GET IT

Okay, I’m back. I played hooky today. Trust me, it’s not easy when both your parents are teachers. I’ve missed four days since I started first grade. I was out for three days with the measles, and I missed one day with pink eye in the fifth grade. That’s it. But I just couldn’t go to school today. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to face Mr. Byrd, or Abe, or Stephanie or Beverly. I wasn’t in the mood to see anyone today.

So I stayed in bed after the alarm went off. Mom came to my room about twenty minutes later to see why I didn’t come down for breakfast. When I told her I was sick, she naturally got the thermometer and took my temperature. She sat around and waited, so I couldn’t put it near the light bulb near my bed. I learned that little trick from Abe. Mom looked at the reading on the thermometer, felt my forehead and said that I wasn’t sick. I whined and insisted that I didn’t feel well, but she told me I had five minutes to dress and be downstairs at the kitchen table. So desperate times require desperate measures. When I went downstairs to the kitchen, Mom had a bowl of Cheerios prepared for me. I pushed it aside and attempted to act sick. Dad was holding the newspaper up so that he couldn’t see me. When Mom turned and started washing some dishes, I went for it. You know that little dangling thingy in the back of your throat. I read that if you push on it, you can make yourself throw up. It works. I put my finger down my throat. The first time I gagged, so I did it again. The dinner from the night before spewed out onto the floor. Mom gasped and yelled at me to hurry to the bathroom. As I left the room, she was complaining about the mess she was going to have to clean up before she left for school.

I felt really guilty, but I had to do something. I went to my room and crawled back into bed. She came in later to check on me. After feeling my forehead, she told me she’d call me later to check to see how I was doing. If my symptoms got worse, I was to immediately call her and she would leave school to take me to the doctor.

I did manage to complete the homework assignments I didn’t do on Sunday. The only problem is now I’m going to be two days behind. Tomorrow night I’ll have today’s assignment, plus tomorrow’s to do. It’s only been three weeks, but my teachers are already starting to pile on the work. I guess they have to. Being in advanced classes, we are expected to do much more work than normal classes. Sometimes it takes me over three hours to complete it all. Now I’ve got this stupid journal to write and it’s taking up more time than I expected. I find I’m grabbing it all the time and either writing in it or reading what I’ve already written. Some of the stuff I wish I hadn’t said, but I guess it’s too late now. I know one thing, when this is over, I’m going to throw it into the fireplace this winter when no one is looking.

I wonder if other students are doing the same thing I am. Are they revealing secrets about themselves that they would want no one to know? I’d really be curious to see what Abe is writing. I wonder if he’s writing about me. He’s probably writing about the fag that used to be his friend.

Since I’m caught up with my homework assignments and I won’t have any time tomorrow night to write, I guess I’ll do this week’s prompt. Mr. Byrd wrote on the board Friday, If I could change one thing in the world, it would be....

It seems like an easy thing to write about, but once you get to thinking about it, there’s a lot in the world that needs to be changed. I know I’m only 15 but I’ve done enough reading to know that there’s a lot of things that there are a lot of problems in the world. The older generations sure messed things up. They say that we are the future, but they were the past. They’ll be long gone when we have to fix the mess they handed us.

Okay. Let me think. What one thing would I change? Hold on. I’m going downstairs and get something to drink. BRB. Okay. I’m back. Mom called and asked how I was feeling. Wait! This is crazy. I’m really starting to think someone is actually reading this. Maybe it’s my subconscious. Lol

I AM THE KID NEXT DOOR’S IMAGINARY FRIEND

Okay. I had to do that. This should confuse him if he reads it. What one thing in the world would I change if I could? I would make lima beans disappear from the fields. Yuck! I hate lima beans. Mom makes this veggie dish that she serves about once a week. It contains lima beans. She gets mad because I pick them out before I eat it. They have absolutely no flavor, and they make me gag when I do attempt to chew them. So yeah, I’d rid the world of yucky lima beans.

Okay, I cheated. There’s really too much that needs changed. War, poverty, hunger, homelessness, AIDS, global warming, corrupt governments. So you get the picture. I’m in a pretty depressed mood. If I start writing about one of these, it will really make me sad. So I’ll go with lima beans. At least it made me smile when I wrote it down. Mom just called me downstairs, so I’ll try to write more later. Okay?

I’M MEANDERING TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

Okay. I’m back. Ugh!! I started working on my homework assignments and I just finished. It’s after 10:30 and I gotta to go to bed soon. I was hoping to have time to write tonight because some really weird things happened at school.

First, Mr. Byrd gave me this really strange smile when I entered, and he asked me if I was feeling better. He’s always friendly to everyone when they come into his room, but today it just seemed different. I can’t explain it. So when I got to school, everyone was kind of was super nice to me. When I went to my locker, several of my classmates were just kind of standing around looking all innocent. Then when I got my books out, they came up and started talking to me, asking me if I was sick yesterday- stuff like that. Caryn and James even walked me to class and talked about what we did in our classes yesterday. It just seemed like everyone was going out of their way to be extra nice to me. Then in second period, Caryn gave me her notebook and let me copy down all the work I’d missed. After Mrs. Reynolds gave us our assignment, she told us we could work together. Caryn, Beverly, James and Richard scooted their desks around me and we all worked together. It was really strange, but nice too. I mean we’ve been working together for years, but today just seemed kind of special. Abe, Sarah and Stephanie worked together on the other side of the room. No one was talking to them. It was as if they were being ignored by everyone. The same thing happened 3^rd period. It seemed like my friends were fighting to walk beside me to class.

It happened at lunch too. After I got my meal, I was confused where I should go to eat. Normally, I would sit at the table with Abe. But when I walked toward the tables where our class sits, my friends at two of the tables started calling out my name for me to sit with them. It felt really good because Sarah and Stephanie rolled their eyes and appeared to be upset. Abe’s back was to me, so I don’t know what he did. I ended up sitting with James, Cory, Elizabeth and Richard. For the first time in two days, I found myself laughing again. Cory is our class clown. I can’t begin to count the number of times we’ve been assigned additional homework because he did something to disrupt the class and made the teacher mad at us. He’s the only African American in our group, and he’s got this really super personality. He had us roaring with laughter when he started mimicking Mr. Byrd when he goes around the room on Friday and checks our journals. He did this crazy thing with his eyes, sort of like making them go in circles as he pretended to speed read our journals. It was so funny.

When the bell rang, we started to get up and I noticed Elizabeth and James nod their head at Cory. He put his hand on my shoulder and asked me to hang around for a minute as everyone else left. When everyone was gone, he kept his hand on my shoulder as we headed to Mrs. Griffin’s class. When we got outside her classroom, he stopped me. “Look, Reggie,” he said. “We’ve all been through thick and thin since elementary school. I guess we’ve become like one big family.” I couldn’t believe it when tears welled up in his eyes. Cory was trying hard not to cry in front of me. “I just want you to know,” he continued, “that we all got together after school yesterday and talked.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You’re still our friend, okay? We don’t care what Abe has been telling everyone.” It was now time for me to blink away tears as I nodded my head. Just then, the bell rang and we entered class. The room was deadly quiet as we walked in and took our seats. I did notice Cory look over at Beverly and nod his head. I had to hold back tears the rest of the period.

So I learned something really important today. My friends are really my friends. I wasn’t just someone that has attended classes with them for the past nine years. I never thought of our group as a family until Cory said it. But I guess we are. Something really special happened and I have to think about it. Right now I can’t write anymore because I can’t see the paper because my tears are making this stupid page all blurry. I’ll write some more tomorrow. I gotta go to bed.

REAL FRIENDS DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT

Okay, I’m back. It’s Thursday night. I didn’t get to write yesterday because I was trying to catch up on the work I missed when I played hooky Monday. Things seem to be back to normal. No one has said anything, and everyone is treating me like they did before things happened. Tuesday was nice, though. For at least one day, I felt really special. I guess my friends don’t have to go out of their way to let me know they like me. It’s just there all the time. It just took something big to happen for me to realize that.

I even think Abe is wanting to talk to me again. Everyone has kind of been ignoring him lately. He isn’t hanging around Sarah and Stephanie much either. They seem to have formed this really close friendship, and they have kind of isolated themselves from the rest of us. But I’ve noticed Abe staring at me during classes. He thinks I don’t notice, but I glance occasionally at him. I don’t know if he’s staring trying to intimidate me, or if he’s attempting to make eye contact. Maybe he wants to be friends again. I don’t know. I’ll just let him make the first move. I’d look stupid if I try to talk to him and he calls me names again. I mean, looking back, he really didn’t call me a fag. He just asked if I was one. I know it’s a fine line, but I really would like us to be friends again. Maybe he does too.

I just added up the words to this entry, and I’m still about 1800 words short. So I have to think of something to write about. It’s hard when my life is practically nonexistent. I mean I don’t really do much except sleep, eat and go to school. God, that sounds really, really boring. It’s even worse when I have to admit my biggest thrill is sitting at my bedroom window and watch for deer to enter the backyard. I’m fifteen, going on sixteen. I should be so busy that they need to add more hours to the day to complete all the things I have to do. Right? I’m not getting depressed over it because it is the way I’ve wanted to live my life. That is, until I started keeping this stupid journal. Now that I’m writing my thoughts down, watching for deer sounds pretty pathetic. Doesn’t it?

SMILE. TOMORROW WILL BE WORSE

That wasted 200 words. LOL. I wonder if Mr. Byrd considers LOL a word? I think I’ll count it as one anyway. Since he’s not reading this, he’ll never know. LOL. Okay. Now what? Let me go get something to drink. I’ll brb. Is brb a word? LOL.

Okay. Back. I have something to write, but it’s really, really, really embarrassing. If anyone sees this I’ll sink into to the floor and be devoured by a big crater. Anyway, I would hope that happens. Please God, don’t let anyone read this. Okay, here goes. I don’t know why my penis gets hard all the time. Jesus, I can’t believe I just confessed to that. But it’s true. When I was going down the stairs to get a soda, I got hard. I don’t know if it is because I’m in my pajama bottoms and I don’t have any underwear on. Maybe the bouncing made it hard. But I mean, it gets hard all the time. I have an erection when I get up in the morning, eat breakfast or ride the school bus. I always get one on the bus in the morning and then when I come home at night. I can be sitting in class taking a test, and the next think I know, Little Reggie is popping up. Okay, I don’t really call him Little Reggie. I just made that up. But I mean, I get an erection about a zillion times a day. I’m pretty sure other guys do to because I see them pressing down on their pants in class like I do when I get hard. And everyone knows that a book bag placed conveniently in front of a guy when he gets up is the universal sign of an erection. Right?

I used to get embarrassed about it, but since it happens to all the guys in my class, I really don’t worry about it too much. Of course, I’m not going to parade around with it poking out, but I don’t turn a bright red if someone does happen to notice it. Besides, it really doesn’t make a big bulge like some of the guys in class. I saw Cory once with an erection. He was sitting in Algebra last year beside me. I looked over when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he put his hand down inside his pants. He looked around the room to make sure that no one saw him when he did it. It looked really big when he did it. The head kind of poked out of the top of his underwear when he adjusted it. I kind of gasped when I saw it, and I think he knew I saw it, but I looked away and didn’t look back at him the rest of the period. I had to come home that night and… Oh God, forget I even began to write that. I would get really, really, really get embarrassed if I confessed I masturbate.

Okay. I think I just admitted it, didn’t I? LOL. I know all the guys do it because I’ve heard them talking about it. I mean they don’t do it in a gay way. They just say something corny, then they’ll make a fist and pretend like they are jerking off. They don’t do it around the girls, though. I think it’s just something guys do with other guys. I’ve never done it, so I wouldn’t know. LOL. Okay, that didn’t sound right. Of course, I done IT. I do IT about three times of day.

Oh God. If you could see my face right now. I even jumped off the bed and ran to my mirror to see how red my face got when I wrote that. You should see it, it’s bright red. I bet if I turned my light out, the room would look like a warning light was going off. But I can’t help it. When I get hard, and that’s like a zillion times a day, I get this urge to do IT. Of course I can’t do IT every time. I would probably get arrested if I pulled it out in the middle of geometry class and started doing IT. Hehe. Is hehe a word? I’m going to count it anyway. Where was I? Oh right. I was talking about doing IT. Anyway, I can’t do IT everywhere, so I have to do IT when it’s safe. So I usually do IT when I take a shower in the morning before school. Sometimes, I do IT twice. Okay, I had to run to the mirror again to see how red my face is. Then I do IT when I get home from school. The bus ride always gets me hard. Most days I have to get off the bus with my book bag in front of me. Then I do IT again when I go to bed. If I didn’t, it would be so hard I’d never get any sleep.

I remember the first time IT happened. I think I’d just turned 13. I was laying on my stomach asleep. I started having this sexy dream. I don’t remember what I was dreaming because of what happened. I think I was humping the bed, and then IT happened. I made a mess in the bed. I woke up and all this white stuff was all inside my pajamas. It had even soaked through onto my sheets. I knew what it was because I’d heard guys talking about the first time IT happened to them. IT happened to most of them when they were doing IT with their hand. I’d tried a few times, and I got this really neat tingling feeling, but nothing came out.

At first I got really, really happy because IT had finally happened. Then I started to panic because I didn’t know what to do with the evidence of my first IT. I ran into my bathroom and cleaned myself off with a wash rag. I threw my pajamas in the corner and pulled on a pair of underwear. When I went to bed, I had to sleep on the edge of the bed because the rest was wet from where I did IT. In the morning I pulled the covers over IT and hid my pajama bottoms until I got home and could wash them. I would have died if Mom washed my sheet and pajamas and asked me why they were so stiff. Hehe. She would probably know because she’s seen Dad.... NO! I’m covering my eyes. I didn’t just think that! LALALALA!

I almost got caught a couple of times. Mom usually comes in and says goodnight to me. She and Dad go to bed around 11:15 after they’ve watched the evening news. So I try to do IT before she comes to my room. A few times she’s surprised me by going to bed early. Usually, I pull my legs up and build a tent so if she knocks, I can put them down and roll over on my back. Once I was doing IT. I think I was fourteen. Anyway, I was thinking something really sexy and I didn’t hear her coming up the stairs. I had the covers pulled back and I was laying completely naked on the bed. She knocked and opened the door, but I think I got the covers pulled up before she saw me. I’m not sure. If she did see me, she never said anything. Now I don’t take any chances. I always just built a tent.

I did IT once last year in school. I was really scared, but I had no choice. I had been fantasizing about this boy all day, and I was sitting in my sixth period when Little Reggie got really, really hard. He was pressing against my shorts and I just knew I was going to do IT inside them if I even remotely touched it. I got up and made sure my shirt was long enough to cover Little Reggie. I told the teacher I had to go to the bathroom really bad and asked for a hall pass. She gave it to me and I rushed to the boys’ restroom. Fortunately, no one was in there. I went into a stall, pulled down my pants and sat down. I held it down while I did IT. IT only took a few strokes and I heard IT hitting the toilet water. I stood, flushed the toilet and made sure all of IT disappeared. Just as I was leaving, another boy rushed in. I laughed all the way back to class and wondered if he was doing what I had just did.

I can’t believe I just confessed all this. I would never have written it if I thought someone was going to see it. But I guess all guys do IT. Some just do IT more. I used to wear boxers, but now I wear briefs because it’s easier to hide IT. Not that I have all that much to hide. I wasn’t endowed with a very big one. Wait a minute. Let me get a ruler and measure it.

You wouldn’t believe how red my face is right now. I looked at it in the mirror when I got the ruler. Okay, let me do this, but don’t watch. Hehehehe. Do I measure it from the base of my balls, or do I measure it from the top where my pubic hair is? I’ll be bigger if I measure it from the bottom and start just above my balls. Okay, I’ll do it that way. Most guys probably lie about how big they are anyway. It’s like that map scale where a hundred miles is a half inch. Hehehe. Okay, I’m not going to lie. It’s 5 ¾ inches long. I don’t know if that’s average or not. I’ll have to google it later. I don’t know the circumference. If I put my thumb and index finger around it, they touch. I’ll get Mom’s measuring tape tomorrow and see how big that is. It’s probably not very thick. Oh well. I’m only 15 going on 16, so I hope it will grow some more.

Okay, I just added and I got more than 200 words than I need. I can’t believe I wrote about doing IT. I’ll commit hari kari if anyone ever reads this journal. If you ever read about a 15 year old boy impaling himself with a sword, you’ll know it’s me. Okay. I guess I’m going to bed. And yes, to what you’re probably thinking.

YOU’RE SO STUPID THAT WHEN YOU FILL OUT A JOB APPLICATION AND IT ASKS SEX, YOU PUT DOWN SOMETIMES

5245