In the previous journal entry I was over at my neighbor Jordan's house and things were heating up between us...

"You think I'm a fag, don't you? Just like everybody else does?"

My moment of truth was now before me.

My little head took over my mouth and I said what was probably the dumbest thing ever. "If you are I'm interested!"

Damn. I couldn't take that one back. Jordan just looked at me like I had told him I was really a woman, his face a blank expression of shock. I also noticed I wasn't the only one with a visible sign of desire.

"Want to go up to my room?", he asked in a much calmer voice and I shook my head probably too eagarly. I followed him up the steps to the bedroom and he pointed the way for me to enter the room, and seconds later I felt my arms being pulled to my back as he tackled me onto his bed, his heft crushing me on the soft mattress.

"Who the fuck sent you here!", his rage filled voice commanded.

"Nobody", I begged and then he pressed even harder into me, then he wrapped his arm around my neck and squeezed it, "Tell me who sent you here or I'll break your fucking neck!"

"NOBODY!" I yelled, "I came because I wanted to!"

"Oh...you WANTED to...", and then he pushed his hardness into my butt painfully. "How 'bout if I fuck you now!"

"JORDAN...DAMMIT...STOP! I'm sorry, I thought you'd like me! I'm sorry, I just think your..."

"You think I'm what?"

I had no way out of this so I told him the truth. "I think you're the hottest guy I know!"

With his crushing weight on me he said nothing for what seemed like hours, all I could hear was his breathing and pounding heartbeat. The ticking of his wristwatch. My OWN heart slowing going from pounding to a steady beat. Without saying anything he rolled off of me and sat on the edge of the bed, giving me my chance to escape, and as I got up and started to walk out of the room his voice stopped me.

"Jake...I'm sorry."

I turned around and looked at him and I saw a guy like me who was scared to death about what had just happened, terrified of the ramifications of words that were too loosely spoken. I didn't know what to say to him but I couldn't just walk out of there, and for lack of a better idea I sat near him on the bed. His face was red and tears were starting to form in the eyes, but like most boys he knew how to suppress them, since the only think worse that being gay was being caught crying.

"Why did you do that?", I asked.

"Everyone in school calls me a fag, everyone except my friends and they get called fags too. Just because I'm fat and ugly doesn't mean I'm a fag!"

I really blew it this time. "I'm sorry, I just..."

"Are you?", he asked.

"What?"

"A fag?"

I shook my head yes.

Jordan looked at me like I had a ax sticking out of my head. "You're gay? You're really gay????"

"Yeah...are you gonna tell everyone now?"

"No...no...because you're right about me."

I was speechless. Jordan told me how he always liked looking at other boys but he never understood why, then when he started puberty he didn't get excited by girls no matter how hard he tried. Then he saw some gay porn and it just made sense to him. Not his exact words but you get the idea. I told him how I was just never into girls, but I didn't realize what it meant until recently.

I sat next to him and stroked his back, now knowing that it was safe to do that to him. His skin was warm and he relaxed quickly, and then I got up and sat behind him and rubbed his shoulders, first over his shirt, and then after gentle coaxing under it. His bare skin was smooth and pearly white, covered by countless freckles. He pulled his shirt off and let me continue to feel him, and then asked me to stand in front of him.

I did as he asked and he stood up and peeled my shirt off and repeated the same actions on me as I had just done to him, and then he asked me to close my eyes and turn around and seconds later I felt his lips against mine in a dry kiss that made me realize I had found what I desired. He hugged me and to compensate for our height difference he spread his legs apart, and the feeling of our shirtless bodies connecting was heavenly.

We didn't relieve the tension that had built up in us, instead we stretched out on his bed, where he told me I was the first person in his entire life he had felt comfortable being shirtless around. He let me touch his chest, tensing up at first as I felt the parts that had been so often grabbed at school and then relaxing under my gentle touch. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world to be with him then and there, and I made the most of it.

I had been at his house for several hours before I reluctantly left, but I knew that his mother would be home soon and my presence there would need an explanation since he never had anyone over.

Even though I was still a virgin, I floated home high on what the past few hours had given me. I had come out to a peer, experienced my first gay kiss, and explored another guy's body. A guy I was infatuated with!

My reward for taking the biggest risk of my life.

I don't feel comfortable discussing what happened between Jordan and I during the remaining time I lived there before moving to Georgia, but if you use your imagination chances are you'll guess the correct answer. I will say that I introduced to him to Oasis, and right before I moved I helped him connect with another guy who was very much like him.

As he put it, if everyone thinks you're gay and you really are, why not make the most of it?

Now that I've explained my history with Oasis and my relationship with former contributor Ty, I should probably start talking about myself, although I'm sure his name will pop up from time to time.

This part starts in the spring of 2000, when I was fifteen and a high school freshman. Spring Break had just started and my body was FINALLY showing signs of puberty, and I was starting to really understand what the little head thinking for the big head meant! I was sort of average in height, around 5 1/2 foot but I was incredibly skinny, weighing 110 soaking wet. At least I could run fast! Ty suggested that I go out for cross country (he was also on the CC squad at his school) and I did fairly well, with a personal best of 18:00 in the 5K.

Right before SB started my parents had sat my brothers and I down and given us the news that we would be moving to Georgia in early summer, thanks to dual job transfers and a desire to get away from Michigan winters. At first I was devastated, but since we have tons of family in Georgia and both of my parents are originally from there it made sense to move.

By then I was waking up to the fact that I prefered Andy's to Andrea's and thanks to my little head's thinking, I was determined to do something with another boy no matter what the end result was. I had once talked with Ty about how to find a willing guy, and he told me to go up to another boy and put my hand on his shoulder, if he didn't act uncomfortable it meant I had a chance with him. That's also a good way to get your ass kicked, I pointed out, but then he told me to go for a guy who I thought was gay, and someone who wasn't exactly popular. As cruel as that sounded, I understood where he was coming from.

In school I was part of the skater/metalhead group but I also fit in with the jocks thanks to CC, making me somewhat popular but not quite in the top echelon. Rebeljock is a good term to use (you'll get used to some of my weird terminology after a while...just wait until I explain the terms tacklehug and ribcracker!). After quite a bit of thinking it hit me that my high school was probably not the best place to look, but the nearby middle school was.

Now don't accuse me of robbing the cradle here, but sure going after a guy one grade below me (and two years younger thanks to my late birthday) was pushing the limits a bit. Okay, a lot. The middle school was where I found exactly what I was looking for.

For his privacy sake, I'm going to call him Jordan, and he was probably the most unpopular kid in his grade. He was a few inches taller than me and weighed twice as much, and when I was an eighth grader he was picked on mercilessly. He had been suspended a few times for fighting when in reality he was probably just defending himself, and he had a hairtrigger temper as a result. He was also constantly called a fag because of the way he talked and walked, and his boyboobs were bigger than alot of the girls chests. He always wore sweatshirts to try and hide them, no matter how hot it was.

I casually knew him since he lived just a few blocks from me and my parents were friends with his divorced mother so it wasn't like I was a total stranger to him (they had attended our Christmas party a few months earlier and were occasional guests for dinner), but he was never outside unless he had to be because alot of the kids in the neighborhood bullied him too. I still can't imagine how bad his life must have been, but he's one of those guys that grow up to be millionaires and can get any chick they want.

I looked the pictures of him from the Christmas party over and over and soon became infatuated with him, to the point where he was all I could think about. Especially when I was punching one off. I found myself in a scary dilemna and had to choose between hitting on him and being ruined socially or possibly getting lucky. The little head won that debate.

It was on a Monday that I went for broke, and I remember that well now since both of my parents were at work and my brothers were at baseball practice, leaving me home alone. Actually the entire week I had the place mostly to myself. It was still cold out but the snow was starting to melt and it was at least above freezing, so I went out for a run like I usually did, except this time I was scouting out his house. As I ran by there was no car in the driveway and I saw the tv on in the living room. Time for me to get brave.

I walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell, and a bewildered Jordan answered and let me in, probably wondering why I would even come over? In all honesty if he had asked I wouldn't have had an answer. He was watching "Billy Madison", one of my favorite movies back then, and just walked back into the living room and sat down on the loveseat. I had a choice between the recliner or sitting next to him, and I'm sure you know the answer to that.

Jordan was wearing a really loose tee shirt and sweats, and it was weird not seeing him in a sweatshirt, but with nobody around to grab his moobs that seemed right althought out of character for him. I sat to the right of him and our bodies almost touched, and I was close enough to smell the fabric softener in his clothes and the soap from the shower he must have recently taken. I rested my right hand on the back of the loveseat because there was nowhere else to put it and we started talking about the movie and then drifted into other stuff.

We talked about how we were both glad to have a break from school, how we were sick of winter and couldn't wait for the dreariness to end. I told him that my family would be moving to Georgia in a few months and he told me that he was sorry that I was leaving, adding that he wished he could go with me. I knew exactly what he meant by that.

Remembering Ty's tip for scoping out a guy, I put my hand on his shoulder and he didn't flinch, but he gave me a funny look and without saying a word turned back to the movie. His body was incredibly warm and felt spongy, and I slowly ran my hand over his shoulders without any effort by him to stop me. By then I had steel between my legs that was ready for use.

Why did you come over? came from his lips and I answered that I wanted to hang out with him. He gave me a blank expression and I noticed how brown his eyes were, a perfect match to his pale, freckled face. It took everything in my power not to kiss him or touch his face, and suddenly he got up and closed the drapes, telling me it was too bright in there to see the tv but I could see it fine. What I could also see clearly was the wet spot forming on my grey sweats, and if I saw it I was sure in my mind that he did too.

He sat down again on the loveseat, and out of his mouth in a angry voice came what I had feared the most.

"You think I'm a fag, don't you? Just like everybody else does?"

My moment of truth was now before me.

To be continued...

Hey y'all! My name's Jake and I'm almost twenty-four, and I live in Metro Atlanta, Georgia where I work as an human resources manager, or as my fellow brass say, adult babysitter. Too bad that's true.

Before I start yakking about myself I feel that I need to explain my history with Oasis, and while I have no excuse for not writing on here sooner, later is better than never. How I found this site is just plain weird to me.

My parents favorite saying is "shit happens for a reason" and in my case it was in the most unlikely of places: A Metallica chatroom on AOL.

Yeah, you read that right.

It was the beginning of summer vacation in 1999 and I was bored as hell, and in that Metallica chatroom I was engaged in a debate over whether "Master Of Puppets" was thier best CD or not. If your a fan you'll understand what that's all about, if not sorry to bore you here. After a while of arguing I saw a guy with a really weird screenname (Tyomaniac) and just HAD to talk to him. Not that my screenname was any better, but still his WAS out there!

We started chatting back and forth and then he invited me to join him and some of his online friends in a private room, and within a short while we were alone. We talked about Metallica for a while then drifted into other areas, and soon I found out that I was a year younger than him, that we were both born past the cut off date to start school, and that were were the oldest in families with all boys (I have fraternal twin brothers a few years younger than me, he had several younger brothers). He was completely different from any of the friends I hung out with, but I had no idea then that we had much more in common.

From then on we exchanged e-mails, chatted whenever we could, and got to know each other better over the summer. Eventually, like most boys that age, we started talking about sex, and even joked about an activity most boys engage in and what it was like being horny, something I was starting to feel more and more, although I didn't share that I felt that way when I was in the locker room with my PE classmates and couldn't keep my eyes off them as they changed into thier jockstraps. He was a late bloomer like me, and he told me the same thing my father kept saying, just be patient it'll happen soon enough. Somehow hearing Ty say that was more reassuring to me.

While we talked about sex, we rarely talked about girls. When we did, it was if they were some alien lifeform living among us. I'm sure some guys would say there's a bit of truth in that! I was starting to have some feelings for guys then, but I just wrote it off as being curious about how my classmates were developing.

One day I opened an e-mail he sent me, and in it he wrote that he felt I should know the truth about him, and if I didn't want to be his friend anymore he'd understand. In it was a link to Oasis and instructions to look under his name.

When the webpage opened, I'll admit I was horrified. Shocked. Disappointed. All that shit you feel when you discover something that's impossible to believe.

I read what he wrote and I was still in shock, and then I looked at the back issues, taking in every word of every column (as they were called then) with the same energy I took in each Metallica CD the first time I heard them. Here was someone MY age, talking to ME directly about being GAY! The kicker was that he bore no resemblance to any gay person I had ever experienced.

I wrote to him that I was cool with his gayness, and from then on our relationship deepened. He told me his real name and the reasons behind not using it on Oasis, and after reading that like me he was one of the lucky American boys whose parents didn't have part of thier cock cut off, I finally had someone I could talk to about what it was like to be different from most of the boys at school! He made me feel good about that and told me things to try that I would have never thought of. I was caught once doind one of those suggestions by my mother who after that knocked on the door first before entering my room!

Soon we talked about some of the deep shit we had been through. I had recently lost one of my grandmothers to a long battle with cancer, and he told me about his brother's suicide. When I asked why he never wrote about that he told me it still hurt too much. Like me with my Grandma, I understood the loss he felt, although his was much worse.

When I was brave enough I told him about the feelings I was having towards guys, how I thought about them when I "punched one off" (one of his favorite terms) and how scared I was as I faced the prospect of being a fag. He told me to do my own thing and not let anybody pressure me into being less than true to myself. We joked that we were probably the only gay Metallica fans in the world, but I know we're in the minority there!

Ty added me to his "inner circle", a handful of friends he knew online who he trusted to talk openly with. By then he was writing his last columns, and I got to see them before they were published, and he seemed to value my feedback. He was talking about leaving Oasis then, but he always told me that too many people relied on him and he didn't want to let anyone down. He was open with me about the pressures in his life, the struggle he had with being in the closet at school while dating his best friend, and other typical guydrama. Shit I would be dealing with in the very near future.

One day he set me a e-mail with his last Oasis column and I cried like a baby reading it. Here was the only person in the world I had ever come
out too, and he was leaving what was now a huge support system. I understood his reasons but it was a massive loss for me nonetheless.

We kept in touch after that, although we didn't get to chat online very often, but gradually the intervals between e-mails grew wider although he would always write back. I remember him saying that after he left Oasis it was like he fell of the face of the Earth, that few people cared about him. If you can find the issue from February of 2000, not one person mentioned his leaving in thier columns despite the lenght of time he wrote there. I think he was bitter about that, and we rarely discussed Oasis from then on.

Over the years we have still stayed in contact, and at one point he lived within an hour's drive of me, although I was in college then and we could never find the right time or place to meet. He still lives in Georgia, while he and the boyfriend he wrote about so long ago remain together. He calls thier relationship one of the few stable things in his life.

The last time I wrote to him I talked about writing something on here and he joked about mentioning him, just for the hell of it to see if anyone would remember him? I think what I wrote here tonight would make him proud.

Thanks Ty!