Jack's Diary

A forbidden love. A fight to be seen.

Jack’s Diary

A novella by Damian Jay Clay

“If I don’t write it, if I don’t say it, then it isn’t true.”

Hidden behind an air vent, wrapped in plastic and shame, lies a notebook no one was ever meant to read. But Jack writes anyway. About his body, his silence, the bruises he’s told are love, and the God he’s told will never love him back. In the language of scripture, whispered desire, and unbearable confession, this raw, radiant diary traces one boy’s journey through religious guilt, abuse, awakening, and the impossible hope of being known.

As Jack falls deeper into self-denial and darkness, a scout camp changes everything. There, beneath starlight and secrecy, he finds what he never dared name: love that doesn’t hurt. And for the first time, he writes not to erase himself, but to exist.

Unflinching, lyrical, and profoundly humane, Jack’s Diary is a coming-of-age story that confronts the violence of shame with the radical act of truth-telling.

A work of fiction that reads like a stolen diary – devastating and beautiful in equal measure.