I'm not, really. Sure, it totally sucks. But it's an ongoing thing - almost part of my life now. Me walking around all gloom and doom sure isn't going to help Neal get back that loving feeling, and besides, I have to continue to live my life. My sad time is right before I go to bed, but the rest of the time, I'm normal.

Besides, we had a great weekend when he came to visit last weekend. He arrived late Friday night, and I arrived late at the airport to pick him up. Saturday and Sunday, in between heavy talks, we just hung out and laughed. It was weird and great all at once - it felt like he'd never left, and I enjoyed US more than I had in months, but there's was a little mist of sadness and fear covering everything we said and did. We showered and cooked and shopped and kissed and I'm going to stop writing this now. It's getting me down a little.

I had a list of wacky (yes, WACKY!) things that happened to Shawn and me the weekend before last, and I was going to string them together into a goofy recap entry, but guess what? You don't even have to guess, because I'm sure that as soon as I told you I wrote a list, you assumed I lost it. You'd be right.

The only thing I can remember that was on the list was this weird thing that happened last Saturday night. It was about 3 a.m., and Shawn and I were just hitting our stride in the only dance club in our area open that late. We were also getting our drink on by then, so the whole thing is a little fuzzy. But I remember this goateed guy with chin-length, dark hair and a wide smile coming up to me, and handing me a thin paperback book. We had a brief conversation, but I could barely hear him over the music. The only thing I could really make out was him saying, "I've been waiting a long time to give you this."

It was a book of poetry, presumeably written by him. But not love poems or anything - mildly amusing, slightly twisted little blurbs. Of course, I didn't discover this until later, because my attempts to squint at the pages and read the damn thing in the club were just pathetic. I ended up shoving the book down the back of my pants, and rediscovering it on the floor of my car sometime the next morning.

I can't freaking figure out why dude gave me this book. I studied it the whole way to Taco Bell the next day, trying to crack the code. It didn't seem like a come-on, and I'm 99% sure the author is gay or something very close to gay. It's self-published and bound, not stapled, so the guy has some bank. It was written in the Keys.

I don't know.

That's a weird one, though, huh? Guy walks up to girl in bar and inexplicably gives her a book of quirky poetry.

He gets points for originality, but the dismount leaves a little to be desired.