As of two days ago, this entry was going to be addressed to the unsuspecting citizens of San Jose/Santa Cruz/Los Gatos, California, warning them of the outrageous PDA that was going to be slobbering all over their pretty streets come this Friday.

But now, my apology is of a different order.

Instead, I would like to apologize to the readers of my first "Public Apology" a few weeks back, in which I rather shamelessly taunted everyone about falling head over heels in love with the prettiest girl in the world.

You see, the joke is on me.

As it always was.

As it always has been.

As it always will be.

That's because that love is over. Finished. Done. Credits have rolled, now could you please leave the theatre so we can begin seating for the next showing? There will be no trip to California. There will not be the most incomprehensibly magical reunion the world has ever witnessed.

That reunion will remain unwitnessed.

I am to blame, she is to blame, we both are to blame (I'll spare you the details, for they aren't important--but for the record, though she's trying to claim it all for herself, the blame is 50/50, damn it!). Whatever the case, it has mutually ended--albeit in a dazed, disbelieving stupor. And so, come this Friday, I will be painting houses in Maryland with my brother-in-law, trying to find a way to return to myself and not vomit tears of disbelief and sorrow.

But in all seriousness, I'm surprisingly okay about everything (which isn't to say that tears aren't dripping onto the keyboard as I type this). For while I'm not a hopeless cynic by any stretch, I do believe that life isn't supposed to be that impossibly glorious. Yet to have experienced it for myself, if only for two wondrous months? THAT is the victory. It's just hard when your insides are still questioning the particulars. But that doesn't matter. We made the cheesiest Hollywood romance look like NIL BY MOUTH! We escaped politics and war and hurricanes and poverty and floated up to a place that can't possibly be described! We were as gloriously connected as two human beings can be!

That said, this hasn't obliterated my hope. If anything, it has made me an even more fervent believer in TRUE FUCKING LOVE, the kind of love that makes world wars seem like a gorgeous opera, the kind of love that makes you write a double-album in one weekend, the kind of love that makes you think that maybe the world is a beautiful place after all. I will hold out until that feeling arrives again. And while I know that this is a once-in-a-decade type of thing (if that), I will remain true to myself and store up for the next miraculous tornado to swirl into my life.

Lastly, I would like to say to anyone in the world who might be lucky enough to win the affection and attention of Blanca Franco, be supernaturally good to her because she is a GIFT FROM THE GODS. She deserves someone four thousand times better than me, which should mean something when you realize that I Was Made For Her.

But that's life, I suppose. Not much you can do but KEEP FUCKING LIVING THAT MOTHERFUCKING SHIT.

Sincerely,

Michael

(I will now take a week of silence to pay tribute to The Greatest Story Ever Told.)