Today’s been…. different, so I am in an unusual mood for me.

Not a good one, either.

Until today, I kind of had a boyfriend.

Today, I got dumped.

Hey look, Coppola’s new flick is a creepy horror film called Twixt.

Well hey howdy there, buckaroos, you already got my attention by having my chaise lounge lizard hero Tom Waits doing the narration. And then you got Val Kilmer looking like some kind of mutant cloned from the sweat of Steven Seagal’s left nut and sounding kind of like Michael MacKean in the lead.

I sort of feel like the trailer told me more of the plot than I really needed to know, but that’s the way with movie trailers these days, isn’t it?

He dumped me over email. Classy.

But it looks like a spooky supernatural mystery story, which is a subgenre I absolutely love. Where the supernatural elements are used to slowly and eerily unwind a tale of evil secrets incompletely scabbed over by the veil of history and obscurity and left to fester in that supernatural realm that, in fiction at least, exists as a layer between reality and the dark and dusty halls where all that we suppress molders in unmarked crates and unread files, growing blind groping tentacles of grey-furred fungus that seek the light without being able to see, driven only by their hate and their need to, finally, be seen.

The local kids seem especially loud and raucous tonight. That’s always a sure sign that summer is past its prime and all the residual civilization from the previous school year has left their bloodstreams and the unfettered freedom that was such a joy a month ago is now a fever that clogs the blood.

To call him my ex-boyfriend might, I admit, be a bit of a stretch. After all, yesterday was the first (and likely last) time we’ll meet in the flesh, such as it is, and Internet romance is nothing like the real thing, as we all should know by now.

Check this out. They’re going to have a marathon where you get chased by zombies.

But for the last three weeks or so, I had been IM-ing (no way to spell that which looks right) with this guy and he had, through persistence and sweetness and compatibility, managed to slip through my thick, caked-on, soapy psychological defenses and coaxed me out of my rusty old shell and got me to think that maybe, possibly, there was someone out there who could both know me and love me.

Nope. Met me and the dumped me. That feels nice.

The way the zombie marathon works is simply enough : you have your marathoners (that’s what they like to be called, those weirdos) and your zombies, and the marathoners all have a ribbon stuck to their chests which represents their “life”, and the zombies have to try to snatch that “life” away.

Must me nice to have one to lose in the first place.

And the marathon course is through woods and urban areas with obstacles and such set up, to make it all as Romero-approved as possible.

Do you have any idea how hard it is for anyone to get truly close to me, even if it was just two writers scribbling to each other in the dark? I am very good at staying at arm’s length from people and protecting this big bruised peach of a heart of mine, while giving all the impression of being sweet and open and funny and warm and wonderful.

Which I am. To a certain depth.

And the thing is, he found me. He found my profile on okcupid.com, liked it, emailed me, we emailed back and forth for a while, then started with the Google chatting, and I thought things were going pretty good. We have an awful lot in common, with a lot of the same values and priorities and outlook. We found ourselves in remarkable accord on many things, and I felt like I had quite possible found a kindred spirit. We knew each other’s deep down fucked up secrets and neither of us ran away screaming. He expressed much ardent desire for me on many levels. I have never experienced that kind of attention in the real world. It was working.

But then he met me, and guess what? Game over.

There is but one glitter of silver treasure amongst the broken and eroded wreckage of a once great temple to an obscure but mighty god that is my heart right now : this pain, despite how deep it bites and how cold its teeth, lets me know I am alive.

More so than usual, anyhow.

At least I am feeling something real, and hence, feeling real.

There are worse things to feel than pain.