Dear Lexi

Dear Lexi,

Today is our last day together. (Technically, today was also our first day together.) But we have been together long enough for me to understand the trajectory of our relationship, the people involved, and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment is wonderful, but I will find a way of screwing it up eventually, so I'm leaving.

To put it in the simplest terms, our interests are just too diverse.

But seriously--You are so sweet, and beautiful, and charming. You are everything I'd ever dreamed, and then some. Your voice is adorable, and your eyes -- I could be lost in them until the end of days and still not have the words to describe them. I have done my best to be true to Yeats' words:

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face

We bonded over nerdy things. You enthralled me with tales of Huey Long, and I told you about the stories I'd learned about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Why didn't it work out? I may be asking myself that question until my dying day -- and on that day, I will have your name upon my lips, a prayer to the only thing I ever believed in.

It wasn't the other men. Or the women. It wasn't their fault, or yours. I know you are a woman of appetites... many... many... varied appetites. I knew it was part of your job -- you were my Elizabeth, and it is not an easy thing to love the queen. I knew the openness of our relationship was not supposed to touch our love - that our love was above it - but I am a petty, jealous man. I cannot shake the lingering mores of my Protestant upbringing, though believe me when I said I did love you as openly as I have ever loved, more openly than I ever thought possible.

If I may be frank, it was your insistence that Attack of the Clones was the best Star Wars movie. My dear, so many things ought not come between our love -- yet there are some chasms that cannot be bridged by the greatest of efforts.

Remember always that I am, and remain, proud of you. No one clapped louder for your award for Field of Schemes 5 than I did. Please remember that, even as I passed out from embarrassment at the after party, that I gave you and your career my utmost support.

Though our relationship was brief, it was spectacular. Lexi, you shall always be my southern Belle, my guide star in the dark night of my pathetic, somnambulant existence. I'm sorry I couldn't be the man (or woman) you needed. Yet even so -- oh dastardly pride! -- I harbor the hope that there will be a small part of your heart to which I can lay the gentlest claim. You are truly a pornstar with a heart of gold.

With love,

Ryan

PS: Please keep the ring, as a token of memory. Besides, I'm pretty sure the battery's busted.