I'm in the middle of an email conversation with a long time Neopoleon reader and friend. He's a smarty Australian who's always "been there" when I've been going through one of my many crises (it seems that, as soon as I've defeated one, another pops up - I'm starting to wonder about myself...).

He strongly advised me not to publicly tell the story that I want so badly to tell.

He delivered a well thought out list of reasons. I agree with some. Not all, but enough that I think he's right.

One of the main points he made is that, by relying on Jeff to get permission to write about it, I've put Jeff in a bad position. It wasn't my intention, but it's a selfish action. I agree with the Aussie on that point.

He also said that there's nothing I could gain from talking about it here that I couldn't from talking about it privately. That's a point with which I strongly disagree. For a few years now, I've been using this site as a way of getting things off my chest. Things I wouldn't even discuss with my shrink (who I think, from time to time, read Neopoleon to find out what was really going on in my life).

I consider many of you to be friends. Granted, among the 40,000+ unique visitors I get each month, I can't count a lot of you, but there are a few I definitely know, and with whom I'd like to share the story.

But that isn't going to happen.

So, to make a long story short and untold, 2006 was a year of extreme controversy in my private life.

To get the details, you'll just have to wait for my ghost-authored memoirs :)

My current plan, then, is to pretend that, with the exceptions of my grandmother's death, my brief romance with Thera, my longer but much more complicated romance with an anonymous girl, a very strange, very short lived romance with another, and several more that lasted about as long as the lifespan of a gnat, 2006 didn't happen.

I deny it. All of it.

2006 was a figment of your imagination. And mine.

And we have quite the imagination.

Trust me.