When the magnolias bloomed

He and I played friendship and love and sex and even compassion like it was a child's game of Red Light/Green Light and if we got too close one of us would accuse the other of misunderstanding the rules of the game.  Maybe it was mostly about sex but sex is never just about sex.  Sex is about power and intimacy and the fear of and need for both.  Sex is about love and hate too.  In this case, it might have been about being two people who didn’t like themselves very much and each almost loving the other for it.  And, in the end, when I drank too much gin and told him I loved him, what I meant was that I loved that he had never asked me to be anyone I wasn’t.  Regardless of what I meant, I broke the rules of the game.