So, I made the mistake last time of worrying about beginning a story in the middle. Little did I know that my significant other was at that moment wrestling with the possibility that it wasn’t the middle of the story but the end. Damn.

Beginning, middle, end . . . love has an amazing way of confusing one on the meaning of the most basic of terms. I mean, we all make the social agreement about what things are supposed to mean and how things are supposed to be and then love steps in like a crazed five-year-old and scrambles the whole mess to the point where no one can remember what anything means. I guess I just never really appreciated how love and “the way things are supposed to be” have no relationship to one another.

I mean, everyone knows that the only thing sadder than unrequited love is for a couple to fall in love with one partner still married to someone else. And as a guy I’m supposed to be immune to this because I’m supposed to be able to reduce everything down to sex and dispose of it all like a spent condom. But even as I was beginning to spend time with my friend, just talking about life and memories of our days in college, I brushed it all off as just an interesting curiosity that would go no further than a friendly kiss from a dear friend from a distant past. It’s not as if I hadn’t stood on the edge of this river before. I had, but for a thousand different reasons, I never had the nerve to cross it. Granted my “moral imperative” was more fueled by a fear of hearing the dreaded “No!” or the alarmed “What the hell are you trying to do!?” than some internal fortitude. So, after countless “opportunities” in the past, why did I not only stick my toe in the river but take a running dive into these unknown waters?

The only thing that I can figure out right now is that out of the corner of my eye I saw the glint of love, and what began as a slight curiosity took on an overwhelming life of its own. I mean, at its source there is no explaining it, and I’m not about to rationalize it or blame anyone else for my behavior or my choices. But the truth of the matter is that, in the middle of this colossal pile of contradictions and lies, I found a single truth that made everything else look like a lie. I found love. JBB