Scene from a chapter of an unwritten book . . .

(probably San Francisco, year uncertain)

… We sat amicably at a pub on Wallace Ave., this lad and I, our faces and our necks lightly warmed by the mid-morning sun. His features moved me, and he was easily twelve years my junior. It wasn't his body which stirred my body; it was his face which stirred my heart. And the soberly thoughtful aspect which bespoke integrity in his soft Nordic face lent a slight melancholic pang – of what? - to my little pondering.

The beer stood half-consumed on the lacquered table. I poured from the pitcher as his eyes roamed the room, returning to the table, sifting impressions. Nothing was being spoken, we needed no conversation just then. There had been no idle talk, though we'd known each other but two days. He could be a good German "Aryan," but was Scandinavian by name; and his jaw, though squared, lacked the heaviness which often characterized the German bone-structure, to my reckoning; his eyes had that Scandinavian touch, the brows ever so light yet visible. His lips were so formed as to be full but willful, suggesting a straight-forwardness which would prompt him to say just what he thought – were he to break his reserve and speak.

My mind was fixed not so much on his features alone, but on what may have been his mother's or a sister's (got any sisters at home like you?...) - yes, I thought of that woman who brought him into the world, how much of her breath still formed him, even as he came into his manhood. I couldn't shake the thought of her; this one was but the product.

There was a shift in the attention, mutually felt. His eyes met mine. They focused on the mood in my face, and reflected caution. "No," mine replied, dismissing his concerns with an imperceptible flick of my glance. It wasn't that. No sexual motives were present between us. This he understood, and relaxed.

But my eyes did not shift. And what he couldn't have known from my looking upon him as his face returned to the sun outside and then back to my face – through which shone the sun in my heart – what he ought not to have perceived, which ought not to be said aloud, was this: that I want to father a child, a son, by the woman who bore you; I want to be that one by whom she conceived you.

And he nodded. For it was spoken.