My son Paul had his driver's license taken away, so I ended up chauffeuring him around for six months.
One day, we went to pick up his friend, Jonah. Jonah was a late bloomer, and his body had recently outgrown itself, angling awkwardly into over-sized hands and feet and tree-like limbs. He ambled out to the truck, and his shy half-smile stretched into a brief grin at me as he folded himself inside.
There had been a short argument over who should sit in the tiny back seat. The negotiated compromise put both boys into the one front passenger seat, with Paul by the window.
Jonah's chestnut hair was wet from his shower, and I could smell the scent of lavender on his freshly-scrubbed skin. His left leg spilled over the bucket seat to the space between us and pressed against the gear shift as I moved it in its right angles. He was wearing cutoff corduroys, and coarse dark hair curled along his sinewy legs.
When we arrived home, there was a message calling Paul into work; so Jonah went along for the ride. Relegated to the cramped back seat by Paul, who argued he would have the front to himself all the way back, I could see his face in the rearview mirror every time I glanced back. Little coarse nubs dotted his jaw, and fine dark hairs fringed his upper lip. He sat quietly with that half-smile on his face, staring ahead with his piercing black eyes.
Jonah was not fond of words, and didn't converse with Paul or me on the way there. So I didn't force small talk once he had extricated himself from the back seat and taken the place vacated by Paul.
In the silence, my mind examined the raw data being fed to it by my senses. I breathed in the soapy lavender smell and the dampness of his hair, thinking that it is one of the few scents I love. I mused upon the suddenness of his recent growth spurt; the dark coarseness of his hair, so rampant on his body now; the solidity and denseness of his large frame, now creating such a presence in my truck.
It was as if the powerful hormones which had produced this abundant growth were palpable. I felt a yearning within me toward that growth, like the thrust of a cotyledon in spring toward the sun. And the seed of an idea began to ferment in my brain.
I was suddenly aware of the weight of my own breasts which pressed my nipples into points through the yellow cotton knit of my turtleneck. I could feel our pheromones mingling and playing in the space of air between us.