At twelve years old Stefan towered over the other children. He seemed detached from their incessant play, like a hen looking after newborn chicks. He felt awkward as he attempted to move about in a body that matured before its time. He felt like the mulatto, rejected by both sides, not an adult but no longer a child. At home he had assembled a group of friends with whom he had just begun to feel comfortable, but here in the Greek islands he was stuck looking after the other German children who had come on holiday with their parents. Although he looked mature, that innocent, playful boy energy was ever present, ready to intoxicate like music from Pan’s flute. The first time I passed him on the path he responded to my hello with a radiant smile. I walked about ten steps past him, then felt compelled to turn around. He was standing in the middle of the other children as if frozen in the exact moment of my greeting. He seemed contemplating it as if it had been a monumental event in his life. After a few seconds he realized I had turned back to face him. He looked directly into my eyes and touched a dangerous place that startled and frightened me! Then embarrassed he turned to walk away. I f I were a heterosexual man looking upon a beautiful young girl I might feel comfortable enough to share my thoughts with others. "She will break someone’s heart someday," I would exclaim, with confidence my erotic attraction would be noted. But that kind of acknowledgement from a man looking upon a beautiful boy could be excused only from a Greek philosopher, safely in his tomb for a couple thousand years. I went to my room to take a nap before dinner. I dozed off to the thought of Stefan’s enchanting smile.

The next thing I remember, Stefan and his family were being seated at the opposite end of the restaurant I had chosen for dinner. I watched as he negotiated with his younger sister to take the seat which directly faced mine. I remembered my own adolescent games. I wondered if perhaps I was projecting my memories of my own precocious nature onto an innocent boy. At this thought Stefan lowered his menu so his clear blue eyes could pierce mine. I was consumed in terror by his act of courage! As a middle-aged man it was the first time I was confronted with a child who was very much like myself at the age of twelve. It was now I who was forced to turn away in embarrassment.

The next morning I arose at sunrise as I had each morning in the islands. I waited for the sun to warm the water in the solar panels so I could enjoy a long shower. I wrapped myself in a towel and walked the five steps to the shower room behind the house. I loved the feeling of living out of doors. I could see people walking on the path just three feet from the rectangular hole that pretended to be a window. Often I would greet them as I lathered my head with shampoo. We would all laugh at the absurdity of the situation, but rejoice in the opportunity to participate in the absurd.

On this particular day my shower had taken on the characteristic of a ritual, a right of passage. Stefan had awakened a memory from my adolescence that I had buried somewhere in a dark corner of my subconscious mind. I stood below the warm stream of water alive with feelings I had killed at some point in my passage into adulthood. The water was washing away my imagined sins and I was allowed to reexperience the freedom of innocence, that memory of wanting to explore my young friends’ bodies in order to understand my own. I had believed that innocence was something adults could steal from children. It was obviously something children could remind adults they themselves possess. As I stood beneath the shower I realized my innocence had been lost in the belief that children cannot, or should not be erotic! It was a horrible lie that had made me forget the erotic nature of innocent adolescent fantasies! A stupid barrier had been drawn to force adults to destroy their own childhood histories in fear of being labeled a child molester or pedophile! In the shower, standing under the warm water, my memories washed over me, carried me back to a time of innocence, excitement and spirit!

I shook the last remaining bits of shampoo from my head, rinsing my eyes before opening to the bright sunlight. There on the path outside the window stood Stefan smiling at me like an angel who had descended to deliver a divine message. When I closed my eyes for one second he had vanished. I quickly wrapped myself in the towel, picked up the bottle of shampoo with my left hand and held up the towel with my right hand. Still dripping I opened the door to find Stefan standing on the path a few feet away. I gave him a nervous glance then turned and walked swiftly to my room. My heart was pounding as I fumbled with the door handle almost dropping the shampoo. I stepped inside, turned to close the door, but found Stefan standing in the doorway. "I will close it for you," he said with a seductive grin on his face. I responded with nervous laughter as I turned to walk to my bed. As I heard the sound of the door closing I gave a huge sigh of relief.

"My name is Stefan," the sound pierced my ears like thunder as my body began to tremble in terror. Stefan had conveniently placed himself inside the door before closing it. I turned to find him standing in the doorway with his right hand extended toward me. Without thinking I reached for his hand and my towel fell to the floor. Stefan laughed, the way boys laugh when they’ve just pulled off some great trick. I introduced myself as I fumbled with the towel, placing it over my genitals. I turned away from him, frantically struggling to get my foot through the proper hole in my underwear. I danced around for a moment on one foot, then put on my baggy shorts which are famous for hiding my carnal thoughts. Now I was ready to face the young intruder.

I turned to find him seated on the floor with his back resting on the wall. He looked up at me with his serious, seductive blue eyes. Through them I could see the slumbering dream of manhood that longed to be awakened. As I looked deeper I saw myself at his age. Back then I had never thought of the view from the older man’s perspective. I was too involved in my frantic struggle to become a man! Stefan’s sandy blond hair was short and unkempt, as if he had himself just awakened from his dreams. His legs were long and lanky with the first signs of adult muscles appearing on his calves. He had full pink lips and white teeth which accented a clean moist tongue he used often to wet his lips. Everywhere on his body were tiny soft golden hairs that seemed to make his blue eyes sparkle with more intensity. My eyes followed the trail of hair up the inside of his golden legs. There I caught sight of the protruding navel suspended in the center of a line of dark brown hair, the only dark hair on his entire body. Pushing through the top of his shorts was a huge bush of pubic hair that crowned an enormous bulge between his legs. I had already gone well beyond the boundaries of permissible thought, so I struggled with the idea that I was wrong to feel the sexual attraction I felt in that moment. Yet there was Stefan seated before me with a full erection.

I managed to break the silence and distract myself by asking how he had learned to speak English so well. He told me his parents had rented apartments to American soldiers, but he also learned English in school. The Americans seemed to have had a big influence on his life. He expressed an interest in going to America someday, especially to California.

"Are you from California?" he asked.

"Yes I am from California," I told him as I watched him come alive with an innocent erotic demeanor that continued to leave me in a state of confusion. The boy in him stood up and leaned against the wall looking straight into my eyes.

"Are you from San Francisco?" he questioned once again.

When I told him I was, he went into a long excited explanation of how he would live in San Francisco someday. He had read an article in a German magazine about the lifestyles of San Franciscans. That was the very moment he decided he should live there himself one day. He asked if it would be possible for him to visit me in San Francisco when he becomes eighteen. When I told him I would be happy to have him as my guest in San Francisco he slithered down the wall and seated himself into a daydream. I squatted in front of him and looked directly into his eyes in order to get his attention. He was so much like a child, in that moment I felt like a father.

"Why have you come to my room Stefan?" I demanded as I watched my reflection in his clear blue eyes.

"Because I like you a lot!" he said as he took both my hands in his.

"I like you a lot too!" I explained as I let go of his hand to wipe tears from my eyes.

"What’s wrong?" Stefan asked puzzled.

I explained when I was his age I also liked an older man a lot. When that older man held me in his arms I realized I loved him. Stefan stood up suddenly as if angered by my words. In my confusion I imagined he would go out the door slamming it behind him in disgust. He turned instead and gently pushed me against the wall, then placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed me into a seated position on the floor. He spread my legs apart then sat in front of me, gently leaning back into my chest. He cocked his head back and glanced up at me, his own eyes filled with tears.

"Now will you not be sad?"

"No Stefan, now I am anything but sad!"

I questioned why he was not playing with the other children, and even more important where were his parents? He told me his parents had gone on an all day hike through the mountains. He was not interested in playing the stupid games the other children wanted to play.

"I want to stay here and talk to you," he told me, as he turned to face me on his knees. "Are you afraid? "

"Afraid of what?" I said with concern.

"Afraid of getting caught !" Stefan replied. "I’m afraid too, but today my parents are gone, so we should not be afraid!"

Stefan walked to the door, locked it, then took the bath towel I had dropped on the floor and placed it over the window in the center of the door.

"In two months I will be thirteen, I will explode if I don’t do something soon," Stefan said. "I have dreams about it and last night I dreamed about you!"

I walked over to Stefan and put my arms around him. We were both shaking with the excitement of the moment. I could feel the blood pulsating into the centers of our bodies. He began to cry like a baby as I pulled him onto my bed. He fell on top of me, rubbing his face on my two day old beard. I felt his warm tears tickle my bottom lip. I could taste the salt of his tears, smell the newness of his body as I prepared to remember everything I had forgotten. I was prepared to teach him what I had learned myself in that long forgotten moment. I remembered the excitement of those first times, the energy that had given me courage to defy the whole world to claim my own life. I remember knowing even then that the cruel world that judged us was wrong, dead wrong!

In the first moment the whole world was there in bed with us. My mother and my grandmother, the pope, the judge and the policeman were all there to tell me I was forbidden to do what I was about to do. I quickly banished them all to the mountains with Stefan’s parents. I thought instead, about the millions of child brides who were never asked if they wanted to bear children at the age of 14, who never even loved the men who now possessed them, and the arranged marriages, the 18 year old boys in prison for statutory rape because their partner was 17, and all the children just like me who simply followed their God-given instincts in order to discover their sexuality. We all paid a price for the unfair assumption that children don’t have rights!

This moment with Stefan was a sacred moment shared between two willing participants. At the moment I felt the warmth of my passion merge with Stefan’s explosion into manhood, I awoke to find myself alone in my bed, awakened from my before dinner nap. It was myself I had just learned to love. Stefan was that part of me I had buried in the shadow of an intolerant world. He was the little boy who in fear had hidden himself from his parents as a child! He had crept from his cradle into adolescence through dark shadows of fear and shame. He had hidden all the pleasures of becoming a man because he had been taught to believe they were unclean. His natural impulses had been seen as aberrations instead of gifts from God. Later in life he had felt it necessary to hide from himself as an adult, ashamed that he had claimed his rights as a child. I had just liberated my inner child from the shame which had made him invisible for more than thirty years. Now he had come to stand beside me as one of the warriors in the fight to liberate Gay children, from the silence which keeps them invisible, from the shame, the injustice that teaches them to hate themselves!

It was now necessary for him to stand proud before the world to claim the right to his future. All he had longed for these many years was to hear someone say that his life experiences were valid, as good as others. Even though he had been a part of me and my life, I was ashamed of him until I was able to bring him into my own bed without the judgment of others. I had never believed the older men I loved were bad, or sinners, or that they had ever taken advantage of me. I cherished the love and support they had given me, the hope they instilled in me. But as an adult I lived in mortal fear of even imagining how it looked from their perspectives. Now I can have the courage to say to everyone that my life was good and pure and sacred! Every moment of it! I will not speak of any part of it with shame, for I have nothing to be ashamed of. I thank all of my older male friends for giving me the kind of love and support parents seem unable to give their Gay children! They were the ones who told me it’s OK to love.

When I came to my favorite restaurant that evening I found the boy I had seen that morning seated with his sister and his parents. I asked if I could join them for dinner. They each introduced themselves and shook my hand. The boy was last to introduce himself.

"And my name is Stefan!" he said with a smile. "I have seen you this morning on the path. Maria told me you are from San Francisco. Perhaps you could tell me about San Francisco! It’s my dream to go to San Francisco someday."

"I’d be happy to tell you about San Francisco, Stefan!" I said as my heart began to race. I recognized that sparkle in his eyes, the one I had noticed on the path earlier in the day. I had no desire to take him into my bed though. No, I’ve always been hopelessly attracted to 28 year olds. When I was 12 I called them men, now I call them boys! My tastes never changed, just my point of reference. But now with Stefan, my pleasure would come in being a role model. I would jump at the opportunity to teach him to live in a world with pride instead of shame. I would help him, if I could, to remove the stones that litter his path to manhood. I would allow my protective paternal instincts to flow for a few days. In that parental role though, I would do my best to suppress the desire to protect him from himself! I should trust that he has the right to make some decisions on his own!