While reading a really sweet story by Melanie Brown called "Just Friends", a song by John Lennon called "Beautiful Boy" was mentioned. Intrigued by the song title, I decided to look it up, and found a recording of it on YouTube. After listening to what turned out to be a very pretty song, I found out it was written for John's son Sean. I'd only heard of Julian before, so I did some research, and discovered that even though Julian had basically been abandoned by his father, he'd still had a good relationship with Sean.

All of that had been swirling around my head last night. When I woke in the tiny hours of the morning, I had the beginning of a story idea. I'd been imagining an alternate universe, where the social revolution that happened in the 1960's led to a much broader acceptance (compared to our universe) of people who didn't fit into traditional gender roles.

In this universe, John Lennon manages to survive, reconciles with his older son, then becomes a loving dad to both of his kids. I also imagined both sons, being freed from old fashioned idea about how boys should act and dress, start leaning towards what used to be considered more feminine tendencies.

In the end, John delays releasing his latest album, and rewrites one of the songs. The title is changed to "Beautiful Boys", which is about the love and pride he feels for both of his beautiful sons. I have no idea if I'll ever actually write this story, so if anyone else out there would like to run with this idea, then go for it! :)