I blushed and pulled hard enough to get my cock out of its harness, then threw it up into my hammock. Standing, I zipped my jeans, thankful I hadn’t taken my boots off. I followed Siren out of the room and into our makeshift kitchen. It has a view of the fence, and we could see Wendi trying to pick her way over the barbed wire. Siren laughed and pulled another cigarette out of her purse. I fumbled for my lighter but was too slow. Siren’s chipped red nails flicked the little silver-and-pearl box. She cupped her hand around the flame and took a sharp inhale, then stashed the lighter back into her bra.
“Grrrls that clean are always trouble, and not the good kind. She’s ether a spy, preparing to snitch on us, or she’s going to bring bad luck.” Siren managed to laugh and be serious at the same time. I didn’t ask how she knew about grrrls like that.
“What should we do?” I asked. Siren blew a smoke ring; I wished my cock wasn’t in the hammock. Siren said that Pan would want me to protect Neverland, that he would want me to take charge, confront this pretty little grrrl and tell her that either she could get jumped in or she had to go. Everything Siren said made sense, and more than anything I wanted Pan to be proud of me. I looked up and saw that the grrrl had made it down the fence and was now crawling through a broken window. She yelped as her ankle caught a shard of broken glass, and her shoe was spattered with red.
Tink had come to roost on Siren’s shoulder and pulled a syringe and baggie from her purse as the grrrl climbed through that window and saw us standing there. I admired how she held my gaze when she first saw me, but when she looked down, Siren fired a series of questions at her without letting her answer.
“Hey, pretty grrrl, who are you? What’s your name? How did you get here? Why aren’t you talking? Who sent you? You’re a snitch spy, aren’t you? That’s why you aren’t talking, isn’t it?”
After whispering her name, the grrrl didn’t even try to answer Siren’s questions. When Siren told her to get the fuck out, Wendi fell to her knees before me and began to sob and sputter. “Don’t make me go! Please don’t send me away.”
Confused, I looked to Siren, who just rolled her eyes. When I looked again at Wendi, I saw that her long, dark hair had fallen from its bun and stuck to the sweat on her face and beautiful throat. I’d never had a grrrl kneeling in front of me. My stomach lurched, and I couldn’t tell if I was going to cum or puke.
“Please, what do you want?” she whispered from glossy pink lips. I looked at the gash on her ankle, the way the blood had beaded. Siren started to laugh.
“If this grrrl wants us to believe she’s not some sort of snitch, then she has to prove it. She has to swim with the Crocodile.” I knew that this strange grrrl couldn’t know what she was consenting to. But then I thought of Pan. I thought of how proud he would be of me if I, in his absence, protected Neverland. I left her on the floor and sat at the dumpstered table with Siren.
This was not the first time that Neverland had been discovered by an outsider. Every couple of years, it seemed, some poser kids would sneak in or befriend Pan and worm their way inside. It never took long for them to be discovered as frauds, but it was always a great nuisance, and dangerous too, because grownups could have followed them here, maybe even parents, the worst kinds of grownups, the ones who have the ability to destroy everything for all of us.
That was why I didn’t question Siren when she said, “What would Pan do? Remember, he fed Hook to the Crocodile. I bet he would want you to shoot this pretty grrrl up, to jump her in.” Siren’s words rang true, and I was not the kind of boi to question Pan.
By now we weren’t alone. News has a way of travelling fast in Neverland, in part on account of the lack of walls. Us bois are always climbing over each other; Pan likes it that way. He doesn’t like to be alone, and I’m pretty sure that’s why he has us bois in the first place. There isn’t much privacy at Neverland. A grrrl, especially one who had broken in, was more than any of the bois could resist. They had all gathered around the little table, watching me and Wendi, who still knelt, silently pleading as delicious tears trailed her rounded cheeks. I can’t imagine what Wendi thought of me, of us, a tangle of dirty denim, leather, ink, and steel shoved through various appendages. We all wore the same thrift-store workpants, and whatever T-shirts, hoodies, and flannels fit us best from the pile of clothes that lived in the corner of the sleeping room. None of us had anything of our own, except for Pan’s cuff, and that belonged to him and not to us. I don’t think Wendi had ever seen bois like us. We weren’t like those guys at the GSA spouting “born in the wrong body” bullshit stories. All she could see was a pack of bois ready to take her down, and Siren reapplying her lipstick.
Wendi’s eyes darted from boi to boi, studying us. Nibs was the dandiest one of us, always trying to get us to fold our clothes and reminding us to shower. Slightly was a strange boi whom Pan pulled from a bus stop where she’d been left slouched over and overdosing on ecstasy after a rave. She sobered up and decided to stay. Slightly and I didn’t get along all that well, though we were forbidden from ever really having it out with each other. Curly was handy to have around because he enjoyed punishment and would always take the fall for things, even when he didn’t do them. When Pan was in a mood, Curly was always the first to volunteer himself for punishment—greedy pig of a boi. Of course, this sometimes backfired on us, because Pan is anything but stupid, and while he loves to punish a boi, he is (at times) a fair leader and prefers (when possible) to punish the boi who deserved it. When he caught us, we were given a lashing twice: first, for not having volunteered and second, for letting another boi take the punishment that we should have been grateful to receive. The Twins must have had a particularly troubled past, because they fell from their pram together, and have never left each other. They even slept in the same hammock. Pan used to punish them for it.
All this time, as Wendi’s eyes darted from boi to boi, I struggled with how best to defend Neverland. I didn’t know yet that Pan was on an adventure hidden in the Pirate’s dungeon with John Michael or that he meant this grrrl to be our Mommy.
Later, John Michael whispered to us bois about the rest of her adventure with Pan, how he’d motioned for John Michael to remain quiet. But from her place under the table, all she could make out was her face reflected in the toes of the immaculate boots that paced the room. Hook, Pan had told her, was Old Guard impeccable. John Michael hadn’t known exactly what that meant, but she started to get an idea when his crew entered and presented themselves for inspection against the back wall.
Each crew member stood before Captain Hook, erect and in proper uniform, ready to be judged. He had carefully instructed his crew in the ways of the Pirates, and as he inspected them—tucking in a shirt here, adjusting a collar there, and shaking his head at a scuffed boot—he lectured them.
“A leather Pirate must always be respectable. He must present himself perfectly, always, in clothing and action. Black boots must always be worn. Do not mix different colours of leather; only black leather is appropriate. My crew will never wear shorts, and should always wear denim or leather. Once earned, a Pirate should only be seen in his leather jacket. Only I, as your Captain, may wear a cap. Never wear the leather of another Pirate, unless it has been given to you.
“You are my crew because you wear my collar; you are mine, and mine alone. You are not to engage in battle of any kind with another Captain. Battling with lost bois is, of course, permitted. No Captain will engage you because you wear my collar, which means you are owned, you are off-limits, and they will stay away from you, if they have been trained properly and know what’s good for them. Captains do not take collars, ever. Never forget: we Pirates are a breed unto ourselves.”
Of course, none of this was new for Hook’s crew, but John Michael was mesmerized. Pan always said that this was shit that Hook had found on a website or something, but Hook swore he was Old Guard-trained in the dungeons of San Francisco before everyone had died. Hook said that the rules were literally beaten into
him, and that was how he trained his crew. In his own way, like Pan and all us lost bois, Hook avoided growing up. He never had to have a grownup job but lived in a world of sexual outlaws, travelling from kink conference to kink conference, teaching his history and helping others to appropriately train their submissives. Hook not only trained others in the rules passed down to him from the great leather Pirates who’d come before, but he dedicated his life to their honour and made sure not one member of his crew ever forgot that. In that way, his world inside the Jolly Roger was like our Neverland, separate from the morality and the judgments and the expectations of adults.
But the Pirates are our enemies because they are rich yuppies. Their fridges were always full. But they were different from grownups, because they lived by their own rules. Rules, Hook maintained, ensured the keeping of good form, and Hook was at his most seductive when he spoke about the importance of good form. When I first met him, I thought it was just about the clothes. After all, he wore only black leather: boots, pants, cap, gloves, pajamas (Pan always added that last one, when he’d make us bois pee ourselves laughing as he imitated one of Hook’s serious lectures). Hook’s keys always jingled from his left belt loop. He always laughed at Pan’s black hanky flagging; after all, Pan had no keys. But I have to admit that good form went deeper than clothes for Hook. Pan had already told John Michael about the Crocodile, and how Hook had never forgiven him for hooking him. Of course, Hook would cut anyone who called him weak, for to show weakness would be to dishonour himself, his crew, and all the great leather Pirates who had come before.
Pan later told me that he didn’t know exactly why he had taken Wendi and John Michael to the Jolly Roger before bringing them to meet us and to see Neverland. He struggled too with how to explain what his relationship was to Hook. They had nasty, bloody battles that fed them both in ways they couldn’t talk about. Hook’s normal protocols for scene negotiation didn’t apply to his battles with Pan. They played hard, and they played for blood, and they played past breaking. Hook never forgave Pan for hooking him on the Crocodile, and Pan never forgot the morning he came to on Hook’s dungeon floor, sore and wrecked and unwilling to admit he’d been had. That very day, he led the Crocodile right to Hook; the man never saw it coming. Hook might have been sunk, but Pan was attached to the anchor. He couldn’t ever make himself want to walk away from that Pirate.
“It’s only a matter of time before you are gobbled up by it.” John Michael was shocked by the sweetness of Smee’s voice when she first heard it. Still quite attached to her lesbian identity and unable to gender the voice she now heard, John Michael wanted to know if it came from the sort of person that she would be allowed to find attractive. From under the table, all she could see was the cuffed denim ankle and the mirrored shine of Smee’s boots.
Now, I’m going to leave Pan and John Michael at the Jolly Roger, since they are about to get tied up for a while, and tell you what happened at Neverland.
When Pan was away from Neverland, we were like a litter of puppies who got destructive when left alone and crawled all over each other the minute our master walked through the door. On the night that Wendi came, us bois were extra nervous and kept pacing and looking out the window, waiting for Erebos to bound in with Pan tumbling behind. It didn’t matter that we were all together. Without him, I felt unsteady, as though I could be blown away at any moment and no one would know I’d ever existed. Wendi was on the floor before me, and the bois had all circled around, waiting to see what I would do with this strange, clean, spy grrrl. What if Siren was right and she really could destroy everything? Wendi didn’t want to kneel there, I know that now. She wanted to hose us down, and do the filthy dishes that filled the utility sink in the corner and were stacked along the floor. I know now that she just wanted to patch the holes in our knees, and that she wasn’t so innocent that she didn’t know just how they had gotten there. Wendi wanted to tell us stories, to tuck us in, to pull our smoke-and-mildew-smelling sleeping bags up to our chins. She wanted to shoplift teddy bears for us from the thrift shop. Pan had promised her a pack of obedient boys who wanted a Mommy, not an ambush. I didn’t know any of this.
While staring at the pink edges of a scar on Wendi’s plump thigh, I knew that Siren’s eyes were on me. Finally, when I could think of nothing else to do, no other way out, I cleared my throat and looked down at Wendi, avoiding her eyes and resting on the smooth inner bend of her elbow. I heard Siren whisper, “Shoot Wendi. Pan would want you to protect Neverland.”
I grabbed the syringe from the table and pulled the black handkerchief from my back right pocket, using it to tie off the arm that Wendi held out to me. Her eyes were fixed on Siren, her face screwed into an expression that was intended to appear fierce but looked like a pout. My ears filled with the bois’ whispers and the rustling of pigeons above my head. I shot Wendi and she hit the filthy ground, cradling her arm. Wendi was drowning and could hear only the gnashing of crocodile fangs.
6
The Little Family
It was only after I’d done it that I realized my mistake. Siren was silent, and the bois’ constant whispering had ceased. I’d wanted to protect Neverland, to make Pan proud of me, and there was no way I could have known that he wanted this grrrl, that he’d brought her here not only for himself but for us. My stomach somersaulted as I watched her puddle onto the floor. Wendi’d presented her right arm to me, but now, as she thrashed on the dirty floor amidst feathers and bird droppings, bottle caps and crumbs, the sleeve of her pink hoodie was pushed up on her left arm, and I saw the thin band of dark green leather. It was more delicate than the one I wore, but instantly I recognized the cuff. The other bois, who moments earlier had been egging me on, also saw and turned, teeth bared, circling me.
“How could you have done this?” Curly said, turning away from me and sitting on the floor next to Wendi. The Twins too were shaken, which translated to anger.
“I bet Pan was bringing us a Mommy!” said one Twin.
“She would have taken care of us, mended the holes in our knees, tucked us in!” said the second.
“Now you’ve ruined her!” the first one cried. A Mommy was something Pan had talked of, but always in abstract ways. I thought this Mommy business was just a story he and I would jerk off to. He’d told us that the Mommy he would find for us would be strict. She’d make us scrub behind our ears and wash our mouths out with soap when we were disrespectful. Domestic discipline wasn’t something I’d ever given much thought to, but Pan had, and he sold us all on the magic of a Mommy’s touch. Still, I never thought he’d send us one as a surprise.
Seeing the cuff changed everything. I was dizzy with the idea of how stupid I’d been not to look at her wrist before things got so out of control. Another boi in my position might have blamed Siren, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hate her. It was my choice. Pan teaches us to be responsible for our actions. I started to cry and was too upset to care that everyone could see. Finally, I wiped my snotty face on my sleeve and whispered, “I used to dream of pretty femmes, that someday one would come to be our Mommy. In my dreams, I would fall to my knees and say, ‘Mommy, please, please have this boi.’ It was always such a beautiful dream, and she would take my face in her hands and smile. But now, when my Mommy finally came to Neverland, I shot her.”
I couldn’t believe I’d let the bois see me act so weak. I rushed into our sleeping quarters. When Pan was away, I’d always been unofficially second-in-command. How could I have let him down like this? I found my messenger bag and threw some clothes into it. Siren came to check on me. As much as I wanted to be alone, there was something about Siren; she didn’t want me to top her, and she didn’t especially want to top me. I could be weak in front of Siren in a way I couldn’t with the other bois, but it still scared me to let her see me like that. Siren started to kiss me, and I kissed her back because I didn’t know what else to do. My tongue was coated with her sticky cherry lip gloss, and she tasted like cigarettes. I didn’t wa
nt to kiss her, not now, not like this, but I didn’t want to stop either. What I really wanted was for Pan to take me down, to make it all right, to punish and absolve me, to change what I’d done. Siren knew I was lost, and not just in a lost boi sort of way.
She told me that I could come back to the Lagoon for the night. I was shocked. It’s against the Mermaids’ house rules to bring someone home without consulting each other. “Sometimes, rules are made to be broken.” Siren’s words hung in the air around us.
I left Siren there and walked back into Neverland’s main room, where Wendi still lay on the floor, surrounded by the bois. I started toward the windows when the bois tried to stop me, saying how much they didn’t want me to go. Curly stood there looking like he might start to cry, and my first instinct was to comfort him, to make a plan, but I couldn’t do anything but run. It wasn’t just that I was terrified of Pan. Greater than my fear of Pan was this new fear of myself. What I’ve always cherished about being a lost boi, other than belonging to Pan, of course, was the chance to find and save the other broken and forgotten runaways, throwaways. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, to help them not be alone. I never thought I’d be capable of hurting someone the way I’d just hurt Wendi. Then came the sound I’d been dreading. Pan was home, and there was no time to escape.
“Bois, I’ve returned!” His bellowing announcement echoed through Neverland. All the pigeons flew from their roosts and circled us, making Erebos leap into the air after them. Pan was distracted for a moment, which gave me time to signal to the bois that we needed to hide Wendi. We stood in a line before Pan, as he liked us to present ourselves, waiting. Siren had gone out the back through the high window, onto the dumpster, and out onto the tracks. I didn’t blame her for wanting to get out of my mess. Pan looked confused; we’re always so lonely without him that, when he comes in, we normally throw ourselves at him, knocking him down, forgetting protocol in a way that he loves. On the night that Wendi came, none of us bois moved.
Lost Boi Page 4