9
The Apology
When Pan saw Gator leave the Lagoon, he went back to the house, passing Kelpie and Siren, who were on the porch couch smoking with some femmes from New Orleans. Pan nodded at the group and began to search for Hook, whose crew was hanging out in the living room. Smee looked up when Pan came in, but gave no clue as to where his Captain was. Pan searched through all the basement and first-floor rooms, where folks were drowning and fucking and making out. When he went upstairs, he saw that the door to the widow’s walk was ajar. Hook didn’t need to turn around when Pan came outside; he recognized the sound of the boi’s boots against the rotten decking. Hook stared up at the stars. He was not drowning. Pan stood next to him, trying to get Hook to look at him, but Hook wouldn’t acknowledge him. Pan sighed. “You aren’t still pissed about earlier, are you?” Pan asked, playfully grabbing one of the Captain’s belt loops. “You know I think of you as more than your codpiece.” Hook refused to respond. “Oh, come on, Hook! Don’t be mad at me! I was just messing around, I didn’t mean any harm by it. Can’t we just let it go? Let’s start this night over.”
Finally, Hook—still looking at the sky—said, “You owe me nothing short of a formal apology for the way you acted tonight.”
Pan did not roll his eyes. He straightened his shirt the way Mommy had taught him, wiped his grimy hands on the back of his jeans and, when he was convinced his hands were clean, extended his right one toward Hook.
“Captain Hook, please accept my apology. I acted out of turn this evening, disrespecting you in front of your crew. I let my joking go too far. I am truly sorry, and I am here to ask for your forgiveness.”
Hook pulled his eyes away from the stars and turned toward Pan. “Look at you. Little boi, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a grownup standing before me. I hear that you’re a Daddy now. Looks like that grrrl figured out how to make a man of you, and you like it, don’t you? You like being her husband? Being a grownup?” And then Hook spat right on Pan’s outstretched hand.
Pan winced. They were fierce battle opponents, but Hook had never been cruel to him before. Closing his eyes for a moment, Pan took a deep breath, wiped Hook’s spit off on the back of his jeans, and smiled. Pan is different from all us other bois in that he doesn’t hold onto the hurtful, unfair things in the world. Just as a boi who grows up and leaves Neverland is immediately forgotten by Pan, so are hurts. Pan smiled at Hook, and again extended his hand.
Hook was disgusted—with himself and with Pan. This filthy boi, leader of a gang of hoodlums, had exhibited better form than he had, the Captain whose workshops on protocol people paid money to attend. More to the stars than to Pan, Hook angrily asked, “Aren’t you ever bad? Doesn’t your form ever falter?” Without waiting for Pan to respond, Hook turned and walked back into the Lagoon.
Pan was left alone with the stars. He was confused, but had already forgotten the hurtful sting of Hook’s words. Tink came to him, accompanied by a whole flock of Neverland’s pigeons. They perched on the railing and on Pan, tickling him with their dinosaur feet and flapping wings until he laughed and completely forgot all of it.
10
The Unhappy Home
It was a time of coming together, of truly being a family. Wendi threw herself completely into her role as our Mommy. She also reinforced old power hierarchies, often telling us to “listen to your Daddy.” Of course, that was just business as usual for me and the lost bois. I never thought of disobeying him. I took my commitment extremely seriously and distrusted those who didn’t. No one could say I didn’t give Pan the best of myself.
For a time, it seemed that John Michael had fallen in love with the Neverland magic. I know I wasn’t very fair to her at first, but by now she had truly become one of us lost bois. It would have been dishonourable for me to doubt her loyalty. She’d stopped her lectures about what was the “proper,” or “safe,” or “appropriate” way to suspend or punch someone and yet, although she was one of us, she seemed happiest when battling with the Pirate crew. Sometimes I wondered if Pan regretted bringing Wendi and John Michael to Neverland—but here I am thinking like a grownup. The best thing about Pan was that there were no regrets. He lived perfectly in the moment, without doubt or questions, trusting completely, and when Wendi agreed to be our Mommy, he gave us bois to her. I think that he believed that because she was a Mommy she could get John Michael under control. John Michael never respected Wendi as a Mommy, and she certainly didn’t respect Pan, not outside of battle, where it mattered the most.
When Pan would go out, John Michael would talk to Mommy in a disrespectful tone. She would ask to sit in Pan’s spot or to play with his knives. There was always battling among us bois, much of it good-natured fight-picking, but this was different. It seemed … toxic. Wendi didn’t know how to handle this boi she had known as a brother, but here had negotiated to care for as a boi.
Pan became increasingly preoccupied by Hook and therefore spent less time with me. I responded by acting out to get Pan’s attention—not anything big, just simple things. Pan would say:
“Tootles, black my boots.”
And I would respond, “Okay.”
I had been trained better than that. I knew the protocol, and that only correct response was, “Yes, Sir!”
I’m not proud to admit it, but a slap across the face felt better than being ignored. The further away he felt, the more I was almost afraid that I would lose him. In those moments, I latched onto Mommy’s apron strings, and I wasn’t sure if I cared where Sir went, with his pixie dust and Pirate battles. I was angry that he didn’t take care of John Michael, that he didn’t get rid of her, if that’s what it would take, like he’d done before with other bois who hadn’t worked out. Worst of all, I started to doubt him.
One time, Pan and I came into Neverland to see one of the Twins doubled over on the floor. He was turning blue and mumbling something about train tracks.
“What the hell happened here?” Pan asked the other Twin.
He didn’t respond right away, so Pan threw him against the concrete wall, forearm across his throat. He sputtered and tried to talk, and Pan pulled his forearm away a little. The Twin confessed that they had been down by the river chasing the Crocodile, and maybe they had dived too deep. I knelt over the first Twin. It was obvious what was happening, his pupils were so small, and when his skin started to turn as blue as his hair, I got up and yelled at Pan who still had the second Twin pinned against the wall.
“Give me quarters! Please, Sir!” I tried to soften my demand to a respectful request, but my tone was all wrong.
Pan turned. He knew why I wanted the coins, knew that I intended to run to the corner payphone and call for an ambulance.
“No one is going anywhere,” Pan responded, stepping away from the second Twin who slumped to the floor and turned his attention to the first Twin.
“Bring me my bag. Now!” he ordered me.
My hands shaking, I brought Pan his backpack. From the front pouch, he pulled out the Naloxone, which harm-reduction street-outreach teams had just started to hand out and train kids how to use. Pan roughly tilted the Twin’s head back and sprayed the anti-overdose drug up his nose. Time in Neverland seemed to stop, but within a minute the Twin’s breathing deepened, and the only thing blue about him was his Mohawk.
That night, Pan ignored the Twins as they comforted each other through withdrawals. Wendi was having a slumber party at the Mermaid Lagoon and so wasn’t home to hear the Twins call for Pan. I could make out their whispered cries, saying they couldn’t take the pain, and they wanted to detox in the hospital. I reached for my boots, preparing to go outside and call a cab. I’d stolen quarters out of John Michael’s jeans earlier in the evening, just in case, so I wouldn’t have to ask Pan again.
“If you go to the hospital tonight, you are no longer my bois,” Pan replied. “You aren’t overdosing anymore. You feel like shit, and you should. You will be sick, and maybe you’ll think differentl
y before chasing the Crocodile again,” Pan said coldly from his hammock.
I went to Pan, but before I could say anything he gave me a look. “Surely you aren’t doubting me, are you, boi?” he said. I went back to bed. Besides battling harder than anyone else, what bonded us was our love of these bois, our belief that Neverland was the way to save lost and broken kidz, to keep them not only alive but safe and protected. That night, I started to lose respect for Pan. It wasn’t something we could talk about.
I started to fight a lot with John Michael. I wanted to break her face. John Michael’s lack of respect for Pan, perhaps because it reflected my own unexpressed feelings, brought me to quick anger. Just the sight of her made me feel worse than dope-sick. I kept trying to initiate battle, thinking that might take the edge off. I’m the kind of boi who breaks all the conference rules and plays mad. She isn’t that kind of boi. She turned me down and asked me if I had something I needed to process. That only made me angrier.
It wasn’t against the rules to be angry like that, to want someone’s blood. We’d all pledged blood, but we weren’t permitted to keep secrets. I was supposed to talk to Pan. My rage was the first real secret I kept from him. I didn’t even know why I did it, maybe because I didn’t want to tell him that the magic was slipping away. It’s not like I went out and started planning insubordination; it just happened. Wendi knew, even though I didn’t tell her. “Mommy always knows,” she would whisper as she tucked me in. She didn’t tell Pan either, and so it became our first secret.
Neverland began to feel small. From the moment I’d arrived, I’d been like Pan, never wanting anything else, never lusting for a different life. Other bois did, and that’s why they left. It wasn’t sudden; I think I would have noticed if I had come home and suddenly seen our world through another’s eyes. I could have taken that to Pan, I could have asked for his help, but my questions and dissatisfaction rolled in slowly, like a fog, and once I was surrounded, I couldn’t see his magic. All of Neverland had changed, or maybe it was me who changed.
What had once been mystery and adventure now felt like a burden. I saw the empty cupboards, felt the knotted rope in my stomach when there hadn’t been enough food to free-box, when Mommy stood and stirred an empty pot and heaped imaginary pasta into our chipped cups. One night it rained so hard that the pigeons’ nests and our hammocks flooded, so we all roosted together on the kitchen floor. Once this would have been an adventure, but now I just felt wet and cold. It was only Pan who found magic in the scabies we got from the Mermaids and the bed bugs that came from the mattress abandoned by the Urban Primitives that we carried into Neverland for Mommy. It looked really nice with the heavy, metal police barricade we snagged after the Pride parade to use as her headboard. The whole setup was great for bondage, if you didn’t mind the bugs in the mattress. I loved being Pan’s lost boi, but I couldn’t stop thinking of all the kids even more lost than me and how I couldn’t help them. Pan didn’t know that my ability to believe was faltering; I just couldn’t reach him. No, let me not dishonour Sir. The truth was, I didn’t want to reach Pan any more. I let our world, the one he and I built, the one in which his belief never wavered, slowly slip away.
Mommy had taken to calling Pan “Daddy” all the time. I hadn’t ever had a Daddy, so I was no expert, but I knew that to be a Daddy, you had to be a grownup, Pan’s greatest sworn enemies. He was my Sir, captain of adventure and danger, who left us bloody, glassy-eyed, and on our bruised knees, begging him for more, asking him to turn us inside out, fling us through his slingshot. Anything that he wished was all that we wanted. Mommy thought it was disrespectful that we didn’t play family the way she did, but I didn’t want no fucking Daddy.
One afternoon, us bois had been wrestling and battling all through the kitchen, and just generally being nuisances. Wendi told us to go outside so “Mommy and Daddy could have some grownup time.” The words slipped like silk from her mouth. I don’t think she even realized what she’d said. Pan was in the rafters and couldn’t hear, which is all that kept his fist from her cheek. John Michael had a Twin in a head-lock, and Curly looked like he was trying to sneak into the bedroom with the other Twin, whose hand had slipped past the loose waistband of his jeans when Mommy’s order came down. I was the only one who heard her slip. I flashed anger then worry, but kept it off my face.
I made the decision right then to disobey her, and I sneaked back in as the bois hit the street, half going to spange coins outside the diner and the others to the Lagoon to see if any of the Mermaids were home. Alone, I climbed onto the dumpster behind Neverland and peered in through a sooty window cracked with BB holes. I lay on the dumpster with my head just below the window. I knew that Pan and Wendi, curled together on the futon, couldn’t see me. I thought Erebos might bark at the window and blow my cover, but Wendi had given him a bone she pulled from her purse. She must have had a special night planned for Pan and didn’t want any distractions.
I felt bad about spying on Pan. I was mad and disappointed, but my loyalty ran deep. He’d made sure of that when he took me. I thought about my first night in Neverland and how uncertain I’d been of my place with the other lost bois. But I knew, for the first time, when I was under Pan’s boot, that I was where I belonged. Watching Mommy and Pan, I realized that I had become one of those bois who’d spied on my most private moments when I first came to Neverland, watching me from their hammocks, sizing me up. Their eyes had glinted in the weak street light that pushed through the very same filthy windows that I now, all these years later, looked through. I saw Wendi tighten her apron strings, reapply her lipstick, and run red nails through her long hair. A Mommy’s motions. Pan sat on the futon, Tink perched on his shoulder and picking at his hair. I thought I saw a flash of silver in her beak, but I’m sure it was just the light. Pan’s eyes never left Wendi. He was as devoted a boi to her as I was to him.
The night I gave myself to Pan, he left me alone in that hammock. I didn’t take my jeans off, and he didn’t try to stay. I throbbed against the ropes. I had sworn my allegiance to Pan in blood. It would not be the last time, but that’s the night I will always remember, because he took me with him. My two stars, birthed in a burst of blood at the tip of his knife on my right shoulder, shot pain through my body like I’d never felt before. I was home. I was Pan’s lost boi.
From my spot on the dumpster now, I spied as Wendi gave herself another once-over in the cracked mirror. She crossed the room and perched next to Pan, stockinged leg draped over the futon edge, torn from snagging fingernails and fence tops. Wendi’s scuffed heel dangled, clinging to her toe. I ground myself against the ridges on the dumpster’s lid; I couldn’t help myself, even if it makes me sound like a peeping Tom. I promise it didn’t feel that creepy. It was hot and forbidden, watching Mommy and Pan. His hands rounded her hips, fist clenching the knot of her apron strings, pulling up the gingham fabric of her dress to get to her. I should have looked away.
Pan took Wendi there on the futon, his filthy hands disappearing into her. She was beautiful as she surrendered to him, but it was Pan I couldn’t look away from. He was fucking her hard, the muscles in his right arm flexing under tattoos and track-mark scars. I loved his arms with their ropes of muscles that held me down, choked me out, or helped me up. My eyes had been locked on the place where wrist met grrrl, and then I saw his face, sweat dripping from his temples, contorted into a pained look I didn’t recognize. Rivers of tears mixed with the sweat. Pan doesn’t cry; he tells us so. Wendi’s eyes were closed, her head thrown back, sweat pooling in the hollow of her throat, her hands clenched into fists. I’ve fucked her enough to know that she was close. Out of respect, I didn’t want to look at Pan’s face, but there was a burning I couldn’t avoid. And then his green eyes, glassy with tears, met mine. I moaned. Wendi came with an earthquake-tremor and a cry so loud it drowned mine. I didn’t understand what was happening to me or Pan or Wendi or the bois—any of us.
I flattened myself lower on the dumpster, but I di
dn’t have to peek through the window to know that Wendi was nestled into him, her hands playing with the short hairs at the base of his neck. She wanted to seduce him. I’d heard her talking about us, about their bois. She didn’t include him as a boi. Wendi discussed our training. I knew I should probably not be listening to this part especially, but I didn’t want to leave. Wendi spoke about our future. Her language was careful but firm, and she wanted Pan to take a firmer hand with us. She wanted less unplanned battles, more structure. She said, “Structure is what little bois need.”
Pan had been silent as Mommy spoke of the leather bois she would polish us into, the fine representatives of leather community we would be, how it was their responsibility to raise the family right so that we could go out into the world, so that we could make them proud.
“But being Daddy to these bois … it’s just a game, just pretend. Right, Wendi?” Pan asked.
I pulled my hands under my chest to keep my heart from banging against the dumpster lid, and I peered up through the window. Mommy wiped tears from her face with the corner of her apron, then began to pick at the fraying edge, scraping off clumps of mascara. At first I thought the conversation was over, but then, so quiet I could hardly make out her words, she pleaded, “But these bois, they belong to us, to you and me?” Her voice trailed off into an accidental question mark.
Lost Boi Page 10