Lost Boi (11 page)

Pan loved battling Hook, even if he did laugh at his Old Guard beliefs about good form, rigid identities, and roles. Above all, our Sir was an unapologetic switch, brilliantly able to move within the worlds he built. Pan could be both Sir to us bois and also take a whipping from me or the others—if he was in the mood. He and Hook were evenly matched, and they always left battle covered in sweat and usually blood. As
you know, battle is the word that all us bois used to describe a scene, but never was there a more appropriate word for what happened between Hook and Pan. Ever see two fierce tops go at each other? Nothing is more intense, or hotter. When Hook and Pan were together, it was a battle of mind and will, not simply a show of physical strength. It was as though Pan and Hook were most alive when they were together. They connected in a way that was unlike anything either of them could reach with anyone else.

The leader of the lost bois would always just grin, no matter how hard Hook beat him, no matter how much snot dribbled down Pan's chin as he choked on the Captain's cock. Pan would always pull away, wipe his lips, and make a joke about having enjoyed the codfish. It was infuriating for Hook, the way that boi would never break, would never become his, but there was more to it. They were evenly matched and fought hard for Top. When I watched them battle, it seemed that Hook would become almost peaceful when he was beaten, beneath Pan's gouged and filthy boots. Pan was a good Top, a wise Sir in his own messy way, but even he could never have anticipated what was coming

After Wendi came, Hook and Pan liked it best when they met alone. When there was an audience, they felt like they had to posture and to keep one eye on their bois/crew; neither of them wanted to appear weak. I never got jealous of Pan's time alone with Hook, but I never entirely understood it, either.

8

Party at the Lagoon

U
s bois settled into a routine with Wendi. Soon the spring had leapt away, and we were solidly into the hot summer months. Unlike the Jolly Roger, there was no air conditioning at Neverland, and so we bois always spent our summers sticky and irritated, and this often led to fighting that Pan had to break up. We walked around the warehouse in as few clothes as we could stomach. A-shirts and sports bras and worn jeans cut into long shorts became the default dress code. Summer always made me grateful that we weren't Pirates, expected to wear only leather and denim no matter how high the temperatures climbed. For us, summer always brought extra-large helpings of eye candy, with all the bois' muscles bulging and fresh tattoos shown off.

Wendi spent a lot of time at the Lagoon that summer. Siren told me that Wendi had started to relax and spent less time watching her words to ensure they didn't blow
the tough-grrrl image she was working on owning. Wendi's dresses had gotten shorter, and instead of the stompy boots the Mermaids preferred when they weren't working, she scoured thrift-store clearance and free boxes for pumps that, in their past lives, had probably belonged to secretaries and saleswomen. I always looked for them too. The first time I bought a pair at the thrift shop, Curly wouldn't stop calling me a cross-dresser and a grrrl. Fighting words. It was fucked-up, but I didn't care to waste the time. I just wanted to get to Mommy. Curly wasn't laughing when we got back to Neverland. Mommy squealed with delight when she put on her new red pumps, and she took me into her arms. My head was right at boob level, now that she wore her new high heels, and Mommy laid my cheek against her chest, kissed the top of my head, and called me her good boi.

Us lost bois spent a lot of time that summer with the Mermaids. Mostly it was lots of fun, but sometimes it was really awkward. One day, Pan found one of Kelpie's necklaces in Neverland and didn't remember who it belonged to, so he gave it to Wendi. That night, when we were at the Lagoon, Kelpie saw her necklace around Wendi's neck and pulled out her little mother-of-pearl-handled knife. Well, Siren put her hand on Kelpie's shoulder, Kelpie put the knife back into her boot, Wendi took the necklace off, and she left it on the kitchen table as we all hurried out the door and back to Neverland.

And while Mommy/boi was intoxicating to me, I didn't
want to lose Siren. One night, I wanted to take her to a show—her favourite riot grrrl band. I ripped one of the posters for the show off a telephone pole, folded it up, and slipped it into Washington's pouch. He came back with a note that said “Pick me up at 7.”

It was a sweet night, the kind of night where I, for once, felt like I was doing everything right. I had worked on Pan's boots that afternoon and done the dishes for Mommy before I left. She even sent me out the door with a kiss on the head, her sweet approval of my night out. I arrived at the Lagoon right at seven and handed Siren a rose I'd broken off a bush in some damn yuppie scum's yard. At the show, Siren and I made our way to the front of the crowd. While we waited for the headliner, I pushed her against a speaker. As I ground against her, I could feel her whole body vibrating with the music. After her favourite band finished their set, Siren pulled me past the bar to the grrrl's bathroom and into the back stall. She was wearing a tight green dress and looked so good when I pushed her against the door. She grabbed my suspenders and pulled me to her. After a while, other dykes started to bang on the door, needing to piss. When Siren and I stumbled out together into the now-crowded bathroom, everyone cheered. Laughing but not embarrassed, we made our way out of the venue and onto the sidewalk. I unzipped my hoodie and wrapped it around Siren's shoulders. I didn't have enough money to take her to the diner, so we just kept walking down to the waterfront and up through
the dark business district, filled with banks and offices closed for the night and homeless old folks sleeping in doorways.

It was late when I walked Siren back to the Lagoon. She wanted me to stay over, but I knew that Mommy was waiting up for me. Before Wendi came, I used to spend nights tangled in Siren's deep-blue satin sheets, but now I didn't want to. I liked how Mommy would wait up for me, the way she tucked me into my hammock with a kiss on the forehead. So I lied and told Siren that I wasn't allowed to stay out overnight. I don't think that she believed me.

Hook also knew that we had a Mommy, but Pan was always careful to make sure he never met her. Pan liked to keep his worlds separate, and I don't think he wanted to let Hook see him submitting to someone. Sometimes I got jealous of Wendi, but at least I was still Pan's secret-keeper, still his best boi. As always, Pan was reluctant to say too much about his battles with Hook, but one night, as Wendi was reading the other bois a story, he told me that Hook just couldn't let this Mommy/boi business slide. For Hook, everything in life was about demonstrating good form. His most important principle was that, as a top, you could not switch. Even the thought of switching was a breach of honour, the ultimate bad form.

Pan and Hook's battles were gnashing, destructive, yet intoxicating hurricanes. Pan would bottom to Hook in action, but never would he submit. He was his own boi, and that grated on Hook, who wanted nothing more than to destroy Pan, to take him down entirely and leave him begging for
his collar. It was no secret what Hook wanted of Pan. He wielded it, somewhere between a threat and a promise, when they battled. Pan only laughed, saying that it couldn't be done, and he challenged Hook to try and make him submit.

Hook never said no to a challenge: another part of his honour. He would carefully remove his leather jacket, leave it hanging off a St. Andrew's Cross in the Jolly Roger's dungeon, and wail on Pan with flogger and fists. Using the hooks labelled with Pan's name, the Captain would send the boi flying into the rafters. Pan would laugh as steel pierced his flesh, and he would lean into the pain, letting the hooks support his weight. Of course, underneath their play was a story, locked in their eyes when they stood dangerously close to one another, Pan's gaze unflinching, and Hook looking down at this boi who would not be his. Despite all Hook's skill and protocol, he couldn't break Pan. Hook's anger spread through him, but Pan could never figure out where it came from. Had he known its root, he would have called it out. That's the way of him. Hook, however, preferred to let things fester, especially things he didn't like. Perhaps, if he'd only been able to set that aside for a moment, things could have looked different, but here I am getting ahead of myself again.

Where was I? Oh yes, the sticky heat of summer. It was the day of the Mermaids' annual play party. When I rolled out of my hammock, I found Erebos panting hard on the concrete floor, with Pan spread out next to her wearing only boxers and a sports bra, talking about the party. Everyone went to it.
Somehow, the grrrls always seemed to pick the hottest day of the year for it, I think because they liked to get everyone as close to naked as possible. All day, Wendi had been anxious, as though this were some sort of family outing, as though our behaviour and appearance would reflect on her as our Mommy. But I'd always loved this Mermaid party, despite the heat, because it was a night full of magic, and I couldn't wait to see Siren again.

The Lagoon's summer party was famous. Kids travelled from a couple of states away to get there, hopping trains and buses or hitchhiking. All the kinky kids did whatever they could to make sure they could be at the Lagoon. It was almost an un-conference of sorts, where if there was something you wanted to learn, someone would probably be up to teach it to you. It was a good place to hone your skills without having to sell your soul and a year's worth of cash to one of the mainstream kink conferences, where we wouldn't be accepted anyway. It was also a place to show off and a great spot to hook up. For this party, the Mermaids sure knew what they were doing. The whole house was decked out with treasures they rescued from free boxes. Kelpie and Undine found strings of green Christmas lights and strung them around the corners of every room and over the doorframes. They wove a web of lights along the widow's walk with its ship's figure-head, a bare-breasted carving of a woman they had attached to the house. The green lights shining against the black trim made the whole house seem dangerous and alluring.

As soon as we got to the Lagoon, we made our formal entrance: Pan first, then Wendi, and then us bois neatly behind them. “Mommy,” we asked in unison, “may we please go and play?”

“What do you think, Daddy?” Wendi asked Pan.

I caught sight of Kelpie in the kitchen. She'd clearly heard Wendi, and she was laughing. I mean no disrespect, but it
was
funny to think of anyone calling Pan “Daddy,” especially someone who imagined herself his equal. It was a D/s twist of Wendi's own imagination, that together they were Mommy and Daddy over us bois. Pan allowed her this fantasy, I suppose, because of what a good Mommy she was to us, to him most of all. But now he looked so uncomfortable at the word “Daddy” directed at him, and the question seemed to hang in the humid air. He blushed uncomfortably before twisting his face into a bemused smile. Then he nodded to us bois, and we rushed off to explore the Lagoon and see who had washed into town.

I went straight for the widow's walk. The chance to battle outside is one of my favourite things about the annual event. It's another world: there you are on this little strip of deck above the filthy churning water, and it's just you, your opponent, and the stars. Those brilliant stars watch over us, laughing, mocking, maybe smiling, but unable to act on their own. Probably the closest to religion I ever got was up on that roof, lost in a battle. I wasn't quite sure who I'd battle that night, and honestly I wasn't sure I cared. I was out for blood, mine or someone else's.

Everyone was scoping each other out. I had my eye on a boi from Denver, but he disappeared into a bedroom on the top floor of the house with Curly and Undine. I wasn't in the mood for big scenes with crocodiles, and besides, I didn't want to abandon my view of the stars. I imagined myself a wild animal lying in wait, knowing the right thing would come my way: either prey or an even bigger predator. I lit a cigarette and sat on the rough decking, staring up at the stars and picking at the peeling black paint. I'd dressed carefully for the party: black A-shirt, ace bandage for extra flatness, dark denim, and of course, my boots. I hoped my slouching posture was sexy and didn't make me look like I was pouting.

I sat in this same spot last year, and it was Pan who came for me. Sitting here again made me wonder if he remembered that night. When Pan and I battled, I felt cracked open. Our battles were the source of all the magic of who we were. Last year at this party, I was sitting on the balcony, staring off into the black water, when he appeared. Pan can do that, just pop up out of nowhere. Anyway, there he was, standing there, waiting for me to feel the burn of his eyes on me.

“Boi,” he whispered, “do you want to fly?”

I thought for a moment that he was talking about pixie dust, and I'm not saying I haven't tried it, but … I try to stay away. Then I saw the rope coiled in his hands.

Pan has never been one for fancy play. He likes his fists best of all and has been known to make quick use of his belt when the mood strikes him. I'd never seen him with rope before.

“Well?” He was grinning, waiting for me to take my eyes from the rope. The way his small hands were tangled within it, I could just make out the B, O, I, and S of his “L
OST
B
OIS
” knuckle tattoos.

“Yes, Sir.” I lifted my gaze to meet his green stare. And then the ropes flew. I don't know where he learned to tie sailor's knots, but I found myself bound and secured and hoisted up off my feet, the rope held tight by the eaves of the Lagoon. Suddenly, it was just me and Pan, alone except for the millions of stars watching, laughing, witnessing. The pain of the ropes against my muscles fell away and I was soaring without fear, trusting implicitly that Pan had me, that the magic we created was bigger than us both, that it could hold us. I'd never doubted my place as Pan's boi, but nights like that took me farther than I had ever been.