Lost Boi (20 page)

Hook winced, pulled his hand away, and laughed a sad laugh that broke into sobs. “See? You and your impeccable form, even now. You would have me? Disgraced shell of the man I've become? Goddamn it, Pan, does nothing bother you? Do you not ever falter? No, I will drown tonight. I am
tired, boi, so tired of running. I'm tired of hiding. I can't do this anymore. The Crocodile will finally take me.”

Pan took the Captain's final order and called no one. He stayed with Hook, his oldest friend, until the end. It was the first order he'd ever obeyed.

Afterward, Pan wanted nothing to do with us bois, but he allowed Wendi to hold him tightly as the tears came. That was the way of them. Pan was the boi who didn't cry, but he cried with Wendi when the nightmares came in the night, and now, when everything was falling apart.

16

Through the Window

P
an had to tell the Pirate crew that Hook was gone. Most of them had gone to bed, the party and battles long over. Pan sent me to the upper floor of the Jolly Roger and into the Pirates' barracks to wake them. I shook Smee awake, and he immediately knew from the look on my face that something was wrong. I told him that everyone had to come downstairs to the living room. Smee didn't tease, question, or fight, which surprised me, since we usually scrap with each other over everything; he just looked scared when he got out of bed wearing only a pair of flannel pyjama pants. I'd never seen his chest scars before. He woke the rest of the Pirates, and I led the way downstairs. Everything felt wrong. This wasn't my house to be traipsing through in muddy boots, but Pan told me to do it in a way that didn't allow for questions. I knew that I had to obey.

We all gathered in the living room. Pan stared out the window, his back to the door as we filed in. Wendi stood
next to him, her hand on Pan's shoulder. At first glance, it looked like she was comforting him, but then I saw the way her hand shook. All the Pirates and us lost bois were seated, on couches and carpet, in the very room where last night I'd swung from the ceiling under Hook's hands. Pan isn't one for fancy words. I could tell by the way he cracked his knuckles that he was upset. Wendi had taken a seat on the arm of the couch.

“I don't know how to tell you this …” Pan began, his voice cracking and trailing off. He cleared his throat and continued. “The Crocodile won, but it can no longer chase him. Hook is gone.”

I couldn't imagine what any of the Pirates were thinking or how they were able to process this news, but they acted properly as Hook's men, even now, holding strong and stoic. He had trained them well. He would have been so proud of their good form.

There wasn't anything else for Pan to say. We didn't go back to Neverland right away but caught a couple hours of sleep in the living room when the Pirates returned to their barracks. I don't think any of us slept very well, but I must have dozed off for a while, because when I woke the bois were asleep. I had to blink hard, confused at what I saw. In the darkened room, in the very chair where earlier Hook had sat watching me, now sat Pan. It was like seeing a ghost. Wendi was curled on the carpet at his feet. Pan's green hoodie lay over her like a blanket.

Pan hadn't been able to sleep at all, and when he saw that I was awake, motioned me to follow him downstairs into the dungeon and Hook's study. Pan handled the paramedics and police, who of course had to be called. He ordered me to clean the dungeon. I removed the condoms, cocks, and ropes, stashing them in treasure chests that were decoratively scattered around the play space. Everything looked normal by the time the police knocked at the door. As I cleaned the dungeon, Pan alone took care of Hook—that wasn't something he made any of the grieving Pirates do. Pan knew that Hook would have done the same to protect his lost bois, had their fates been reversed. I answered the door for the paramedics, but it was Pan who had to answer all the questions from the cops about what had happened, but really, there weren't many. The empty syringe lay on the desk where Hook sat slumped, and the cops don't care much about junkies. They just wanted to get out of the house. Before they took him away, Pan kissed Hook one last time, but for the first time tenderly, on the forehead. When the paramedics left, Pan locked the door and went back downstairs. Hook's leather jacket still hung on the back of his chair. Pan ran his fingers along its hard, smooth seams before picking it up and slipping it onto his shoulders.

Wendi had woken when the police left and followed Pan and me down the stairs. He saw her enter the study as he pulled on Hook's jacket. She looked upset but said nothing, and he held her stare silently.

The next few days seemed to work in slow motion. It was
horrible to climb into my hammock each night. I wanted to just quickly pull the bandage off and leave. I was surprised that Pan let us stay, but he was in shock, momentarily weakened. He let Mommy take charge, even though she didn't put her apron back on, and he never commented about the missing stone on her ring. Mommy said that we couldn't just leave Pan, that running away from someone who was hurting wasn't what her good bois should do. She told us that he needed us, and I think she hoped that, now that Pan had lost Hook, he would come with us.

Wendi also spent more time with John Michael. Neither of them had seen death before. They didn't mention Hook at all; instead, they talked endlessly about Mr and Mrs Darling, about how well the Darlings had treated them, how much better than all the other group homes they had been in. They discussed how pleased the Darlings would be with all of us. Wendi also busied herself caring for the Pirates, who joined us for meals now, here in Neverland. It was peculiar to have our battle partners sitting down to packaged noodles with us, but they were without a Captain. They did not speak of Hook either, but always proudly wore his uniform and didn't stay past dinner. Pan never talked about Hook, but that's the way with him. I think if he remembered, the pain would've been too much. It would've destroyed him.

In those final days, Pan talked mostly of mothers, not Mommies, about the distinction between the kink and the biological kinds. Pan hated mothers, always had, and his
temper seemed so much closer to the surface now. He would never have admitted it, but I think he hoped not only that we might stay, but that he would break protocol and allow us to. In part, I wanted to give that to him and believed that I truly owed him that, after everything we'd been through together.

In the evenings, when the Pirates had returned to the Jolly Roger and when John Michael was with Wendi in the kitchen talking about the Darlings' home, speaking in whispers about the classes they would take, the conferences they might attend, and the lives that awaited us, Pan and I would sit together. He knew that we were leaving, but we never talked about my broken promises, the leaving, or my flight with Hook. He was unusually kind to give me that.

I wish I could say that Pan and I talked about important things: Leather, the life we had together, or even death. Instead, we fucked because it was easier than talking. When we did talk it was about stupid shit, about dramas at the Lagoon, what the pigeons were thinking about, and our favourite candy. I wanted to talk about real things, serious things—I wondered what he thought of the decision I had made and if he would ever forgive me—but we didn't. He monologued about the evils of mothers: the way that they mistreat their children, how they go away, how, above all, they shouldn't be trusted. I completely agreed with him. I hated mothers, and I didn't want to be with Mrs Darling in her home. I didn't want a mother, I wanted my Mommy Wendi. I wanted a life with her, the life that we had promised
to one another and were going to build. I saw Mrs Darling as an unpleasant side effect that I could do my best to ignore. Pan wanted me to remember that mothers are evil, that they constrain, control, and abandon. He wanted to ensure that I knew what I was leaving him for, and that it would not be just the magical life that I imagined.

The week after Hook drowned, it was time for us to go. I don't know how that was decided. It was between Pan and Wendi, and neither of them told me. I awoke in my hammock, and Wendi was in the kitchen, making coffee as usual. She told me that I had to help her to get all the bois packed, that tonight we would be leaving, going back through the window to her world. I wasn't ready, but I said, “Yes, Mommy.” I packed my bag that day and helped the other bois to do the same.

I snuck out around lunchtime, just me with Washington perched on my shoulder. We made our way to the Lagoon. I hadn't seen Siren since the night that Hook died, since the night I told her I was leaving and she'd slapped me. I wanted to see her one last time, to explain that although I was leaving Pan's world, I didn't have to leave her. I stood on the sinking front steps of the Lagoon and knocked and knocked on the red front door until my knuckles bled, and still they wouldn't open for me. Siren would not grant me access, would not agree to see me. I guess I couldn't blame her.

I walked back to Neverland alone. When I got there, I was surprised that Pan wasn't there. Wendi didn't know where
he'd gone, and she acted nervous as she packed her bags. Pan had agreed to help us get to the Darlings' home that evening, and Wendi feared he wouldn't keep his word and she would have to find the way herself, which she didn't know how to do. I knew he would be back, that he would keep his word and come for us.

Pan left Neverland not long after I went to the Lagoon. It wasn't until much later that Wendi and I learned that he'd retraced, in reverse, the route that he'd first taken with Wendi and John Michael and found himself at London Street, at the door of the Darlings' Home for Girls. Pan picked up the brass door knocker in his dirty hands. I'm guessing he hadn't known what to do until he was there, and then he did something that was neither strong nor brave nor in good form.

Mrs Darling let him in, against her better judgment, probably only because he seemed like the kind of—boy? girl?—who might know what had happened to Wendi and John Michael. Mrs Darling offered him coffee, and Pan, with unexpected cruelty, told Mrs Darling that her girls had become addicts, that Wendi had flown, that she was meaning to bring back a pack of bois so damaged there would be no saving them. He wanted to scare Mrs Darling so that she would close the window—so that Wendi would have to come back to Neverland. When he was done speaking, Mrs Darling suggested that perhaps it was time he leave. She believed nothing this old butch had told her. All she wanted was her Wendi home, she told Pan, and no matter what kind
of entourage she brought with her, the window was open.

Mrs Darling also knew that the law would allow them to continue to collect cheques until the girls turned twenty-one, as long as they were enrolled in school. All summer long, Mr and Mrs Darling had dodged visits from case managers to whom they said that the duo were out visiting friends, at camp, working part-time jobs, but she knew they couldn't keep lying. Eventually, it would be discovered that she didn't have the children. Mrs Darling had no intention of closing the window, for so many reasons.

Meanwhile, all afternoon, Wendi was nervous that Pan wouldn't return before we left, and that she wouldn't get one more chance to see him, to make one more attempt to “save” him. I tried to tell her that Pan had been saved long ago by Hook and pigeons and Neverland and all us bois. Pan had saved himself and would never be the kind of boifriend that she wanted. He didn't want to be saved by Wendi. But I told Mommy that I would do my best to fill the gaps that Pan had left in her heart, that I would try to be the boi/boifriend she'd always wanted. Wendi smiled and pulled me into a kiss, hard and fast. She smelled so good, like antibacterial soap mixed with thrift store.

Pan returned to Neverland just in time to take us to the Darlings, but not before he removed our cuffs. They were locked in place with padlocks, but as we'd sworn ourselves forever to him, he hadn't kept the keys. He put his knife next to our skin for the last time and cut the cuffs from us,
severing our relationship forever. What we had been to him and to each other couldn't be contained in that little strip of leather, and yet my hand shook so hard that Pan had to hold my arm steady so he wouldn't cut me.

As we walked to London Street, Tink flew ahead. None of the other pigeons followed. I hadn't known how to say goodbye to Washington. I was naïve then; I didn't think it was a goodbye that needed to be said because we would still see each other in city parks and on sidewalks. I thought I might even keep a bird feeder in the backyard. I didn't know that we would stop talking. I didn't know that I would lose the magic that binds bois like us to pigeons, to wild animals. I didn't know that growing up meant that the magic would die.

It was a quiet walk, follow-the-leader style: Pan first, then Wendi, followed closely by me, then John Michael, and then the other lost bois trailing behind. We all pulled at the collars of our shirts. Wendi had managed to get us polos and button-downs from the thrift shop. She'd helped us tuck them into our jeans, and we stood at attention by the door of Neverland before we left. She looked each of us over, asking if we were sure we were ready to meet the Darlings, making sure that we were ready for our new life and that we looked like it too.

When we reached the Darlings' Home for Girls, Pan kept his distance, hidden in the shadows, camouflaged by Hook's dark leather jacket. Wendi held the knocker in her hand, pausing for so long I thought she might set it down silently
against the door and run back into Pan's arms. Or that I might. I took a small step toward Pan, but he did not soften. Looking directly into my eyes, Pan swore: “I said nothing to you about forever. I promised you adventure.”