Lost Boi (9 page)

At first, I didn't know what to say. I played with a sugar packet, and finally all I could think to respond with was, “You don't mean that. You're just hurt and scared.”

Those were fighting words, but Nibs didn't raise a fist, so I continued. “I don't know what's going to happen, but having a Mommy is going to be good. If it wasn't, Pan wouldn't have brought her. When I gave myself to him, I promised to obey without question. Who am I to judge what's good for me? Pan knows best! Besides, she's so good to us—she made us dinner and everything! That's what Mommies do. She's going to take care of us, she's going to tuck us in at night and help us not to be so afraid.”

Nibs just stood up from the table and said, “Let's go back to Neverland.”

I thought I'd done well, doing what Pan had asked, bringing Nibs back with me, making our pack complete. When we got back to Neverland, Mommy smiled at Nibs but didn't pressure him to take her key. She said it was time for bed. Nibs said he wasn't tired. Wendi sent the rest of us to our hammocks. Then she pulled one of the little chairs into the sleeping area and sat down. We all rolled onto our sides and gave her our full attention as she told us our first bedtime story. It was a sweet tale about a grrrl and a boi and the adventures they have.

One of the things about Pan was that he didn't always do a very good job of explaining things. He didn't think that he needed to. I wouldn't say that I disagreed with him. It takes all the fun away from things when you explain and negotiate everything to death. I've always liked to play hard and edgy, and one of the best things about being Pan's was that he always gave me that. Always. But all that day there was part of me that wondered if he'd take us bois aside and explain how the dynamics would work now that a Mommy was in Neverland. He never did, and that's why I was so nervous when the story ended and she began to visit each of us in our hammocks. Given the nature of our sleeping room, us bois were used to not having much privacy. We knew how to close our eyes, put our headphones in, and go somewhere else.

Mommy came to me and crawled up into my hammock.
I scooted over and adjusted the balance so she could lie next to me. I was the last boi she visited. I think she might have planned it that way. Wendi wasn't as innocent as Siren or I thought when we first saw her. Wendi knew I was Pan's second-in-command. I don't know what Pan told her about me, but maybe she heard that I didn't take well to newcomers, that I didn't trust easily. We lay there together, not talking for a while. The longer we lay next to each other, the more uncomfortable I became. I started getting worried that she might try to talk to me about how I shot her. I could hear her breathing; I'm enough of a predatory switch to know that she was working to quiet her ragged anxiousness. I know how to keep a hammock balanced through just about anything, and I thought about rolling over, kissing her, and taking control of the whole mess. But I felt the cuff on my wrist and couldn't move. First and foremost, I was Pan's boi, and I couldn't disrespect him that way. He'd told me, as was his right as my Sir, that she was to be my Mommy. I needed to follow her lead, to be available to her in whatever way she wanted me.

Finally, Wendi turned to me and ran a warm smooth finger down my jaw and kissed my forehead, and then, cautiously, my lips. I was confused, but returned the kiss. I guessed this was part of what it meant to have a Mommy. I like to think I'm like Pan, that I never ever get scared. Pan let me stay stone. He always honoured that part of how I make sense of myself and my body. It's a known thing, not only between us, but between me and the other bois, and me and Siren too.
Pan could do anything to any of us, but this is one of the few things he doesn't play with, except for when we've asked him to, which I did, once. Anyway, when Wendi started to kiss me, I worried about how to block her touch, how to tell my Mommy that there were things I couldn't give her. I think Pan must have told her more about us than I thought, because she didn't go further and brought her lips back to my forehead before crawling out of my hammock and moving toward Pan's.

My head was heavy with the need for sleep, yet I couldn't stop thinking about everything that had happened, the way that our little Neverland family was expanding and what it might mean for all of us. So completely did I trust Pan then that I was no longer worried about Wendi being our Mommy. I just knew that it would be okay. But as I lay there, I could feel a burning sensation, both at the spot where Wendi's lips had met my forehead and where the cuff gripped my wrist, just like Pan's hand does when he holds me tight.

7

More than Playing House

I
t was still dark when I felt someone shaking my shoulder. I could barely make out the tattoo on Nibs' face when I opened my eyes.

“Shhh,” he said and motioned for me to follow him.

I climbed out of the hammock, rubbing my eyes, confused. Nibs is tricky because of how old he is. I mean, technically, here in Neverland, age doesn't really matter. As long as you're legal, there's no worry that some scary social workers will chase you down and bust you for squatting. Still, although he hid it beneath blue hair dye, Nibs' age was catching up with him. I could tell that he was probably even older than Pan.

Nibs turned being lost into a career. In the decades since he fell out of his pram, he'd been halfway around the world and back. He liked to brag about all the places he'd been and illustrated his stories by pointing to whatever stick-and-poke ink he acquired in various cities/houses/shows/squats. I don't think bragging is very good form, and I'm not really sure
why Pan let him get away with it. Nibs' favourite stories were about his time in Berlin. He spent a few years among all the ex-pats there, making as much art as he could—mostly graffiti-style paintings on boards he would pull out of dumpsters. Nibs had a lover there, a filthy boi who taught him to tattoo and marked his face. I think that boi was as close as Nibs has ever come to settling down. He always got soft when he talked about that boi, but never uttered his name.

They lived in little apartment rooms behind a squatted trans bar. Together, they smoked cigarettes and tagged their bodies and all the walls with intricate abstract designs. In the winter, they huddled together to stay warm when the bar hadn't sold enough beer to buy coal for the little stove they used to heat the apartment. On weekends, they would take a train out of the city to walk around the abandoned amusement park. Nibs always talked about the time he threw ropes and suspended that boi from the frame of the crumpling Ferris wheel. (He shouldn't ever tell John Michael that story; I think it would break her little SSC brain.) I think that boi was the only person he ever really loved, and then he overdosed right there in their bed. Nibs was the one to find him. The way Nibs tells the story, that's when his world ended again. From there, he came back to the States and wandered around for a bit, hopping trains and trying to disappear, until Pan found him.

Nibs and Slightly didn't get along because Slightly was always dreaming of her life before Neverland. For Slightly, it
was almost as if being a lost boi was just temporary. It's hard to trust someone who seems like they have an exit plan, who might betray you at any moment. That's what Nibs said he could smell in Wendi too.

“Tootles, I just can't do it. I'm not going to listen to some little grrrl playing Mommy. That ain't my kink, and I refuse to submit to that.”

“But we have to; it's what Pan wants! You don't know how it will be. You haven't even given her a chance!”

Nibs pulled out his knife and slipped it between his wrist and the leather. Even though it was the middle of the night and all of Neverland was asleep, I yelled out for Pan. Nibs rolled his eyes. He'd meant what he'd said: once the respect was gone, so was his loyalty. He felt as though Pan had betrayed him, and so he owed Pan nothing.

Pan groggily crawled out of Wendi's blanket bed, confused and frustrated at having been awoken so rudely. His eyes followed to where I was looking at Nibs with the knife in one hand, cuff in the other. The padlock was still intact, but the leather cuff itself had been sliced in half. There was nothing to be said. Pan wasn't one for begging or negotiation. It was over, and he knew it. Pan took the cuff and, without a word, walked back to Wendi's bed.

I started to cry. I didn't want Nibs to go, didn't want him to leave me alone, but I also knew that there was no going back. Nibs' bag was already packed. I reached out to shake his hand, but he pulled me into a hard hug, though normally,
Nibs and I weren't very good about being close to each other, or anyone. Nibs broke away from my embrace and walked out of Neverland, a free boi.

Wendi later told me how, when Pan came back to bed, he was upset but wouldn't talk about it. Instead, he grabbed his knife and pulled her left hand close. He stuck the tip of his knife under the little yellow stone on her birthstone ring and easily pried it loose. The stone went flying across the room into the dust before Wendi could reach for it. “I would have saved that! He might come back.” Wendi cried. “Nibs chose to leave, he's gone, and you must forget him,” was all Pan said to her before going back to sleep.

The following days were filled with getting to know Wendi and making Neverland the kind of place she felt was decent enough to live in. Wendi and John Michael gave their oaths in blood to Pan and Neverland. We were permitted to watch. I don't know why he waited so long to mark them. Maybe Nibs' departure shook him, or maybe Pan was distracted—that wasn't for me to know. The ritual didn't take long. First, he opened an alcohol swab and ran it across their right shoulders before swabbing the tip of his knife. He took Wendi first. She was a big grrrl, and only a couple of delicious tears ran down her cheeks, but she did not cry out. John Michael, to her credit, also took Pan's blade honourably. When he was done cutting the stars, Pan pulled a black handkerchief from John Michael's pocket and dipped the corners in her blood. “Now you have earned the right to wear this,” Pan said,
handing it to her. It was a very Hook comment, a very Pirate-like move. Normally, Pan doesn't put much weight in those kinds of rules, but I think he knew it would mean something to a boi like John Michael, and he was trying to connect with her. John Michael put the handkerchief into the right back pocket of her jeans, with the bloody spot proudly showing. Later that night, I caught Wendi in the bathroom twisting to see her oozing shoulder in the little cracked mirror, a smile across her face.

One day, Pan and I went out to the thrift store and, for ten dollars, bought Wendi the biggest couch that we could find. It was velvety and green with a thick, dark wooden frame. It could fit all us bois, or Wendi and three of us. You have to be more delicate when dealing with a Lady; I was working on remembering that. It felt so good to be out with Pan, almost like the old days, and I was honoured to be the boi that he trusted on this adventure to please our Mommy. At first, I was worried about Pan and I both having Wendi for a Mommy, but Pan was still everyone's Sir. He still called all the shots. We didn't talk about Nibs.

I think I started to fall in love with Wendi in those first few days. I'd been so skeptical about her after Nibs walked out. None of us had ever had a Mommy. When we came out as queer and, for most of us, simultaneously as leather bois, we all had gone for Sirs. I shouldn't speak for the other bois, although I know their stories nearly as well as my own. But I can tell you that I played as hard as a Sir would let me, and
as deep as I could go. I played for blood and bruises and for scars, the ones you can see and the ones you can't. I wanted to cover up the oldest scars, the ones I got before I was brought out. I (mistakenly) thought then that only masculinity could bring me there. But it was becoming clear that Wendi wasn't skittish, and that she could handle everything us bois laid before her.

Pan could recognize the wildness in our eyes and know how deep and far we'd let him take us in that first battle, but Pan's not one for aftercare. Wendi cared, she cared a lot, and she wanted us to know it. It seemed like all her time was devoted to caring for us. I can only imagine how that adjustment must have been for her, going from being a little grrrl to a Mommy with all these bois for whom she was responsible. At first, it must have been a bit like playing house. I don't mean that as disrespectfully as it sounds either, as playing and make-believe are traits Pan values as much as loyalty. Survival in Neverland is dependent upon make-believe, so in this, Pan and Wendi made a good team. Wendi was blooming in this new world, in this new life. In the early days, she didn't speak about the Darlings or the world she came from. She appeared to be shifting and changing, becoming lost, discovering the way that broken glass sparkles under the glow of streetlights, the way that you can lay hands on another person and watch them come alive under you.

We bois didn't always make the caretaking easy. None of us knew quite what to expect from a Mommy, so the first time
I came back to Neverland with skinned knees after having tried to jump a fence on the waterfront, I thought she would be mad about the rips in my pants. Mommy didn't scold; she looked worried when she first saw me creep in, and the worry didn't pass from her face until she'd felt me all over and was certain there were no broken bones and only a little blood. Mommy took me into our little bathroom, took my pants down, and held me tight while she poured alcohol across my knees. Before Wendi came, the bathroom was filthy, and you would have had to dare me to sit on that floor. With Wendi, the smell of chemical clean came into our lives.