Lost Boi Read online

  Runaway! Runaway!

  This wasn’t all Pan’s doing. Wendi might have looked sweet, but she knew she wove powerful spells with her stories. These spilled onto paper late at night when the Darlings thought her asleep and then shot from her drugstore-pink lips on the open mic stage. The way Pan told it, he’d just wanted to hear how the story about the princess ended. It was the stories that made him secretly follow her home that night, for Wendi didn’t see Pan and Erebos trail her down sidewalks and through back alleys back to 14 London Street.

  Pan later told me that he almost turned around then, seeing that she lived in such a nice house. It sat in the middle of an average suburban neighbourhood at the corner of Kensington Avenue and London Street. Money was tight, but the Darlings had done well for themselves, and the house with the manicured yard that Mr Darling mowed on Sunday afternoons was their prized possession, the proof that they were respectable community members. It was everything that Pan hated. It was almost enough to make him walk away from a pretty grrrl, but then on the mailbox he read “THE DARLINGS’ HOME FOR GIRLS,” and he knew his plan would work.

  Pan watched Wendi go into the house, and a few minutes later a light came on upstairs. He left Erebos on the ground and climbed a tree that reached to the second storey. Then he waited. He should probably have felt a little creepy watching through the window as Wendi undressed, but he enjoyed the show. He didn’t mean anything disrespectful—he never analyzed pleasure, just appreciated it. Wendi’s room was tidy and organized, with light-pink walls and books neatly lining the shelves. Black-and-white photo-booth strips and concert tickets precisely arranged to look haphazard were taped to the mirror of the white vanity that stood next to her bed. The room looked like a clipping from a decorating magazine. Only the two kids, with their ragged edges, were out of place in this pretty little room. Watching Wendi slip into her nightgown and comb her long, dark brown hair, Pan wanted to take her away, to show her another world. Erebos had fallen asleep at the foot of the tree, and Pan’s feet were tingling, but still he waited. Finally, the nightlights went out, and only then did he creep to the window ledge and into the room.

  Pan had been surprised to see John Michael, and for a moment thought Wendi had a boyfriend, or a boi. Then, he remembered the group-home sign out front. Later, he told me how he’d almost walked away when he heard Wendi wish John Michael goodnight. Whatever their relationship was, it was clear they were a package deal. But what is one more boi? Especially if that deal is sweetened by a grrrl. John Michael must have been a deep sleeper, because she later swore that she never stirred as Pan cracked the window open and slipped past her bed, but the rustling of feathers and Pan’s tears (that he will always deny having shed) woke Wendi.

  Tink, of course, had followed Pan all the way to Wendi’s and flown into the bedroom. Then, finding herself trapped inside the room, she began to panic, throwing herself into the walls, looking for the window. Tink crashed into a framed poster of white kittens and disappeared behind a dresser. Pan, convinced Tink was dead, couldn’t keep from crying. The sound woke Wendi, who switched on her bedside lamp and gasped when she saw Pan standing at the foot of her bed, more alive than in the dream she’d just awoken from.

  Tink would peck my eyes out if she thought I’d gotten this far into the story without properly introducing her. Tink is Pan’s fairy. Unlike loyal and obedient Erebos, Tink is a jealous creature. Pigeons are so small that, unlike dogs, they can only hold one emotion at a time, and with Tink it is usually not a very nice one. Especially if there is a grrrl involved. She wants to be the only grrrl in Pan’s life. When she gets into a mood, there’s no reasoning with her, and no reminding her that she’s a bird and no one will take her place. I see that confused look. Fairy? Pigeon? There is magic everywhere around you, but most people are too busy being grownup to notice it.

  I’m not sure how Pan first met the pigeons; they must have been the feral ones nesting in the rafters of Neverland. Back before Pan was leader of the lost bois, he was alone with no one to talk to except for the pigeons. It didn’t take long for them to adopt him into the flock. When a boi is brought into Neverland, he is given a pigeon. It’s part of how you know that you’re home, and it means you’re never alone.

  Starting when they hatch, us bois keep the fairies close, so they know how to find us. Sometimes, they follow us out on our adventures. Pan taught us how to make small leather leg bands for the pigeons, where their names can be embossed. Tink wears a green leather band around her ankle that matches the thick leather cuffs Pan makes for each of his lost bois and locks onto our wrists the day we swear our loyalty to him and to the principles of Neverland, the most important of which is, of course, to never grow up. I’ll never forget the day that I met my pigeon, Washington. He had the most brilliant purple blaze of feathers right above his wings. When Pan handed him to me, I was nervous. I’d never held a bird before, and I certainly never thought I would hold a filthy pigeon. I held out my hand, palm up, and he hopped onto it. I thought my heart might break out of my chest as Washington fluttered and found his footing on my arm in our new home. The grownups’ army used to use pigeons, but people have forgotten how smart they are. They learn where home is and, magically, they can always find their way back. We send messages to each other tucked into special little leather harnesses we made to fit each of them.

  Anyway, Tink appeared from behind the dresser, feathers askew, but still very much alive. Relieved that Tink wasn’t hurt, but knowing how jealous she would be, Pan sent her out of Wendi’s bedroom window into the stars and back to Neverland to tell us bois that he would be home soon. Pan had been gone all day, and he knew we would worry that the Pirates had got him tied up and he might forget to come home to us. Pan’s message just said that he was on his way home, not that he was bringing a grrrl. That’s where the trouble started, but here I am getting ahead of myself again.

  “Boi, you don’t have to cry,” Wendi whispered. She was now sitting up in her little bed. She let the pale pink comforter slip away, revealing her thigh. Had Pan been paying attention, he would have seen the cross-hatching of pink and red slashes. Her respectably coral-tipped nails toyed with the buttons of her nightgown at her throat, and she slowly began to undo them in a way that almost looked accidental. Again she whispered, “Boi, what’s wrong?”

  Pan rubbed his tattooed knuckles across his wet eyes, drying them on the tattered and frayed cuff of his green sweatshirt. Face twisted into his most charming smile, he turned and whispered in his husky voice, “I’ve come to hear the end of the story.” Wendi stalled, wanting to know more about this stranger she’d been fantasizing about. She licked her lips and pulled her hair up into a bun, a gesture that revealed the curve of her breasts under the clingy white nightgown, sticky with sweat in the warm spring night. Whispering so as not to wake John Michael, she patted the mattress next to her and tried to ask him the kinds of questions grownups ask. Wendi was not a grownup, but even then she was the kind of grrrl who could turn at any moment.

  She made the mistake of first asking about mothers—that is, about his. She should have known better, being a foster child, but her world was so straight back then. I can picture how Pan must have prickled at that question. He told her coldly that he found mothers to be overrated sorts of persons. Wendi pushed when Pan said he had no last name, when he told her that “Pan” was the only name he had. If it had been me, I would have gone back out the window. Wendi was a good grrrl, always on the honour roll, with plans for going to college. Even though she didn’t have them, she was convinced that everyone should have parents, or at the very least want them. Wendi believed that no matter how badly the grownups had treated her, they could be good. It had never occurred to her that she didn’t have to become one.

  Finally, after not getting useful answers out of Pan, Wendi asked him where he lived. Pan’s eyes glittered as they always did when he talked about Neverland, about us bois. He told her that we had our own warehouse, a paradise we were always
working on, patching the shot-out windows, hanging swings and slings, and about the day we added hammocks for each of us to sleep in amongst the rafters with our pigeons. Pan told Wendi he had a pack of bois who jumped at his command, who had sworn themselves to him and wore his cuff. He told her we too loved stories.

  I don’t know exactly what Pan promised Wendi in that little pink bed. Probably nothing more than adventure, with his crooked grin and the way his eyes twinkled when he talked about the things they could do together, but he locked a leather cuff around her wrist that night. It had been enough for me; there was no reason to think it wouldn’t have been enough for her. Later, Wendi said that he told her about grrrls, how there weren’t any of them in the Neverland, and how lonely that made him, us. How there was something special about a grrrl like her, something she could give him, us. Pan talked of how we would cherish and worship her, how she would always care for and feed her bois. “I love the way you talk about grrrls,” Wendi whispered through glossed lips, placing her hand on Pan’s denim thigh. She tried for a kiss, but Pan was already distracted, looking out the window to check on Erebos. Pan didn’t want a grrrlfriend, he wanted a Mommy to tuck him in and put him in his place, but he would never have said that last part.

  After fantasizing about this mysterious boi for weeks, only to have him appear in her bedroom, there was no question in Wendi’s mind that she would go. She took her homework out of her backpack and filled it instead with dresses, drugstore lipstick, nail polish, and her notebook. Then she woke John Michael. I don’t know if she had really been asleep, because it doesn’t seem like she took much convincing to pack her own bag and follow Pan and Wendi out the window. Pan really had no need for more bois, but Wendi wouldn’t leave her behind. Pan was so eager to have Wendi, he quickly consented to the tag-along.

  4

  The Adventure

  Climbing down the tree had been hard for everyone except Pan. Wendi and John Michael tried and failed to imitate Pan’s controlled free-fall from the branches. Wendi later told me that while she liked the way Pan had talked about grrrls, he didn’t know how to treat a lady. As Wendi’s foot left the window ledge, Pan was already on the ground, and he was playing with Erebos as Wendi fell. It never occurred to him to extend a hand to help her down; he was used to us bois. Wendi picked herself up from the grass, adjusted her bun, and straightened her nightgown. John Michael had fallen behind her in a painful tangle of elbows and knees. By the time she reached Neverland, she had a delicious shiner. While Wendi tied her little white canvas flats, John Michael steadied herself against the pull of Pan grabbing her hands behind her back. He leaned in and whispered, “You’re my lost boi now,” and locked a green leather cuff onto her wrist. Pan led them over the back fence and into the alley. The Darlings, meanwhile, were sitting at the dining room table working on their budget and didn’t even notice the children were gone.

  Pan led them away from the house through a dizzying maze of back alleys. He didn’t dare go onto the streets, knowing that at any moment they could be spotted. Pan had shown many a boi how to fly away through an open window, how to disappear in the night and never be found. The Darlings’ house sits far from the edge of city, near suburbia, so it was quite a journey back to Neverland. Wendi and John Michael wanted to take the bus, but Pan wasn’t sure it was safe. Those two looked like runaways, even if the kids (as he was coming to think of them) hadn’t a clue about how green they looked—and, given the hour, how easily they could be picked up. Pan paused and looked at them in the glow of a streetlight. Wendi wore a baby-pink hoodie covering that white nightgown he wanted into. Even the boi John Michael in her sweatpants looked like she had stepped off a school softball field, and her purpling eye made the group look even more suspicious. Pan took them through a hole in a chain-link fence into the darkness of a small stand of trees, wondering how long it would take for them to look crusty enough to not arouse suspicion.

  The kids tried to keep up with Pan and Erebos as they skidded down a gravel hill and onto the train tracks. They were worried now, the reality of having climbed out their window beginning to sink in as their sneakers slid on the gravel beside the tracks. There was a freeway to their left about fifty feet up a hill, and the streetlight provided a grimy blanket of light—not enough to make sense of the details of where they were, but enough to keep an eye on the railroad ties and keep from slipping into the ditch. Pan warned them to stay to the shadows, but otherwise didn’t talk for a while. There was enough light for Wendi to look at John Michael. She could see fear in the pale face of this boi whom she had come to think of as her little brother. Even that night on the train tracks, before she came to Neverland, Wendi was aware of the power she wielded and the responsibility she had, and now she shivered with the realization that she was leading John Michael astray. She knew that the boi looked up to her, trusted her, and relied upon her. Since coming to the Darlings’ home, Wendi had rushed through her own homework so she could help John Michael with hers. Now, Wendi focused on her excitement, fingering Pan’s leather cuff on her wrist and pulling down her sleeve to protect it. She pushed away the fear that she was being irresponsible, that she was ruining the future she’d worked so hard for. She needed Pan; that’s all she knew for certain.

  There was a wildness to Pan that Wendi hadn’t noticed at the bookstore. He was feral, she was sure of that now. The wild of him should have scared her back to roads with sidewalks and bright streetlights and her warm, pink bed, but instead she followed him further into his world. The only part of the city Wendi had known until now was the bookshop where she read, and the diner down the block where, when the Darlings permitted her a later curfew, she would go and sit with the baby dykes from her GSA, talking poetry. They would eat fries and sip coffee that was really equal parts sugar and milk, just as they imagined grownups did.

  As they walked further from 14 London Street, Pan slowly began to open up about the world he was bringing them into. It occurred to him only then, after he’d taken Wendi, that he hadn’t told her or John Michael enough about us and the way we lived. He told them that Neverland was a special place, a whole world full of wonder built out of the things that no one else wanted, the treasures that grownups couldn’t see, just like the bois who built it. Pan told them about the art room where we’d spray-painted murals of deep forests on two of the walls and blue undersea scenes on the others, the floor a muddy mix of colour and dirt where the paint of the two scenes meet. Pan told them about the hammocks where we slept and the piles of rope for suspending other things. He told them that if they wanted to, they could fly. Then, without explaining anything more, he said that no matter what, they would become his.

  Pan doesn’t do cultural competency trainings, and he doesn’t do 101. He thinks that’s for wusses and assimilationists. That’s one of the things he and Hook never agreed about, but I’m getting ahead of myself again. Pan did not ask John Michael or Wendi for a safe word. He simply explained how things work. Neverland is a paradise, his paradise, and it runs by Pan’s rules, and his alone. Pan explained, as they walked along the tracks, that Wendi and John Michael had to swear their allegiance to him, as all of us had once done. In return, he would care for them, and he promised that they would always be well used. John Michael, who was not inexperienced with sex games, quickly realized that this was more than that, much more complicated. Her hands were sweating as her mind raced. “Yes, Pan …” she finally muttered.

  Pan stopped walking and turned to her. The gold in his green eyes, glistening in the dim light, met hers for the first time, and she understood how deep this all would go. “Yes, what.” It was not a question.

  “Yes, Sir,” John Michael replied, her face glowing red.

  John Michael later told me she couldn’t believe her luck. She’d been reading books about kinky protocol that Wendi would bring home from the queer bookstore, and suddenly there was this boi who appeared in her bedroom, living all the things she’d only read about. Best of all, he wanted her!


  Wendi always says she lost track of how long she had been walking, but remembered noticing the scenery on either side of the tracks had changed from Interstate and sparse trees to buildings, mostly old and seemingly abandoned. She shortened the distance between herself and Pan, feeling safer in his shadow. Her eyes fixed on Erebos’s tail as she darted ahead, leading the way toward Neverland. Wendi was grateful it was so dark, for she was certain she flushed with embarrassment and desire as Pan explained to John Michael that, though Wendi now wore his cuff, she was also to be his Mommy and Mommy to all his bois.

  Like John Michael, Wendi was less innocent than she appeared. The stories at the open mic had convinced Pan of that. She understood the basics of D/s and leather, and had even experimented with grrrlfriends, but never … How do I say this politely, dear reader? She didn’t fancy herself a switch, let alone any sort of Top, or a person of authority over another. For the first time, language failed her. Mommy/boi, Wendi realized, is what this adventure would be called, but could she be a Mommy? And then it occurred to her that everything she had done with those old grrrlfriends had been a child’s game of make-believe, and what she was about to embark upon was deeper than where she had been before. Pan told her that he played for keeps when he closed the cuff around her wrist. For a moment, it seemed as though he was going to extend his hand to her, but then it came to rest on Erebos’s head instead. Wendi looked away, trying to ignore the hot sting of tears.

  They walked for a long time in silence. She did not think once about the Darlings. Wendi and John Michael were getting tired. It was far past their bedtime, and the initial excitement of having run away was beginning to wear off. They were each lost in thought, imagining the adventures they would have or the trouble that could come when their departure was discovered. Their thoughts drifted to less accepting homes they had been placed in and the fear that they would be sent back to them, or worse, cast out on their own. They realized that now they were alone, and they needed Pan. When he spoke, they jumped at the sound of his voice breaking through the night, sounding like a lifetime of cigarettes.