Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:34:55 EST
From: J
Subject: PETER PAN 8

Part 8: DID I SAY FUN?

The worst thing that could happen. That's what will happen. To me, it was
the worst. For Peter could be killed. He could die if pricked, if shot,
if blown up. He's eternal but not immortal if you know what I mean.
He'll live forever barring accidents and/or being stabbed, shot, etc. You
get the idea.

Anyhow, one never knew when he was telling one the truth or pretending or
just plain lying. I mean he'd go out and not say one thing about this and
you knew by his smugness that he'd had an adventure. I mean one
time...other times he'd come back and brag about something he did and I
was sure he was lying. Both times, at times, oh dear. There were so many
times. I mean he was the consumate adventurer. He was stronger than most
boys, the match or equal to most men, physically he was the best boy
ever. I wondered often if he was indeed aging, bit by bit, an inch here
for every 100 years, 8 inches for every 1000 or so on...he seemed to me
to be about 9 or 10 when he first came to me but now...he seemed almost
12 or 13 or even dare I say it 14. He was shorter than I at times but
mostly he was taller...my little man and he was so endearing in that he
didn't really know he was like a little man...like a real father or
....dare I say it lover. I mean we didn't yet...he slept with me of
course and his warm presense was always felt and needed...and comforting.
He'd innocently spoon me every now and then, sometimes for weeks straight
and there was no sex involved. A lot of the time around him I'd be hard
as a herd of elephant legs and he's not notice. I wondered if he notice
me at all really. I wondered if he cared at all or as he said loved me at
all. I mean he was so wrapped up in himself and his adventures...oh where
was I...his adventures solely. I mean one time I'd go out and knew he had
an adventure because I'd find the body of a renegade Indian, a bright red
hole where his belly button should have been. Or a pirate...or even a
grizzly bear gone rabid. Peter was such a savage.

Athletically he could match any boy and better him and most men. Ahh, but
this Kickai was quite the man. Handsome, long haired, on the verge of
great manlieness, a match for Peter Pan I can tell you. But it was during
Peter's LONG trips outward that I was left alone for a long time. I'd
give Peter a week, then a day. And then I waited. I'd give him another
day and another. And I would swear somehow, maybe unconsciously or
psyhically he would know my last straw before I'd chuck it all in and
return home and that would be that. He'd pop up flying down...sometimes
with a new Lost Boy...more on them later...and I'd say that I'd been
about to go home and he'd just reply, "Don't be silly, oh."

I know you long enoug and that long being, I suppose it is time that I
give you my name. Not one I am very proud of. It's Chase. I suppose it
meant something, that I'd been chasing around after Peter and adventures
and Lost Boys, cute Indian braves, and even the friendly pirate or two
but mostly after Peter...and he'd say, "Chase, don't be silly, I've a new
lost boy for you to father." It didn't matter that I'd be jealous but
there were some really, really cute lost boys. Take the new one, the
currently only one, Jennie, a girl's name to be sure but a boyish boy to
be sure. He was so cute. Yet he was just a baby ...it used to be that
Lost Boys became Lost Boys because they fell out of their baby ambulators
in the hospital but I sort of thought that they fell into a space time
warp, a hole in time and space to come here. I mean where was here? Peter
just would say, "Oh Chase, here is here. Never land." Maybe the name
meant that it was no where, no time, no place, no space. Otherwise how
would one explain the fact that 17th century pirates were here in 2004 or
was this even 2004? Certainly there were more moons and suns here than on
the mainland. And the Indians were right out of pre Columbus times,
maybe. Peccinines I think Peter called them. For a boy who could not read
or write or do maths, he sure knew a lot.

I worried when he was gone this long. You see sometimes he'd come back
and take his knife out and approach me, "Who goes there, intruder?"
He'd forgotten me. I seem to recall he would have forgotten Wendy, John
and Micheal too just as they flew from London to Neverland and during the
trip he had solo adventures in the Heavens and the seas and would return.
He stowed his knife when I told him my name but even then I wasn't sure
he really knew me or recalled my as a friend. He said the same thing to
me that he told Wendy, "I say, Chase, if ever I should not remember you,
as I haven't had that yet happen..." He had. "Just tell me your name
over and over again and I will remember you." At times like that he was
somehow vulnerable and falliable and I liked that.

Jennie, was a selectively mute boy. He didn't talk a word. Peter knew why
but wouldn't say. I don't thik whatever bothered Jennie was something
that Peter could get over himself. Still, the mute boy and I watched from
trees as Peter drew a circle in the sand around himself in the
jungle..ahh, he was a jungle boy, and as he did this, he dared the lions
to cross it. Knife out he waited. I also seem to recall he did this too
for Wendy and the Lost Boys back then too. This time he just went to
sleep after an hour of the loins just laying there and being defied.

You see as an athlete he did it all. I mean he was the rockclimber, self
flown bungiee jumper, rapid river rider, cliff diver, cliff scaler, hang
glider, and he would swim further and faster than any Mark Spitz (for
those of you to young to recall he was a champion swimmer in the 1970s)
and any Triathlon star, young or old or in between. He could dive deeper
than any submarine, something to do with his grace among Mermen and
Maids. He could fly without much sleep if any. He would fight and train
in technques and styles and with swords of all types from all nations and
some he must have just made up: I mean who would fight with a sword
sticking out from between one's legs? Uh hem. And who would fight with
their upper body sticking down and under and through their stance from
behind? What? He was something else and his physicality is what made him
also so loveable. It was him. He was a major physical being, a nature
boy. He'd also wrestle bears BARE. Best indians in their own cultural
games and tests of, ironically, manhood. He'd often tell me that tests of
manhood are shams if a boy who could never grow up, who would never grow
up, who didn't want to grow up could best them.

What was so infuriating about him was he would sometimes play games in
the middle of a serious adventure, even ones I was on. He'd also would
change sides in the middle of a battle. I once witnessed him fighting
indians against another tribe of indians and suddenly he was on the other
side! It was all a game to him. One time on the pirate ship...ahh the
pirate ship. That was the point of this. On his mission to find Jennie,
Peter was gone. It was during these long missions that I would spy on the
pirates, land on their ship, and with stealth I'd learned from the great
Pan, I'd spy on them. I heard the handsome, big muscled black man (he had
such a body and such a nice outtie navel) Brook, talk to others about
Kickai.

Now Kickai was attractive, a nice boyish face, some facial hair but not
much, hints of a beard, all very unattractive to Peter but to me...I
don't know. There was something nice about him to the eye. But that was
all. Kickai I came to learn from these spying missions and from later
encounters was totally without love, totally without any genuine kindness
about him. He was hate. And he hated so thoroughly that it scared me.
Peter just told me to put it aside and forget it. But to always leave
Kickai to him. He knew Kickai would and could kill me in a second to get
revenge on Peter. And Peter knew this also. It was always about him.
Sigh. Anyway, Kickai was hatching a plan more sinister than that and it
involved Hook's supernatural endowed Hat and Peter's game of changing
sides. More on that later.

What would I have to go back to if I flew back home while Peter was gone
for weeks at a time? The longest time was a month and I thought I would
die. I was playing my own game of give him one more day and finally just
as I packed my bags and was going home, I realized what waited me there:
early bedtimes, early rises to go to work that I hated mostly, bossed
around by people who cared not for their work, garbage cans, taking out
the garbage, bills, taxes, death...old age and no sex! This time I was
most depressed but then that marvelous green wearing blond (yes mostly
blond but sometimes he's scare me the way he could and would change his
own hair color at will) rode the air and the wind back down the
underground house and filled me with happiness and glee and gayness. He
was laughter and he was light. He was beauty. Yes he would and could be
other things too but...

One time, our second time on the pirate ship, Peter went to try to get
Hook's hat, which he remembered he threw to the sea after once trying it
on. Actually he put it on twice that he knew of, and yes he recalled it.
Sometimes he would remember things, not always people though. And other
times he REALLY did forget Wendy, poor long dead Tink, Micheal, John,
Slightly, loyal blond Nibs, and the rest, even Hook. But he did recall
that Hook's hat made him once really bad, really evil to his friends...an
evil Dark Pan, that scared me. I WOULD NOT WANT PETER PAN AS AN ENEMY or
attacker. Anyhowwww, the last time he wore it was after he actually lead
Hook to the croc's mouth...okay let's not beat around his bush...he
killed Hook. And it had the same effect on him. I think he gave Slightly
a dozen lashes himself for some slight thing Slightly had done. But on
the ship that second time, Peter asked Kickai about Hook's hat and how
the fairies (one named Olivier) told him that Kickai had picked up the
hat on the sea. Kickai denied it but his evil malice was such that I knew
he was lying. Peter just, however, accepted it. "Oh, oh very well," and
was about to fly away when stupidly I told Peter that he shouldn't just
take Kickai's word for it. Well, Peter and Kickai fought with swords
after this and Peter killed a few pirates and even cut off Kickai's thumb
on his left hand which angered him greatly.

And then...Peter just declared, "Chase, you know what? I'm a pirate
today!" Then he turned to the black cook who came out onto the deck
with a hatchet and turned to me and ordered, "Get him!"

"What?" I said, "Wait a minute! I want to be a pirate too! I mean always
wanted to be a pirate!"

Peter shrugged, "You have?"

"Yes," I patted my belly and said something pirate-y cliche, "Yo ho and a
bottle" type of thing.

"Very well!" Peter said, "We are all pirates on this ship!"

Kickai had picked up his thumb and cried as another pirate, the ship's
medic I think, a really dirty looking old man, was bandaging up the
wound. Kickai yelled, "What? I don't think so!"

"Beggin yer pardon sir, if we become well like them, then we can still
split them stem to stern."

"What? WHAT?" Kickai looked at him and then waved the doc off, "Be gone
foul medic."

"Foul? Why is he foul? I mean I don't disagree with you but..."

"Silence!" Kickai yelled at me and waved his sword, "Welp!"

Brook, the cook, whispered to me, "Foul's his name, see?"

"Oh."

Peter looked, "Well since I am a pirate and the obvious choice for
admiral..."

"WHAT?????"

"Well look, I cut your thumb off! So you can't bite it when you see lost
boys."

When Peter wasn't here, everyone got along a lot better. Pirates
sometimes met lost boys and just bit their thumbs at them and vice versa.
Kickai looked, "Wellll," he said evilly, "I am a lost boy leader I am the
great Pan," he said dripping with sarcastic menace.

Peter's face made a vee with his eyebrows, "You are? I'll be keelhauled
if I let any Pan attack me!" And he ran at Kickai and they bade swords
at each other and Pan had Kickai down on the ground and flipped as he
flew between his legs and then...

"I'm tired of this. Let's do a new game," Peter flew up to me.

"Oh, but...but he...you could have..."

"C'mon," Peter said, "Let's go, we're lost boys again or maybe we can do
a new game and just be nothing. Sit and do nothing. I like the sound of
that game. Did that once and pretended to be John and Micheal who did
nothing before they came here. Then after they left...well it was very
sad."

We hovered. We said nothing. I gulped. "Peter, Peter. They left. I'm
here."

"Yes," Peter said, "Thimble time for you." And with that for the first
time he kissed me heavily on the lips and I swear some tongue was in
there. "Like that?" He pulled his head back. As he kissed me, he had
floated his body back up horizontally and then vertically. He bumped into
me. "Fairies sometimes do that to each other. I've seen them."

"Hmm, uhm, than...thank goodness for fairies then," I had my eyes shut
for a long time.

Peter looked down, "Oh, what is that?"

"Oh, uhm, that's uhm, when I get really happy I get...."

"I'm often happy and I've sometimes felt that when you spooned me...or is
it forked me? Have you forked me?"

I choked. "Hum, uhm, eh, huh? Ha. Peter, it's a adult thing."

And to my surprise instead of just dismissing it, he pushed for more
info. "And that thing expands? I've felt it on my back sometimes when you
are touching against me."

"Yeah, but can we talk about this later?" I didnt want to talk about it
at all. I felt like I was teaching him something that nature didn't
really want to teach him.

And besides all this time, the pirates were not idle. They had prepared
the cannon and fired. We left just in time. A large blast hit the sky we
had been in just moments before. But as I've said, Kickai was hatching an
evil plan in his black heart. He cared not for his mother, his crew or
his own life even. He lived just to be evil, to be malice, to be blood.
And he was mad. Angry and mad, insane and not at all happy. And I
remembered Peter's words, "Leave Kickai to me, promise me that." It was
that he cared about me not getting killed by Kickai, who was second only
to Peter in sword fighting skills. I loved him for that. He did love me.
Yet, since he had so many solo adventures and adventures with others that
I didnt know about, wasn't it time I had some of my own? No, not if it
meant having them with Captain Kickai!


The play Peter Pan and its characters are trademarks of and copyright
J.M. Barrie