18th
Once Upon a Type
I knew that I had grown up when I finally stopped dreaming about you.
When I was a kid my parents had tried telling me that you weren’t real. They even took me to a therapist to have my head shrinked, but he only gave me some candy to nibble on and chucked me under the chin — “Only one at bedtime sweetheart, but keep that fairy dust in your eyes or you’ll become an old sucker just like me.”
But I knew even then that you were real. And once when I was 13 you even proved it to me so that I had to wear a turtleneck to school for a whole week.
But then you came by less and less. “Love you Wendy,” a stray foot doing a dance of epilepsy against the window’s edge. “See you real soon.”
And then you didn’t come at all.
Until that final time. I knew it was you when I heard the sling shot of a pebble and the outline of your frame — its echo — against my windowpane. I let you in. I always did, even when I sighed and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, fumbling for the pill box with the sewing thimble that I kept under my pillow just in case that damn shadow of yours decided to show up.
You laughed and your laugh was different. “Oh Wendy, that dark side of mine won’t be bothering us anymore. I ditched him awhile back — he was nothing but trouble for me.”
Peter, how beautiful you had once been. Even on my fifteenth birthday when you took me to my first goth night at Neverland and left me to dance with that tweaked out Twinkie fairy bitch I had understood. We both liked how you glistened iridescently with his dust. That with just one sprinkle you would turn you into the magic boy, offering up parlor tricks for a dollar. I watched you levitate spoons, throw cards on tabletops in bold wager. And then, into my lap, where they became spades. Your pockets sang with the steal of gold coins, the sweat of my palms.
I couldn’t see you but I knew that this time you weren’t pacing, already suffocating in my bedroom with one ear cocked for the siren call of a lost boy’s transmission as he circled my block, waiting for you. I knew that this time it was really bad.
“Peter, uh, how are you?…Are you okay? Are you… hooked again?”
We both knew what that meant — butterfly-fine brows would knit tightly together to make a point, punctuated by the crack of a beloved doll’s twisting neck.
Instead you just smiled. Really smiled.
“Wendy, the Captain’s out of commission. Cleaned up his act real good. He and my dad are actually tight now. They even got me this sweet deal in Williamsburg for a loft space. I have to share it with my brothers, but hey, it’s only until college —”
“Dad? You don’t have a dad, Peter Lost! Your mom and dad were like Bonnie and Clyde and they both died in some murder-suicide thing at the Chelsea Hotel when you were a kid! I tried to tell my parents so that they would adopt you and you could stay here with me but you well, you remember how that went; after that I was gone for a long time. Well, you know, you remember —”
You turned on the lamp, drowning out the nightlight that had once commanded battalions of puppet shadows across your face late into the night while you popped my candy and told bedtime stories. The light healed the purple bruises under your eyelids and tamed the dancing onyx of your eyes into a puppy-dog amber. Your cheeks had filled into two symmetrical stains of rose.
‘Uh, Wendy, how long are you planning on staying your parents for?”
“What do you mean, Peter? I live here. I’ve always lived here — except for when I haven’t (giggle) but there really hasn’t been a trip away since the last time I saw you.”
“Oh Wendy, I am so truly sorry.”
You took me into your arms. I searched furtively for the concave of your ribcage but you didn’t break the embrace and anyway, it was no longer there.
“Don’t cry, Wendy, I’m going to help you. You’re so beautiful.”
“Oh Peter, you have gone truly mad!” I threw the window open, ready to walk the plank if I had to in order to dive into the whole, wide world. The wind was confetti rich with fairy dust.
“Love you Peter. See you real soon.”
And just like that, I was gone.
