Ever Neverland by Phillip

I live on an island at times, one I visit when I need space, need to be away from responsibility, or need to exercise my imagination. I’ve gone there many times, flying away from my peers, my family, my school, and my work. I have been aware of such flight since childhood.

Was I a flighty kid?
Was I lost in dreams?
Was I?
Am I now?

I know my dreams have been important, especially the daydreams that tend to take me away into adventures I could not in any other way experience. But once I entered a dream that endured and became real.

I had a dream of love, a dream of love shared with a man. A dream of love discovered. I shared and cultivated a relationship with another man who also needed and desired the same. A dream of love that transforms to the depths and heights and that still occurs daily, feels grounded, and fulfills common needs. I entered this Neverland holding hands with a man.

There was no map. Oh, if you compared the plats, you might think you were in Denver, but that’s not really where this story occurred. No pirates lived there. Perhaps some Indians did and some lost boys! I loved the place. I’m pretty sure there was buried treasure; I’m sure I found it. The cast of characters: only two mattered then, Rafael and I.

Awaiting the arrival of the No. 10 bus I met a younger man named Rafael. I didn’t ask for his last name as I proffered Phil from my end of the pleasant conversation. (I wonder now if I had, would he have said Martinez or Pan?) We boarded the bus; that’s when we began to fly. We talked together as we rode about a mile, then he—this cute, warm, smiling man—got off to make a transfer that would take him to work. The contact seemed to me so much more than a bus ride. It was more like freedom of movement, even flying as we talked and laughed and studied one another. The experience happened again the next week—same place, same bus, but more information, more smiles, more laughter, more looking into one another’s faces, and less awareness of others who didn’t even seem to be present. A third experience seemed to establish a yearning for more, much more, but my Rafael Pan didn’t visit the nursery of my infatuation. I started searching for him—walking the streets near the bus stop alert to every biped in pants, wondering where this young man could be. Finally I met him again. We talked. I touched him, I touched him again. I gave him my phone number and an invitation to get together. Then two months (they could have been years) of no contact convinced me I needed this man in my life. I wanted his friendship, his presence, his charm, and his love. I would survive without him but kept alert to the possibility of seeing him again in some unexpected place. There and then I wouldn’t be as casual in my conversation. My friends were amused. One thought I was giving the situation over to the universe. I had a different thought. Finally Rafael phoned leaving a message. That next day and for many days to follow we flew together.

We met by happenstance the morning we waited to board a bus. A few months later we connected with a passion that was so total as to make us two the only occupants of my Neverland. Rafael Pan and I played house, played lovers, played sex, played decorator, played god. We came together in our fantasy island with an intensity neither of us had ever experienced.

Rafael was living alone when I met him and not doing very well. He was always late, always short of cash, always in crisis. His crisis was much larger than he could imagine. He was dying from hepatitis C, a disease that had reached full term (over fifteen years) and that was having a devastating effect on his liver, spleen, and brain. Already it had ruined his life. Already it had robbed him of much of his cognitive function. What I met was a dying man out of control, a beautiful, sweet man with a funny voice and endearing misuses of English who seemed to like me, a younger man who was lively, conversational, warm, loving, needy, sweet, open, vulnerable, and who became an obsession for me.

I lived there in Neverland with a double life. So did my Pan. We both worked daily but found great relief when we got home at night. Rafael greeted me with open arms then as if we had never before met but had known each other for millennia. Some of my friends got to meet my charmer, eat his cooking, and enjoy his warmth. For awhile life seemed good.

Although life in Neverland thrilled me, it wasn’t perfect. Its ATM was flat broke. There were money problems, clinic appointments, and a court appearance for a problem that only slowly revealed its true parameters. The clock inside Rafael’s bad-health crocodile kept ticking away towards its pursuit of dominance. But Pan transformed it with his own enfolding heart. In the extremity of his life I watched as he reached out with strength and love to a nurse, to his parents, and to me, his lover.

I worked through it all knowing I needed to keep a passable bridge between my worlds, knowing someday I would have to leave this fantasy place. I spent a huge amount of time helping his family cope with his homosexuality and eminent death. Finally I lost Pan who flew away from our love nest on the summit of the Hill. Unable to fly, I trudged home along the streets of Denver, the city to which I had moved in order to rebuild my life. Of course, I was sad, sad, sad as I reentered the life I had never really left. The going there now seemed difficult, the letting go painful. Where did my Pan go? Of course I don’t know, but he left me with a fantastic treasure of love I keep warmly nurtured in the innermost sanctuary of my heart. Our brief life together changed me, and I am determined to keep alive the treasure I discovered forever in Neverland.

Denver, 2012

© 23 November 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com