When Pan brings home Wendi (after seeing her read at a poetry slam) with baby dyke sibling John Michael in tow, the novelty gives way to concern. It’s a leather-wrapped, gender-flipped revisitation of Peter Pan set in a warehouse filled with runaway bois bound to Pan by a leather cuff and the promise to never grow up and become “nice lesbians.” Stealing to survive, wheeling and dealing among other outcasts and outsiders, Tootles (the narrator and Pan’s chosen favorite) and the other residents at Neverland squat use their youthful rebellion as a way to reject the families who rejected them first. Lost Boi plays with these ideas to great effect. What does it mean to grow up? Young children play at every aspect of the idea, from bringing home the bacon to smacking Barbie and Ken together in varied positions, but the allure of staying outside the mainstream is terrifically seductive. While taking a core sample and counting the rings would inevitably lead to a positive answer, some part of me rebelled against the mere idea and passed the question along to his mother with a story about not wanting to say anything inappropriate. Sassafras's books, Kicked Out, Roving Pack, and Leather Ever After, have been honored by organizations ranging from the National Leather Association to the American Library Association.Once, while working in a store where the owners’ young kids spent the day with us, the youngest, a two year old, turned to me and asked, “Are you a grown-up?” It was an oddly emotional moment. Sassafras Lowrey is a straight-edge queer punk who won the Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award and was named to the inaugural Trans 100 list by We Be Trans. Like a fever-pitched dream, Lost Boi situates a children's fantasy within a subversive alternative reality, chronicling the lost bois' search for belonging, purpose, and their struggle against the biggest battle of all: growing up. Told from the point of view of Tootles, Pan's best boi, the lost bois call the Neverland squat home, creating their own idea of family, and united in their allegiance to Pan, the boi who cannot be broken, and their refusal to join ranks with Hook and the leather pirates. In Sassafras Lowrey's gorgeous queer punk reimagining of the classic Peter Pan story, prepare to be swept overboard into a world of orphaned, abandoned, and runaway bois who have sworn allegiance and service to Pan, the fearless leader of the Lost Bois brigade and the newly corrupted Mommy Wendi who, along with the tomboy John Michael, Pan convinces to join him at Neverland.

Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey