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<td align="LEFT" width="1" rowspan="3" valign="BOTTOM"><font face="Georgia" size="2" color="#CCCCCC">..</font></td>
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<td align="LEFT"><b><font face="Georgia">Last Trick Before the New World</font></b></td>
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<td align="RIGHT"><b><font face="Georgia"><a href="bios_a2l.shtml#Kamstra">Ryan Kamstra</a> </font></b></td>
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<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">His accounts were frozen. But it's not that that spooked him.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He had seen his last boyfriend laid out on one of two medical
tables in a private hospital room overlooking a few medical students
who laughed in the leafy wind-cobbled courtyard below, and nodded
to acknowledge this, too numb to think. He had seen Tweak prepare
sandwiches, weightless things with iceberg lettuce and tomato,
and he had seen him buried. Life he thought would last longer.
Nothing had prepared him. A pretty pink corpse in Vancouver on
too pure Heroin, an uncle of AIDS, and more than one casual acquaintance
or someone whom they were close to diagnosed with Cancer. Yet
none of this had wizened him. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">But that, also, is not what spooked him. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- I don't even know who you are anymore, Jeff said. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">An enigmatic extreme sport: the way this new lover applies make-up.
Tom was an accountant with some spare time on his hands and some
pretty grim theories of cosmetics. And Jeff, after a few drinks,
had sensed he needed the danger. Total saturation of the cloud
in which his thoughts moved. Temporary overturn of his reality.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">None of his senses were in accord. The stranger stood, a ghost
and yet a consciousness, overfed waist in ballooning pants. Black
circlets painted under both flesh-hung eyes. Eyeballs of a curious
plasticity. White cream on pasty cheeks, silver on full lips.
Big black spidery wig. In an axle of icy bathroom light. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff was going the way of brokers you only read of, indiscretions
that were just part of the culture at the time, only his own was
curiously more. Hard drives and files had been seized months ago.
Lawyers and regulators and the police. Each passing day left him
further from the world as reported in the papers. What was reported
there left him no backdoor. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He needed the change - the distraction. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He had met Tom just hours before at the sports bar hubbed at the
base of his office tower along with the pizzeria and the dollar
store. GABBYS was one of those homely pubs lost in the size and
neglect of the immediate city, arranged on the interior with a
silent ritual of unrelated strangers. Some hesitant talk, some
eyes locked upon the peculiar televisual fantasy that glowed as
if predestined for them. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff in white shirt and black tie lightly sweated and sipped.
He had just finished skulking off from his office with whatever
two banker boxes would carry, boxes which he then disposed of
in a lane of dumpsters down half a block. In his current state
he was no doubt a magnet for strange and corrupt men. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Tom talked of domination, magic and play. Jeff got himself progressively
pinker and drunker, his speech thickening. Tom was an accountant
who moonlit - you just never know with accountants. When the invitation
came, Jeff was too weak to decline. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Minutes later they had paid their bills and were riding Tom's
elevator up to a condo of interlocking beige rooms. Minimal furnishings.
A large central oil depicting subtle patter of confetti upon a
tumultuous black. There were harlequin masks with no eyes and
grotesque goofy grins. Vases of battery-operated roses blinking
as hazard lights. <br>
<br>
- So what are you supposed to be? Jeff smirked at him when Tom
returned from the bathroom, feeling distinctly ill-at-ease. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- A clown, said Tom, lips thick, grinning. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Jeeesus, said Jeff, moving away, I'm not sure I can go through
with this. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Tell me your fantasy, hissed the clown. Your fear . . . </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff had lost everything in the dogged pursuit of his grief. The
man from the funeral agency who officiated had spoke kind, if
general words. In the graveyard before the casket was lowered
Jeff had distracted himself watching a few fighter jets streak
across the sky, turn arcs, their high frequency screaming sounding
a moment later. There was an air show going on that day and a
war overseas. He remembered the leaves of the tree that day. Their
crispness and circumference. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Tweak's father, from beneath a black suit of mourning, had said
to Jeff, </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- You know I never approved. But I know you loved him. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He touched Jeff's shoulder. All Jeff could manage was, </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">North American childhood had become, within his lifetime, improbable,
indistinct, a hovering intransient mass, as if there had been
a screen placed between him and it. Despite entire industries
set up to preserve it. Cabbage Patch dolls. Star Wars figurines.
Saturday morning cartoons. Tom's breath was hot on his inner ear.
His beer gut touching the small of Jeff’s back. Jeff seemed to
feel a whole lifetime withdraw in cards raining on a trading floor,
the melted glass and frame of a shrinking building, Tweaks bald
head and white pyjamas and his eyelids finally laid to rest. Tom's
fingers massaged Jeff's fingers. Tweak and him were seventeen
again, in sweats, in the bright of Tweak's kitchen. Tweak made
his lunch every morning before first period, bagged and placed
in an orange lunch pail on the stainless steel island in the centre
of the room. Amanda, the only girl Jeff had ever been with, made
fun of Tweak. Amanda called him pansy. Tweak gave a small mischievous
grin. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Amanda would leave for out west at age seventeen, gigging at a
peeler’s bar, renting a room with a view of the ocean. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff at his peak had had more than ten million tied up in assets
and he just froze. Everything was uncertain that day. A scream
unrolling from cyberspace and beyond, message boards filling up:
Where was the president? Can you see the towers from your office?
Are we under attack? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">On September 12th, the headlines heralded: "a chilling new era."
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">The markets lurched and Jeff did nothing. Not for his clients.
Not for himself. He let the loss come. He watched the data withdraw.
His voicemail max out. He went to a Lebanese restaurant that lunch
as if in a trance and ordered a Coke. The man behind the counter
slowly shook his head and served. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">The clown's wig shook as he hissed in Jeff's ear, low, certain,
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Play. Regain your naive belief again Jeff. C'mon sweetie, play
with me. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">A tear rolled down Jeff's cheek while the clown kissed his neck,
his eyes, his shoulder. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He was twelve again, on the way to the midway, when his father
said, </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- You're Uncle Joe has been living with a man for seven years.
You're not to repeat this to anyone. He's dying of AIDS. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Do you do tricks? laughed Jeff through tears. The contact with
the man felt so good, it had been so long since anyone had touched
him. He shuddered as tears continued to come. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Do us a trick! Do us a trick! shrilled the clown in delight,
clapping his hands together. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">The clown's hand moved around to the front of Jeff's pants. Jeff
had never felt so vulnerable before with a stranger. As if to
be raped consensually in a ghost world. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Perhaps squeaky toys? leered the clown, cupping Jeff's balls.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff's sobbing became audible. He laughed despite himself. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Let me tie up your hands, said the clown. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff and Tweak, at seventeen, fell in bed. It was prom night.
Neither of them had gone. After the first four moths Amanda's
letters became less and less. It was the first time they had kissed.
Jeff was surprised to feel Tweak’s tongue through the reek of
vodka. They would meet again, nine years later, both of them commerce
graduates, no idea what the other had been doing, surprised they
had both done the same thing. They met as singles in a cruising
bar. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Tweak told him then that Amanda had ODed. That her parents had
had to fly up to identify the body. They had gone home drunk together,
Tweak and Jeff, wobbling, careening off the curb while headlights
misted rain. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He felt Tweak's body against an ATM. Blue-crystal on his face
like a miracle. Tweak’s tongue in his mouth that cut to Jeff’s
heart. White shirt wet against his flesh. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff, at twenty-eight, laughing in tears into his cell phone,
</font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Tweak, mark my words. They're gonna investigate. The whole market,
it's been going on for years. All the market is inflated, you
know that. That fucker knew. Bin Laden, he knew. He was popping
our balloon and he knew it. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Tweak didn't respond. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- What, Tweak, talk to me man, am I paranoid here? Am I just jazzed
up? I am hyperventilating here man, speak, Tweak, speak. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- I am scared that you stay with me because I am dying. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Tweak, don't be maudlin. My career is going down the tubes.
All of ours are. America is under attack. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Do you love me because I am dying? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Tweak I don't even know who I am just now. Don't ask that. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- You know I am dying Jeff. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Tweak I don't want to think of that now. There’s just this harrowing
voice in my head. I don't know what to expect anymore. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">There was a beep on call waiting. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Will you come visit the hospital tonight? I got a VCR, from
the cute nurse lady who looks like Audrey Hepburn. We can watch
videos. You could pick one up on the way over. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Gimmee a sec Tweak, other line. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">And the zero-degree voice on the other line, </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Jeff, you need to set things in order. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Something in Jeff crashed. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">He paused on the sidewalk, blocking a scatter of professionals.
Light went from green to red. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Do you hear me Jeff? Get to the office now. We've been subpoenaed.
They’re going to investigate. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff is now in the bathroom, weeping frankly, while a clown kisses
his newly undressed body, his dimpled nipples, his breast. His
hands raised above his head and bound around in black ribbon.
Watching this reflected skull of caked make up hover near his
cheek, in the mirror, down at his shoulder, as a hand cups his
ass. Through a lacquer of tears, Jeff repeated, </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- I don't know who you are anymore. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Black and silver balloons shook. The curtains, white, let in wind.
There was the chill of coming storm. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Magic and play, grinned the clown. I'm whomever you want me
to be. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">Jeff cried more as the hand began more freely discovering his
ass. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- Pretend all there is, is today and today is your birthday. What
do you want Birthday Boy? </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">From the bathroom window, downtown towers continued in austere
armored silence. </font></p>
<p><font face="Georgia" size="2">- I want to disappear, Jeff hissed, please let me disappear. <br>
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