In 1993 many brand new condo buildings constructed in the late 1980s around the Greater Vancouver in British Columbia began to show signs of leakage and deterioration due to poor construction standards, faulty materials, and cost cutting on the part of unscrupulous contractors. This has caused great distress to many new homeowners who have chosen Vancouver for its majestic location against a maze of mountains covered with virgin forests. In the past years, we have heard sad and even bizarre stories of broken hearts and bank accounts and grueling repair work (News Items Magazine, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2001).

With one exact gesture, a blue tie briskly uncoils from around Bruce's crisp blue shirt collar. He unbuttons it, one by one, and disrobes to reveal his solid chest finely wrapped in a skin-tight CK micro fiber white tank top to the large bare window. On a second thought, he draws the blinds close, quickly, with sure brawny hand; the evening is winding down out there, the wind blows a dark fodder of cumulus that suffuses the sky with gray. Ross' hands glide from behind, counting Bruce's distinct ripples: one, two, three, four, almost a six-pack.

Firmly, Bruce pulls away from him.

"Not now," he says and begins to take off his blue pants. He carefully finds the sharp ironed middle line and runs it between his index and thumb, folds it over, and hangs them on the cedar valet at the top of his comfortable queen size bed to keep them wrinkle-free. The bedroom is not far from the kitchen or from the living room in this large studio, but the few stark and serviceable fixtures make it look spacious. Ross purses his pretty lips and a blond curl falls over his fair forehead. Sulking, he looks down and fidgets with the worn out "Whistler Mountain" ski day-pass tag clamped at the end of his red Gortex jacket.

"You know that my interest dwindles during the work week. " Bruce dismisses Ross' pouting and changes the topic, "How was your day, anyway?" Ross' shrugs his shoulders and his face grimaces as he tries to remember any remarkable event at the mountain slopes.

Oblivious, Bruce continues, "I missed my gym session today, Steven will be upset, he wanted to start me on a new circuit." He pauses to peel his socks and underwear and place them in the laundry hamper conveniently hidden inside the mirrored closet. "You know how that invigorates me." Bruce, now resolutely naked, inspects his outlines on the mirror.

Ross has given up standing in the middle of the room and his hands are now fumbling to find two boxes of "Lean Cuisine" in the freezer. Once he has pulled one corner up-a domestic lesson learned with tears in the course of three minor implosions-he pops them into the microwave. Then, he takes his Gortex off, hangs it up in the closet by the door, kicks his shoes off, then puts them by the door in alignment with Bruce's spit-shined regulation black leather shoes.

Bruce wields a certain index towards Ross. "Take it all off, stay." Ross complies.

Later, sitting across from each naked other at the aluminum kitchen counter, they look like two dutiful children at a school cafeteria. Ross carries on like the small cartoon dog character that continually jumps around the big dog yelping, "Hey Chester! Wow Chester! How do you like that Chester?" Save for the fact he is a 190 lbs, 6'2", strapping twenty-something jock (and a contrasting 6" cut tool).

"How is your new co-worker? Do you call each other 'partners'? It's a woman, right? How is that for you?"

Bruce savors every bite absent-mindedly. He transports pieces of chicken cacciatore and wild rice from the disposable container to his mouth without missing a grain. This evening, like the one before, and the one that will follow, every clockwork domestic detail takes place. In an hour, Bruce will be handing Ross a brochure for a sex addicts anonymous group that meets on Tuesday nights at the United Church on the West End.

One week later, on a Tuesday evening . . .

"What on earth . . .!" He pulls a Nike gray sweatshirt over his head and storms out of the apartment. Bruce climbs up the stairs in broad two and three steps. Politely at first, he knocks at the door right above his apartment, but he has to repeat this, louder, without losing his composure. The music is loud inside, Ella Fitzgerald croons "Stormy Weather"; he recognizes it because his father used to play it. The door opens, it opens wide.

"Hi, come in!" The editor looks portentous in a housecoat that barely comes together under his salt and pepper scraggly beard, no neck, and a couple of sweat drops running down his sideburns.

Coolly, "No thanks," Bruce explains himself, factual, while looking at the editor in the eye. He cannot help notice that the music has been turned down and a lanky naked figure has zipped by like a whistle to the bathroom at the left of the entrance door. When passing by, a pair of eyes have beamed a single, quick glance his way.

"Your music is loud. It is already 7:30 and... the banging... the banging is... well, in a word, inordinate." In a lower demure tone Bruce tags his complaint, "you know what I am referring to."

"Certainly. I'm sorry, I didn't notice, I was taking a shower." He certainly looked drenched under that housecoat. "Sure you don't want to come in? We'll be grabbing a bite" invites the bemused fifty year old. Bruce mutters, "no thanks" as he turns around, mortified. He has realized that in his obfuscated rush to go upstairs he has forgotten that he is wearing only his Banana Republic striped boxer shorts.

Later that year, in his Resignation Report to Correctional Services, Bruce carefully described the noise on top as "similar to the trampling of horses and loud songs" and although he tossed and turned until late that night, he did not go back upstairs to complain. Bruce gave no account of Ross' crying himself to sleep next to him.

The breezy wind of fall laps their faces. Bruce drives conscientiously.

"Often, I come back from my evening workout, I am having my dinner, and I have to put up with this noise." Bruce complains curtly. "I explained to him-this editor upstairs, how their noise travels down in our building."

His colleague half smiles. "Don't you ever make noise yourself? I mean you and..." Bruce pauses, uncomfortable, as he hangs a sharp right corner to head downtown.

"Some things are private in nature."

"Some noises are public in nature." Connie takes one wicked look at him through the corner of her eye. They come to a full stop at the traffic lights and their attention in diverted by a couple of grungy, happy-go-lucky teenagers in black T-shirts and baggy torn black jeans peppered with metal spikes and studs, standing in the middle of the road. Like pieces of an urban body armor, they strap their skateboard across their backs. The youngsters quickly ambush the first two of cars, wielding sodden squeegees. The Corrections Canada vehicle is one of the immediate targets.

"No, no." Bruce tries to dissuade a young guy from his guerrilla attack with exasperated hand gestures. "Can't you see it's a government car? You idiot!" but the windshield wipers have already been pulled back and the window is covered in a sludge of soap.

"C'mon Bruce," she says, "give him something." She digs in her pockets looking for coins.

Bruce frowns. Three more skillful slashes across the windshield take most of the muddy water away leaving a hazy film all over the windshield; on the double, the boy turns to the driver's window. Bruce is caught in the knife-like slant of a pair of emerald eyes, almost iridescent.

Befuddled, Bruce bluntly spurts, "This is illegal" and takes the money that his colleague has given the boy away from his stretched hand. The raspy touch of slender cold, dirt-under-the-nails fingers trying to retrieve the coins startle him a little bit more.

"Oh, Bruce, get over it." Bruce's colleague grabs the two-dollar coin from his hand and deposits it back into the extended palm.

Bruce huffs, shifts to second, steps on the gas, and lurches past the grinning figure.

"I've seen those guys hanging out there before. I should report them." He spits these lines.

Slightly inquisitively, his young sidekick points out, "These kids sure get you going, don't they?" They have already entered the Correctional Services parking lot and Bruce pretends not to hear this. He hops out, checks his pants looking for major creases, shuts the door, and as they walk into the building he continues as if nothing had interrupted their conversation five minutes earlier, "In any case, I will have to talk to him again-this so-called 'editor' I mean-seriously. My plumbing problem in the bathroom originates upstairs. I'm not surprised".

 

That evening Bruce goes about his routine calmly. His index sharply presses "Play" on the answering machine and begins to disrobe in perfect sequence. A piercing beep is followed by a message, "Bruce? Hi, Ross here. Sorry, I will not be able to make it today, I mean I have to write mid-terms, and I am going to... Hmm, that new support group you recommended-you know, the codependent anonymous one." Another piercing beep. The next message is from Bruce's mother telling him to show up punctually at church on Saturday because his auntie Claire will be reading. The last message comes in, an airy voice struggling to thread the words together. "Bruce, hi, it's me, Connie, didn't want to talk about this at work, I know what you think about on-duty hours (she gives off an apologetic snigger). Anyway, like you told me, I'm trying, but... the other day in the parking lot, a lot really changed for me... I mean, that book you gave me after... it really changed things for me... thanks. I have not been... out on a bar for three evenings in a row and I-" The machine gives this hesitant caller the hook, exactly after one minute, as per Bruce's laconic digital greeting-"Be brief and to the point."

 

That evening Bruce, reenergized by several rounds of squats and abs, takes a long deep breath and hikes up the stairs. He knocks. After a minute, the door does not open wide as usual; it opens only a crack, enough to reveal a pair of curious green eyes that check him head to toe. Softly, Nina Simone's "Wild is the Wind" sifts through.

Bruce is unusually stumped. "Is... Hmm..." forgets the name, "...the 'editor' here?"

"Uh-Uh."

"Will he be back soon?" Now Bruce's voice sounds unsuitably strained in the sluggish unwinding of such evening.

"Uh-uh."

"Will you tell him that I need to talk to him?" Bruce hesitates for an instant. "In fact, I have asked a plumber here tomorrow morning to check this, er, your bathroom, to see about that leak. I hope that will be okay with you... with you two".

"Yup."

"The plumber will be here at around ten." The door closes softly as Bruce completes his sentence.

 

Having called the plumber, the remedy, at least for the best part of an hour between 10 and 11 the next morning, appeared worse than the ailment. There was loud banging upstairs, then something like loud voices and then more banging. Bruce tries to masquerade his irked mood while he apologizes perfunctorily to his mother for sleeping in and not showing up at church that morning. The cell phone somewhere in his jacket keeps on ringing too. Once manages to deflate his mother's dreary sermon-a perfect practice of conflict resolution and micromanagement lessons learned at work-Bruce resolutely marches upstairs to see for himself what the ruckus is all about.

When Bruce knocks at the door, it slides open. The speakers blare the scratching of a needle into the grooves of spinning vinyl. From the bathroom comes a sonorous thump-not hammering or drilling-thump, thump. Bruce walks in to encounter two steel metal toe boots up on the air perched on a wide young man's shoulders; moaning, getting ferociously pounded against the toilet and the sink stand. Janis Joplin howls, "Take another little piece of my heart". A sequel of knee-jerk reactions takes place: the female plumber looking over her companion's shoulder sees Bruce, disengages herself, and in two shakes she jumps to her feet, exposed and sweaty. She is trying frantically to pull up her stained coveralls. The young naked man, drenched in sweat, still down, slowly turns around on one knee, his sly hands resting on the other, panting, presenting a rapacious grin and wide eyes.

Bruce devoted more than one line in his discharge report to those wide eyes he characterized as 'Eurasian' and to the apparently disturbing effect they had on him. He recounted having immediately abandoned the apartment to downstairs "to collect himself and think clearly of a possible course of action"-Actually, Bruce and the plumber had stumbled onto each other as they walked out the front door at one fell swoop. Bruce did not complain about this incident to the building manager. He opted for what he reported as an "even-keeled approach that would give his neighbors a chance to explain themselves". Once he realized such explanation would not be provided any time soon, he called in upstairs at an 'appropriate' time to have a formal conversation with "the editor".

"Bruce, believe me, I appreciate your discretion. The kid is a guest and he means no harm, his hormones are raging, but he meant no harm. He is a distant relative; he'll be gone soon. In fact, he has spent the last two nights at a friend's place." The editor catches his breath. "Bruce, you are a correct man, I mean, given your line of work. I am sure that you appreciate that at my age-not to mention my line of work, which is not what one would call alluring-one does have to be, shall I say, creative about life options. We sometimes engage in..."

Bruce stands up quickly as if he had a firecracker explode up his pants-a flashbulb institutional memory of his reservist years- kicks his heels, and abruptly bids farewell before heading out.

"Sorry, getting those Janis Joplin records was my idea. He mostly likes classic blues and jazz and..." the rest of such non sequitur explanation is brutally silenced by the slamming of the editor's front door.

"Hey dude!-You've been watchin' me at the corner, right?" The nearness of the voice shakes the living daylights out of Bruce. He quickly scans his right and left and takes a few steps to the far side of the south building where he could not be easily seen with the squeegee boy who presently appears like a pitiful Robin Hood under the afternoon drizzle.

"Turn that down." Bruce points at the kid's earphones that gust Klaus Nomi's impossible high Cs.

"Cool, eh?" His translucent and dilated emerald eyes calmly come to rest on Bruce's crisply turned out figure. "Why are you so interested?" He pauses and takes a long guzzle of Mountain Dew from a one-liter bottle. "Don't want you fuckin' up my style. Don't fuck 'round with the editor-hear me?" His breath is close enough to fog up Bruce's thinly rimmed Armani spectacles. "He doesn't ask for much, not much, even if it sometimes leaks down. And I get a pad to crash." Bruce lips are tight, his fists are tight, and the nape at the back of his neck has risen.

"That blond guy, the snowboarder, he roams around the building at night, you know? Sly motharfucka that is. Watch out, he's out to get you." His cussing is flushed with innuendo and his arms execute the sentence with the trained dexterity of black rappers on TV.

"How do you know that?" Asks Bruce, cold as a blade.

"Seen him on MTV. Won a medal or something, right?" Lets out a hoarse chuckle. "A pothead, he is."

"I don't have the slightest idea of what you are talking about. Anyway, I will present a complain to the Strata Council and see that you and the editor are asked to vacate these premises, permanently." Bruce is indignant. "Or I will have to contact the appropriate authorities."

"What! You're gonna call the police? Fuck man, how goes it? People who have glass ceilings... something or other?"

"What do you mean?"

"No sweat dude. I'm cool, lots of guys come to see me at the corner, they want this or that, I get to meet lots of 'em-See what I mean? I'm cool."

The evening sets on the squeegee boy's eyes. He turns to the wall and takes a long leak; a warm steam rises between his body and the wall. Casually, he adds, "West side, well-to-do dudes, fancy bitches, know shit about making whoopee, man, you see? Or that anorexic Connie chick you banged in the parking lot a couple of weeks ago. They know fuck all, I, on the other hand, can give you the f-" He does not manage to end his offer. Bruce grabs him by a fistful of jet black hair and pulls his head back. The drizzle now soaks his face as if tearful.

"Yes... sir?" The kid mutters provocatively. "Leave your door open one night and you will see what I mean."

Bruce lets go of his grip with fury and the kid's forehead strikes the grainy wall. In a second, he distances himself several feet from Bruce, but turns once more quickly to glance wildly over his shoulder. He bears his sly smile again, a streak of blood trickles down from a piercing in his long and thin eyebrow and blends with the raindrops at his lovely mouth. A second later he skillfully drops his skateboard on the pavement in front of him and hops on to propel himself vigorously around the corner after throwing away the empty plastic bottle.

 

In his report Bruce maintained that it was a case of "homosexual panic", and he recanted having uttered any threats, and from having caused any bodily harm to the squeegee boy. Bruce's impeccable record was kept as such to accommodate a last minute request from his superior who stated, in a separate document, that Bruce had probably acted on "a blind basic instinct". His resignation papers listed "extenuating circumstances" as one of the main causes for his early retirement from active service.

Thursday late afternoon. Bruce comes home early to wait for a Thanksgiving package from his aunt Claire. It has been over a week since Bruce told the editor that the squeegee boy had to leave. Upstairs, Peggy Lee is deliriously singing out "Fever" very, very loud. It leaks down into Bruce's flat.

A tentative voice comes up on the answering machine-always turned up to full volume-to deliver a quick despondent message, "Hey, Bruce, please. I need to see you. I've been going to meetings as I promised."

Abruptly, Bruce tells the UPS to dismount him. "You'd better get going. That's my girlfriend."

"Sounds like a man to me." The UPS guy circumspectly removes an extra large Trojan. In a quasi-military tone Bruce commands, "No, don't throw it in here"-hands the brown guy a paper towel the same way a doctor hands tissue after an anal probe-"Throw it in the basket in the bathroom."

The UPS guy rolls his eyes up. "I hate not finishing what I start." He spits out as he pulls up his tight brown pants.

"Finish! You... went soft on me. Listen, finish your delivery now."

"It's the noise from above, man, it distracts me."

"Long dick, short attention span." Bruce ruminates as the willowy bearer of thick nine UPS inches disappears into the bathroom for five bitter minutes.

"Your ceiling is leaking." The UPS guy notifies as he comes out, rearranging himself. He picks up his automated flip chart and indicates, "Sign here, please." Bruce complies and sees him out the door where he hands him a sex addicts anonymous group card.

The UPS pockets it with disdain. "Whatever."

 

It is late and getting dark when Bruce, after scrubbing himself pink with Phisoderm under a scalding shower, walks up one flight of stairs, then he retraces his steps, the he turns to go up again. Like this, stepping up and down, he makes it once more to the fourth floor. His clammy grip turns the knob and he steps into a sensuous candlelit room where outlines and shadows seem mysteriously suspended in mid air, heavy with the aroma of weed. The bathroom door frames a bizarre tableau: sitting at the toilet, a life-size Buddha, bathed in the glow of a golden shower holds a beatific grin. At times, the Buddha opens his mouth wide to collect the generous golden liquid and perform a gleeful ablution. He swallows mouthfuls with glee. One restful hand on his knee holds a pink denture, the other flabby hand rests on the knee holding a small bottle. The steam from the running hot water wasting away in the bathtub lingers like an effluvium. The nervous endings in Bruce's bare feet are electrified over the wet bathroom tile floor.

A small Chinese postman looks like a comics superhero with a bright yellow rubber rain cape, dodging the paddles he scurries into the Portland Hotel. The busy reception area smells of foul and urine. With his small hands, the Chinese postman swats away the junkies that besiege him like mosquitoes and drops a bundle of government issued brown envelopes at the attendant's window. The lucky ones get their cheques sent, the rest will have to shuffle their feet to the nearby office fittingly numbered Hastings 666. Welfare Wednesday unfolds like a nine ring circus every last Wednesday of the month with junkies and whores gyrating at the corners like Kamikaze trapeze athletes and zany jugglers. Later that morning the Portland Hotel's attendant loudly knocks at the door of one of the stingy rooms at the end of the dark corridor. When the door opens he hands an anonymous note that reads: "Please come back. I will do anything to have you near again."

 

When called to answer questions at the Correctional Services Centre the Portland Hotel attendant declared having seen only the lanky figure of the squeegee boy cloaked in a red Gortex jacket.

"Fuck if I know!-You know'em junkies, they just lie'bout, doin'nothin', for all I know, he had ripped it off someone. He swore he never saw a "decent' blonde in the room, male or female-"I'm telling ya', there are no visitors allowed, ever."

 

In uncomfortable tones, Bruce pieced together a conversation he had with the editor in which he delivered an ultimatum. This conversation had taken place about two months before the pleading note was delivered at the Portland Hotel, only weeks after what Bruce described as an "apparition" in the editor's bathroom. At that time Bruce, who looked somewhat unhinged, had stated, "It is essential for me to get 8 hours of sleep". Reportedly, the editor had responded, "You must be a Libra, someone who finds bliss in domestic harmony", which was followed by a "Not to worry, I'll look into the matter". They had briefly sat down to talk, at Bruce's request-both of them clearly remembered that-and that the squeegee boy was not present.

 

"I want to get this kid out of 'the life'. I mean dodging cars and cleaning windshields in the rain for quarters and loonies, under the rain, it's kind of, you know, absurd. I think he should work as an escort, or in a massage parlor." The editor lights up another cigarette.

Bruce lips do not move, they form a livid thick line. When he curves them, his tone is restrained and flattened. "Absurd?!-your idea of helping this individual is to have him turn tricks for living? I should report you."

"How much do you make a month?"

"What!" A tinge of exasperation taints Bruce's crisp utterance.

"I mean how much can a boy with no education, no money, no family, nothing but a checkered past as a foster child that is too traumatic for you to believe it's real can aspire to make in a month? Where? McDonalds? Have you seen the octogenarians who work at McDonald's? How dignified is that?"

"You should speak of dignity!" Bruce is on his feet towering over the editor. "Listen, it is not my concern what kinds of choices he makes-or what choices you make. The point here is that he has to find another place to live or I will have to talk to the landlord and the police." With sure feet he swaggers to the door and opens it to signal a dismissal, as the editor waddles his way out Bruce adds, "If you care for him so much why don't you... keep him?"

The editor replies in the unexpectedly low sweet voice of a concerned father. "I would, in the blink of an eye, if I could, but I don't have the means. My fifteen minutes of publishing glory are up. I can't keep beauty in a cage when there is such a wide world out there that he deserves to live, and I can't blame him for wanting it either." Bruce hands a government issued brochure to the editor. It is about a support group for 'street-involved' kids. Then, he slowly closes the door but he does not pass the deadbolt.

Debbie testified that whatever problems she may have had begun the day she did not discourage young, handsome, and intelligent clients from getting "Hired Hands" services. Her philosophy was that "beauty and youth are the worst enemies of a client-driven business". She explained that she had more problems with the "Paris Place" masseuses - abusive pimps, drugs, faulty hair extensions and nails, staggering needs for counseling on age angst, pregnancy and diseases-than with the "Hired Hands" masseurs. She peppered her account with dutiful asides about health standards and good service and accompanied it with subtle but effective hand gestures. In a compassionate tone, which was either fully hypocritical or profoundly sincere, she recalled waiting in her small stuffy office and deliberating on whether or not to approach this case "as a cold business woman, or in a more stern, mother-like, dominatrix kind of way." The word dominatrix barely passed through her crimson lips. It was added breathed out so low that the two Correction Services officers conducting the interview had to lean forward. When the boy came strutting into the door, Debbie said she was still unprepared, and simply blurted it out "You're fired." His radiant emerald eyes "glared and saddened infinitely," and he was gone. She swore that she had checked his documents and they were in order. Drying a tear from the corner of her eye, she insisted that the contents of her business log and the identity of her clientele were as sacred as the names kept by a priest or a psychopath (by which she meant "psychologist" and this was amended in the final record). As to the boy's underage, it was hard to wring out from Debbie who had alerted her about this fact. "Was it one of your homosexual tricks?" inquired one of the officers in a knock off NYPD Blue intonation. Debbie froze for a second-never let them see you sweat. "A trick? No, it must have been one of our clients, blond, young, discreet, always wore a red ski jacket." She pauses to place a Listerine cool mint in her small tongue. "How was I to know he was lying about his age? The kid was well recommended by this old acquaintance of mine, a patron of the arts." Then, the Correction Officers, much to Debbie's chagrin, urged her to tell about the first time Bruce, their colleague, showed up at her door.

"Wait please, listen, I think I can help you with what you are looking for." Debbie's former social worker persona kicks in before the strapping figure hurries out the door. Nanette, the bronzed girl with Blondissima mane checks him out from over the Vogue pages, sitting on the man-made white leather sofa at the reception area, her fleshy tongue sweeps her upper teeth to erase any trace of lipstick.

"I think we do render the most appropriate services for you, let me show you our lovely portfolio." Bruce walks back in and sits straight on a rattan armchair across Nanette. Debbie gives Nannette the unmistakable get-lost signal, which also stands for "change of guard", and the curvaceous petite blonde precariously tiptoes on her stilettos down the narrow corridor in search of one of the male masseurs. Bruce is nervous and stiff, and, in a mirror across the room he checks himself to make sure that the tell tale groove line around his crew cut, a dead giveaway, is not too pronounced. Debbie is back with "the portfolio" and a chilled glass of water.

 

The "Jungle Room" at Paris Place is a small self-contained hell, and the Jacuzzi elevates the temperature to the upper 90s. Bruce checks the palms patterned cheap duvet cover, sniffs the towels, begins to get neatly undressed; he folds the pants over the back of the chair and places his polished shoes straight under the chair. Then he sighs, he seems to be making up his mind once more as he hesitantly switches the lights off. Five minutes ago Debbie had crooned, "Interesting request, we successfully cater to gentlemen with wild imaginings, you will enjoy the 'Jungle Room' in the dark as much as in the light. Pay attention to the realistic soundtrack with streaming brooks and pelicans. I love the little shrieks they give, don't you?" For a moment, she looked at him and she seemed hesitant too.

In his Resignation Report Bruce reported that he had never turned on the light in the Jungle Room and that he never imagined that his behavior there could in any way affect his job performance. Initially he had emphatically denied having any knowledge of this business being also for "gentlemen of a different persuasion" but he was advised against this absurd phrasing and feeble claim to ignorance. As to his knowledge of the goings on in the apartment upstairs he wrote, "It was a nuisance, I could not put two and two together," tentatively put, "I tried unsuccessfully to move out of my domicile but I was drowned in work and it was difficult to find the time to look for another place. Besides, the vacancy rate that winter was negligible." In closing, Bruce summarized a couple of prickly incidents between feuding neighbors, one verbal disagreement with his co-worker Connie Manley (caught by a supervisor when he walked in on them), how he had failed to sell his apartment "due to mildew accumulation in the bathroom and a host of minor disrepairs" and how this had provoked "enormous anxiety and disorientation" in his life. He also made one single obscure mention to having taken ski lessons in Whistler Mountain that winter.

Back home from his last day at Correctional Services, several months after the leaking from the upstairs bathroom had appeared, with one precise gesture Bruce uncoils the tie from his blue shirt. Then he unbuttons one by one and exposes to the large bare window his chest wrapped tight in a fine cotton tank top. On a second thought he goes and draws the blinds, quickly, the evening is winding down out there. It is springtime but dark clouds have buried the sky. He slips out of his blue pants and carefully folds them over and hangs them on the cedar valet to keep them wrinkle-free. On the sparkling clean kitchen top, Ross and Connie's pristine wedding invitation sits open in perfect solitary display. Ross' voice also fills the answering machine with hesitations and half sentences; some of them about "honeymoon in Vegas" and "homemaking" as if quoted from a bridal catalogue. Bruce reaches for a gelid bottle of Mountain Dew into the refrigerator and knocks it back steadily.

Bruce's well-aimed finger presses "play" and a silver disc spins out the torrent of chords that Ashley McIsaac's violin releases under the youthful torture of his fingers. Bare and luminous, standing at the center of his room Bruce cries a tear or two, and spanks the monkey, rough, hard, with frustration. After a while, he checks the 1950s' bakelite clock in the kitchen and at 8:00 PM sharp enters the bathroom and runs the hot scalding water in the bathtub, fixes two bare metal clamps on his nipples that bite hungrily into the darkened flesh around them. In the middle of a rain forest, barely touched by the sunlight, surrounded with steam and violin shrieks Bruce kneels as a pair of feline emerald eyes materializes amidst the golden haze. At the door, a rhinoceros shape also awaits its turn. Bruce tastes all the bitter rain as it pours downs his throat, not missing a drop, not a single drop. Once all the rain has subsided, the feline figure recedes into the darkness, and Bruce calmly turns around, and kneels on the wet tiled floor, in absolute acquiescence. Both visitors withdraw for the day. Maybe tomorrow they will come again down the mountain.

©2001 Francisco Ibañez-Carrasco - Contributor's Bio