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It is Christmas Eve, 2001. It is any night of the week, really. Nothing special to me other than business being slower than usual, on account of the holiday. I'm not sure what the Koreans make of it. They seem to approach it with Taoist composure. In any case, they are open. So it's sashimi, kimchee and udon soup for dinner. I am a regular there and they are very generous. I find they make me feel like an adoptee when I'm there. The guy behind the bar always adds a hand roll or gifts an extra something interesting on my plate. Dessert is an apple cut to resemble a flying dragon, and some decoratively carved mango wedges.

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I call my agent, to say hi and find out if the phone is seeing any action. Usually if the crazies are at least calling that means something might materialize. Some of the craziest crazies make the best clients after all. Nothing.... No ones' calling. Even the crazies have the occasional dinner party obligation. Some prefer to call him pimp, but he treats me with a curt businesslike respect, and we are more like friends. I pop into my Internet office to see what's going on there. The manager on duty gives me a room to work in. So why not? what else am I doing? If I can keep a few lonely people in cyberspace company why not put in a couple hours at the porn factory. It is 9pm... By 11pm I've had a few laughs and jerked off.... I don't remember if I came or not, but it doesn't much matter. The office will close for a few hours from midnight till noon the following day. It is one of two occasions in the year we shut the site down, and it feels macabre. Well the site keeps going with the video tape ghosts as the hired help. No live rooms for a whole 12 hours; surely the world will come to an end.

Church Street is usually a mini Mardi Gras of activity, especially around the midnight hour. Tonight is different. It's like a Monday with a warning out that there's a gas main leak in the area and everyone should remain indoors, or better still, leave town. I go to a local leather bar to see what, if any, like minded creature might have ventured from its respective lair. Since the washrooms became better lit, by forceful request of the Toronto police force, the joke lately has been you can roll a bowling ball through the place on a weeknight. Tonight you could hold a curling match by the main bar unobstructed. There are a few regulars haunting the pool table, and some guy sits glow faced staring and poking a video monitor playing some adult version of match the shapes. Upstairs the tented patio is shelter to a couple guys groping each other. After my tour of the establishment I conclude there's nothing I want.

Out on the sidewalk, I run into a fellow I objectified a few weeks earlier. He's also a male prostitute. I am more the Yorkville- or Park Avenue-flavor of sex worker, and this number is better suited to a hustler joint or the side streets, meaning no offense mind you. Whether you get $50 or $500 for the fuck it's the same job, and there can be no pretense otherwise. I know more than I should about Frankie, having met him through the agent I work with. He being new, and in a debt situation with the boss, I took him for a test ride, and paid down some of his debt. It was remarkably sweet for its brevity. A few minutes before I use him, we are dropped off in front of a busy Church Street cafe, and have to walk a few blocks to my apartment. With a bit of self-reproach, I can't help feeling mild embarrassment at being seen with him. He is really street, and although I'm dressed casually, the contrast must be acute to passersby. As we walk I have to listen to that self-righteous banter that is the exclusive property of the post-adolescent, whose wonder at new experiences translates into a mock, but devoutly held, self-assurance.

Once we are inside I have him take a well needed shower. I add his blackened soiled socks to a pile of similar trophies. It has become my practice to keep a remembrance of those I use. He undresses to reveal a skinny yet well-defined wiry muscularity. Correctional-services tattoos and homemade designs decorate his chest, upper arms, and shoulder blades. The ink work is blurry and nondescript. His body hair is unmanicured. His ass is inviting and I direct him to lay on his front for me. The details of the violation are never as sweet in words as the act is itself. Having used a condom– not always my practice– I did not pull out upon ejaculation. He has enough hazards in his existence; I don't need to add to them unsafe sex. I went in hard, pounded him fast till I was done, and then ordered him to wash up as one would order a domestic to polish the floor. The entire event lasted less than 15 minutes and was exactly what I wanted, no kissing, no foreplay, and no pretense of affection. He behaved with perfect obedience and docility. Some street tricks will say they can bottom, but make a big deal of it to the point that it is not only not fun, but not possible. Frankie just endured the discomfort as a matter of fact. He would get none of the money he earned directly. It was paid to our mutual acquaintance whom he owed a debt. He did get a fresh pair of socks, and a hot beverage.

After I got off I took him to a cafe north of the busy section of the village. I talked with him over our drinks. He complains of not being trusted with any of the money he's just earned. I remind him that it was his idea to have our mutual acquaintance safeguard his accounts, that he himself felt himself too untrustworthy to have money in his pocket. He regurgitates some support-group idioms, and in a kind of nervous pride explains how pleased he is with himself having abstained from drugs for the monumental measure of one week. I ask him if he's considered leaving town, going to live and work in the country at a more normal kind of job. Frankie counters defensively that he's stronger than running away from his problems, throwing in someone else's words to defend his own inaction. I tell him if he means to do well at the trade, he needs to look more healthy. I tell him I think he should get to a gym to bulk up some. He offers some defensive objection. Point counter point is a tiring game. I am not sure at what point I leave him with his cliché convictions and walk away wishing luck to the loser. It's not a judgment, so much as an observation.

Returning to the any-old-evening where I started, I run into Frankie on the sidewalk on my departure from the leather bar. He's looking the same. Neither better nor worse, and when I call to him, he abandons the other street kid he's with to talk with me. A friend for a moment is the rule when there's the potential for income. I know this all too well from my own canceled dinners and hurried meetings. When the phone rings, it's time to cut the loose strings and get ready, call the driver, or hail a cab and down to business. Nothing personal of course, a boy's gotta eat. So with no promise of anything, I let him infer what he may, and I invite him over. He acquiesces without inquiry. We walk the same route as a few months ago, but no one is out to stare at this unlikely odd couple. These are the last few minutes of December 24th.

At my apartment I ask Frankie if he's hungry. He is. I tell him to make himself at home in the kitchen. Help yourself to anything you'd like, or words to that effect. He offers me some of the pasta dish he's prepared but I'm not hungry for food. We mention briefly the sex of before, and he confesses enjoyment– or rather, suggests he might've enjoyed it more if only he'd been a little high. I remind him of his support-group speech to me. I ask him his intentions. He claims to want to stay off the crack; in fact he's been off it for two weeks now. I offer to let him shower but he declines claiming he's already had one that afternoon. I know the answer before I ask him, where is he living? Nowhere. His clothes tell that. I know before I ask him, if he has a job. He has none, save street hustling. The agency has dropped him for unreliability and nonpayment. Does he intend to call the boss? He says he will. It's a lie. Does he know it's a lie?

I decide to play a cruel game. I resolve to buy crack with him. I plan to take my share of the rock and crush it before him and flush it down the same pipes I shit in. I want to see his reaction to this. I lead into the suggestion. You know I've been thinking, I've not toked-up in damn near five years! Why the hell not? Do you know a connection? Hell ya? But shit I don't even have a pipe? Fuckin A... You have one! Shit it smells real fresh. The scent of spent cocaine is unmistakable, sweet even. How far is it? Shuter Street? I know it's cold, we'll walk... All I got is 20 dollars, it's enough to give us both a good hit guy. Fuckin A let's go now, if it gets too cold we'll hail a cab, its only a five-minute walk dude: so much for abstinence. We are walking south on Jarvis.

The glaring billboards proclaim the chicdom of downtown living. Condos coming to a street corner near you. Some of the ads are so hip as to present the suggestion of two guys living in marital bliss in these fine boxes. Boxed in towers. Towers among towers, till there's no light in the sky and only an endless succession of towers of boxed bliss. Over 70 percent sold. Order from the blueprint plans and model suites now; they break ground this spring. I consider these new concrete creatures as the one I walk with explains how much clearer the nature of reality is to him with a hit. A toke kind of clears the murkiness of the meaningless he perceives. One blast on his rock-star candy pipe and his wiry muscular body tingles with an ecstasy designed to eclipse the rush of an orgasm. Seventy-five percent sold, the penthouse views are spectacular, balconies overlook the financial district skyline in the distance. For as little as ten dollars you can find a kind of emotional freedom from the mundane. It will send waves of ice fire through you, like sex, but better than sex. With 10,000 dollars down these beauties carry for 890 dollars a month, plus maintenance fees and taxes. Unobstructed western exposure to feed a fine array of tropical plants in the solarium– or use it as a guest bedroom! Bliss in solitude, like cool electricity, giving the moment what it longs for. Eighty percent sold... 2003 occupancy! Rushes.... Why rent, when you can have the status, privilege, and security of owning? Elation in a puff of smoke. Call for an appointment today! Higher, and rushes, and higher....

I ask him what he thinks people think when they are faced with their own extinction? Not in an abstract way, like boo-hoo global warming will be the end of us all in a thousand years. I mean what happens when you're in the passenger seat and you see the Mack truck coming full on at a speed that threatens your very existence? What do you think that person thinks at that moment of self-aware impending oblivion? Ever wonder what that must feel like? It's got to be the most kick-ass rush money can't buy. Frankie brandishes a blade, in a matter-of-fact, look-at-my-new-toy kind of way. He explains it's to preserve him from being dealt with unfairly by anyone who might be significantly larger than him. I ask him if he's ever been in a car that almost crashed? Has he ever almost died?

He explains because I've not met the dealer, I have to wait downstairs. Do I want to be introduced to the dealer for a future buy? Sure, ask him for me Frankie. He'll take care of business and meet me outside in five minutes. He gives me his blade for safekeeping, a kind of collateral among addicts, and he takes a 20 dollar bill from me for the rock. He'll get a piece of processed cocaine that resembles a piece of salt used to melt snow on city sidewalks. Frankie enters a slummy apartment building. The front door buzzer is busted. There's a person in the lobby who may or may not be placed there to lubricate access to whoever is upstairs doing business.

I walk down the street as agreed and I find myself not turning back to conclude my plan. It's a fair trade– I have a nice weapon souvenir for my dirty socks trophy pile, Frankie gets my toke, along with it, the seed of mortality paranoia I planted with the suggestion of a car-crash death. It will blossom in his down cycle when the money runs out in 15 minutes. Or an hour. Who knows how long it will take but the money always does run out. Cruelty for Christmas is never out of style but there's purpose in it.

I keep walking. I should be honest. If I stayed I cannot say with absolute infallibility that my plan would have unfolded as I wanted it to. I had no intention to get stoned, but there's an aroma of longing curiosity. I keep walking. I get to a popular dance bar. It's the only one busy every night. There I find what I was looking for earlier at the leather club. The sex is a special pleasure in that it's not hurried. The gratification is mutual as is often the case when I chooses a more mature partner. Pretty isn't everything. As much as I enjoy the guy from the bar, his company, and the sex, I'm glad when he leaves and I can sleep off the day's events and details.

I heard recently of Frankie. It's been several weeks since our last tango in limbo. He has a blackened eye I'm told. I hear third-hand the fight was over another unpaid debt. I wonder if he had had the blade whether he would've been able to prevent the black eye, or whether the blade would just have made a bad situation far worse. There's a frustration in having a clue to a puzzle that another labors over, refusing help. Living in the city deadens empathy. It begins to seem futile to care more for a person than they care for themselves.

It occurs to me that I choose to play with these street boys, not for the quality of the companionship, but the intensity. I can live vicariously in their oblivion. I maintain my routine, my somewhat dry middle-class stability, and I get to look into the mouth of the dragon. Maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe I just like being in charge of something; someone. What can be sweeter than observing, feeling the reluctant surrender in the writhing of a body violated? The only experience more intense than being the passenger facing extinction by Mack truck, is that of being in the driver's seat.