CLOWN BURNOUT

Last week was the Calgary Stampede, known as The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. I am no stranger to carnival performance, the joyful screams of the midway coasters, the bright-coloured stripes of a circus tent. There is always a certain feeling at the end of the day when you go out to a place like this, hands sticky from cotton candy that looks like wall insulation and caramel-covered apples. The air is raspberry-blue electric even at the dusking golden hour, when you're minutes away from falling asleep in the car ride beside your new, hard-won stuffed animal won in a water-gun squirt race. There is a ceremony when the spectacle of the day finally winds down. Clown-white face makeup doesn't come off in one pass. It's zinc oxide suspended in tallow and lanolin, formulated to sit unbroken under hot stage lights, for ten hours at a stretch. Removal takes cold cream first, worked in circles to cut the grease, then a washcloth pressed into the hairline, the jaw, behind the ears where…