august 5 bro
It's my oldest brother's birthday today. He lives outside of the city now, but for a while he lived in Toronto's Corso Italia, which is about a half hour walk from where I live now. In a lot of ways, I live where I live now —— where I also lived in the summer of 2010 and from 2011-2014 —— because he lived where he lived then.
Though I was born and raised in Scarborough, I was in the city every time I got a chance. In the late 1980s, the birthday brother worked at a bar called Downtown that was owned by Toronto Maple Leafs legend Borje Salming, among others. Shortly thereafter he became the "hosting" manager (read: guest services) at the CN Tower, which is how a different brother and I ended up working at the CN Tower during our summers off from school.
Those summers were the best. I'd work my shift during the days and have adventures at night. Adventures included house parties, mallratting and matinee movies with various older employees, weird crushes, hair experiments, and sneaking into bars like Vinnie's (which doesn't exist anymore) to drink shitty draft beer and flirt with women in their 20s despite being a 17-year-old who didn't know shit about fuck.
I used to think I'd write a book about those summers, but I never did. I still could, though, and probably should; so many of the experiences from those summers turned out to be formative, by which I also mean deeply scarring, by which I generally mean indelible and important. I'd go as far as to say that those years informed a lot of who I ended up becoming, and as I (finally) like who I am, and who I became, it occurs to me had my birthday brother not hired me to hand out flyers shortly after I hit puberty, I would be a completely different person today.
Ow, my heart.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch listen to old
🌳 grass Lowest of the Low records
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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