i’ve been having a pleasant string of almost-summer days that make me grateful.
last saturday, amber and i went to cirque du soleil and had what seemed to be a life-changing and eye-opening experience – at least in the immediate aftermath, when we talked about leaving our boring, everyday lives to join the circus.
(my toxic trait is believing that i can develop the capabilities necessary to be a cirque du soleil performance if i wanted to, even now, in my close to middle age)
the human body is an absolute marvel.
we saw mesmerizing contortionists, a man stacking chairs to an unbelievable height while also performing acrobatics, a man whose feet were strapped to one long stilt, who was launched into the air and did several flips before landing in perfect balance – it was insane and thrilling and now i truly believe every one should see one of these performances at least once in their life.
after the circus, we went to my friend beth’s 30th birthday party and it was cute. i’m trying to live more of an alcohol-free life, but it’s difficult when i say i’ll only drink on special occasions and every occasion seems special.
got a bit tipsy, played with a dog, stood outside smoking a cigarette and talking about the upcoming movie, “killers of the flower moon.”
and when a friend of mine gets tipsy too, sometimes we get closer than we probably should. easy affection, a strange pull, some yearning for a deeper intimacy that might not be wholly appropriate given the context of everything. or maybe just a little bit of a harmless flirtation.
the next day is sunday and i’m too hungover to go to church. i meet my sister at my parents’ house later though, and we head to bang bang to stand in line for 20 minutes and get ice cream. we walked all the way there, which was impressive, but maybe a bit unnecessary.
i’d invited conor out for ice cream, but he flipped it over on me and instead invited me over to a little party he and his friends were having at Tommy and Ronan’s place.
i wanted to go just to properly meet one of their friends, Shane, who had just immigrated to Toronto a couple of days before and has maybe the coolest natural hair colour i’ve ever seen.
my sister and i get to their party, which is happening on the shared patio space on their building, so there’s a bunch of random people there, and we find everyone talking to a group of australian girls.
i play it cool with shane, pretending to be just noticing him, and strike up a nice conversation. he seems sweet, and a bit shy and sensitive, but also like he can have a good time. a nice addition to the group, in any case, but i guess they’ve all been friends forever.
later we go to stackt market, and shane confides in me that he thinks it’s overrated and he’s bored, so i suggest going to crews. to my delight, he seems excited about the idea, but conor and i had been texting renee and she said she was at karaoke, so we went to meet her there instead.
it might’ve been the wrong move since we ended up having to get a separate room anyway and barely seeing renee, and crews honestly probably would’ve been more fun, but it is what it is.
shane leaves early saying he’s tired. he leaves without letting most people know, and i feel bad he didn’t have more fun, but there’s always next time.
the next day i meet my david, amber, and michael (+ michael’s wife) at the beach. it’s a nice day out and we walk along the board walk for a stretch before heading to a barbecue restaurant for lunch.
my friend liam, his friend william and william’s room mate meet us there. i feel kind of bad because i think liam thought we were going to have an actual beach day – a day of casual drinks on the shore, playing beach volleyball or some other sport – but really we just wanted to be outside in the nice weather and go get food.
i think i accuse him of misunderstanding what i said when i invited him, but really i should’ve just apologized. in any case, he said he’d be ready for next time – that he would get some sort of ball himself and we’d all be able to play. he lives in the beaches but apparently rarely goes to the beach, but next time we’ll make a day of it.
our waitress at the restaurant is unnecessarily rude, making mistakes and accusing us of them and refusing to answer questions in any helpful way. it’s honestly astounding, and i make a loud remark about how she needs to learn how to just do her fucking job that i hope she hears while she’s walking downstairs.
at one point she’d brought us what she says is a pork sandwich, which none of us ordered. she goes, “well, it’s someone’s, i wrote it down,” and we say none of us ordered it so she goes back to the kitchen and comes back saying it’s a brisket sandwich. our friend asks to confirm if it’s pork or beef (since he can’t eat pork), and she dismissively says something along the lines of,
“i can’t tell just by looking at it.”
so we ask her to go to the kitchen and check. and it was on her way back to the kitchen that i make a loud remark, and honestly after that she was quite a bit nicer to us so i think it worked.
it’s crazy how service can truly make or break a dining experience. we were 9 customers who were just trying to have a good time and enjoy the long weekend, and it seemed like this waitress with a stank ass attitude was making it her personal mission to ruin everything. to be honest, i think she was also a little bit racist or ignorant. maybe she was just a basic white blonde girl whose spent all her life in the beaches ever only with other white people, so she has no grasp of any possible experience beyond that.
two of the people we were with were from cameroon and were asking her very reasonable questions that she was treating as stupid. i want her to try going to cameroon and ordering in french off of a menu that she doesn’t understand. she literally had no patience or empathy, but i’m hoping she’s just young and will grow out of that.
after lunch, we walked along the beach some more and when we parted ways, i went home and took a nap until 9pm.
all in all, it was a nice weekend with nice weather, and now i’m going to go back to trying to finally finish my portfolio.
