My Summer Vacation

“My Summer Vacation” is an elegiac, poignant contemplation of the brevity of youth and the ephemeral nature of love. Along the way we see the contrast betwen middle-class life and the sexual/drug underground. Joe, a young man in his early twenties, is on the “edge” of his youth. He has been given a film camera by his older lover (who is leaving town for the summer) and Joe decides to utilize the camera in order to find himself “the perfect summer boyfriend.” The first part of the film is a joyous, comic summer exploration of Church Street, Toronto and the gay ghetto, where young Joe searches cheerily for a boyfriend. He finally discovers Chris. During their first sexual encounter, Chris admits he is sexually turned on by buildings under construction. The two fall in love. Next, during a party scene in which we meet Joe’s friends, Joe talks about his problems with his new lover Chris and we meet typical members of the sexual and drug underground in Toronto – such as a stripper Ima Chicken, hooker Dick Large, and heroin addict Marvette. Joe meets Chris’s mother, Miriam, and a kind of Chekhovian scene ensues. Miriam fears she is dying of AIDS (but is actually just addicted to diuretics). In the final scenes of the film, Joe invites Chris to have dinner with his lesbian sextrade worker friends Lotta Dish and Ima Chicken, but Chris leaves Joe. The summer is over.