The first time I drank absinthe I was visiting my brother and his roommates at their condo in downtown Toronto. Gabor, my brother’s Hungarian friend, had smuggled some back from his homeland. At that time, the green stuff was entirely illegal in Canada. Now you can buy it at the government regulated liquor stores (but it’s seriously feeble shit). I was seventeen. I took a shot or two. I felt nothing. The second time, I was in a photo studio that belonged to a high-school friend of mine. I was posing as a tormented 19th-century writer. Which was easy because I am a tormented 21st-century writer. My girlfriend was posing nude in the shots with me as the ‘green fairy’. She looked hot.…