NIGHT RAT: Underground in MTL

by Kyra Sutton

003 / Meet Me at Grind’her (XOXO-Edition)

It is not yet 11PM when you arrive at the venue on Saint Laurent, wine drunk, stumbling out of the Uber. The moon hangs low in the sky, full and white. You adjust the nipple charms on your tank top. You help your friend tighten her leather harness. You spot that group of friends you always see out, smoking in front of the doors. You smile at each other. Is it your first time? One of them asks you, and you wonder if they can read it off you. Smell it on your skin. You look down at your boots, a little shy. They touch your arm. Don’t be nervous, they say. You don’t know why but you trust them right away. Your respective groups exchange a few words, some compliments. A hand reaches out to touch a silver earring. It matches their body chains, glimmering in the light. Eyes meet other eyes. Sizing each other up. Grind’her is heavy in the air, all-encompassing, sucking you into its orbit. Grind’her has already begun, before you’ve even opened the doors to Cinéma L’Amour.

*

“Grind’her started in 2018,” one of the founders, Estelle, recounts later on. The other co-founders included ballroom performer Mookh Louboutin and their friend Sunny Doyle, who coined the name Grind’her. The event emerged from a different collective Estelle was part of, Taking What We Need, which raised money to help trans women fund their transitions. “We were constantly thinking up new party ideas to get people out, to raise money,” she explains. “Grind’her was one of those ideas. At that time, there weren't many sapphic or lesbian or dyke-centered events in Montreal.” Inspired by the gay cruising culture they grew up around, the members of Grind’her wanted to replicate this kind of space for lesbians. “So we thought, let’s create a dyke party, that’s centered on cruising, and that’s centered around trans people as well. Those three things at once created Grind’her,” Estelle says.

“In Montreal, there’s always been queer spaces that embrace sexuality in a more direct way,” Estelle observes of how Grind’her fits into the city’s underground landscape, reflecting on the spaces that inspired it. She recalls Against the Wall, a leather queer kink party that’s been happening in Montreal for years. “I think Grind’her has come from those spaces.” Estelle emphasizes how creating more space for trans people has always been integral to the Grind’her project. “We didn’t simply want it to be ‘trans inclusive’— we wanted trans people to be at the center of the party,” she says. “We tried to make all these things feel normal. Like dykes cruising is normal. We wanted it to seem like if this hadn’t happened before, then it should’ve been happening.”

At its core, Grind’her is a fundraiser, and has always been a fundraiser. The team doesn’t make any profit from the event. All proceeds from the first parties were donated to Taking What We Need. Since then, each event has raised funds for different organizations and collectives around the city. The most recent Grind’her on February 21st raised nearly $5000 total, split between two organizations: TRAPS Montreal, a transfeminine mutual aid fundraising collective (1), and the Indigenous Sex Work & Art Collective, a grassroots organization where Indigenous sex workers can safely access support within their community and make art (2). “We were never able to fundraise that much before when it was smaller,” Estelle says. “Now we’re able to give a lot more.” The latest event sold approximately 425 tickets, selling out within the first week.

The first edition of Grind’her was held in 2018 at Brasserie Beaubien, embodying a more casual atmosphere than their recent events. Due to restrictions placed on bar venues, there was a limit as to how far the cruising could go. Over the course of ten editions of Grind’her, the party has evolved significantly, migrating to different venues each time. They threw strip club nights at Café Cléopâtre; they organized a rave in an old church. Later parties were inspired by leatherdyke history. During the pandemic, Grind’her organized a party in an outdoor cruising space. As Grind’her has grown, the team has also grown, with people coming and going over the years. Current members of the collective include Kriss Li, Ziya Jones, Bex Yu, and Bluma Kleiner.

“Once we found Cinéma L’Amour, where the last two parties happened, I feel like it’s been the perfect marriage between the cruising element and Grind’her. There’s more freedom there— it’s kind of ‘whatever goes,’” Estelle explains. “And Cinéma L’Amour has such a history. Even if people haven’t been there before… when Grind’her happens and we all get in that space, I feel like we take on that culture,” she says. “It’s extremely horny at Cinéma L’Amour.”

*

You step inside the theatre with your group, scan your tickets, remove your coats and outer-layers. Behind the shiny padded doors, an erotic lesbian film by Dayna McLeod is playing on the big screen. A butch wearing a leather vest leans against the wall, winks at you, or your friend— maybe both— you can’t tell. People are walking around, lining up at the bar, finding their seats. You order a drink and find a spot by the front, just as the cake-sitting is about to begin. The host encourages everyone to get out their wallets to shower the performers with cash. The performance is a collaboration with Cakes4Palestine (@cakes4pal), a mutual aid fundraiser that hosts bake sales and donates the proceeds directly to families in Gaza (3). The cake-sitters, Carmen and Francesca, strut down the aisle in high heels and lingerie. Francesca leads Carmen by a chain leash, the dom to her sub. Under the cinema screen, they perform an erotic dance to Ethel Cain’s “Gibson Girl.” Your mouth drops. You crane your neck, trying to get a better view. When one of them bends over to untie the other’s top, you whisper to your friend, “I can’t believe this is real.”

Afterwards, Carmen and Francesca recounts how they became involved in this project: “Lucy from Cakes4Pal reached out to me,” Carmen explains. “She knows me as a performer.” Carmen then approached her friend Francesca to collaborate in creating a performance.

“I got the idea from this artist Lindsay Dye,” Francesca says. “She used to post videos online. She would bake cakes and then sit on them as a form of performance art, mixed with sculptural art.” Carmen and Francesca are both independent artists and performers, who’d already been planning a cake-sitting photoshoot when Lucy from Cakes4Pal approached them with this idea. “It was a total coincidence,” Francesca says. “Lucy had seen cake sitting performances in Toronto and was like, ‘No one does this in Montreal.’”

“We got asked a bit last minute, so we went with our gut on everything. We decided confetti cake would be cute,” Carmen says. “For our looks, we played off the sub and dom dynamic. So Francesca had an all black, leather outfit for the dom, and I had cute red lingerie, for Valentine’s Day.”

The two met up to practice their routine, decided on cues in the music, and discussed boundaries and consent. “We wrote a list together of things we were comfortable with happening on stage,” Francesca explains. “I think we expected more interactions with the crowd.”

“We wanted them to come closer, maybe feed them cake. But people were really shy,” Carmen says. “It might’ve been their first time seeing a cake sitting. Next time I think we would lay out clearer expectations from the crowd.”

Overall, they were both grateful to have shared this experience. “It was such a fun moment for our friendship and artistic collaboration,” Carmen adds. Their performance raised over $500 in tips, donated to mutual aid efforts in Gaza.

*

After the performance you roam through the aisles, halos of red light and dark corners, dense with fog. Your eyes are watery, alcohol thumps in your head like adrenaline. You feel weightless, floating outside the bounds of your body. You wander past the ‘groping wall,’ where thick leather gloves hang out from a plywood fixture. The gloves beckon you closer. You peek behind the wall to find a girl you vaguely recognize. She likes your bleached brows. You love her intricate eye makeup. Soon you are kissing. When you pull away, your friend spots you — “There you are!”— and drags you to the bathroom, where the line looks interminable. You find yourself next to the group of lesbians that you always see at Dyke Night at Champs. One of them asks where you got your top, admiring the piercings. “Thank you,” you say, “My friend designed it.” And when you turn around, she is there, coming out of the bathroom.

Montreal based textile artist Madeleine West designed several of the outfits worn at Grind’her. Later, she reflects on her experience of the event: “It was really special because I sewed clothes for some of my friends and it was so fun to see all the outfits in action, and hearing how sexy they made them feel was very rewarding,” she says. “It’s so special to have a space where you can be publicly horny with rules in place to make it a safe and comfortable experience. Coming from Nova Scotia where there is nothing comparable to Grind’her, I’m so grateful to live in a city that holds awesome, sexy, and fun leatherdyke events!”

*

Estelle remembers how the outdoor Grind’her during the pandemic was one of first times where the cruising energy felt so prevalent. “People were finally like, ‘Let’s just go for it.’ We’re all learning how to cruise, we’re getting more comfortable with it. We’re expressing our sexualities in this new way… It really felt like we’d reached the turning point,” she recalls. “The thing about cruising is that it actually takes time. We don’t have spaces like this. It’s not like we can just go to the Village and go to some bar. There’s no bathhouses for dykes. It takes time to build up…” she searches for the right word. “The practice of it?”

“Dykes are learning how to cruise,” you laugh. “Grind’her is teaching us.”

In regards to how the team curates the space, Estelle says, “Really, we just want Grind’her to be fun. You can go and just dance, walk around with your friends— you don’t have to hookup with anyone. At sex parties, it can feel like the only thing there is to do is hookup. That’s not what we wanted Grind’her to be,” she explains. “You can walk into the space and you don’t really know what’s going to happen.”

“There’s something really important about being able to access different parts of your sexuality, with people from your community. When that space doesn’t exist, I think we lose a part of ourselves,” Estelle observes. “With Grind’her, we’re trying to create that space for people, where they can go and maybe cruise someone they’ve never met, maybe have a sexual experience that is safe, consensual, beautiful. You don’t necessarily have to start dating that person.”

You tell Estelle that, while you’ve frequented kinky, queer raves, Grind’her creates a kind of space you’ve never encountered before. The specific energy, crowd, and the respectful, intentional way that everyone approaches and interacts with each other. How safe and comfortable you felt at all times.

“It just speaks to how much we need a space like that,” she responds. Though Grind’her prioritizes safety and consent through on-site harm reduction and awareness staff, Estelle thinks that Grind’her’s unique energy comes from the crowd it attracts: “It’s a precious thing. It’s really the people who make that happen. It’s organic, in a way.”

*

There’s no shortage of Grind’her stories. One friend tells you about their steamy dancefloor hookup, and how they didn’t speak a word to each other afterwards— which she loved. Another tells you about how they had a foursome that included their ex on the seats at the back of the theatre. Your own story is that at one point, you stood up, looked around, and thought maybe anything is possible.

When it’s time to leave Grind’her, you don’t want to go. The bass pulses under your feet. You are sober now, in a sea of lesbians— dancing, kissing, hooking up against the wall. You wonder if paradise would look something like this. The outside world seems like a surreal concept, far away from here. Tomorrow, when you tell your friends about the night, you will have to come up with some way to capture it— the space, the atmosphere, the magnitude. How you opened a gateway to a secret dimension. Before Grind’her, and after. You leave the party still buzzing, eyes wide open, asking about the next one.

(1) https://www.trapsmtl.com/

(2) https://www.blackindigenousharmredux.org/sex-work-and-art

(3) https://www.instagram.com/cakes4pal/