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“Sky now boasted two wooden barges on which smooth-faced twinks served cocktails, and a series of minimalist couches at the back that no one sat on. Drinks were cheaper and the dancers more eager to take it all off for the gender many of them preferred.” (Christopher DiRaddo/The Geography of Pluto) The regular crowd is a mix of older men, young hustlers, and drug dealers, but for the past few weeks Thursday nights were Ladies’ Night, the only time women were allowed. Adonis is a funny place: small and dingy with exposed brick walls that remain hidden within the club’s dark shadows.
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“ A seedy male strip club at the far end of the Village. A thick gloss of sexual possibility highlighted everything, from the crowded unisex bathrooms to the drag queens who worked the door.” (Christopher DiRaddo/The Geography of Pluto) “The club housed three very different bars: a small dyke club named Sisters upstairs a men-only leather dungeon named Katakombs downstairs and in the centre, where the main entrance opened into a gigantic hall, was K.O.X., a pansexual circus featuring the most outlandish creatures I had ever seen. Would you agree with Will’s BFF and party partner-in-crime, Angie, that “everything looks better in hindsight?” Your trip down Sainte Catherine East memory lane begins here: In celebration of Montreal Pride and the Gay Village, once upon a time the city’s indisputable nightlife hub, Nightlife.ca sifted through some of DiRaddo’s most delectable descriptions of after-dark Village institutions (some still standing, others long gone).
ADONIS GAY BAR MONTREAL FULL
Setting up the city as a bona fide character – from the Atwater Library where his bibliothecary mother singles out many bedtime reads for her son to Priape’s Big O parties where Will does a lousy job of drowning his sorrows, DiRaddo’s Montreal is wonderfully time specific and full of evocatively rendered surprises. Besides its eloquent ruminations on the unique mother/gay son dynamic, Pluto also provides a considerable window into the distinct hotbed of gay nightlife that was Montreal in the ‘90s. There’s the obligatory anguish that comes with moving on from Max, his first real love, and handling his widowed mother’s cancer scare as best he can. Whether Nightlife.ca's LGBT readers will jump at the chance to be flag bearers on a beat-throbbing float or altogether steer clear of out-and-proud extravaganzas, there’s a good chance the city and its storied Gay Village played a part in their sexual awakening – much as it does for Will, the 28-year-old protagonist in Montrealer Christopher DiRaddo’s poignant, sharply written debut novel, The Geography of Pluto.Ī project 14 years in the making, Pluto explores the emotional peaks and valleys of Will, a high school geography teacher still reeling from romantic loss and longing for answers. Toronto’s World Pride hoopla and Montreal’s Divers/Cité shindig have come and gone, leaving it up to our city’s oft forgotten Fierté/Pride to cap off a summer’s worth of LGBT-minded reflection on hard-won battles and lingering injustices (culminating in Sunday’s de rigueur Pride Parade).