Mock’s Convenience

Montreal Pride Travelogue Part 1

“I need to be free,” I started muttering under my breath some moment last fall, ludicrously, and without thought, like humming a stuck song. I sort of listened to myself. I called a friend. We drove three hundred miles for Pride, even though we didn’t have to.

Our road trip to Montreal begins the New England way: a Dunkin breakfast. My friend Finn is an expert at this fast food stuff, so I double their order of an iced latte and what would become the first of many bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches. This bacon-egg-and-cheese is C tier; on a croissant. Dunkin is known to take creative liberties with coffee. The lattes come out lighter than me, and that’s saying something. I’m told that’s part of their charm.

Fishing out their passport, Finn says this trip would be their first time out of the country. They cringe at their ancient passport photo, wherein they are a frowning teenager with a subtly cocked head. Their light hair is escaping a buzz cut, just long enough to leave ruffles along the curve of their scalp.

I compare their photo with mine—bangs pinned back, voluminous, lipsticked—and find the bizarre quality of this pairing charming.

Finding our exit is a struggle. We pass a store called Mock’s Convenience. I cackle, it sounds like the title of a Pynchon novel. Finn questions my pronunciation of Pynchon, and neither of us are sure, laughing more.

On the freeway, I’m ranting about perfume again. I did an analysis of online reviews that contained terms like “dyke,” “femme,” and “lumberjack.” I learned lesbians love smelling vintage, and Finn—this soft-spoken kid—is finishing my sentences. It’s all about a fantasy, you see, which involves a distinctive character.

“I want to be the older woman,” my friend says, eyes on the road.

“Go on…!”

“Total financial freedom, but not necessarily wealth, solitude. I want to be the one who sticks to the routine, and she pulls me out. Undesirability to anyone but the discerning eye… the artisan taste.”

(Yes, that was 100% off the cuff.)

“But you can’t be this as a 23 year old. So much of my queer identity is being a late bloomer… I feel like I’m going to have my great lesbian romance late in life.”

I’m pretty dedicated to my friends, so if you’re single and still reading the Sinister Wisdom Blog in 2040 …

In Vermont, three pickup trucks are having a tiff. They weave in and out of the left lane and around one another, metal colorful as dance ribbons. Maybe we’re going the same way. It seems totally plausible that we’ll ride out the last hundred miles with the trucks flirting at 70 miles per hour.

Pride flags displayed at Place du village in the Montreal Gay Village. Montreal Pride’s book fair spans an entire block. There are deselected magazines from the Archives lesbiennes du Québec, poetry and short stories from L’arc-en-ciel littéraire, secondhand books ($9 each!) from Mes Pants de Queer, and so much more. We’re terrified: we can’t carry all these books with us!

The Gay Village is also home to L’Eugélionne (like "le gay lion"), a feminist bookstore and co-op that takes its name from Bersianik’s novel. Having learned about L’Eugélionne through the Sinister Wisdom independent bookstore stockists list, our visit begins with full trust in their curation ;)

Finn’s picks are the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Picador, 2002) and Exuberant Botanica by Aaron McIntosh (2023), a luminously illustrated zine about the connections humans share with plants.

My picks are the out-of-print collaborative chapbook Flesh and Paper by Suniti Namjoshi and Gillian Hanscombe (Ragweed Press, 1986) and the inaugural issue of lstw (lez spread the word), a bilingual magazine on lesbian culture in Canada.

Woo-woo interlude

At the first hostel we visit, I’m brushing my teeth when the world sends me a Canadian dime. The coin is tempting me from the sill. Should I take it? Is this a nudge? Perhaps it could be just the token I need tomorrow. If it’s a sign, do I need to pick it up to accept, like a collector’s call? That’s not how debt works… I leave it for the next person.

My dreams are crazy when I’m sharing a room. When I tell them it was like Twin Peaks that night, Finn theorizes a woman at the hostel was psychically interfering with me. Someone put up posters in the Gay Village with a solution for “dream attacks” that I’ll have to try.

Support Mes Pants de Queer, L'Eugélionne, L’arc-en-ciel littéraire, and all the other fantastic organizations at Montreal Pride.

Learn more about Exuberant Botanica and other projects at aaronmcintosh.com

Don't recommend Dunkin coffee. Spoiler alert, we preferred the Pigeon Espresso Bar that was attached to Hang Time Pizza.

Stay tuned for Part 2: The Return (& the Club)!

alww

Image 1: From Exuberant Botanica by Aaron McIntosh (2023).

Image 2: Suniti Namjoshi and Gillian Hanscombe on the cover of Flesh and Paper (Ragweed Press, 1986).

All other images provided by the author.