Image Credit: Photograph of Andrew Gurza, HZD Photography, 2015. 

You ever seen a wheelchair user fuck harder than the best porn stars in Vegas? How about the hardcore harness fetishists losing it over the straps of a hydraulic sling lift? Ever considered the implications of the condom catheter X leg bag situation as the ultimate power move in watersports? Andrew Gurza and Stella Palikarova did and in 2015 they set out to light the world on fire with the criminally underrated pleasures of the crip flesh at play.

On Friday August 14, 2015, Toronto’s legendary LGBTQ+ theatre, Buddies in Bad Times, hosted the first ever Deliciously Disabled event. Billed as a sex positive “masquerade play party for every sexy body,” the party ran purposefully during Toronto’s summer of hosting the 2015 Pan American and ParaPan American games. With global eyes already on Toronto for the summer, Palikarova and Gurza spotted a perfect opportunity to approach one of the managers of Oasis Aqualounge and pitch an accessible sex party.  

Already well versed in organizing the sex club’s in-house Pussy Palace revamp, Sapphic Aquatica, Fatima Mechtab was absolutely onboard. But as any Oasis guest can tell you, the club is housed in a heritage designated 1880s manor punctured by one giant motherfucking staircase capable of winding even the most able-bodied deviant. The solution hit as hard as Sky Gilbert’s slightly problematic mood swings: the ol’ Buddies in Bad Times Theatre at 12 Alexander Street.

But why there?

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Company has a long and illustrious gay history. The company itself proudly boasts it’s the “largest and longest-running [facility-based] queer theatre company in the world.” A notable exception to the ephemeral transience of most theatre companies, Buddies has been running since 1979 and has premiered over 1000 new queer works for the stage. Largely nomadic when it was first established, the company theatrically couch surfed for the first 12 years of its life. In 1991, Buddies set up its first dedicated performance space at 142 George Street. According to Buddies co-founder Sky Gilbert, it was at this location that the Buddies team started holding sex parties, purposefully curating them as part of its artistic programing. Not just your casual popper-studded penile romp for cis gay men in Diesel undies, these parties were often leatherdyke affairs with educational workshops on fisting and bloodplay.

Fairly quickly, Buddies was looking for a new permanent home and submitted a proposal to the city of Toronto to occupy the space at 12 Alexander Street, just around the corner from The St. Charles Tavern, right smack in the middle of Toronto’s Gay Village. Now, at this point, there was a bit of a kerfuffle over those aforementioned S and/or M parties by the pearl clutching set of the Toronto Sun. See, the 12 Alexander space was, and still is, owned by the city of Toronto. The building had stood vacant since the Toronto Workshop Production Theatre had folded in 1989 and the city stepped in to scoop it up. By 1993, a few different theatre companies and theatrical collectives, including Buddies, had put forward proposals to take advantage of a favourable lease deal from the city. Given that this was 1993 in Toronto and it was a little more publicly acceptable for the cis-hets to bleat about fags in the arts in the local conservative rags, it feels right and proper that a young counsellor Rob Ford and relatively shifty journalist Christina Blizzard tried to sashay away from the gay by going on about Buddies’ fervent “Female Ejaculation Pajama Parties” in the Toronto Sun. In a way, the intended public hoopla worked, and the city chose another collective to helm the space. Fortunately, artsy types aren’t known for their object permanence. After most of the members of said winning collective had up and moved to other cities during the protracted council debates re: gays on stage, the contract wound up going to Buddies as the sole occupant.  

For a whopping two bucks a year plus taxes and all operating costs, Buddies signed a 40-year lease on the 12 Alexander Street space in 1993. What’s even more impressive, Buddies got the city to shoulder a cool million bucks for the renovation of the building and an additional 60k in annual funding. Once all was said and done, the renos were well over the total 2.5-million-dollar budget and the company was about 60k in the red by the middle of their first season. Having sunk so much capital into the project already, the city quietly converted a previous 90k loan into a grant in 1996 to balance the books.

So, when I ask you If you’ve ever seen two motorized wheelchair users doing the Tokyo drift with two backs, the question you should shoot right back is “where would I have had the chance?!”

Snapping back to August 2015, Andrew Gurza and Stella Palikarova were making international headlines for their sensational success. The BBC, VICE, The Daily Beast, The Toronto Star, The CBC and more covered the party. The sold-out event hosted 125 guests plus staff and attendants. Lifts, harnesses, beds and drinks were all involved. For 20 bucks a pop (a steal as far as mixed gendered sex parties are concerned) attendees lit up Buddies’ cabaret space, relishing in the sexual freedom that is their human right. It’s easy to see why the party was a media darling; sex and disability is still a major taboo. Gurza has spent their entire life pushing for sex+disability education and access, and Palikarova has worked in disability advocacy for just as long. Between the two of them, Gurza played to the queer sex and perverse pleasure focused crowd. Palikarova was significantly more reserved, often emphasizing that it wasn’t an orgy or even anything deviant at all. With 2015’s party a smash success, the pair geared up for round two in 2016. Christened Justify My Love, the branding for the second party adamantly reflected Palikarova’s preferences; gone were the references to orgies, deviance or overt sexual liberation. And ultimately, that’s probably what killed it. Three weeks before the crip sex party 2.0 was scheduled to go down, it had only sold 14 tickets. The organizers decided to scrap it and haven’t publicly worked together since.

For a behind the scenes look at the first Deliciously Disabled party (plus some tea about the second!) mixed with a bit of Andrew and Stella’s respective backstories, take a look at Jari Osborne’s 2017 short film Picture This. 

So where does that leave us crips to cruise?

Nowhere. Quite literally nowhere. Aside from the few aforementioned spaces, sex while disabled is immensely difficult in the GTA. Add in queerness and the intersections start stacking up. Buddies continues to host sex parties, dance parties and has recently begun hosting The Disability Collective’s CRIPtonite queer drag and cabaret performances in their accessible venue. Covid safer events with accessibility information can be found on the Covid Safer Events Toronto instagram. And again, Impact Lounge does indeed have that fully accessible first floor now. But as for dedicated sex parties, we’ve got bupkis, nadda, zilch.

Atticus Hawk (they/he) is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His research looks at the role of Leatherdykes in the creation of medical knowledge and harm-reduction practices for fat, trans and disabled bodies in kink.