by TRACEY LINDEMAN

Matt never used to think much of the lustful notes scrawled across the walls of the Concordia Hall building’s 10th floor men’s washroom, but when the university student decided to make a pit stop on July 11, he wasn’t really expecting a fan club.

Made uncomfortable by a peeping Tom lurking in the bathroom, Matt zipped up and went into a stall to blow his nose. But when a second man who had been perched atop a toilet bowl emerged from another stall to take a gander, Matt decided it was time to go.

“When I opened my door, they opened theirs, and when I was walking out, I did a spin-around to see if they were looking at me, and they totally were,” says Matt, who made his way to the 11th floor to do his business—only to be accompanied by the man on the toilet seat. Taking refuge in a stall, Matt noticed a familiar pair of shoes under his stall door and an eyeball glaring at him through the crack.

“I can see him peeking at me and then I see a flash above me, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck? Did he just take a picture of me?’” recounts Matt, who asked that the Mirror not publish his last name out of fear of possible reprisals. Just days after filing a report with security, nine men were nabbed by campus security in a toilet sex crackdown and the bathroom was closed for business.

While in no way condoning the type of harassment that Matt experienced, Concordia professor and gay activist Tom Waugh perceives a double standard in the university’s response to gay and straight toilet sex, which he says has been going on since at least 1976, when he joined the faculty. When a Concordia student in the military was discharged after being caught having gay sex, Waugh had had enough. In 2000, he co-authored a report that, among other things, recommended the school avoid calling the police unless there’s a possibility of physical danger. “Our recommendations got flushed down the toilet,” he says.

Not so, says Montreal police media relations officer Mélanie Lajoie, who says Concordia does act with discretion. Police have no records regarding the July 11 incident.

Concordia, however, may be the exception when it comes to discretion. According to Waugh, it’s no secret Montreal police remove certain people, like prostitutes, from tourist areas for major events and festivals, and the impending Outgames aren’t any different.

“It’s a contradiction, and what do [Outgames organizers] care?” says Waugh of the pre-games crackdown on perceived undesirables. He says the Quebec Gay Chamber of Commerce, an Outgames partner, has supported previous actions against the queer community in the name of enterprise, namely the 2003 raid of Village strip club Taboo.

Some businesses in the Village disapprove of gay toilet sex, says former Concordia Queer Union co-president Orlando Lopez, pointing out the “bathrooms are for clients only” signs, cameras and the buzz-in system at some establishments. “We live in a society that frowns upon public sex, especially gay public sex,” he says.

According to Lajoie, however, that’s not the case for the upcoming Outgames. “Public sex has not been identified by police as a likely problem,” she says. Regardless, Concordia’s 10th floor men’s washroom will remain sealed until after the Outgames as part of the university’s investigation.