Neon and the whiff of Frizz Ease – you must be out on the tiles. At least five of these will happen when you step into your local rainbow hostelry.
01. Your ex is in there with someone famous/someone better looking/someone younger/a different ex.
02. Everyone but you is buying two for one cocktails – and they’re all in front of you in the queue.
03. Someone from a hen night tries to dance with you and tell you how amazing you are and that “it’s such a waste”.
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04. If you’re between 27 and 42, people bump into you as if you’re actually invisible to everyone else.
05. You see five men wearing the same vest top. Two of them are you.
06. A guy standing three paces away from you messages you on a hook-up app, without realising it’s you.
07. You’re mistaken for someone else’s Tinder date at least once.
08. Everyone will scream when a Kylie song comes on, but then feel guilty because it’s not a very #masc4masc thing to do. Can’t Get You Out of My Head, though. Only a philistine wouldn’t scream.
09. Your friend pulls, you don’t.
10. You pull, your friend doesn’t.
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11. You seriously consider pulling one of your friends just so you don’t have to get the night bus.
12. You scream with laughter at the idea of being invited to a chemsex party, while secretly hoping you are. Just so you can see. Is it true what they say about going all night? And what will the music be like?
13. One of your friends goes over and talks to the guy who’s obviously on his own, and in a gay bar for the very first time in his life, and brings him over to your group. You protest that you saw Cucumber and know how *that* one ends, but nobody listens.
14. A man who was a twink three years ago is sneering at twinks who are still twinks.
15. You flick through the free mags and scream at all the pictures.
Until you see yourselves looking mashed up in a bar you can’t even remember.
16. You spend the first ten minutes after you arrive trying to work out whether that smell in the air is cleaning fluid or… something else.
17. The younger guy next to you at the bar gets served first, whether he was before you or not.
18. If you’re in a couple, someone assumes you’re looking for a third wheel for a sex trike. And if you ARE looking, you can’t bloody find one.
19. As a bouncer walks by, you suddenly try to act as unsuspicious and non-threatening as possible, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong.
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20. Someone wants the football on, totally unironically.
21. You moan the music is too loud. Until it’s something you like.
22. Bad choreography to Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).
23. There’s a massive queue for the toilets – everyone’s hogging the mirrors taking #gaysontour selfies.
24. Someone takes a picture of a pornstar martini.
25. You moan about how the scene just isn’t the same anymore. Just like you did ten years ago. Just as you will in a further ten years’ time. Twenty. Thirty. From the afterlife. It’s your destiny.
26. “Hookup apps are killing the scene,” you say, as you finally give up trying to get any action and fire up Grindr at the bus stop on the way home.
27. A straight bloke – an ally, if you like – has everyone eating out of the palm of his hand, while you could set yourself on fire and nobody would notice.
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