I got into an argument with some friends last night. Our exams ended yesterday and everyone wound up going to a pub around the corner from the college, and proceeded to drink for about 12 hours. I showed up at hour 10. The conversation (as conversations will) turned to where people should go after the pub closed, ostensibly to “party”, in reality to keep drinking, because really…once your liver has been hit by a certain critical mass of alcohol, there’s no turning back. And naturally, they asked where I was planning on going, and I said that I was either going to head home or swing by Heaven. There were half-hearted protestations at this, until one person who wanted me to go out with them to…well, wherever they were going, asked me why I “always have to do the gay thing”. Confused, I asked for clarification. “You know, only going to gay clubs and bars and pubs when you go out. Why don’t you try the other side of nightlife?”

More than anything else, I was amused at the slurring that accompanied that little bit of social commentary. But at the same time, after I left the pub and walked down to the Tube station, I found myself seething a little bit. I didn’t plan to get all Camille Paglia on anyone’s ass, but I realised that I really resented what my friend had said. Not because it was painfully accurate or anything, but because I felt like there was some sort of essential issue being overlooked. I spend my daily existence, running from commuting in the mornings to grocery-shopping in the evenings in the heterosexual sphere. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it doesn’t bother me in the least, mainly because there’s only room for one major player in my head and that’s generally me. But when I do go out, I don’t see the point of going to “straight” clubs and bars, and frequently, I’ll pick a gay area/neighbourhood/venue over a straight one because…well, because I don’t want to be surrounded by straight people. Because when I go out, whether it’s to try and pick up a guy (which, not so much, but occasionally one gets lucky), or just to hang out with friends and dance, I want to do it in my particular sphere, the one that I don’t get regular exposure to, or at the very least, the one to which I feel as though I (ever so marginally) belong.

But the real reason has nothing to do with getting lucky or exposure, to tell you the truth. I’m always hunting for that particular instant. Because sometimes, when I go out, there’s this moment of epiphany. When you’re standing in the middle of the dance floor, and all around you, there are men enjoying and celebrating themselves, it can break your heart a little bit. Easily. When you grow up hiding who you are, or always a little bit convinced that you’re a freak, that there’s something not quite right about you, to see it all normalised…to see other people like you dancing, being themselves, for just a brief moment, it’s worth all the cattiness and the bitchy asides, the retorts, the shallowness, the puerile behaviour and the whole slew of other nasty issues that come bundled with being a gay man. And they’re horrendous issues, they’re abrasive and chip away at you over time if you let them (and I tend to, unfortunately), they run a gamut of emotions from the merely irksome to the outright traumatic. But every so often, there’s that perfect instant when everything seems to slow down to a tenth of its speed, where you just look around and see other people just like you in so many ways, with the same issues and the same insecurities, including the people you’d rather not be, or the ones who show you everything dark about yourself, but it’s fucking beautiful. Because it all makes sense. Just for that one moment, everything snaps into place, it’s all aligned and gorgeous and intricate and beautiful, and it makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time, and sometimes I do, quietly, because it’s overwhelming and you can’t believe that any person is allowed to see that pattern slide smoothly into place in front of your eyes, but you can’t look at it for too long or let yourself get caught up in it, because too much of it might do something unpleasant to you, deaden your heart or your mind, or you might–horror of horrors–get used to it, which is just not the way it should be. Things that lovely are meant to be experienced intermittently I think, just so that when they do happen, you really appreciate them.

Clarity. It’s a phenomenal feeling. I imagine that’s what it must be like to have faith, to believe in a higher power that creates for a purpose and with a reason, even if you don’t know what that reason is. But it’s fucking beautiful nonetheless.