TYPICAL TOURIST refrain on South Great George's Street "Is this the only gay bar in Dublin?" was met with a hint of a curled upper lip. As if a bar could have a sexuality. What do these Americans want? I wondered. Are we destined to plough the mucky dirt track of international (read USA) commerce - a sauna steaming on every lane, rainbow-festooned corner cafés disgorging cuties and carpaccio, and laptop lesbo bars?
On Dublin's queer club scene, size does really count. The population base and compact urban environment have demanded a more integrationist approach to our social rituals. We no longer need only to homomix. We don't even have to be defensive and elitist - except when Saturday suburban geansaís are involved.
Changing times have also played their part. When I came out in the unreconstructed '70s the raison d'être of say Rice's on St Stephen's Green or The Oak Tree on Dame Street was a house safe from the hostility and abject homophobia that seemed to lurk all around - often with tacit State approval.
Legislative changes in the intervening years have enshrined in Irish democracy the civil liberties of our sexual minorities - with the notable exception of transsexuals - legitimising our concerns, desires and even our tastes, and allowing many to piggyback the oft-mentioned pink punt. Even the pre-refurbished George (a '70's anachronism if ever there was one) has got in on the act and realised it has to cater for a more sophisticated, albeit ironic, urban clientele.
Crucially, the mix covers both queer heteros and queer queers, the latter steadfastly maintaining their queenly ascendancy. H.A.M. @ POD, every Friday pulling a sublime social and sexual mix, has proved in its 14-month history that it is possible to be all things to all punters (gay, straight, bi or bestial), whilst pursuing a particular queer agenda. I modestly take some small credit with colleagues Niall Sweeney and Rory "Miss Panti" O'Neill for this success. H.A.M.'s sister monster, the exuberantly fetish monthly POWDERBUBBLE has been more overtly political and deconstructed the "rave" as a blueprint for a united future queer lifestyle.
Like the Peace Process, the other great movement of our times, the operative word here is "inclusive". Unlike the late '60s feminist mantra we are having it and on our own bloody terms. So fuck off if you can't take it.
QUEER is the panacea for all our sexual confusion. The only danger of luxuriating in this new found queer fashion, I mean freedom, is a small tendency to heterophobia. Inevitably, I think, after all the atrocious bad taste inflicted since childhood on some of us more discerning faggots and dykes.
Mind you, a trawl of queer Dublin night life will also confirm how wedded we can be to old role-models. Witness tacky drag and dodgy entertainment in a black hole called Wonderbar @ Temple Bar Music Centre. Disco bunnies everywhere desperately trying to be OTT cool yet managing ultimately to enjoy themselves. And then there's the vaguely parish-hall sensibility of getOUT @ The Furnace. At the time of writing even this is getting the post-liberation legislation reconstruction.
Like so much else in our lives, the scene has become more specialised, more fragmented and more diverse. Ultimately this can only be a good thing.
There's something delicious in witnessing two country "straight" boys establishing Dublin's premier queer bar. The Front Lounge on Parliament Street, and maintaining the pre-theatre blue rinse brigade. And I'm not only referring to the ubiquitous drag queens being louched around the part known colloquially as the "back passage". In common with all urban sophisticates this handsome bar has never felt compelled to wear its sexuality/sexual orientation/sexual preference on its sleeve.
I can't speak for the rest of you but that's where my future lies.
* Tonie Walsh
PS Mine's a Carlsberg, except when I'm drug-fucked and it has to be Bombay Blue Sapphire.
* Tonie Walsh is curator of the Irish Queer Archives and well-known DJ/promoter.