The bruises on my face are almost gone now, nearly a fortnight after I was attacked by a gang in Aungier Street, Dublin, on a Friday night, around 1am. They were shouting “fucking queer” as they hit me. About five or six of them. Like a pack of fast-moving apes ranging around me, each got a quick, vicious punch in, and then nonchalantly moved on, looking away, pretending it hadn’t happened, keeping his face out of my sight.

When it stopped, I blearily stood up from the bloody ground, to which I had sunk in order to protect my head from their blows. I looked around, at people passing by. It was very disorienting – the immediate effect was of a stunning paranoia. No one looked at me. My shirt was wet through with blood, which also poured from my nose. The gang had melted into the crowds: so the crowds themselves became threatening. It had happened so fast, in less than 30 seconds.

I dialled 999 on my mobile (robbery obviously not their motive) but when the operator put me through, there was no reply. Helplessly, I watched who I thought were my attackers disappear into the flats across the road, as the phone rang and rang. It would have made more sense to me, in the grip of that primitive fight/flight mechanism that is triggered in such moments, if I had a face, however hostile, to focus on. But nothing, no one. Shifting figures, backs of heads, people ignoring me, walking by, eyes down in the unsafe night. It is illogic that truly paralyses me in times of crisis. I can cope with anything if my brain isn’t loudly protesting: “this doesn’t make sense”. What happened? Where was my enemy? Who is my enemy? What had I done to deserve such hate?

The answer is, of course, nothing. I can try and impose a meaning on the chaos, and attempt to identify patterns in the swirling eddies of violent circumstance, as if in the naming of the experience and its symbolism I can own it, possess it, and not be defeated by it. But it is very difficult to accept the random nature of life’s cruelties, sometimes. The police, who have been kind and thoughtful throughout (even though, in the 999 moment, they weren’t there when I needed them most), have suggested that perhaps it was completely unconnected with my being gay, or the fact that I had just come out of the George ten minutes earlier. In other words, “fucking queer” is the language used by any gang on a chosen male victim, and it is narcissistic of me to think that the words they used were anything to do with me.

I found such a thought both appalling and refreshingly healthy. The world doesn’t revolve around my sense of victimhood, and is not out to get me. It just feels like it, sometimes. In the past two weeks my black eyes have reflected my inner bruising, an emotional state of turmoil, rage and grief, that is both highly disturbing and completely appropriate for such an experience. I, as a therapist, know that such assaults can have highly unpredictable and painful after-effects, and, even with that knowledge, I have still been taken aback at the way I have reacted since. 90% coping magnificently, 10% complete collapse into existential isolation, rage and despair.

There isn’t a way of inoculating against distress. Like riding a bucking bronco, it has to be endured and stayed with until it calms down, until the shock has worn off, until the whispering soothes. There are many ways to freeze it, to numb it, to medicate it, to delay it, and I felt like doing everything recently: getting drunk, taking E, watching daytime TV, hunting for sex. Insanely, I found myself, four days after the attack, walking like an automaton into a public toilet, cottaging for the first time in many, many years. It was as if a primitive part of me absorbed the message of the attack, and interpreted it in a literal way: if I’m treated like a piece of shit, then I must be one, and I’ll behave with no self-respect whatsoever. It didn’t last long; black eyes, as a look, aren’t the most alluring. What I really needed was physical contact and comfort, and the pain of being single forced itself painfully centre-stage in a miserable boo-hoo-hoo self-pitying wail, to which a few of my dear friends were witness, as well as a concerned therapist. At such times, it’s not so much a lover one craves as a companion, a fellow-traveller.

I’ll get over it; I am already. It took me many years of therapy to recover from the shame and the self-disgust that the last homophobic attack had on me, or revealed in me, 15 years ago – I suspect that, this time, it will be a similar number of weeks. A sense of deep irony helps, too. As I was being beaten to the ground in my beloved homeland, an interview with me in the Irish Examiner was rolling off the presses, to do with my day job. There I was, bright optimistic smile, waffling on about being a gay therapist, and how people could “like me or lump me”, so advanced was I compared to the shame-filled natives, in being comfortable about my sexuality. A wise astrologer once told me something about my chart: be careful when you put your head above the parapet, for you may get it shot off.

One certain thing I’ve learned from this experience is that the cops are the good guys. The guard who took my statement was young, well-meaning and earnest, in a kind of Sergeant Lewis way, with a heart of gold. When I rang him ten days afterwards, to find out how his enquiries were going, he made sure to ask me if I was getting support and/or counselling, which touched me.

Inspector Finbar Murphy, the Garda Gay/Lesbian Liaison Officer, (01-666 3804) emphasised that the most important thing I did was report the assault. Without the police knowing about it, there is very little that can be done. I endorse his appeal whole-heartedly: if anyone reading this is or has been attacked, homophobically or not, do report it. The circumstances are irrelevant: as the kindly desk sergeant in Pearse St told me, looking at my battered face, in a way that brought tears to my eyes, no one had a right to do what they did to me. As is often the case (like mine 15 years ago), gay men can be embarrassed and ashamed about the circumstances that led them to be attacked – i.e. following someone down a dark lane, being married or with a boyfriend, or being in a cruising area, or having left a sauna. Sexual shame combined with physical trauma can corrode self-esteem disastrously; but nothing justifies being assaulted, and nothing can change in our society if assaults aren’t reported. I found the experience of reporting to the guards relatively painless and supportive.

The gang had obviously done it before, so effortless and cold-blooded was their attack. (The editor of Gay Community News tells me that a correspondent of theirs was attacked two years ago in exactly the same spot. I don’t know if he reported it to the guards or not.) I don’t know, however, if my attack was homophobic in the sense that they singled me out as a gay man to receive their hate, or whether it was random, with their words of abuse homophobic only in the sense that all domination by gangs of men over other men is homophobic.

If they singled me out, then someone tagged me for ten minutes after leaving the George, for there was no other way they could have known I was gay (my narcissism isn’t that pathological). Whether the guy that tagged me was the same guy who asked me for directions in George’s Street, who chatted with me as I was walking, and who disappeared, inexplicably, around the time the gang swarmed and hammered around my head, I don’t know. When he reappeared afterwards, he was apologetic, in a childlike way. For what? Nothing made sense, nor does it make sense now.

I’ve been crying a lot, this week. An old wise part of me knows that this is good. It’s not necessarily the physical act itself, although the discomfort and the explanations for my face have been difficult – it’s the hate behind the act, the psychic punch of being subjected to someone else’s disgust and loathing. It takes a while to bounce all of it back where it belongs.

I fear the ugly poverty-stricken world that lets a conspiracy of violence fester among its young. “Let’s get a queer tonight” is the agreed topic of conversation. Or is it just “let’s get someone tonight”? Does it switch, weekend to weekend, to another minority group? “Let’s do a nigger tonight?” Does anyone in the gang protest? Are they afraid to? That’s a shared set of values that is completely alien to me. That’s a culture that I do not understand. Is that Irish? Perhaps I have just been blind to the savage underbelly that has always been part of the Irish psyche.

A man who has been in a fight, one-to-one, bears his bruises lightly; it’s a matter of pride. “You should see the other guy” is there at the tip of the tongue. But when it’s a gang of five or six, the bruises are different. They are somehow badges of weakness, of subjugation, a marking inflicted by a dominant subculture. It’s animalistic, primitive, tribal. It’s fascism. These guys only aimed for my face. As I was lying on the ground bleeding, they could have inflicted real damage by kicking me in the stomach or balls or kidneys. But the intention was only to mark, to scapegoat. Another queer is walking around the streets of Dublin with black eyes. Good job, lads.

I want to find out what the fuck is going wrong in the estates of inner-city Dublin. I want to find out what the fuck they are teaching in the schools that breed those animals. I want to find out what their grievances are. I want to know what their parents think. If their parents think. There is a level of hate in those who are socially excluded in Ireland that is not in keeping with our fond image of ourselves, those amusing pictures of Irish football fans spreading craic across the world, that bullshit.

I don’t want to be a victim. Victims are manipulators, needy and whiney. Victims are passive-aggressive, they get what they need by playing on guilt. Victims are powerful, using the dark art of emotional blackmail to get attention and comfort. Victims are impotent; their bruises are proof. Victims place their unhappiness at the centre of their lives and leave no room for anything else. Victims need support. Victims are losers.

I lost that night. I will recover.

I wish I knew who won, though.