On Valentine’s Day, Colm and I celebrated our third year together. We met pretty much by accident on the balcony in The George in 1999. My friend Enda and I had been to a Valentine’s Tea Dance at the Tivoli (I can’t even begin to describe what that was like) from which we’d left early to head over to The Gee. Once there, Enda hooked up with some old flame or other and I wandered around the place to see if I knew anyone there. I told Enda that I wasn’t staying and headed back upstairs to get my coat. At the balcony, I stopped to look down at all the happy couples dancing away on St Valentine’s Day, when this guy turned around and said: “It’s Tim, isn’t it?”
I suddenly realised that not only was this guy looking straight at me, but all the people with him were as well. I said yes, that my name was Tim. And then I remembered that he was this cute guy I’d been talking to briefly about two weeks before. We got chatting, me, him and his friends and that is where it all started.
Three years on and we ended up in The Gee again, but more about that later.

At the moment in Brown Thomas, if you buy two Clinique products, you get a boxful of goodies free. And since Colm loves pampery-type presents, I sashayed around the cosmetics department of BTs buying him some. You really must sashay while in the cosmetics department of Brown Thomas – gay law says so. It’s the perfect place to cruise (or so I’ve been told) if you don’t feel like going into a gay bar as it’s stocked full of eye candy – mostly of the gay male variety.

Presents bought, I headed over the road to my favourite wee haunt, AKA. Colm had already arrived – he got very excited when he saw what I had in my hand. The sight of a BT shopping bag seems to have a strange effect on him! Anyway, he loved his gifts and we were soon knocking back the Buds and getting ready to head over to the Stonewall Café on Exchequer Street for dinner.

 I’d been to this place once before and enjoyed both the camp company (the vast majority of those eating there were gay) and the good food. You can imagine our shock when we walked in to find that every couple in the place was made up of a mixed sex variety. In the Stonewall Café (Stonewall = New York gay rioters in high heel shoes = gay) I kinda expected there to be a few familiar faces around the place. Instead all we got were table beside table of straights every now and then looking uncomfortably down at the two gays eating their beef medallions. The food was lovely (apart from Colm’s ‘tart’ starter which comprised of some crisps stacked on top of each other) and by half eight we were making our way over to The George. 

The plan had been to stay the night in The Gee, watching Annie Balls castrate Missing Links and then maybe a re-enactment of us meeting on the balcony. However, the place, despite looking brilliant, was not exactly heaving so we had a quick pint and headed over to the much fuller Front Lounge on Parliament Street. The place looks fantastic since its makeover and for the night, staff had filled around 500 ‘Kisses’ balloons with helium and draped the tables with white cloth. I’ve never seen the place look so good (of course the toilets were still minging but you can’t have everything). We bought our Buds and leaned against that hideous silver piano for support only to be told by this roadie-type person that he was going to be performing in this particular spot and could we kindly move.

We moved down to the front of the Front Lounge and got two high stools so we could chat about our latest big plan. A few months ago, I mentioned in the diary that Colm and I were hoping to go to Sydney Mardi Gras this year. Well, that fell through although now we are planning to go to Sydney in October. I have priced the trip and it will cost €1,147 (plus €80 tax, plus stopover charges) each for the Singapore Airlines flights (which is a special offer) (and which I have been told by someone who went last year is a rip off as she only paid £700 or €888 for flights and stopover accommodation). 

If any readers of the diary have any suggestions, can they please send an email to the website? (Click here)

Enough ranting already! We left the FL and headed over the road to The Porterhouse which does a killer oyster stout. Unfortunately the bar/staff hadn’t put up anything in the way of decoration – not even one red lipped balloon. I’ve always liked The Porterhouse, it seems to get a real mixed crowd and I don’t just mean sexuality wise.
By this stage in the night, we had two choices: pay our way into The Gee or meet our friends Gavin and Doreen in MacGowan’s which is near enough to where we live in Rathfarnham. We chose MacGowan’s and that’s the reason I’ve been getting ‘where were you last night?’ and ‘I thought you said you’d be in The George all night?’ text messages all morning.

I hope you all had a great St Valentine’s Day, next up on the big gay calendar is The Alternative Miss Ireland – can’t wait!

Speak soon
Tim

P.S. Keep an eye out for my two articles in the next GI magazine – there’s a piece on different body types and a travel piece on Copenhagen. Hope you like them.

 
Tim - February 2002
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