Happened June 2008 & August 2009
There are certain rites of passage that everyone goes through and then there are the rites of passage that can only happen after turning the magical age of 21- i.e. strip clubs and gay bars.
Dublin hosted the Bingham Cup in the summer of 2008. The Bingham Cup is also known as the world cup of gay men's rugby. I had an email from my friend Matthew who I'd met in Portsmouth back in 2001 that said he was going to be in Dublin and he'd love to meet up. Of course we didn't actually get to go out until the night of the final match when everyone really let their...er... hair down (this was literal in the case of the Australian team as they all dressed up in drag for the party).
The first bar located on the north end of Temple Bar wasn't really that exciting. It looked like a post game party- with drag queens. The second bar, called the George & Dragon, filled in late just like any other club, but by midnight I began to feel like a diabetic kid in a candy store. Beautiful broad shouldered and built men everywhere and they all played for the other team.
Finding a man who did play for my team proved to be more difficult than scoring a try on the field. One poor guy who had been singled out and presented to me announced in a rather panicked voice "No, I'm gay!" when he realized that the other lads were trying to set him up with a girl.
I ended up dancing the night away, which was also a very startling experience as most of the men on the dance floor had taken their shirts off. I like to think that it wasn't the same-sex bumping and grinding that heightened my awareness of my surroundings but rather their semi-nakedness. I'm not really one for public displays of affection in clubs and often wish that people who do would just go home and get on with their bedroom olympics rather than doing it on the dance floor for all to see.
I left the club in a taxi around 4a.m. and discovered that taxi drivers get really annoyed when you don't know how to get to your destination because you don't know where you live. I had just returned to Dublin and would only be there for two months before going traveling and then back to the USA, so I let my old apartment go and rented a room in a house near my office in Dundrum. I didn't know the area very well and was consequently less than helpful explaining where I needed to go. He finally dropped me off near the Beacon Hospital (because I knew I could see that landmark from my bedroom window). Who says all bar stories that end in a trip to the hospital are bad?
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