A Night Out In Leicester

Amid a grim downpour we trudged into the city. Making our way through the busy streets, a sense of unease crept upon me: hooded urban youths loitering in doorways, glaring coldly, rarely provoke any other feeling. In my chinos I felt preposterous amid the tracksuits and menacing glares.

Yet with safety in numbers we carried on. Thankfully it was only a brief walk to our destination: the gay bar.

It may surprise some readers, but I am not a regular attendee in such venues (I promise this isn’t one of those ‘Christian-pastor-caught-cottaging’ scenarios). Having sped to Leicester straight from the Reform UK conference, I was experiencing a societal ying and yang: from the young, wannabe politicos in suits and the eccentric middle-aged men drawn ‘to conference’, I had suddenly been parachuted behind enemy lines amid the trannies and genderbenders. Tweed was out, ripped stockings and corsets – and that’s just the chaps – was in.

Even I, with a faulty gaydar (I long wondered why a highly successful friend of decent looks and grotesquely successful career in his late thirties was single: the idea that he preferred the company of gents never even crossed my mind. It was only upon seeing him festooned with rainbows that I finally cottoned on) realised that the clientele were, on average, a notch gayer than a bus-full of male air stewards pulling up at a Village People tribute show.

A drag queen belted out camp hits amid a room bedecked with LGBT flags. It felt very Current Year. Once upon a time, such venues would have been clandestine. Today, the degeneracy is practically mandatory. At my own workplace, diversity training is delivered by a gender-ambiguous pagan. Whereas centuries ago such types would have found their niche in occult rituals in dank caves, now they hold the whip hand (saucy!) throughout our nation’s HR departments.

Gulping my beer I tried to ignore the end-of-Rome surroundings. It brought me back to a conversation overheard at work that same week: there were rumours of someone organising a protest out a primary school because one of the teachers was a transsexual.

“So what?” interjected a listener, “what’s it got to do with what’s in their trousers? They’re not teaching with their genitals! It’s ridiculous!”

That some of us think the issue a bit more complex than that typically modern oversimplification, I kept to myself, not wanting to be immediately tarred and feathered by the pagan lurking in HR.

Before long we had gone to another venue – a pub with extremely loud music. Unwilling to dance and unable to talk to anyone due to the volume I made my excuses and left. Heading back I decided to stop at McDonalds for surfeit of chicken McNuggets. Queuing up I could not help but notice the high number of heavily overweight, heavily tattooed and heavily inebriated customers.

As it the heavens continued to open in precipitous disgust, I took cover under a shop front. Soon, a young woman did the same. I wished her a good evening, which she ignored. Instead, she took a phone call, putting it on speaker. It transpired that she had been separated from her group but – not to worry – she was going to get a taxi home after the night’s drama.

I soon became privy to what that drama constituted. Supposedly her paramour – a certain Jack – had betrayed her trust. This was not a surprise as Jack had reminded said girl that he was a ‘f**kboy’ (that is, he has many sexual encounters): as such, his knavery should not have surprised. Yet, despite knowing of his self-appointed ‘f**kboy’ status, the young woman declared loudly that she ‘needed his d**k’.

The temptation to tell her that she need God, not his Richard, was almost overwhelming, yet I stuffed more McNuggets into my muzzle to prevent myself from blurting this out.

They say, dear reader, that there are no gentlemen. Presumably Jack is not one. Yet, their absence is only matched by the recent extinction of ladies. I find it hard to imagine that women of my grandmothers’ generation would holler loudly in public about their urgent copulative and phallic needs. Even the toothless, syphilitic harlots of Victorian England, one might imagine, likely displayed less overt, shame-free depravity.

While finding the conversation enlightening, I decided to carry on my walk – the company the beating rain preferable to such sordid tales. On my way back I passed a ‘gentlemen’s club’ (presumably where all the gentlemen have disappeared to), outside of which two girls stood as meat market-like adverts to the wares within. I walked past and wished them a ‘good evening’, upon which they both laugh: whether out of surprise or ridicule I cannot say.

Boring and full of chicken, I went to bed. The next morning I awoke to tales of japes that unfolded during my slumber. One of our group had spent £700 in a strip club procuring various dances. Whether or not he has the cash to blow on such endeavours, I cannot say, but his car is a veritable Swiss cheese of creeping rust. Another spent merely £100.

A third spent no money at all yet found a partner for the evening. She was, according to all, ‘well fit’. Asking for photographic evidence he presented the image of a heavily tattooed girl with just a few scraps of clothing covering her vanishing modesty and surgically enhanced femininity. With hair bleached blonde and features plastered with make-up she looked, I regret to say, very British. ‘Very nice,’ I say, politely.