IN AT THE DEEP END
The week begins with a trip to the National Aquatic Centre. I wouldn’t normally be up this early of a Sunday morning but my niece and nephews are visiting Dublin for the weekend and demanding my attention.
Actually, they’re more interested in a chaperone so they can hit the waterslides, and they know I’m game.
I grew up in Blanchardstown and, had the aquatic centre existed back then, who knows how good at swimming I might have become? But it didn’t and what I have become is definitely not a swimmer.
I meet an old classmate, who also has squealing kids in tow. The years clearly haven’t been kind — either my moisturiser is better or having kids is ageing. (At this stage, I have done the waterslide circuit only 10 times, so I am purely speculating.) We haven’t spoken in 20 years — and back then we hardly spoke at all — so we struggle with small talk and with kids who want to “get a move on”. I hate small talk. You have to be average to enjoy it.
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For me, mundane questions like “Are you married?” or “What do you do for a living?” defeat the purpose of getting the conversation over as quickly as possible. For the record, my answers to those questions are “No, I’m not married — I am not allowed” and “Tonight I’m calling out bingo, in a dress”.
POPULAR NUMBERS
Bingo in The George on Sunday nights is an institution on Dublin’s gay scene. I’ve done it for over 13 years — in a dress — under my pseudonym Shirley Temple Bar. That’s 670 weeks, and that’s a lot of dresses.
There’s more Shirley Temple Bar on Monday, but this time I’m in the audience. It’s a special outdoor screening of this year’s Alternative Miss Ireland in Temple Bar’s Meeting House Square. As Shirley, I won in 1997 and I’ve been a guest performer at the show ever since. This year I open the show, so obviously it’s downhill from there on.
It’s also my friend Brendan Courtney’s birthday and we celebrate with dinner on the terrace of Eden restaurant.
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Along with his impossibly stylish Off the Rails co-star Sonya Lennon and some of Ireland’s finest homosexuals, we are joined by drag queen (and pop princess) Veda Beaux Reves.
After Sonya’s enlightening demonstration on the merits of the strapless Wonderbra, we get to see the premiere of Veda’s music video. Veda doesn’t wear a bra, pointing out that “you don’t need to have big tits to be a real girl”. Maybe not tits, but Veda certainly has a few hits in front of her.
SMALL WONDER
It’s the longest day of the year and the longest meal of my year. Four hours later, we’re still eating.
My partner, Andrew, has a business meeting in the morning and I’m presenting Telly Bingo, so we sneak off home like a boring married couple — except we’re not (allowed to be).
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I spend Wednesday and Thursday working on a screenplay and watching the longest-ever tennis match at Wimbledon. I’m not there in person — they invited a different queen — but, on Thursday, I am invited to a Stevie Wonder gig. He lifts us up into musical euphoria, but I find the end of the gig a bit of a letdown.
When the lights came on at the end most of the crowd are taken by surprise, but Stevie’s already off the stage and gone.
“A little bit lacking on the showmanship?” I wonder. I certainly wouldn’t have let it end that way. Maybe it’s because Stevie Wonder is blind. I think I’m allowed to say that. After all, my parents are deaf. Or perhaps that’s what the Pope calls “moral relativism”.
GAY PRIDE
The weekend brings the madness that is Gay Pride. To the innocent bystander, it is a carnival of craziness and possibly not quite “your cup of tea”.
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But that’s the whole point. Gay people like me (and maybe you) get marginalised by the mainstream in society all the time. It’s only our outrageous acts that get us noticed.
Gay Pride is a statement of intent — “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” — but it’s also a celebration: a great, big, gay splash-about.
When I first came out, it felt like I was jumping in at the deep end. And if there is one thing my niece and nephews taught me this week, it’s that jumping in at the deep end entitles you to a great, big splash-about.