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I had my first swig of booze when I was fourteen. It was in my friend’s mom’s two-bedroom apartment in Kearny, New Jersey kissing a bottle of bottom-shelf vodka on the mouth. The taste was awful. I switched to Coors, hoping for a better result. I spat the first mouthful into the sink. My friend laughed and called me gay for hating beer. Guilty.
Frankly, I was fine not liking beer. I was out about it. I was the kind of zesty little gay boy who wanted nothing more than to play Troy Bolton in my hometown production of High School Musical 2 (nailed it). I found other spirits. Party guy? Absolutely. Frat guy? Nah.
Then, Dublin. A quick trip. A two-day stopover. I waltzed around. I bought a ring at a thrift store and lost it. I tried a shepherd’s pie. I sat in one of Dublin’s four gay bars, where I was the youngest person by around 30 years, and waited for my shitty Lifetime movie to start – for gay Hozier. I drank a cider, which didn’t fit the vibe, but seemed like the only thing on offer worth having. I finished and moved to leave, but a young Italian man entered and sat beside me. I paused. He asked me if I knew how to “hold a lot of air in my stomach” because he “really likes that.” I left. That wasn’t to my taste either.
The next day after some exploration, I hopped on Grindr while inside the National Gallery of Ireland and followed a blank profile to a pub down the street. Probably not safe, but a good way to go. When I got there, he was sitting, grinning, behind two pints of Guinness.
He had a slight lisp and a birthmark on his face. I didn’t want to offend him. We chatted.
“Why aren’t you drinking it?” he’d asked me.
“Honestly, I don’t really like beer.I’ve never tried Guinness. It’s sweet that you bought me one, though.”
Telling a gay Irishman you’ve never tried Guinness is like telling a straight Englishman you’ve never tried sodomy. Clearly, he was going to beg me to try it. I didn’t want to sit through the monologue so I did what I had to. Chin up. Swallowed. Liked it.
Having been proven right, my date smirked. “Lucky your first experience wasn’t at The George,” he said. “The Guinness sucks at gay bars.”
He explained that no gay man knows how to pour a proper Guinness. I didn’t believe him.
A day later, I went to the Guinness Storehouse. The space was gorgeous, a temple to black and tan. Guinness employees explained how every Guinness tap was kept at the right temperature so that all pints taste the same. I didn’t ask about gay bars because no one involved needed that interaction, but I was curious so I messaged by date on WhatsApp and we went on a bit of a crawl. We hit Street 66, a gay institution, and Pantibar, which is owned by Panti Bliss, an infamous Dublin drag queen who everyone claims has a fetish for tanned, Brazilian men. The Street 66 Guinness was suspect. The Guinness I was served by a tanned Brazilian man was not good. Same thing at Penny Lane and back at The George.
So, not all pints taste the same. As it turns out, a number of factors can influence taste. There’s the distance from keg to tap, the temperature, and the amount of gas. There is also, more pressingly, the the (correlated) frequency at which pints are pulled and the pipes are cleaned. The problem with the Guinness in the gay bars was, in short, that no one was drinking it. No one except me, a new enthusiast. A fan.
Having come to Dublin and found the first beer I ever liked, I was presented with a choice: Gay bars or Guinness? I chose Guinness. I chose pubs. I have standards as well. They were finally met.
