I am no longer a Gay. Everything that I am supposed to be about has just been proven to be a sham.

This morning I failed, dismally, to put my money where my mouth is. The most crucial pouff test of all, and my litmus paper failed to turn pink. I sat in front of my computer, just before 9am, transfixed. The screen was informing me that I could buy two tickets to see Barbra Streisand live in Ireland, on her first European tour, on her post-retirement comeback. The clock ticked, and I was paralysed.
My cursor hovered over the “Buy” button, but I didn’t go click. I was not prepared to pay the price. I had attempted to get the promised cheapest tickets, at €118 each, but, suspiciously, they were unavailable, right from the start. The cheapest available were €200. I’d have probably stretched, in a grudging way, in the heat of the moment, to paying 20% more, so used am I to Ryanair’s gimmicks at adding fees and charges to basic prices online, but nearly double was too much for me.
Despite being single for so long, I usually buy two tickets for gigs and concerts, hope springs eternal and all that, and there’s always a friend that’s glad to come with me nearer the time. But €400? And not even counting transport, drinks, etc? Too much.
The moment passed, the screen timed out, and I got on with my day. I was being sensible. Practical. Grown-up. I had resisted the pressures of conforming to the collective gay identity, and felt liberated. I was anti-gay, and proud of it. I was making a statement of individuality, of going against the crowd. Again.
Then, the doubts began assailing me. For the rest of my life, at every dinner party I attend where there is another gay man, especially one of my generation or older, the topic will come up, and I will be asked whether I was there. I will have to answer “no”. For the rest of my life, I will have to explain this morning’s decision, to justify it.
For it is on a par with the visit of Judy Garland to Dublin in 1952, when she sold out her twice-daily show for a week at the Theatre Royal, the biggest crowds a woman had attracted on this island since the visit of Queen Victoria, 50 years earlier.
Don’t assume, dear reader, if you are not in the tribe, that Madonna or Kylie are in the same league – for all their gay following, they are mere upstarts, pretenders to Streisand’s throne. Nevertheless, trying avoid whining, I will, in measured non-defensive tones, assert my prudence, my caution, my individuality, and I will ensure that it doesn’t appear that my decision had anything to do with cowardice, cheapness, internalized homophobia, or a lack of joie de vivre.
I will endeavour to sit there with a relaxed demeanour, listening to tales of rhapsodic devotional gluttony that the event will no doubt produce, and I will not feel a moment’s guilt or regret. I will feign good-humoured boredom with the topic. I will grin indulgently, acknowledging my oddity, asking merely that people respect my right to self-determine. I will even accept it when people humour me, and when the last crumb of tiramisu has been scraped off the plates in the kitchen, I will ignore the private glance between the hosts, as they reconsider whether this heretic will be welcome again in their house.
You see, they would have supposed, quite reasonably, that I was one of them. I will, gamely, offer a family precedent: my mother passed up the chance to see her lifelong love, Frank Sinatra, on his last tour, on the principle that she would rather remember him in his prime, and she could not have enjoyed hearing his failing voice. In time, I am sure that I will persuade myself, trying not to sound petty or defensive, that of course such extravagance could not have been worth it, that there are much better things to do with that amount of money.
More realistically, even if she were past it, and produced a bland, mediocre saccharine-sweet event, high on schmaltz and low on talent, the collective homo hysteria would inevitably paper over any cracks to ensure her deification remained unchallenged. What would be the point of actually attending? Like cult members drunk on the opiate of adoration, the glassy-eyed article of faith will be, despite any evidence to the contrary, that the event will be the epitome of fabulousness. Begrudgery will not be an option.
It’s not that I couldn’t afford it – at the very least, my credit card company wouldn’t complain. I’m sure, if I went, I’d forget the sting of the price tag. “Well, it is Babs.”
Yes, it’s Babs who was Dolly Levi, with the incredible ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’, insinuating herself into my pre-gay (?) consciousness as a boy. From the same film, the gentler duet that we used to sing along to as children, the gravelly Louis Armstrong beaming out all the love in the world to the feisty dame in Hello, Dolly.
Babs who wrote and sang the Oscar-winning “Evergreen”, the love song that hit me at my most sentimental and romantic teenage period. Babs who sang the extraordinary duet with Donna Summer, ‘No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)’ that hit me at age 16 – if ever there was a song that epitomised the bright lights and promises of the glamorous life ahead of me on the disco floor in gaysville, that was it.
Even then we knew something precious and contrived about that track (and possibly apocryphal, but hey, it was part of the myth) – the two divas hadn’t bothered to be in the same studio to record it. We marvelled, as we span our silly selves into a tizzy on the dancefloor, at the soaring voices, outdoing each other to impossible heights. Babs as Yentl: it’s a great musical, still, and it’s a soundtrack I’m still fond of, in particular ‘Papa, Can You Hear Me?’. We loved her ballsiness in putting herself right out there, playing a man, directing and producing, doing it all, and getting away with it. In the thoughtful Prince Of Tides, she gets Nick Nolte to cry, and not many women can do that.
She’s impossibly humourless in so many ways, can’t improvise to save her life, her stage shows are pre-scripted with giant teleprompters at the back of the auditoria, and yet she made her name in cooky comedies, and was in the recent Meet The Fockers, which was the highest grossing comedy in history.
She’s one of the top 10 recording artists in the US. She’s won Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes and a Tony. She has a gay son. She sings Stephen Sondheim. She’s political. She’s into Jung. She’s a diva, pouring scorn in her website on all the fake tales of her divadom that get published, but by repeating them she ends up sounding even more peeved and diva-esque. She makes up her own rules. She’s just fabulous.
Damn. I’ve talked myself into it. One ticket. Just one. For curiosity’s sake.