In the light of recent closures of many LGBTQI venues across London, and the struggle for many others to survive the lockdowns, the question begs asking. In the era of “dating” apps and marriage equality, chemsex and home entertainment, is the gaybar defunct, antiquated, no longer fit for purpose? When we can no longer go out, what does it mean to stay in?

Many of us can probably remember the first time we set foot inside a gay bar. It’s a queer rite of passage. Mine was The Thompson’s Arms in Manchester in the late summer of 1986, when I came out at the age of nineteen. It was to be the first of many, many, many nights out.`

The narrative voice is pitch-perfect throughout, at turns informative, hilarious, brutally honest, and philosophical. The Guardian’s Peter Conrad found it lurid and florid but I found it to be neither; rather it’s just queer.

At times dishing the dirt, at other times simply telling it how it is, with perhaps the turn of phrase or embellishment of a born raconteur. But never florid. Atherton-Lin certainly pulls no punches when writing about sex, but this is (piss)elegant prose even when it’s being downright dirty: precise and candid,  at times epigrammatic, Gnomic. So many lines to underline and read again and again.

Part memoir, part social history, the narrative weaves and dips around various locations, and fluctuates between the confessions and configurations of his youth to informative passages about the history of some of these places (there’s a wonderful section of the fisting parties at San Francisco’s The Catacombs, and a history of the London Apprentice that completely took me back there.

The book considers the sociological and at times revolutionary role performed by the “gay bar” and there’s a wonderful refrain throughout about why we go out, why he went out (both with and without his husband, the Famous Blue Raincoat (though mostly with). Geographically speaking, Atherton-Lin’s been fortuitously well-placed to have first-hand experience of a variety of gay bars from LA in the early 90s to London mid-90s (and a wonderful evocation of the queer indie scene, especially Popstarz) to Blackpool in 2016, via noughties San Francisco and Hoxton, East London, right up to the author’s current location in Brockley, South London.

Whilst I appreciate the book’s intention isn’t to serve as a kind of guide to queer Britain, I’d have liked more on Manchester and the rise and fall of the gay village. A trip to Blackpool is the only location from the North of England, sadly, but that didn’t stop me from going right back to the start and reading the whole book again once I’d reached the end – which isn’t something I’ve done for a long time. I hope he’s working on another book because I need it.