‘Beer before wine makes you feel fine, wine before beer makes you feel queer.’
That old drinking adage may now finally have to be officially amended to wine and beer – and anything else alcoholic – in any order, make you feel queer.
A recent study published in The Journal of Social Psychology claimed to show that heterosexuals become much more interested in the same sex when drunk. Straight men especially so – going from zero interest in a dude when sober, to almost the same level of interest as in a dame after ten drinks.
Call me old-fashioned, but isn’t this slightly redundant? Didn’t we already know this? Isn’t this, in fact, what beer was invented for? As a ‘lubricant’ for ‘male bonding’, in rugby clubs, fraternities and the British Army?
A British paratrooper chum tells me that a popular pastime of the mauve berets is ‘naked bar’ – someone shouts ‘NAKED BAR!’ in the vicinity of alcohol and then everyone has to strip off, enjoying their favourite tipple in the altogether.
Needless to say, if I was a para I would be the one shouting ‘NAKED BAR!’ before anyone else. Probably over breakfast. I would single-handedly kill the tradition with overuse.
And then there is the old joke US sailors like to tell about Marines (and which Marines of course like to tell about sailors):
Q: What’s the difference between a straight Marine and a bisexual Marine?
A: A six-pack.
That ‘ten drinks’ standard the study came up with probably only applies to civilians.
Let’s not forget that for hundreds of years, before the current fashion for blaming hair whorls, ring-fingers and amniotic fluids, drunkenness was regarded as one of the chief causes of sodomy. It’s certainly way more fun.
I of course have been conducting my own selfless researches in this area for decades. Though in truth I’ve been somewhat hampered by the fact that I’m far too gay to invite a drunken straight man home with me. He might throw up or piss the bed. Or snore.
Anyway, how good is the drunken, unrehearsed, un-douched sex likely to be? Even without the hangover and guilt. Much better just to flirt drunkenly before heading home separately. Having sweet dreams of what might have been.
I can also vouch for the fact that beer can make a raging queer more bisexual too. Or at least, more likely to snog women. Indeed, I have experienced heterophobic discrimination as a result of my drunken sluttiness. Many moons ago I was barred from gaining entry to Love Muscle, a famous gay club in South London because I shared a taxi there with a random, but pretty woman, and we’d started snogging. (The bouncers were unpersuaded of my gayness, even though I was topless.)
It would be interesting however if someone repeated the study, this time secretly giving the guys alcohol-free drinks packaged as alcoholic and seeing if they still feel queer after downing them. This would help answer the age-old question of whether the suppressive effect of alcohol on inhibitions is more physiological or psychological – giving straight guys permission to entertain not-so-straight thoughts.
‘Oh boy, was I drunk last night!’
Or, as the Romans used to put it: in vino, veritas.
This post originally appeared on Mark Simpson’s Patreon page.
