You know how it is in the early days of a relationship. You’re excited, you’re buzzing, and for a moment you forget about the outside world with all its gnarly prejudices … especially when you’ve had a few drinks. So there I was, on the platform at Piccadilly Circus tube station, excited, buzzing, drunk on a barrel of red wine (at least that’s what it felt like), and saying goodbye to a man I’d met only two weeks beforehand. It’s the centre of London, within a stone’s throw of the gay bars of Soho, so I didn’t think twice about putting my arms around him and kissing him goodbye. A pair of lads walked by and one of them muttered, “fucking poofs”.

Normally I would keep my mouth shut, but I was excited, buzzing, and full of red wine, and so I shouted after them, in Eastenders butch, “Oi, who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” They kept walking, which I suppose was lucky. I was about to go after them and tell them how unacceptable it was to talk like that (or at least the drunken remix …). I was persuaded not to.

I think this is the behaviour people have in mind when they say they don’t like gay people “shoving it down their throats”. What they mean is that they don’t want to see it, failing to realise that heterosexuality presses in from every corner. It is so common that they fail to see that. On the way down to the platform I saw at least two heterosexual couples holding hands and kissing. And there were no doubt a raft of posters showing heterosexual couples going about their lives.

I was really angry at having to experience that, as unobtrusive as it was (especially considering the violence that could have happened, and indeed happens daily). I was angry at being told that I should have not said anything, angry that I had to qualify the experience by thinking I was lucky it didn’t end in violence.

Perhaps I need to have a t-shirt, with the following quote from Dorothy Parker, printed on the front: “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common”. That way I could plant a thought in many a mind without having to once open my mouth.