My night at the orgy: I was the most awkward man in the room

But this is what I wanted! This is gay rights in action. This is sexual liberation. This is building Stonewall in Elephant and Castle’s green and pleasant land! The only schemas for a gay coming-of-age I’d had to hand growing up were paeans to the ecstatic freedom of partying and the odd hook-up in a sweaty nightclub. In Andrew Holleran’s novel Dancer from the Dance, the erotic potential of orgies is a potent antidote to the homophobic politics of late-1970s New York. And, finally, I was doing it. Sick of watching straight friends fall in love for an evening over a dinner party table, I had wanted something spontaneous for myself. Like most queer people, sex and romance were penned behind a screen, limited to two per cent of the population. So, I’d said yes to the date (Joshua, 27, doctor from the Highlands, flying home Monday), said yes to the club night, the afterparty, the “chill out”.