Lin’s tone tends to be high-pitched, but he can tune it down to a baleful, haunted whisper, as when he studies a video installation by Wolfgang Tillmans in which shards of light from a disco ball merge with dust clouds stirred up by a scrum of unseen dancers. If it wasn’t for our Struggle for Gay Rights, or the Sacrifice of the AIDS Era, Where Would You Be Today, Young Man?

His life, sensibility and values are very different from my own but I appreciate the intelligent and skilful ways he considers how experiences in gay-designated spaces can positively and negatively contribute to our personal and collective sense of gay identity. Gay is an identity of longing and there is a wistfulness to be holding it in a building", "Identity is not just inscribed in our bodies, but articulated in places we inhabit. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.

Starting out in San Francisco and duly referencing queer literary icon Allen Ginsberg, Lin later moves to London and explores the scene there.

Yet Atherton Lin is always on the outskirts of those communities, taking shots at their centers even as he acknowledges their orbits, always standing in and athwart his subject. This book had not enough of either to keep me very interested, and our book club managed about 10 minutes of discussion before moving on to other topics. No, I don’t get it either, but it is clearly a term of endearment, and after a while becomes an indelible part of the character. In fact, the traditionally Black and LatinX bars, from which much of mainstream gay culture is derided from, is only briefly mentioned in Lin’s otherwise fantastic history of gay venues. Ages ago, they used to print candid snapshots of partygoers from various nights of the British club scene.

Coming back to the aspect of identity though, Lin stresses that gay bars as communal spaces helped individual people to find their own place and character, and this is why it is justified to tell the story of the gay bar as an autobiography, or an autobiography via non-fiction about gay bars - it's this smart idea that renders the book so unique. The subtitle of this book “why we went out” feels especially poignant when considering why he and his long term partner 'Famous' went to bars to make friends, view the “scene” and have sex with other men.