"Are you gay?"

I went out for a Chinese with my neighbours and a bunch of their friends (10 of us in all) yesterday and didn't get back till 3:30am, one of my rare very late nights.

The meal was excellent (it helps that Asian meals aren't built around a meat dish) and as for the company, let's say it was wonderfully surreal to share a meal with cheesemongers and a Beijing duck obsessive. It wasn't until 11:30pm that we left and I was a little surprised that only two of us were up for carrying on into the night. I was to sing in the morning and probably ought to have headed home, but I'd sort of had my eye on the guy I'd be joining so wasn't about to call it a night.

The revelation that he had a girlfriend didn't change things much from my perspective as I was enjoying his company anyway, but by this stage the alcohol was lowering my inhibitions anyway and he must have had his suspicions. At what stage of the evening he twigged, I don't know, but a couple of hours later, over one last bottle of wine back at his flat, our conversation went something like this:
"Can I ask you a personal question?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, go for it."
"Are you gay?"
"Yes."
At which point he and his flatmate made a point of saying I was welcome round any time. It's always good to find open-minded people ...

(I never did make it to church, as I'd expected my phone to switch itself on automatically at 8:30am to remind me about my medication so didn't bother setting the alarm. Woke up twenty minutes after we were supposed to be there, my voice not surprisingly a bit below the tenor register.)