Friday night and I decide to eschew going to see Gentleman Reg, much to my own chagrin. These days, I make these funny little pro v con arguments in my head when choosing to not go to something.

Pro: Reasons why you should go.
– You really like his music.
– He rarely plays in the UK.
– The venue is an intriguing gay indie club night called Lippy at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Maybe you’ll bump into someone you know there. Or maybe you’ll make exciting new contacts or friends.
– His stage time is midnight, so the normal buses and tubes will have stopped running by the time you make your way home. But drinking enough will help you deal with the long journey home alone via night buses. Yes, I know you’ve decided to never take a night bus journey by yourself again, but tonight you could make an exception.
– But then, perhaps you’ll get an offer to go on to someone else’s house for the night. Who knows?

Con: Reasons for not going.
– He’s on at midnight, and in recent weeks you’ve been going to sleep about this time. You wouldn’t get back to Highgate till at least 3am, factoring in the night buses and the waiting for the night buses.
– He’s playing again at the Brixton Windmill on Sunday. You can catch him then. He’ll definitely be done before the last tube.
– The club will be full of younger people. You will feel alone and depressed and thinking constantly to yourself “When I can go home?”, as you’ve done for too many nights out lately.
– You will be by yourself, and so will drink too much out of nervousness. You haven’t got enough money to get drunk this weekend, and besides you’ll feel ill and fragile for at least the next 24 hours. The price is far too high.
– You will have to go all the way to Vauxhall by yourself, which isn’t so bad. But the journey back will have to involve night buses. And waiting for night buses. By yourself. On a Friday night, at the mercy of London’s drunken bully population.

Cut to a few weeks ago, in a late-night Highgate take-away. I’m starving. And now I’m starving and frightened. Because a group of young men enter and gather around me.

“Come and look at this guy. He looks like a batty boy.”

Here we go again.

One is sipping from a large polystyrene cup. He asks me why I’m wearing make-up (and I wish I could fire back, “Are you quoting the thugs in that scene in The Naked Civil Servant? Is this a 1930s tribute attack?”).

“Do you f— men?. Are you a batty boy? Hey. Do you f— men?”

I grin sheepishly at my shoes, thinking no response is the best response.

And then he throws his drink fully in my face.

I can’t NOT respond to this. Fight or flight? Well, I’m me. So I get up and leave, without collecting my food.
Then as I walk past them, the drink-thrower touches my shoulder and says “We’re cool, mate, yeah? We’re cool?”

Is this his apology? Is he in conflict with his own thuggery? Is he having his own interior dialogue? “I had to do something. I can’t let a man who looks like that remain in my field of vision without doing something. And now I wish I hadn’t.”

To be fair, it’s just the one man out of the group that’s confronted me. His friends aren’t bothered after the initial curiosity. In fact, one of them sucks his teeth in disapproval when my interrogator throws the drink. A possible translation: “Ooh, that was unnecessary, Dave / Steve / Gary / Marmaduke. Let the funny-looking man be.”

I walk away, upset and angry. I think “That’s the last time. That’s the last night out by myself. Ever. ”

I feel I’ve had this too many times before for one life, and at the age of 35 I don’t have the stamina to take it any more. I’m already sworn off lone nightbus rides, taking taxis or nothing. Now I’m really thinking of putting the kibosh on going out in the evening by myself at all. At least, on a Friday or Saturday night. I’m just exhausted with having to be on my guard against my fellow man all the time. Going out shouldn’t mean having to deal.

I recount this to Ms A. She says I’m overreacting. That it’s a terrible shame if I completely curtail my London nightlife purely out of fear of attacks like this. That it’s like not crossing the road just because you can get run over.

Some rather more tongue-in-cheek comments from friends, defusing my whining with a certain gallows humour:

“Well, you do ask for it, frankly.”
“I’m just surprised you’re not actually attacked on a more regular basis.”
“Well, take-aways are bad for you.”
“You love it really. Lads expelling their liquids in your face in the middle of the night…”

It’s fair to say such acquaintances are having none of any drama-queen histrionics. So the diary gets them instead.

Besides, I urgently need to have my hair cut and re-bleached. That’s the main reason for not going out tonight, I tell myself. The No voice wins.