While LGBTQ+ rights have progressed significantly in recent decades, there are times in life where we still feel unequal to our heterosexual counterparts. This is something Darragh McGirr has noticed when travelling in a same-sex couple, and here, he recounts some of his experiences.

In 2021, on check out from our Killarney Covid-time staycation hotel, my boyfriend at the time and I were asked about our experience staying there. It was a moment of internal conflict on whether to be honest. Being Irish, and a millennial, complaining doesn’t come naturally. But something inside said, “Go on! You don’t just have to accept this anymore.”

Post-marriage equality, post-it not being uncommon to see two men or two women in love hold hands on the street (in Dublin, at the very least), post-hotel wedding venue advertising in the likes of GCN with happy same-sex couples pictured in equal matrimonial bliss to their opposite sex counterparts, I felt emboldened to go beyond the lifelong default of ‘keep the head down, avoid appearing difficult and moany, and suppress the feelings to avoid seeming self-piteous’.

“The hotel is beautiful, everyone has been so lovely, but we have had an issue with one of your staff, or rather, he seems to have had an issue with us,” I said after that moment of unexpected mental “fuck it”.

It started relatively innocuously on our first afternoon at the hotel, asking a tall man strolling across the lobby in dapper hotel uniform turned out perfectly for a menu for the bar food. “The bar is not open,” was the abrupt response, looking us up and down. That much was obvious, given the darkened, empty bar clear to see through closed glass doors. “That’s ok, we know that. We’re just interested in the menu for our dinner tonight.”

“No. It’s not open,” was the increasingly irritated response.

This was our first time travelling as a couple that year, in the second Covid summer, and we dropped it, a little taken aback but conscious of my own experience in hospitality of bad days and tetchy moments. We went about our business, enjoying all that Killarney has to offer.

The following night, returning to the hotel after a great day out and about, we met our immaculately dressed friend again.

We wanted to get a quick drink in the bar before heading up to bed. “The bar is closed!” was the same line, but in an even more aggressive tone, while he stood in the doorway to the heaving bar full of chat, laughter and clinking glasses.

We were, apparently, too late to join the other guests enjoying the hotel facilities. I pleaded our case, never one to give up easily on a last drink of the evening.

“You’re not getting in!” was the curt and agitated response – the man’s shoulders increasingly hunched towards his ears, and his body tense.

He left, and seeing the crowd of fellow guests still ordering pints, wine and shorts at the bar, we strolled defiantly in.

Once settled, we took our two beautifully poured pints of Guinness to a small, high table and chatted about the day we had just had, and excitedly about our plans for the next one.

The worker reappeared, and this is when he got really irate, shouting at us, telling us that the bar had been closed, we were not to be there and to get out. His demeanour was so aggressive and his voice so loud that the guests at the other tables fell quiet, and a couple of people came to ask him to stop shouting at us. We sat where we were, but with faces reddening in embarrassment and sinking ever smaller in ourselves. At the insistence of the other guests, the man walked away, leaving us to our slightly spoiled pints. They just don’t taste the same with a side of mortification.

The other guests checked in with us, and, assuring them we were OK, we left half our pints behind and headed up to our room.

The following day, we had another run-in with our ‘friend’ over something equally trivial, forming another part of the picture that this was personal.

I didn’t want to think that this was rooted in homophobia, but the more consistently aggressive interactions we had with him and the more unaggressive interactions we witnessed him have with our straight fellow guests, the more unavoidable that conclusion was.

There were no slurs, no specific verbal acknowledgement of our being a couple travelling on a romantic long weekend away, but after 30 years of hyper vigilance of reactions to who you are and how you carry yourself, you have a sense of when it’s your sexuality that is distasteful to others.

And so, when checking out, after making it very clear how lovely and helpful every other member of the hotel team had been, I recounted our experience with this one member of staff. I’m not even sure what outcome I expected, if any, but I knew I didn’t want to simply let it go without being acknowledged.

The lady on reception apologised and asked for more information on which staff member this had been.

I know from experience that hospitality is stressful at the best of times, and this was Covid, so all the more so. New rules, new guidance, threats of new waves or lockdown.

But I was also aware of the assumed new rules guiding society. That casual homophobia is no longer required to be quietly accepted. That queer people can be as openly ourselves as we wish, supposedly without the small minded, hateful reactions of strangers. This gentleman didn’t seem to have been made aware.

But it’s not an uncommon experience. On the more minor side of the scale, on check in when travelling to a different Irish hotel as a couple the previous year, we had a raised eyebrow and a clarification made that “the room only has one double bed, yes?”

“Yes” is the slightly tense, awkward response, confirming that yes, we are comfortable to share a bed as a couple, even if you are not comfortable with that.

It can be a tricky experience travelling as a gay couple, putting your usually private life on show to strangers at a desk. Waiting for them to breeze past it in full acceptance or question and confirm, just to be sure.

As homophobia goes, it’s on the very minor end of the spectrum. They are tiny interactions, almost insignificant, but they touch those dark parts of us installed through many years of receiving messages that queer relationships are less, abnormal or somehow wrong. And suddenly they’re presented in moments with someone we don’t know, standing behind a desk in their space, awaiting acceptance or judgment.

The idea of ‘gay-friendly’ hotels, Mr. BNB highlighting them for us as spaces where we should be free from raised eyebrows or raised voices, would implicitly suggest gay-unfriendly hotels as their natural counterparts. I know the vast majority are not gay-unfriendly, but on a romantic trip for two, especially paying the extortionate Irish hotel rates, it’s a pity that there’s this chance. The chance of even just a moment of a lovely trip sullied by a stranger’s personal bullsh*t.

In a new location, whether in Ireland or abroad, each environment requires a brief scan and assessment. Boat rides, restaurants, big house tours, pubs. Travelling always demands a quick look around to determine whether, for the sake of others, we’re a couple or we’re ‘friends’.

This is most often unconscious. A mental process honed over years of practice, as a couple or as an individual. A rating on the scale of Irish all-boys secondary school to hard-core gay club, how relaxed in my queerness can I be here? Are we good to hold hands? Are we going to cuddle with a head on a shoulder in this pub booth, listening to the trad like the straight middle-aged couple in the booth next to us? Do we take cute selfies, clearly identifiable as a couple, or butch it up with a little distance between our bodies to ensure we’re safe from disapproving glares or outright homophobic comments?

Of course, in the battle for queer rights and acceptance, and in the comparatively queer-accepting paradise of Ireland when the act of sharing a bed can get you imprisoned elsewhere, this is all very minor.

The Killarney incident happened almost four years ago, but it has stayed with me. A small tarnish on a beautiful, fun and romantic trip away. A tarnish added to the scuffs of a life of raised eyebrows, raised voices and raised awareness of surroundings, assessing safety and acceptability.

But in a time when homophobia and transphobia are becoming more normalised again internationally, I have no intention of going back into a hotel closet, sitting on top of the little safe, beside the flimsy mini ironing board. And I have no intention of going back to silent acceptance – in hotel lobbies or anywhere else.

I’m proud to be queer and will bring that queerness unapologetically with me on my travels. And I’ll be crossing the threshold of the bar for a drink at the end of the day – “closed” while still selling pints or not. And I’ll let them know on checkout if something happened.

Because 11 years on from Panti Bliss’ globally viral Noble Call from The Abbey stage, I can still find myself “checking myself”.  So one hotel staff member at a time, I’ll continue to say “fuck it” and speak up. We deserve a carefree holiday just as much as anyone else.