The local sexual health clinic wouldn’t be the first place I’d choose to spend a couple of hours just before Christmas, but there I was last week, waiting in the waiting room at the end of a gay sex slip-up.

I went along to give support to one of my best friends who was in a panic about his previous night’s gay fuck. He slept with a guy he’d met earlier that same night at a Christmas party. The booze flowed, they hit it off, danced ’til they dropped, back to his, and ‘forgot’ the condom.

My friend is usually so militant about safe sex, always prepared and in control. For some reason he didn’t stick to his own high standards that night – I think there was so much chemistry between him and this guy – an attraction he’s never felt – and it caught him off guard.

Cue frantic phone call to me early the next morning after he’d slunk out of this guy’s house. He needed to get tested A.S.A.P. and didn’t want to be worrying about it all over Christmas and the New Year. Would I go along with him for moral support?

Sexual health clinic waiting rooms can never be pleasant places to sit even if they had made the effort to put up some rather sad looking Christmas decorations. It was incredibly busy – the party season obviously being a busy time for STIs – and we were informed matter-of-factly by the person at the desk that a long wait lay ahead.

I’m sure making you wait hours in a drab and uncomfortable room is all part of the plan, giving you time to think about those errors of judgement when it comes to gay sex. My friend was certainly glad to have someone there, and to play the game, ‘what do you think they’ve come in about?’

In fact, people-watching is one of the few things you can do to pass the time, what with the magazines being at least five years out of date. There’s the mincy homo who strides in like he owns the place – obviously clocking up some mileage. There’s the twitchy first-timers, all on their own, reading a mag upside down and nervously looking up anytime someone walks through, as if a gun-shot’s just sounded.

You’ve got your couples; your young mums with babies; your older gay guys – or are they straight? Can’t tell. Always older men anyway, not women. Lots of students – some French, some Spanish I think… from all over. A middle-aged guy in workman’s jacket. Furtive glances – is that guy to my left checking me out? He keeps staring. Now he’s getting up and coming towards me! Oh, he just wanted some water from the machine.

The staff – mainly nurses I guess – come and go. There’s a really sexy male nurse in blue uniform – I hope my friend gets him. No, I shouldn’t be thinking like that. Hey, that woman came in way after us and she’s just been called. Oh shit, I think I know that guy that’s just walked up to the desk… please don’t turn around…

As you sit there, time stretching on forever and your arse starting to ache, it occurs to you that, gay, striaight, bi, young, old, married, single, black, white, mother, attractive, not-so… at some point we all end up at the local sexual health clinic. There’s no judgement inside and we’re all there because of choices we’ve made about sex. It might not exactly be the ideal way to achieve it, but that’s true equality, right there.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.