A relationship? In this economy? Flowers are far too expensive (€2.75 at Tesco), and it’s too cold to share your favourite hoodie. It’s much more affordable, self-serving, and quick to rid ourselves of long-term, loving intimacy with a moment in the corner of a club you may regret for weeks onward. Oh, what our grandmothers would think of us now. (“Back in my day we had a faucet and a photo”)
To find a club in Dublin specifically for oh-so-casual reasons is a challenge. Casual sex is more than entering the basement of any club – it’s an art, a manoeuver only few can pull off.
Enter Dicey’s. The molding wood from the open-air ceiling rain supersedes its neighbor, D Two’s squalid corner sofas. The wooden pillars provide a great splintered support to be aggressively pushed up against by a keeling drunk. Want to kiss on a floor littered with toilet paper and spilled Orchard Thieves? This is your place.
It’s the least romantic – imagine a proposal under those Georgian awnings and neon glass walls. You can’t. Adjust your eyesight to a cesspool of White Fox mini skirts and grey track tops – you’re sure to find a match in this lucky selection. To ease into such a rite of passage, grab a €2 shot. This makes the wood against your back feel slightly softer – and their breath taste just slightly better.
Follow the yellow brick road (the trail of broken Guinness glasses) to Coppers down Harcourt Street. Now this is a step up from Diceys – the demographics tend to be slightly older (for those who enjoy a beard with flecks of Guinness froth mixed in their frenching). The LED lighting in the smoke area, which washes one’s face with red, and the BRAT remixes work a seductive magic on the college brain.
If you find being sober and in daylight a more enjoyable endeavor, perhaps move to the Hamilton (the “glory hole” toilet). Worried about the acoustics in the gentlemen’s bathroom? Most bathrooms on campus will suffice. Try the third cubicle to the right in the Arts Block ground-level bathroom in your ten-minute breaks between tutorials. If it’s too crowded (and you don’t enjoy that), try the Atrium’s second-floor bathrooms. If you can survive any of these in a sober capacity, under fluorescent lights and on top of open toilets, kudos.
There’s always the risk of being caught at school, by those you know. There’s also the far more inordinate threat of finding the experience enjoyable and wanting to do the same thing again, with the same person. It’s advised to avoid eye contact while pushed against the toilet paper dispenser – best for evading connection.
If that doesn’t fulfill your voyeuristic needs, there are always public parks. Look both ways before laying down the picnic towel in Howth. The trees are quite sturdy near St. Mary’s church, although your arms may be left with more splinters than Dicey’s. This might transgress into intimate territory – best if you don’t speak before, during, or after. You wouldn’t want feelings to get involved.
But if you’re in the corner of Dicey’s, Coppers, or even on a toilet in the Hamilton, and there’s a passive voice in your mind that whispers that you might want more than a drunken kiss, or an unenthusiastic grope, maybe give it a little listen. Maybe if that voice is still there when stepping on the Luas from Harcourt, or when you fall asleep that night, when you walk by a flower shop, or see a pair of hands holding, perhaps it might warrant an ear. Because God knows having your hair matted on the velvet couches of D Two feels fantastic for 26 seconds, but maybe the extent of connection reaches beyond the Georgian arches of the Dicey’s ceiling.
