Like most establishments of the sort, which are quick to open, quick to close and quick to be forgotten, La Cachette didn’t look like much: black walls on which you could ­barely make out some pseudo-erotic posters so crude and poorly executed they wouldn’t be a turn-on for a guy who hadn’t had it off for years, lighting that aimed at discretion but achieved near-invisibility, scanty furnishings, and staff that seemed a little lost. The music, too loud for my liking but well-chosen, came from an excellent brand-new sound ­system that must have cost a fortune, that would survive only as long as this place was à la mode. The lack of ­personality was painfully obvious but it had one ­tremendous advantage: it wasn’t hot and it wasn’t freezing cold.

So I ordered a beer from a passing youth in a cunningly revealing get-up, then took a seat at the bar that gave me a good view of the huge rectangular room that must have served until recently as a rehearsal hall or a dry goods ­warehouse.

Two things struck me right away: the absence of queens and the presence of a number of young girls who seemed to be enjoying themselves. Both sights pleased me. Queens can be the death of a pleasant place and I’ve always been in favour of gay bars that accept women. Ghettos scare me: I prefer mixtures, even the most heterodox, to wall-to-wall homogeneous crowds that shun diversity and reek of ­exclusivity.

I’d been warned that La Cachette was a hangout for ­university students, but I didn’t know that nobody else went there . . . It didn’t take me long to realize that I was the ­oldest person in the place and I was getting sardonic little grins that seemed to say: “Came to the wrong place, eh, grandpa? You’re stuck here now . . .” And in fact I did feel pretty uncomfortable. I even caught myself looking around to see if any of my students were among the animated groups that kept staring at me. Was that the paranoia of a teacher who doesn’t want to mix his private and professional lives? Probably. But there were no familiar faces.