“In 1709, the London journalist Ned Ward published an account of a group he called ‘the Mollies Club.’ Visible through the homophobic bile (he describes the members as a ‘Gang of Sodomitical Wretches’) is the clear image of a social club that sounds, most of all, like a really good time. Every evening of the week, Ward wrote, at a pub he would not mention by name, a group of men came together to gossip and tell stories, probably laughing like drains as they did so, and occasionally succumbing to ‘the Delights of the Bottle.'”