Displaced in Mullingar:They might not flirt with foreign women, but Westmeath men sure walk tall, writes Michael Harding.

I was in the vegetable aisle of SuperValu, when a woman passed with her baby and trolley. She spoke my name. I turned and saw a face I had not seen in years.

For a split second I wanted to kiss her there among the cabbages, but, as someone said, passion in middle age is an act of nostalgia, so we conducted the usual exchange of mobile numbers, and moved on; she to the fruit juices and I to the frozen fish. We came embarrassingly close again in the skin-care section, beside the moisturisers, and she said wistfully that SuperValu was a far cry from Susi Street.

Susi Street was a late-night club in Dublin. A dark cellar of vanity, where minor celebrities often skulked in the corner and lusted after the unreachable. That was a long time ago. When we all lived in the dark.

I once spent a summer in Subiaco, a town in Italy about the size of Mullingar; a society where the afternoon siesta was strictly observed, until about 4pm. Then, the parents would parade along the streets: fathers in cream patent-leather shoes, with shoulder bags and Eau de Cologne; mothers flushed from marital bliss and a good siesta; girls on the stonewalls around the cathedral, swinging their legs, and slapping each other's bare arms with the affectation of experienced women.

The centrepiece to the promenade was the motorcade of boys on beautiful bikes. With white starched shirts, blue jeans and sunglasses, they curled around the cobbled streets. It was a cocky display, but as graceful as a team of stallions at full gallop, and as irresistible as a Verdi opera. It was a style that bore no comparison to the gawky shame of my own lukewarm Irish adolescence.

Things have changed in Ireland. In Mullingar, the Midland's lesbian and gay scene swings with happy conviviality in designated venues, and musically the torch has been passed from Joe Dolan to The Blizzards. Country music is now more rock and folksy, and there's an extraordinary amount of heroic emotion coming through the understated lyrics.

Boys too have changed. They come to the gym and lift weights with strong muscular bodies, they wear cute woolly hats like rap artists, they open doors for older people, and phone their mothers on Sundays. Which is all nice. And lukewarm. But nowadays boys are more than just nice. They are heroic.They have tattoos on their powerful muscles, and they move best by night, watching and protecting each other.

As security men for clubby pubs and late-night bars, they get a chance to shine in black tuxedos or anoraks, their ears rigged with flashy devices. They're proud to protect; to be both man and boy in the one moment. To enjoy the admiration of the girls who stand smoking in the porches.

Others drink in bars such as The Yukon, and listen to The Blizzards, or Paddy Slattery, a 28-year-old singer from Tullamore, who writes lyrics that carry dark and sullen emotions, and who sings with a forlorn beauty that reminds me of James Taylor. One of his best songs is about young male suicide, no less a tragedy than the body count from car crashes.

But no matter how many get killed each weekend, by falling asleep at the wheel, or holding the pedal just a split second too long on the floor, boys still love cruising on the uneasy highways. Reviled because they are reckless, and knowing that they must be outlaws before they can become lovers, they drive on, singing, and hoping that someone will listen.

A woman from Budapest told me recently that she was always uneasy in Ireland because Irish men didn't flirt. "With Irish men," she said, "I feel somehow neglected."

The boys in Mullingar don't neglect women, although the courtship often displays the heroic sincerity of cowboys, and is occasionally deadly destructive. Young men illustrate that evolution is a divine comedy. Boys are nature's most beautiful flaw. The best destruct creatively, and the worst live boring lives and mistake irony for art. (Long live James Dean, who will never die, because he never grew old.)

The writer Jorge Luis Borges sometimes went to American westerns in the cinema. His eyesight was poor, so he heard more than he saw. This brought him to realise that the American cowboy had kept mythic language alive in the 20th century.

He would have loved the gigs in Mullingar.