The Hunger Read online

  I shower and go for a run. About seven miles from Soho, up to the Heath and back.

  I sprint all the way.

  I feel my heart raging in my chest.

  I outrun its anger.

  By the afternoon Maynard is almost sober. I ask:

  —So, what was all that fucking baby lotion about?

  —Sorry, Linc. When I finally found my cock it wouldn’t do anything.

  —How exactly is baby lotion going to help?

  —I think I went into the bathroom to look for some Viagra and all I could find was the pink bottle.

  —But Maynard, it’s fucking baby lotion.

  —I know, but when I saw it I was too pissed to read the label and I just thought: it’s pink, it might be a special gay concoction.

  —A special gay concoction? What the fuck?

  —Sorry.

  7 a.m. The next day

  I’m running across Hyde Park on my way from Soho to Kensington. It’s one of those misty autumn mornings when I can actually hear the birds sing. My cock hurts from the night before and there’s a pain stretching across my chest. I think I might die. I don’t care. I’m three years younger than my father when he had his heart attack. I feel close to him. The pain across my chest gets more intense. I begin sprinting. One of us will have to surrender: me or the pain in my chest. After a few moments the pain begins to ease and, by the time I reach Kensington Palace and turn back towards Soho, my heart has settled into a calmer rhythm. I win. I need a drink. Some coke. A Wrap. When I get back to my flat there are a couple of Wraps crashed out in my bed. One of them is Melanie. I’m not sure who the other one is or how she got there. I’m as certain as I can be that she wasn’t there when I left. But then I’m certain of nothing except that I need a drink and a line to steady me before I go to work. I take a shower and look in my wardrobe. It’s full of dresses and female underwear, all between size zero and size ten. I think:

  —How many girls are using your flat, Lincoln?

  I guess it must be at least half-a-dozen Regulars and Occasionals. They have ‘moved-in’ with me, which means they pick up a spare set of my keys, which I leave in the drawer behind the bar at The Office, go to work then sleep, fuck and get hammered with me. We are all prisoners of Soho, and my room has become a sanctuary for the rootless, where we build a special kind of home, one fuck, one drink, one line at a time.

  10 a.m.

  I arrive on time. I’m always on time. I hold the handles of my office door. I need two hands to stop myself from falling over. The Boss is looking at me. I’m sweating. I think I should have taken another line and perhaps a couple more vodka tonics after my run to help me stand straight. Instead I’m leaning like a fucking cripple against the glass. I check my hankie is popping neatly out of my jacket pocket and smile across at The Boss. He smiles back. I think:

  Great, he hasn’t noticed.

  He thinks:

  The flash cunt will kill himself.

  Once the meeting gets going I feel better. I am arguing with The Boss about two things:

  • The Club is not a strip club. It’s a Gentleman’s Club.

  • The videos on the big screens in The Club should not show the Wraps naked.

  This is my reasoning:

  • Big Spenders like to be referred to as Gentlemen.

  They can be the fattest, rudest cunts on the planet, but if they’re going to waste a fortune on Wraps and champagne they want to do it in a Gentleman’s Club, not a strip club. Even when their brains are back in the Stone Age, they want to take their status with them.

  • Once the Gentlemen are in The Club, they need to be separated from their money. The most efficient way to do this is to use the promise of naked pussy to get them off the floor and into the booths for ‘sit-downs’ at four hundred quid an hour. Naked Wraps on the big screens are a barrier to this. They encourage wankers to stare all night at the screens and leave happy.

  I win the first argument and lose the second. That’s the thing with The Boss. If you want to win a battle you have to fight on more than one front, because there’s no fucking way he’ll settle for a defeat on aggregate. I’m good at my job and he likes me, which means I’m allowed a draw. After the meeting, he asks me to his office. While he rummages in his drawers, I look at his face. I am fascinated by him – the self-styled ‘King of Clubs’. People take the piss. Not in Soho. Outsiders. The great and the fucking good. But he’s better than all of them. He pulls out a picture of him standing on a beach. He’s holding a piece of paper and smiling.

  —Know what that is?

  —Sorry, no.

  —It’s a notice telling me I’m skint. The day I was made bankrupt. I had nothing but the shirt on my back. Do you know how I did it?

  —Wasn’t it the clubs in America?

  —That’s how the story goes. The real reason is I thought I was invincible. Do you know how that feels?

  I stare at him. He goes on:

  —You know how that feels, Lincoln. But I wasn’t invincible and neither are you. I lost my money. Then I got up off the floor and made more than I ever lost. You carry on like this and you’ll lose your life and you can’t get your life back. I don’t know what you get up to in Soho, or who you do it with, but you won’t be doing it much longer.

  As I walk up the stairs to the ground floor of The Club, I’m crying, then I see Esurio sitting in one of the private booths. He is playing with a yo-yo. The sound of the string around the axle echoes through the empty club.

  —Not getting a bit sentimental are we, Lincoln?

  —Fuck off! Leave me alone.

  —You know I can’t do that, Lincoln. Especially when you’re sad. All that matters to me is your happiness. I want you to have as much pleasure as you can. All the pleasure in the world, that’s what I want for you, Lincoln, just like any true friend. I am a soulmate of your better nature and I want you to have more. Much more.

  He lets the yo-yo rest in the palm of his hand and squeezes it. The silence is as dense as fog.

  —The Boss is an old man, Lincoln. You’re young. Everything is there for you. Reach out and take it. Feed me, Lincoln, feed me.

  I know he’s right. Of course, The Boss wants me to sort myself out. He wants to make sure I keep bringing in the bankers and the high rollers. But I know I can do that. Whatever I put up my nose or down my throat, I know I can do it. Esurio says:

  —You’re not like other men, Lincoln. You can take more and you deserve more. Why give it up now when we’re having so much fun?

  Esurio understands me. I am different. I’m a better class of loon. I can pound for England and run a half-marathon when I’ve drunk and snorted enough to put most guys into casualty. The boys in The Office call me a Legend and I think they are good judges of character.

  As I walk out of The Club I think:

  The Boss means well. I love him but Esurio knows me. When the time is right I will stop the madness. That time is not now. I have so much more living to do.

  As I walk towards The Office I know the day is going to be extraordinary. I know it because there’s a pattern. Here’s how it goes:

  1. The feeling begins in my gut. A spinning, twisting anticipation.

  2. Once the feeling starts, I know three things: I am going to get bollocksed. I am going to get fucked. Nothing and no one can stop me.

  3. I start smiling and wiping my lips.

  4. I see images in my head: Drink. Coke. Cunt. Drink. Coke. Cunt.

  5. I look at my reflection in the windows as I walk past. Sometimes I adjust my handkerchief. Other times I clench my fist.

  6. I talk to any Wrap I fancy on the street. I always touch them. Usually on the arm or wrist before I speak. I say: I love sex and I’m fucking good at it. Or: You’re coming with me. Most of them take it because they’ve fucked me before, know someone who has fucked me, know that I am Lincoln and I fuck a lot of Wraps, or because they are fucking terrified.

  7. If I’m not fucking a Wrap by the time I get t
o The Office, I order two bottles of wine, a vodka tonic and take a line.

  8. By now I’m a rabid dog and someone should section me.

  9. I call a Wrap or one of them calls me. We meet at my flat, in a toilet somewhere in Soho, or I book a hotel for a few hours.

  10. I spend the night believing in my own immortality while expecting to die at any minute.

  3 p.m.

  I’m in the Sanderson Hotel, sitting in the open-air bar waiting for Sandra. The tinkling of water from the fountains is pissing me off. I go into the toilet and take a line. When she arrives we go to the room. I rip her clothes off and tie her to the bed. I go into the bathroom. I stare in the mirror and begin twisting my face. My head is full of Wraps – fucked harder than they have ever been fucked before. Esurio is standing in the corner drinking some fucking absinthe.

  —Let’s eat, Lincoln!

  I kick the door open, walk into the bedroom and kick a coffee table over. Some plastic flowers and a few glasses crash to the ground. I begin pounding her. I annihilate her. Women pretend they want love and sometimes they do. But even when they’ve found it, when they’re knee-deep in nappies and anti-depressants, they also want to be fucked. Hard. So fucking hard they can’t walk. Then they can go back to their husbands and love them. Really love them.

  Most of the Wraps I fuck have ‘boyfriends’. The trouble is boyfriends become husbands and husbands lose their power in a basket of dirty socks. I’m encouraged by the fact that evolution programmed women to want power and they know where to find it and when to take it. They have a nose for it. A sixth sense ripened over millennia. They know they’ll find it when they go where other women go, and when I walk the streets in Soho I am always armed with women. The more women I’m seen with, the more women want to fuck me. Women say they dream about a white wedding and a faithful husband. Honest women say they dream about a white wedding, a faithful husband and another cock to fuck them senseless when the dirty socks start bursting out of the basket.

  Esurio told me this once:

  —The hunter who brings the carcass home is the one the ladies always go for, Lincoln. No one wants to go hungry, and men who kill are loved the most.

  Sandra is screaming. The bed is bashing into the wall. Then it fucking breaks. The headboard cracks and one of the front legs snaps. She says:

  —Don’t stop, just keep going! Just keep going!

  She thinks I want sex. I don’t. I want to make a mark. I want her to remember me. Tell her friends. Think of me when she’s holding her grandchildren and mourning her lost youth. I want to leave a cock-shaped footprint in her brain, deeper, more enduring, than any memory any man will ever leave there. Then I want to leave her. And I do. I always do. I can’t stop myself. It’s nearly seven o’clock and she’s lying on the bed. I’ve untied her. I look into her eyes. I see it there: a mark. Permanent. I have nothing more to say to her. I need a drink. I need a line. We smile at each other. I leave the room, pay the bill and by the time I’ve reached Oxford Street I’ve forgotten her. For a moment I know I’m a twat. I know it with greater clarity than I’ve ever known it before. I am ridiculous. A poseur playing a part. Not even an emperor without clothes. Just a naked actor. Esurio reads my mind. He walks alongside me:

  —Ruminating again, Lincoln? Does you no good, you know, no good at all.

  —What do you fucking suggest then?

  —More, Lincoln, always more. It may be the only idea I have but I believe it to be a good one.

  —How much more can I fucking take?

  —Lincoln, you are in serious danger of disappointing me. There’s always more. You know that better than anyone.

  —I don’t like admitting this but sometimes I get scared.

  —Scared! What on earth is there to be scared of?

  —Like when I don’t know how to stop, or when that pain comes in my chest like it’s going to explode.

  —Trifles, Lincoln, mere trifles.

  —You know what happened to my Dad.

  —That’s ancient history, Lincoln.

  —They do say that early deaths can run in families.

  —They? Who on earth are they?

  —You know, experts, doctors, people like that.

  —They know nothing about you. Nothing. They can reel off statistics but about you they know nothing. You want it. You can take it. So get on and do it. Life is a cauldron of pleasure and you bubble away happily in the heat. The more intense the better. Don’t you agree?

  —Yes, but I’m scared. I—

  I look across at Esurio. He’s gone. I look up and down Oxford Street. He’s nowhere to be seen but I can still hear him. He’s in my head. Going at me. He’s fucking relentless. He never leaves me alone.

  —More, Lincoln, more. Feed me, Lincoln, feed me . . . Hunger like you’ve never known Hunger before . . .

  Then I see him outside the Archer Street Wine Bar. He smiles at me:

  —Now, let’s see how hungry you are . . .

  I want to carry on walking. Just this once. To keep walking and find somewhere, anywhere, where he can’t find me. I feel my stomach twisting, eating me from the inside out. I push open the door of the wine bar. Esurio has already lined up three vodka tonics. I drink the first one. He yelps with triumph. After each drink another one appears. It’s an endless conveyor belt of alcohol until a man standing next to me touches my drink. When I’m on it I hate anything I own being touched by some clammy fucker. I especially hate my drink being touched. In seconds I have my hands around his throat. I can feel people pulling at my arms and jumping on my back. The man’s face is going blue. He is losing consciousness. I know I am going to kill him and I want him to die. I want him to die and take me with him. Both of us. Together forever. Then I feel a thud on the side of my head and I collapse onto the floor. When I come round I’m lying outside on the street. Esurio is sitting beside me. He says:

  —Much better, Lincoln. I feel like you’re back to your old self. You see, it never pays to think too much. It’s always easy to lose yourself in this idea or that. What matters is to live. Let me do the thinking for you.

  I pick myself up off the floor and we walk into another Soho night.

  Stairlift to Heaven

  November 2009

  Maynard and I are alone in The Office. He asks:

  —What do you see in her?

  —She’s juicy and naughty.

  —But she’s in her mid-seventies.

  —I like older women.

  —But surely not that old.

  I raise my eyebrows. The conversation is over. There is no reason I can ever give him to help him understand my love for older women. Especially old women. I tire of Wraps with their ridiculous hopes and designer handbags. There are times when I’m pounding them that I believe I really want them. But the truth is I don’t. I feel lonely when I’m with them and you’re never alone with a Granny. She is with you in the way a Wrap can never be. Decades of fucking, fantasy and frustration bring her to you complete: a woman who has lived, loved and lost; who has given everything to her children; who dotes on her grandchildren and who is trapped in a bubble of resentment and regret that only age can bring. She looks enviously at the Wraps, wanting one more, just one more, reminder of what it is to be young, to be wanted. Wraps have biology and fertility on their side but I would sacrifice all the Wraps I have ever fucked for a month locked in a hotel room with a Granny over seventy. A Granny like Ella. She says she is seventy-four, but I guess she’s a few years north of seventy-five. Maynard says:

  —But why waste your time with her?

  —There’s nothing like it.

  He looks at me. The look a man might give his best friend when, after years of friendship, he discovers his friend is from another planet and they cannot understand each other. Esurio says:

  —I love your appetites, Lincoln. They’re deliciously perverse.

  When I was barely a teenager I used to read a magazine called Filthy Fifties. It had a section called ‘Vera’s
Veg Patch’ where Vera would stuff an allotment of vegetables up her arse. Carrots, cucumbers, squashes, marrows – she got them all up there. Then I went to London on a school trip. To the Natural History Museum. While the other children looked at fossils I disappeared to Soho. It took me weeks to plan my trip to a sex shop. It was a feast my young senses could barely take in. The magazines I really wanted were on shelves I struggled to reach yet, as I raised my hands in hope, the magazines dropped down gently into my arms. Occasionally I saw the ghostly outline of some black gloves with only the wrist visible or the faint outline of a bowler hat. Sometimes a whisper:

  —Enjoy it, Lincoln. You’re young and everything you will ever want is waiting for you.

  I didn’t really understand what the whisper meant or where it was coming from. When I got to the counter a man said:

  —You’re too young, son. I can’t serve you.

  Then those spooky gloves and a smell of aniseed. The man looked confused. He said:

  —OK, take them, piss off and don’t come back again. You’ll cost me my licence.

  As I walked out of the shop, I heard the voice again:

  —One day, Lincoln, one day we’ll be best friends, you and I. The bestest of friends.

  My Mum caught me wanking. All the time. She didn’t mind the wanking. She did mind the Gorgeous Grannies. She said:

  —It’s not normal.

  I didn’t care. And I don’t care what Maynard or any of the other boys say. A man who has never fucked an old woman has never lived. They say men want youth and beauty. I say:

  —That’s fucking fantastic! That leaves all the grey hair and saggy tits for me.

  10 p.m. The Townhouse. Dean Street.

  I can’t keep my eyes off her. Maynard sees me looking.

  —Quite nice, isn’t she?

  I’m puzzled.

  —I didn’t think you were into older women.