The Hunger Read online

  —Enough? You’re too fucking much.

  —I’ll take that as a compliment. I know that artists have a long history of abusing their nervous systems in the service of creativity, but I fear that your impulse is rather different. You just want a break.

  —Yeah, I do. I want seven days of doing something different, when I don’t wake up sweating, full of anxiety, waiting for my heart to explode.

  —A break, Lincoln, can extend from days into weeks and months, perhaps even years. When you’re on a roll it’s always best to keep going. Breaks mess up an established routine and can, in tragic circumstances, alter it permanently and you wouldn’t want to stop drinking and using, would you?

  —Not permanently, but maybe for a week.

  —And what reason do you have to stop?

  I look at him. He smiles. We both know I don’t have an answer.

  Apart from the magic seven days, all I remember about the book was the title of the first chapter: Who Are You Really? I haven’t a fucking clue who I am, what I’m doing or where I’m going, so my job for the First Day is to fill in at least some of those blanks. Here’s the result of my best efforts:

  I Really Am:

  A Cunt

  An Alcoholic

  A Coke Freak

  A Pounder of Wraps and Grannies

  A Great Salesman

  A Ball of Muscle and Anger

  A Father

  A Son

  An Artist

  When he sees the list, Esurio can’t help himself:

  —You see, Lincoln, where does honesty get you?

  —At least it gets me a list.

  —So choose one, then. My choice would be the first item on the list. Absolutely you in one little word.

  I want to be a Father or a Son but I lack courage, so I go with the next best thing:

  —And mine is the last and that’s what I’m going with.

  When I get to the flat I prop the canvas on the dressing table and begin painting. I feel sick and I need a drink. Every stroke of my brush is an effort until, one slow movement at a time, I disappear into what I’m doing. The twisting in my stomach eases and I become the rhythm of my brush on the canvas.

  I am a child again. I feel breathing behind my left shoulder. I turn and my Granddad Bob is watching me:

  —Hold it this way, Lincoln . . . That’s it . . . Picture what you want to do and let it happen . . . There’s no right or wrong . . . Just enjoy doing it . . .

  I can feel his hand holding mine as it moves.

  There were paintings on the wall of our council house when I was growing up; all of them given to us by my Granddad. He was an engineer; a short, stocky man who worked in an artillery factory during the war, and he was as hard as the shell cases he made. He was also skilled at re-engineering the human body. Someone threw a dart in his head once and before he could say One-Hundred-and-Eighteeeee, the guy who threw it had his nose moved to the side of his face, like a Picasso. The rules were simple: you cross Granddad Bob, you pay a price. One of his favourite sayings was:

  —They all pay. One way or another they all pay in the end.

  He developed a variation of that saying for me:

  —It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a brothel with a prostitute or a church getting married, you always pay for it one way or another.

  Bob was one of those men who surprised you. Just when you thought you knew ‘his type’, you found something out which made you question whether he really was ‘his type’ at all. As well as keeping the long-standing Townley tradition, passed down the male line, of throwing a killer right hook, he was a talented artist. He didn’t just give us the paintings on our wall. He painted them and he kept painting until he began to lose his mind, and that’s when he forgot much more than how to paint. He forgot who he was. Where he lived. Everything.

  When the Alzheimer’s got bad he could no longer live on his own. He had nowhere to go, so I moved him into my flat in London. His memory came and went in waves. One day I came home and he was sat in the garden with a sketchpad and some pencils.

  —What are you drawing?

  —A lake and some trees.

  —Yeah, I can see it. It’s beautiful.

  It was just a random series of lines and colours. He was no longer able to make sense of the sensations that bounced around his brain. Perhaps that’s what it means to forget. Everything becomes a whirl of words and colours without any meaning. And there are many ways to forget. Alzheimer’s is only one. Drinking and using is another, and the outcome is always the same. You get lost in a Fury of Sensation. You dance in the Chaos until it overwhelms you. Then you cry. Then nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I cooked him breakfast, came home at lunchtime to check on him, and spent all my evenings with him until, one afternoon, I came home and found him in the garden. There was a smell of gas. He had turned the cooker on and gone out to enjoy the afternoon sun. I hadn’t a clue what to do except to give him more of myself, and we persevered together for another few weeks. I came home more often during the day and took days off to be with him. Then he left the gas on a second and a third time. I clung on without hope until whatever it was holding us together snapped and I told him:

  —Granddad, you’re going to a lovely home a short distance away where there’s some cracking-looking nurses, so if you play your cards right, you never know.

  Nothing. Not even a smile. Then:

  —Had some artist mates come round yesterday. Salvador Dalí was one of them. We sat for hours painting the garden fence. Don’t know who the rest of them were. Think one of them was bald. Not sure what happened to the paintings after they left. Have you seen them? Might be worth some money.

  I visited him most days in the home. It was a decent place but he was out of context and he was dead within a month. The last time I saw him, I thought he didn’t recognise me, until he pulled his head out of whatever mincer it was in and said:

  —Never forget who you are.

  But that’s exactly what I do. I forget who I am. People pay to watch me sniff and snort and shag until I pass out before their eyes and I become what they see. I play a part and I’ve played it so well, I am it. I’m a freak show, a circus act that makes the admission fee worth paying. You want a high-wire act, that’s me. A clown? That’s me, too. The audience, on the other hand, always watches from a safe distance, immunised against what they see. If the wire-walker falls, they gasp and pretend to cover their eyes, but they will be looking, waiting, hoping, because they paid the admission fee to see someone fall. When they tell and re-tell the story of that fall, they will exaggerate it each time, because they become more in the telling. First:

  —It was awful.

  Then:

  —I couldn’t look. All the broken bones and screams.

  Then:

  —It was the worst thing imaginable, to watch a man fall and break like glass on the ground. There was blood everywhere.

  So if I tell my audience I drink a gallon of whisky every morning before having senseless sex with a thousand Wraps and a smattering of Grannies, they will say:

  —That’s Lincoln!

  But if I tell them I am an Artist and I’ve painted over a hundred canvasses they will say:

  —That’s not Lincoln!

  And although I could take them to see every one of those paintings, they are right. That’s not Lincoln because Lincoln forgets. He forgets who he is. He forgets to be kind. He forgets to love. He forgets to create. He forgets everything that matters because he has become a spectacle, and his act is to destroy anything and anyone who stands between him and his Hunger.

  As I finish the painting, Esurio walks in. He looks at the canvas.

  —Ah, A Stag at Sharkey’s. A fine painting and a very fine copy.

  —Thank you.

  —It’s also reassuring to see that you are connecting with an underworld, Lincoln. I was fearful I might find you copying Monet’s Women in the Garden but to see fists and fighting and dimly lit bas
ements makes my heart sing.

  —It’s not the fighting. You know that, don’t you? It’s not the fighting.

  —What do you mean ‘it’s not the fighting’?

  —The fighting isn’t why I like it. It’s the people-watching, waiting for one of the fighters to get hurt. Really hurt. Even if they lose their bet, the hurt makes it all worthwhile. They make me sick. You make me sick.

  —I see we’ve been ruminating again. Does you no good, Lincoln. Here . . .

  Esurio passes me a glass and pours some red wine into it.

  —A very fine vintage. Cheers!

  I dare not move my hand. I need this drink. I need it now. I look up at the painting. There is nothing there. The canvas, the paints, the brushes, they’re all gone. In their place, Esurio is leering at me:

  —Feed me, Lincoln, feed me.

  I squeeze the glass so hard I think it will shatter. Again:

  —You must feed me, Lincoln, you must!

  —Fuck you!

  And that is my battle cry. It is not a cry of attack or victory. It is a cry of resignation. The First Day is for Art and what kind of artist would I be if I was a sober one? I raise the glass to my lips and drink.

  —Drink, Lincoln, drink. This is your true self. Accept it, surrender, and take all the pleasure it wants to give you.

  He pours me another. And another. He keeps pouring but however many glasses I have, the bottle never seems to empty. I say:

  —What sort of bottle is that?

  —A special one. I keep it for occasions such as this. Enjoy!

  He hands me the bottle. I take it with me when I leave the flat and it stays with me until I’m too drunk to remember where I’ve left it. I show it to the boys in The Office. They are impressed until they forget about it and say:

  —We were worried about you. We hadn’t seen you all day. We thought you’d forgotten about us.

  —Well, I’m here now and let’s get the needle in red!

  They cheer. Red means turbo and I go into turbo like no one else. I am, after all, a consummate performer. There comes a point where red turns to black but I do not know when that happens. Black doesn’t mean anything cools or slows. It’s the point when I pass out, when something turns to nothing, when forgetfulness takes over and the spectacle consumes me.

  The Second Day

  When I wake up, A Stag at Sharkey’s is torn to pieces. Bits of bodies are strewn across the room. Paints and brushes litter the floor. There is a Wrap in my bed. I look again. Two Wraps. Coke and booze are everywhere. I don’t know whether I created this mess or just walked into it. I grab a quick shower and go for a run. As I pound the streets, leaving Soho in the direction of Knightsbridge, some things are as they always are:

  • My head hurts

  • My chest hurts

  • I am angry

  • I need a drink

  • I am killing myself

  One thing is different. It is a New Thought. Here it is:

  Perhaps I should try Abstinence for the next six days. Just to see where it takes me.

  I have no idea where this New Thought comes from because I can’t think of a single reason why I should abstain from anything. I ask myself a question: If I stop drinking and using, who will I really be? I can barely make sense of the question and any attempt at an answer would be ridiculous. But the New Thought is there and it is Real.

  Esurio is nowhere to be seen. I know he’ll be unhappy at this change in the way I’m thinking, and he won’t be happy until my head is as empty of good ideas as it usually is.

  When I get back to the flat, Maynard calls and reminds me we’re meeting for lunch. I had forgotten everything about it and, besides, we never make appointments. I’m confused so I ask him:

  —Anything in particular?

  —Just carrying on from last night.

  I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about. He reads my hesitation.

  —Don’t worry, I didn’t expect you to remember.

  —Thank fuck for that.

  We meet at The Office. Almost everything is the same as it always is. The wine, the food, the bar. Almost everything. After the usual recap of yesterday’s madness, the normal frantic anticipation of what might happen today is gone. Maynard looks surprisingly dapper in a blue suit. It’s not usual for me to see beyond the gaunt face and the sweat. But today I do. I can’t think what it is about him other than he seems like the man he might have been. Our conversation is drifting into familiar dead-ends when he breaks the flow:

  —It’s what you said last night, Linc. It stuck with me.

  —C’mon, man, I have no idea what I said last night. I can’t even remember what I did last night.

  —OK, fair enough. You kept on saying, ‘It’s over, it’s over, it’s over . . .’

  This is where the Big Story begins. I think the Geek with Glasses said somewhere in the book that Big Stories were a good way of learning. Maynard begins his Big Story placing two fingers parallel to each other on the table.

  —Think of these fingers like lines and, when they’re like this, however far they stretch into the future they will always be the same distance apart, so nothing really changes. But now imagine I move the left finger just one millimetre to the left. You probably can’t even see the difference, but as the lines stretch on and on, a millimetre becomes a centimetre, then a metre, than a kilometre, until a distance opens up between the two lines that’s so big you can’t even measure it. That’s what a small, insignificant change can do. Make it now and your whole life will change because of it.

  I have six days left to change my life, so I think the Big Story is a good one, although I don’t know what to do with it. Maynard can see this so he hands me a crumpled bit of paper with the address of a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous in Soho. I am disappointed. He reads my expression like a book:

  —I thought you might think that. Not enough for you is it, Linc?

  —I suppose not.

  —Sorry to disappoint; it’s all I have to give. Just give it a go.

  —Thanks, Maynard. You’re better than all of them.

  —No I’m not. I’m one of them and so are you.

  Esurio is furious:

  —So, Lincoln, you listen to your mate who’s some American screenwriter whose best years were never that great and he passes you a box of the toughest tissues, tells you a flimsy fairy tale about a couple of parallel lines and you cry like a baby and decide to quit on me. I thought you were more of a man than that. If I’d have known this side of you, I’d have booked you tickets to see The Sound of Music so you could get it out of your system without any real damage being done.

  —I haven’t quit on you. I never quit. I’m just going to one meeting tonight at seven and you can say what you like, but I owe that to Maynard.

  —You owe him nothing, Lincoln, nothing.

  —OK, then I owe him nothing but I owe it to myself. I said seven days and I’m doing seven days. Esurio grabs me by the shoulder. I go to grab his throat but before I can get to him he’s already a few yards behind me.

  —Don’t think you can touch me, Lincoln. You can talk all you want about owing and changing but there’s one thing you and I know and that is we’re joined at the hip like Siamese twins, and there’s no getting away from that. Not now. Not ever. So go to your meeting but remember that every path you take leads straight back to me.

  The Third Day

  I haven’t had a drink. No coke either. I think:

  —This is easy. I’m probably one of those guys who doesn’t really need to go to AA meetings.

  Esurio says:

  —I don’t think you need to go either, so why bother? When I walk into the room there are maybe a couple of dozen people sitting in a rough semi-circle. I smile at a few of them. They smile back. I wonder what I’m doing here. I’m embarrassed. I want to be in The Office. I decide I’m not going to say anything in the meeting. I take the people in. Most of them are men. Average age, over forty. There are leafl
ets and books on a table in the corner. On my way in I pick up a copy of The Big Book and I bury my head in the Twelve Steps. I convince myself I’m learning. The truth is I’m hiding. My stomach begins twisting. I clench my teeth. I want to hurt someone. Then a man in his sixties starts the meeting by saying something about a ‘fellowship’ and he reads a prayer. I sit and listen and think about The Office until a young man says:

  —Hi, I’m Jason and I’m an alcoholic.

  The group responds:

  —Hi Jason.

  He goes on:

  —I want to thank everyone here for helping me on the road to recovery. When I first came I found the Steps hard, almost impossible. I was ashamed of what I had done to those closest to me and frightened because I didn’t believe in a Higher Power or God or anything like that; there was nothing or no one to restore me to sanity. Bill, my sponsor, said, ‘Just think of it as something that’s more important than you. A parent, a child, a book you’re writing, nature, anything.’ I did and I dedicated it to my son. I hadn’t seen him for four years because my ex-wife thought I was a danger to him and blocked access. Well, he’s four and a half now and this week I saw him for the first time since he was a baby.

  Some of the group applaud. Others wipe away a tear. A few seem unmoved. And so it goes on. People stand and talk; it’s called ‘sharing’, and they talk about acceptance and humility and powerlessness and God.

  I feel sick.

  I want a drink.

  I don’t believe in God.

  I wonder if going to the meeting was such a good idea.

  I think about my son, Lewis. He’s eighteen now.

  I last saw him a month ago. We met at seven o’clock in the Townhouse. I was sober. When I know Lewis is coming to see me I stay as clean as I can. We hugged each other as we always do and I felt his anger. And his love. We sat in silence opposite each other at a table near the bar. Then he said:

  —You know I can see it, don’t you?

  —What?

  —What you’re doing to yourself.

  I didn’t respond, and we spent the next hour talking about this and that as shame washed over me in waves. As soon as he left I drank a bottle of Grand Cru and put as much coke up my nose as my nostrils could take. The worst feeling a man can have is to feel less than his son, to be a father in name only. It’s as if someone has given me a label and said, ‘That’s who you are now, a father’, but however much I read the label I can’t connect it to the person I feel I am. It’s not that I feel I don’t deserve my son’s love. It’s deeper than that. I don’t even deserve to give love, let alone receive it. If ‘father’ is a feeling then how can I be a father, when I’m a screaming, helpless, terrified child, too busy trying to scrape my own Dad’s dead body off the ground at a caravan park to grow up and be a father in my own right? I have never been fully formed; it’s like I got stuck in that moment and all I have ever done is bang my head against the bars of that cage, waiting for them to break from the pressure, but they never do.