The Hunger (15 page)

I’m sober.

I wipe my hand across my mouth.

I look at my watch. Esurio will be here any minute.

9 p.m. on The Seventh Day

I’m in my flat on Old Compton Street with two Regulars, an Occasional and a Paid-For.

I am bored.

No amount of anal can raise my spirits.

After an hour I put a hundred and fifty on the bedside table for the Paid-For and leave the Wraps to get on with it.

As I walk down the stairs I have this thought:

—When you have changed your life, what happens next?

10:15 p.m. on The Seventh Day

I bump into Lisa, the Pilates teacher on Berwick Street. She’s in her early seventies and one of the sexiest women I know. I banged her once a few months ago. I think if I
bang her again it might raise my spirits.

—Lincoln, this is Joanna. She’s one of my Pilates students. Joanna is a petite, little Wrap with one of those pretty, picture-book faces. I imagine what that face would look like
after I fuck her. I smile at her and shake her hand with just enough pressure for her to know what I want. She smiles. Nervously. She waits for me to let her hand go. The deal is done: passive
Wraps are easily banged. I say:

—Let’s go for a drink.

Lisa replies:

—Sure. Where do you fancy?

—Well, I’m off the booze and the gear at the moment, so it’s up to you.

Lisa looks at me like I have beamed down from a distant galaxy.

—Well . . . that’s . . . great . . . great . . . Are you sure you have . . . I mean . . .

—I’ve changed my life in seven days.

She looks relieved. I don’t understand her relief but I seem familiar to her again.

—That’s OK then. Why don’t we get a coffee at my flat? We were going there anyway.

Joanna follows close behind us, her hand touching my arm when she speaks.

Lisa’s flat is littered with pictures of the Buddha and some old prints of Asians banging. It stinks of incense.

She puts on some music. I look at the CD cover: half-a-dozen Wraps dressed like angels and chanting to some pipes. I imagine banging them until I realise they bore me. I look at Joanna. She says
something about the fucking universe and waves her arms above her head in a soft, rhythmic movement. I think she really needs a good pounding to sort her head out. I’m just about to surrender
and leave when I have a thought:

I’ve never banged a Granny and a Wrap at the same time.

I have another thought:

My life can never be complete until I bang a Granny and a Wrap at the same time.

I say to Joanna:

—That’s lovely the way you move your hands above your head. Shall we all do it together?

—That’s a wonderful idea! Why don’t we do a sacred circle?

In a few minutes, we’re all hugging, touching, waving, while that ridiculous fucking music drones on in the background. This is what happens next:

I kiss Joanna.

She likes it.

Lisa freaks out.

She says: Lincoln! She’s my student. Not with her . . .

I begin taking Joanna’s clothes off.

Lisa gets up to leave.

She says: Lincoln! I’ve never done it with one of my students.

We both pull Lisa towards us.

Gently.

She looks at me.

Joanna strokes her.

Gently.

I say: Why don’t you connect to Joanna’s energy?

They begin to touch and then the first kiss.

I think: I am a fucking genius.

They strip. The Wrap is nice but Lisa is
compelling
.

She may be a Pilates teacher, but she is still a Granny in her seventies and it shows. I love the maturity in her face. The flow of her body. And the sadness she hides in her crystals and
bells.

I look at them, a Granny and a Wrap. My Spiritual Bitches.

They fuse into one body

I don’t like being left out.

I look for a way in.

Every road is blocked.

I wish I had some gear.

But I don’t have any gear and, without it, the coiled fury doesn’t spring into life.

I take a last look at them.

They are
serene
.

Their world is not mine.

I think: I want to destroy their world.

Then I think: I want to belong to their world.

I feel pain.

I wonder who the pain belongs to.

I lower my head as I leave.

Esurio opens the door for me and says: I hope you’re happy with the change, Lincoln.

Just after Midnight on The Seventh Day

I hear Esurio before I see him:

—A bit disappointing earlier, don’t you think?

—Back off!

—Oh, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m as proud of the way you have changed your life as you are. It just seems like it might have gone a bit too far too soon.

I turn to see him standing beside me, squeezing his thumb and forefinger together to illustrate his point.

—Look, I’m not drinking or using, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I may have messed up earlier but the pounding is still there. It just takes a little more to get it
going.

Steve, the barman, passes me a glass of water:

—You don’t look yourself, Lincoln. Esurio whispers in my ear:

—Everyone can see, Lincoln. Except you.

I bang my fist on the bar.

—See
what
for fuck’s sake?

—What you’re missing out on. That you’re not being the person you’re meant to be.

—And who the fuck are you to tell me anything?

—Who am I, Lincoln? After all this time, do you really have to ask?

—Yeah, I do. Who the fuck are you to mess with my life?

—I can show you who I am if you have the courage to look.

—You think I’m frightened? Of looking? At
you
?

Esurio taps his cane on the floor and draws me into his eyes. They are two dark pools, swirling, spinning, and I feel I’m sinking into them. I want to look away but I have no strength. I
am cold and helpless, like a child carried off in the night. He waves something across my face. It is too dark to see what it is. I feel nauseous.

—Not feeling well, are we?

I try to reply but I can’t move my mouth.

—Best get some air, Lincoln.

I follow him out to the back of the Townhouse. I am behind him as we walk through the bar, but all I can sense is darkness swirling around me. I am struggling for breath. When we’re
outside I feel the cold air across my face and the sound of his voice ebbs and flows like a giant wave in my head:

—Who am I, Lincoln? Who am I? Who . . .

I cover my ears but the wave gets bigger and louder until it’s crashing inside my skull and I pass out.

When I open my eyes I don’t feel awake. I hear Esurio tap his cane on the ground again as he passes his gloved hand across my face and I am deep inside the dark pools, lost, without a will
of my own.

I have never been at the back of the Townhouse before and, as the darkness breaks in patches, I notice a flight of battered-looking steps leading to a door. There are dustbins on some of them,
full of empty bottles, and rats peer at me through the weeds and half-smoked cigarettes. Esurio is sitting on a step, drinking a vintage absinthe.

—If you really want to know who I am, follow me in, Lincoln, follow me in.

I walk up the steps and open the door. Inside the smell is thick and musty. There’s a bar with some old photographs behind it and the walls are painted sickly green. There are paintings
and drawings everywhere and the till is one of those old ones with buttons and levers. A striking-looking woman in her fifties with dark hair, black gloves and smoking from a long, silver cigarette
holder comes over to me. She says:

—Hello, Cunty, are you a member?

I stare at her, unable to move my lips, pushing anger out of my eyes. I think:

—Did she just call me a cunt? She turns to Esurio:

—She looks very touchy, doesn’t she?

—Afraid so. He’s just changed his life.

—And why, Dearie, would she want to do that?

I want to tell her to stop calling me ‘she’ but I have lost the power of speech. The woman carries on talking to Esurio:

—Best get her a seat in the corner. She looks like she might faint.

Esurio pulls an old wooden chair under me, like the ones I used to sit on as a kid in school. Even through the dim light in this room, I can see into the grain of the chair, deeper than I have
ever seen into anything. After what feels like hours, Esurio taps his cane on the ground, tells me to sit down and, when I do, the woman asks:

—I forgot to ask. Is she a member? Has she got one of these?

I look up and she’s waving a crumpled, brown piece of paper in front of me with some writing on it. The letters have a life of their own. Esurio sorts them out for me:

—It says: Colony Room, 41 Dean Street, W1. Membership

Card.

The Colony Room Club. I’m in the fucking Colony Room Club. I look again at the woman and, for the first time, I know who she is: Muriel Belcher. Founder of the Colony Room Club. I remember
she is dead and then she continues:

—Tell her not to worry about membership. I know who she is. She’s famous in Soho and you know how I adore the Great and the Bad.

She touches my cheek with her gloved fingers and hands me a card. I can just about make out the words
Lifetime Member
before everything goes black and, when I can see again, there are
bright lights above the bar and the Colony Room is getting bigger. The green walls are moving away from me so fast I feel sick, until the room is so big I can’t see where it ends. I feel soft
fabrics rubbing against my hands and, when I look down I’m sitting on a throne covered in jewels and the finest furs. I turn to Esurio and, for the first time, I can speak. The words sputter
out of my mouth:

—What’s happening to me? Who
are
you?

Esurio leans over to me:

—All in good time, Lincoln.

Muriel is blowing smoke in his hair. He continues:

—I realise you have achieved so much in a short space of time. A mere seven days. But abstinence is not in your nature, Lincoln, so Muriel and I have organised a Grand Ball in memory of
your excesses.

Esurio opens his arms and gestures to the vast, empty room:

—Even this room is barely big enough to accommodate all those who come to honour your insatiable appetites. You are a strong man and I have no doubt you will end the night without a drop
of alcohol on your lips, but I have become concerned at, how shall I put it, the
seriousness
of your life in recent weeks, so tonight you will live like you have never lived before.

He pounds his cane against the wooden floor:

—Let the Grand Ball of Immortal Addicts begin!

I stare into the vast green room and as far my eye can see there are bar stools, wooden tables, ashtrays, endless bottles of wines and spirits and long, winding trails of white powder stretching
along a torn green carpet potholed with cigarette burns. ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, an old Bing Crosby song my Granddad used to listen to, is filling the room with sound and, in the
distance, the first guest arrives and walks towards us. He’s fat, wearing a dark suit and pink, spotted shirt with a black tie and red trilby. It’s George fucking Melly. He nods in my
direction and I think:

He’s dead, too, like Muriel.

He begins drinking a glass of wine. I notice the bottle he’s drinking from never seems to empty and, however many glasses he pours himself, there’s always more.

Within minutes the room is full of people smoking, drinking, snorting, shagging, and I am strangely sober. The room has stopped moving, I seem able to speak again and I can see with a clarity
and depth I have never experienced before. One after another, the guests come and bow before me. Esurio taps me on the shoulder:

—Go among them. Let them get closer to you.

I step down off the podium. The ballroom is a mass of bodies. They all drink, some snort, others shag and they are all dead. Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Laughton and countless others who lived
invisible lives on the streets of Soho. All drunk. All dead. Yet they look so
well
. Everyone is drinking bottle after bottle, taking one line after another, and it makes them stronger,
happier, healthier. I turn to Esurio:

—But these people are dead!

—Such talent for excess never dies, Lincoln. It goes on and on forever. These people can never die. They always want more. They finish ten bottles of the finest wine and they consume
another hundred; one rock of the magic white powder and they demand a mountain. They have sat in this room and lived and loved in Soho and you, Lincoln, are one of them and potentially the greatest
of them all.

I look to my left and see an impish man surrounded by paints and canvasses. His face has a random, ruddy tint to it, as if he has applied rouge in a haphazard way. He is clearly drunk and often
stoops to drink from a bottle of Bollinger on the ground next to his easel. His concentration is so intense he makes me feel that if he doesn’t finish what he’s doing, the whole world
might collapse around him. When he’s done, he gets up. He can barely stand but somehow he makes his way towards me, his easel floating alongside him. When he gets to the podium he turns the
easel around so I can see what he has been painting. I gasp. It’s the ‘Screaming Pope’ but, instead of Innocent X, he has painted
me
sitting on the papal throne. Esurio
smiles down at him:

—Thank you, Francis. Lincoln will be grateful beyond measure.

—My pleasure, Master. To seduce is everything.

I turn to Esurio. I do not understand:

—Why does he call you Master?

—Because my name is Esurio and we are many.

I haven’t a fucking clue what he’s on about. Esurio senses my confusion:

—To make it simple for you, Lincoln, where you find pain, there you will find me; where you see a man in the gutter, I am with him. Even the greatest artists and the purest minds know me.
I am in every glass and every bottle, I dance on the point of every needle and skip on every line. I am everywhere there is Chaos. That, Lincoln, is who I am, who I have always been, and who I
always will be.