The Hunger (23 page)

He was wrong. There was nothing. Absolutely fuck all.

I decided to lose myself in a good book and got as far as staring blankly at the fiction shelves in Waterstones on Piccadilly before walking out empty-handed. The next day I took a trip over to
the Tate Modern to see the Gauguin exhibition. After sitting before a naked woman and a South Sea island for half an hour, I moved only when one of the curators woke me up with a gentle tap on the
shoulder. The single useful purpose the painting served was to remind me I was in a gallery where it is not appropriate to punch him in the face for touching me.

Even when I’m running or working out in the gym, my mind is empty. One foot goes out before the other and I lift weights as heavy and pointless as they have ever been. Without any
enthusiasm. I try banging the best-looking Wraps I can find and they muster a hard-on and a thimble of semen but, when I am at it, all I think of is tiling my Mum’s kitchen floor or standing
by dark pools of water counting the ripples. My last hope is the booze and the gear. Night after night I get to the ‘red zone’ as fast as I can and wait for the euphoria, the ecstasy of
drunken anticipation, to wash over me and carry me from one Technicolor adventure to the next. Nothing happens. Worse than nothing. I realise getting hammered has become a habit as dull and
relentless as a grey, February sky. I begin to panic so, one night, I say to Maynard:

—What matters to you?

—Bit early for that Linc, isn’t it?

—No, seriously, what matters to you?

—Um . . . I don’t know . . . I’d have to think about it . . .

A Terrible Thought grabs hold of me. Perhaps I have become another
Lost Man of Soho
, not even looking for a way out, just hunting for a broken compass to help me pretend, for a few
useless moments, that having a way out or not having a way out makes a difference.

The Second Stage

This happens when I know that I really don’t want to do anything. This ‘knowing’ isn’t something open to debate. It is a matter of absolute certainty,
the kind of certainty that wakes me up in the middle of the night and leaves me gasping for air. It is a necessary prelude to the second stage of my crack-up: Isolation. This is when I reach the
end of whatever ridiculous journey I am making and wait for someone to greet me only to learn there is no one there. I am totally alone. There never was anybody there. There never will be anyone
there.

When Dad died, I remember how he looked, lying on the gravelled ground of a caravan park with only a stranger beating at his chest and a spooky see-through man in a long coat and bowler hat for
company. It freaked me out when I thought about it. I used to think that what got to me was the fact that he was dead but now I am a
Lost Man of Soho
, what gets to me is that he died alone.
That we all die alone. Life after death happens to the living not the dead. It begins the moment we realise how cut off we are from other people.

My life has become a daily grind of crushing loneliness. I laugh and drink with the boys at The Office, pound the Wraps, chat to barmen and shopkeepers, without ever feeling I am
with
them. There is no bridge between my world and theirs. Perhaps there never was and, even if such a bridge once existed, the ropes have been cut. All that’s left is the rush of air past my ears
as I wait for my body to hit the ground and lie undiscovered for centuries.

There’s a homeless man who sleeps on Poland Street and begs around Soho. I see him often when I come out of The King’s Arms and he is always alone. I see him one afternoon on Dean
Street. I buy his attention with a quid and ask:

—Do you ever have any mates you knock about with? You know, just some company?

He has no answer because the question makes no sense to him. When loneliness gets into the soles of your shoes and the fabric of your shirt, ‘company’ has no meaning. Words that hint
at connection are the language of the living. He, like me, no longer speaks it. The only consolation I have is that wherever I am, Esurio is always with me. I need him and the more he bullies me
the more I need him. He is all I have left and, the closer I draw towards him, the lonelier I feel, so I draw even closer and he pulls further away, teasing me. I don’t love him. I
crave
him. I know he loves me only because I am good sport, in the way a spotty teenager loves the pet cat he can trap on a swivel chair and spin around then throw it on the floor and watch
it bump into the furniture and then do it again and again until the cat is sick and becomes epileptic and froths at the mouth and . . .

The Third Stage

After isolation comes fear.

I think it’s the Thursday after the last party and I’m leaving a tapas bar on D’Arblay Street when I don’t just feel alone. I am
aware
that I am alone. I am
shining a light down a long narrow tube and looking at myself walking around Soho. Walking from one bar to another. Talking only to myself. There is never a person on the other side of the
conversation. I speak and no one responds. When I hold my hand out, there is no one there to receive it. It is in this moment, moving like an ant in a desert, that I feel the horror of my situation
and panic sets in. My hands and face are covered in sweat and my stomach is churning like a tumble-dryer. Without anyone to act as my mirror, to reflect back evidence of life, I do not have any
proof that I exist, and fear squeezes me until I can’t breathe. Without anything to hold me together, fear breaks me apart and I scatter around the streets of Soho like litter.

Fear has many faces. It’s kind when it protects you from harm and warns you when you’re in danger; when it tells you to move away from the shadows or forces you to look away from the
smiling psychopath who offers to share your burden over a quiet drink. Fear is generous when it walks alongside you, pushing you past every gnawing thought of failure towards your greatest triumph.
But then there is a Darker Fear. This is the Fear that consumes you. The Fear that worms inside your head and eats away at you until there is nothing left.

I have known all these fears but only one remains. The Darker Fear. When fear turns dark, it is never pure blackness. If it was all black, it might be bearable in the way that death is bearable,
because it leaves you without any awareness of what has happened to you. Death is laced with
compassion
. But my Darker Fear is speckled with light, small fires of life, that let me know I am
alive and in pain without any possibility of mercy. It flickers like the sparks a bound victim sees rising from the torturer’s coals, as he lies semi-conscious, burning with pain, waiting for
the touch of molten metal on his skin.

I turn into Wardour Street and I’m shaking. I need a drink and a line but I know they will not be enough to steady my nerves. The Darker Fear has consumed me and, as I turn right towards
Dean Street, I know what has happened . . .

The Fourth Stage

. . . I have cracked up and now, perhaps some time after the event took place, I know I have lost my mind – without hope of finding it again. I imagine trawling the
gutters of Soho in search of it and finding it lodged in a drain where I snatch it and clean it up and get it working again, but it is too late for that.

I have cracked up. I
know
I have cracked up. And I have just enough knowledge to feel the pain and see the hopelessness of my situation. Esurio can’t stop gloating and hassling me.
He has changed. He is colder, less easily satisfied, always demanding more of me and he changes shape. Sometimes he is his normal self, standing in a bar or blowing on a pussy, dressed in his black
coat and bowler hat, his fingers bulging with fabulous rings made from amber and amethyst, spinning his cane on the end of his tongue, but other times he looks different, like he’s some kind
of shape-shifter.

I’m walking down Brewer Street and I can’t see him anywhere but his voice is banging away in my head:

—Feed me, Lincoln, feed me.

—What do you want from me?

—Nourishment, all the nourishment in the world.

—I don’t have anything left to give.

—Then find something to give, find it now!

We bicker all the way to The Office and when I sit down at my usual table at the back, Maynard follows in behind me. He looks like the doctor has just given him a diagnosis of terminal cancer,
so I ask him:

—Are you OK, Maynard?

He pauses and says:

—I’m fine, Linc, but I’m worried.

—About what?

—About you.

I look at him. He goes on:

—I was behind you on Brewer Street and you were talking to yourself.

—I was just hearing him in my head.

—Who?

—Esurio.

—Who the fuck is Esurio?

—You must have seen him around. I hang out with him a lot.

Maynard is staring at me like he believes I should be in a padded cell.

—I’m just worried about you, talking to yourself and making up friends and it’s not just me who thinks it . . .

—Who else?

—All of us. I told the boys I wouldn’t say anything but we all think you might be . . . losing it a bit . . .

I can hear Esurio roaring with laughter inside my head. I bang my head with my hands. Maynard shuffles away from me. The one thing worse than seeing your friend lose his mind is for him to lose
it when you’re sitting at the same table. I walk out onto Dean Street without saying anything.

It isn’t just in the way he projects his voice that Esurio has changed. He seems to love changing his shape. There was the wild dog in the Charing Cross Hotel but that’s not the only
time he’s changed. He’s done it four times since the last Secret Society party:

The First Time

I’m walking along Greek Street when something catches my eye on the wall of a restaurant. I take a closer look and see that it’s a lizard. I am about to turn away
when it says:

—Don’t you recognise me, Lincoln?

The voice is his. I tell him to fuck off. He doesn’t like it:

—The problem with words, Lincoln, is they have consequences . . .

He propels himself off the wall and lands on my face. I’m tearing at him and trying to protect my eyes when I can feel blood on my fingers. His or mine? I can’t be sure.

This attack is one of the things Maynard mentions to me when he gets concerned:

—And another thing. Simon saw you talking to a brick wall on Greek Street and then you were pulling at your face and screaming on the ground.

—Why didn’t he come and fucking help?

Maynard looks down into his beer and shrugs his shoulders.

The Second Time

I’m having a wank in my flat looking at some Granny Porn where this filthy sixty-year-old is taking one up the arse from a young bloke when he turns into this goblin-like
creature whose claws push out of the screen. I see his long nails are covered in a white powder and I snort it all and then my mind gets full of colours and I puke everywhere. When I wake up,
probably a few hours later, I am lying in my own vomit and the goblin is standing over me:

—And not even a gesture of gratitude on your part. Pathetic!

I see him about to pounce on me then I go unconscious again.

The Third Time

I wake up and I stare at the ceiling. I can see it’s mainly black with only the odd patch of white breaking through here and there. I’m about to get up when the
black bits move. I strain my eyes to see what’s happening and they seem to be falling towards me and in seconds my body is crawling with spiders, hundreds of them getting everywhere, in my
arse, my mouth. I’m choking and flailing about in my room, bashing the walls, and I manage to get to the door and run out onto Old Compton Street, where Esurio covers me with a blanket and
tells me to go back inside. I don’t want to go. I am Fucking Terrified, but he guides me up the stairs and when I get back into my room the spiders are gone. He laughs and leaves me shivering
under the covers.

The Fourth Time

I’m lying on my bed in the flat when a snake slithers between a gap in the door, crawls up onto the bed and rests on my stomach. It has skin made of black velvet and
whispers to me:

—This time there is no way back. You know that don’t you, Lincoln?

—Yes.

—Sorry, I didn’t hear you . . .

He prods me with his tongue, catching a nerve in my back.

—Yes, yes.

—We have had such a journey, you and I, but we are reaching the end now. Have you thought, Lincoln, how you want it to end?

—I don’t care . . . I don’t care . . .

—Now, there’s no need to descend into indifference. Use your imagination. How about an overdose in the disabled toilets in The Office and you can lie there for perhaps an hour before
Maynard goes for a pee and finds you? Or perhaps you can get into a fight in Ronnie Scott’s. I know you’re very fond of Ronnie Scott’s, but this time your general malaise deprives
you of that necessary timing; you just don’t
care
enough to win, and you take a fatal blow to the side of the head. I can even arrange for you to have a grieving lady kneeling over
your body . . . No, that would be too sentimental and, quite frankly, you don’t deserve it. I know! You can end it by your own hand. How about tying that blue car-towing rope you have in your
flat to your bedroom door, wrap it around your neck, stand on a chair then push the chair away?

—I told you, I couldn’t give a fuck . . .

—Then I have an even better plan. Have you ever heard of the ichneumon wasp, Lincoln?

—Of course I fucking haven’t.

—Well, it caused quite a scandal in the nineteenth century when such cruelty was beyond the imagination of a humble parish priest.

—What the fuck are you talking about?

—You see, the female ichneumon wasp injects her eggs into the body of a host, usually a larva, and as the larva develops, the eggs of the wasp hatch inside its body and when the larva is
mature enough to provide a decent meal, the wasp slowly eats it from the inside, keeping its brain and nervous system alive long enough to make a feast of the organs. Then, when the larva is dead,
the wasp just flies away. You hear that, Lincoln, it just flies away in search of its next meal.