The Hunger (6 page)

It’s about midnight. I’m with Maynard in Little Italy on Frith Street. I am totally fucked. I need cunt. Now. I need cunt. Now. I need cunt. Now. I catch the eye of
a young girl with a mass of dyed blonde hair standing in the far corner. I walk up to her. She says:

—Hi, I’m Melanie.

I find the direct approach works best. Blokes don’t understand that women would rather share a strong man than have sole ownership of a weak one. I think:

—Be the Boss, Lincoln, be the Boss.

I sit down at the table, let her look deep into my coke-fuelled eyes, then I press my hand on her wrist and say:

—I really want to fuck you.

She can feel the strength in my hand. I can see shock and the hint of a smile in her face. She lingers too long before pulling away.

I lose track of time. It’s probably about two in the morning and I’m with Melanie in the kitchen of my flat. Maynard is outside on the landing with Alison, trying everything he can
remember to get the green light. He’s sweating so much I think he’s about to have a heart attack. He sways like a reed as the usual lines come out:

—I worked with Leonardo di Caprio, you know . . . Have you ever been to Hollywood? Do you know how the film industry works? I feel we have a real connection and I’d like to show you
how to be really creative.

His short-term memory is fucked and, in a few minutes, he starts again:

—I worked with Leonardo di Caprio, you know . . . Have you ever been to Hollywood?

Alison is maybe eighteen. She’s a Hopeful Girl. She wants to be a film star. Maynard says:

—Fuck, fuck, where the fuck is it?

I pop my head around the kitchen door and Maynard is in my bedroom, looking for something in my drawers.

I whisper loudly:

—Maynard, what are you looking for?

—Fuck, fuck, where is it?

—What?

—That big vibrator. I need her to believe it’s me.

—Try the third drawer.

He pulls out a pink Rabbit. Nine inches.

—Thanks, Linc.

I watch him for a few seconds. The logistics are too much for him. His drops the Rabbit and slumps against the wall. Alison falls on top of him. I go back into the kitchen with Melanie. We take
a line off the kitchen table. I lie on the floor.

—Sit on my back.

Melanie hops on and I begin doing press-ups. I stop when I get to two hundred. As soon as I’m finished, I bend her over the sink. I want her arse. Now. Esurio is in the corner:

—Take it, Lincoln! Take it!

I try three times to get my cock in. I am bollocksed and her arse is too tight. She says:

—I’ve never done anal before.

I’m possessed. I look for some lube. The bedroom is across the landing. It’s too far. I must get it in. I open the fridge door. Eggs, ham, half a pint of milk, cans of Budweiser, two
bottles of vodka. Then I see it. Beautiful, brown and round. A jar of Nutella. I snatch it out of the fridge and open the top. It’s almost full. I scrape it all out, one big dollop at a time.
I’m sure I’m aiming for her arse, but I’m a child again and it’s getting everywhere. By the time I’m finished her arse, buttocks, legs and lower back are all covered
in Nutella. She is a Work of Art. Again she says:

—I’ve never done anal before.

Then she says:

—What are you doing?

I stand back for a moment, an artist admiring his canvas, before my cock ploughs through a Nutella mountain and into her arse. I am pounding when Maynard stumbles into the kitchen, sees the
sticky brown substance all over her arse and begins throwing up. Melanie says:

—Is that someone being sick?

Then:

—I can smell chocolate.

Esurio is irritated:

—You could at least have used a better class of chocolate paste. Perhaps one from Fortnum and Mason. You’ve no class, Lincoln.

It must be morning. I’m in my bed with Melanie. My head hurts. The sheets and duvet cover are brown. I say:

—Fuck!

I put my finger on my arse.

Dry.

I put my finger on Melanie’s arse.

Wet.

I pull my finger out and it has a brown lump on the end. I taste it.

—Better than I expected.

I can’t see Esurio but I hear him shouting at me.

—Feed me, Lincoln, feed me.

I finish half a bottle of wine on the bedside table before getting up. Alison is unconscious on the landing. I look down and see a body on the stairs. I angle my head at forty-five degrees to
improve my focus. It’s Maynard. He is lying, feet facing up the stairs, one of his legs wrapped around the banister. I think he’s naked. Then I see he has a sock hanging limp off one
foot. His cock and balls are smeared in a pink liquid and a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Lotion is lying by his side.

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:

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:

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.