The Hunger (12 page)

—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:

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 leaflets 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.

My mother or my ex-wife, perhaps both of them, said:

—Lewis idolises you.

Lewis said:

—I just want to be like you. You’re a hero to me.

When he said this, I thought:

—I like being idolised by my son.

Then I thought:

Life is easier when people look down on you, when they have no expectations and you’re free to be the total cunt they believe you to be.

I said to my Mum:

—I would die for Lewis but his love is killing me.

In the meeting, I find myself standing on my feet. I say:

—Hi, I’m Lincoln. I’m an alcoholic and I’m powerless over my drinking and I want to dedicate my recovery to my father and to my son, Lewis.

When I look up I see Esurio shaking his head in the corner of the room. He takes off his hat and does an extravagant bow:

—Bravo, Lincoln, bravo!

I want to kill him. I want to leap over the chairs and ring his fucking neck. Before I can move, he has gone. On the way out, he is waiting for me by the door.

—Quite a performance in there. Reminded me of a church. It doesn’t seem like you at all, Lincoln, and I fear it will finish you off if you start believing.

—Give it a rest. If I want to be there, I’ll be there. It’s only for a week.

He pulls a crumpled bit of paper out of his pocket.

—OK then, let’s look at some of these grand steps. Here. The first one:
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable
. That’s hardly
you, is it?

—What do you mean?

—Well, you are many things, Lincoln, but powerless isn’t one of them. You consume whatever you want, when you want. That, if you ask me, is the action of a strong, confident man
– a man who knows what he wants and takes it.

—That’s fair enough, I suppose.

—And how about this one:
We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
. When was the last time you brought God into anything and,
let’s be candid, you have certainly not done anything
wrong
. A little misguided at times, perhaps, even a touch over the top, but
wrong
? ‘Wrong’ is an unkind word,
Lincoln, very unkind. It’s a word designed to break a man, to take away his dignity, and I have certainly not gone to all the trouble of teaching you how to dress, of watching you blossom
into a man dedicated only to joy and pleasure, for someone to call it ‘wrong’. And what kind of person, Lincoln, what kind of person uses a word like ‘wrong’?

I don’t want to hear him but, one by one, his words, like relentless drops of water washing up against a crumbling wall, are finding a way through.

—I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t
want
to know.

—Ah, you see, there it is. The Admission of Wilful Ignorance. Well, let me tell you about the person who uses a word like ‘wrong’. It is a weak person, like the fearful hordes
who fill places of worship, who use all their energy to judge the few, the mighty few, for whom a word like ‘wrong’ does not exist.