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.
We stop outside the Soho Theatre on Dean Street.
—And that you don’t want to know, Lincoln, shows how just one meeting has weakened you. I fear if you continue going I will not recognise you, my own brother, my twin, and we will become strangers to each other.
—Please leave me alone. Please.
—I’m afraid I can’t do that, Lincoln. What kind of friend would I be if I let you hurt yourself in this way? Life is to be lived and they will have you cowering in a corner in no time at all. What kind of man do you want to be? One whom the ladies adore, who sweeps all before him, who rises above his own excesses and lives a life free from fear, or a little mouse afraid of his own shadow?
Esurio furrows his brow, lowers his head, brings his hands under his chin and squeaks.
—And the worse thing they will do is make you believe that you are ordinary when you, Lincoln, are a man apart from the rest. You can drink more, snort more, sniff more, run more, exercise more and pleasure more ladies than any man in Soho, and while doing all this you can still not only hold down a job but earn the right to be the highest-paid Sales Director of a gentlemen’s club in London. So tell me, exactly how are you powerless? What are you doing wrong? What faults do you have to admit to? Face the truth, Lincoln, Alcoholics Anonymous is not for you. It may serve a purpose but for you it can only do harm, great harm. It will make you look back at what you have lost in life, make your strengths into weaknesses, your courage into wrongdoing. It will make you give up on yourself when you are at the peak of your powers and it will take away from you all that you value most in life and everything that brings you happiness. Stop it now. NOW!
I turn into Old Compton Street, open the door to my flat and slam it in his face. I’m asleep as soon as I hit my bed. My sleep is fitful and I am drunk in my dreams.
Truth and Other Lies
The Fourth Day
Recovery is strange because I never thought I was lost and I have no idea what kind of man will appear from the wreckage, assuming I can get to him before the seven days are up.
Esurio says:
—Lost? Far from it, Lincoln. You are absolutely in touch with your essence but I’m so concerned that you’re in danger of forgetting who you are and what makes you happy. I fear you’ve already forgotten your one, true friend.
Being sober is like peeling away a thick layer of skin. It doesn’t fall away all at once. Bits of it break off here and there and, as they do, I notice things. This morning I was running along the Embankment and my head was clear. I thought about new ways to leverage relationships with the concierges to bring more punters into The Club. I thought about doing a Jet Set in the South of France and I called my Mum to tell her I would come round to build her a small rock pool in the back garden. She said:
—That’s lovely, darling.
Then:
—Are you all right?
That’s the thing about clarity in drunks. It shocks people. They get used to your hazy, virtual life, then you mess up their world with a shocking display of sobriety. Some people want you to stay clean. Most can’t take it and fear they might get contaminated. These are the people who touch me all over, looking for the skin we used to share and, when they can’t find it, they think:
—He’s lost his skin! Does that mean I will lose mine too? But I don’t want to lose it. I’m not ready to lose it, and I don’t want to be around him until he grows it back.
When I go into The Office, the boys are split. After a week of drinking water and chamomile tea, Maynard and I are having lunch at our usual table near the bar. He says:
—You’re doing well. I’m really pleased for you.
The others treat me like a freak. Terry says:
—So, you’re not drinking anything?
—No. Not unless you count tea and water as a drink.
—I fucking don’t. Surely you can have one?
—I don’t want one.
—Not even one for old times’ sake?
—One is never one. One might as well be a hundred and one.
—You sound like a psychology textbook.
—I just don’t want a drink.
Steve joins in:
—Does that mean you’ve stopped shagging as well?
—Of course not.
—Thank fuck for that. At least a little bit of the Old Lincoln is still with us.
The Old Lincoln
But which bit? Here’s what I notice when I’m fucking Wraps while sober:
• I pound for hours just like I always did.
• I find this reassuring.
• In fact, I do my best to break more beds than ever.
• I find this reassuring too.
• Wraps and broken beds are less important to me than they were before.
• I find this worrying.
• I sometimes feel I can’t be bothered with Wraps.
• I find this even more worrying.
/> • When I feel this I go out of my way to fuck two or three of them at a time.
• For old times’ sake.
• I find myself connecting with them.
• I know this because I feel grateful.
• I think I have feelings for some of them.
• I like talking to them.
• I cry with some of them.
• They massage me and tell me they love me.
• I want to hold them in my hand and keep them safe from harm.
• I take some of them away from Soho.
• Away from Soho!
• We go walking in the Lake District or we go to Southend for a day by the sea or we visit my Mum.
• I notice I am using Paid-Fors less often than I used to.
• One day I think:
There’s not much left of the Old Lincoln.
• This thought frightens me, so I hire four Paid-Fors and we go to the Sanderson Hotel.
• I bang them but it doesn’t feel like it used to.
• I wonder if I should have a drink to get that feeling back. Esurio says:
—Have one, Lincoln, have one. Just one.
• I consider it, then I think:
Maybe the Old Lincoln wasn’t that great.
• I spend a few minutes thinking about the difference between the Old and New Lincoln.
• I make a list of the bits of the Old Lincoln that are still with me. I can think only of:
• Vanity
• Anger
• Pounding
• I think about what I like most about the New Lincoln. I write:
• Clarity
Because I like having a clear head, I decide to stick with the New Lincoln, so I say to Steve:
—Yeah, the Old Lincoln’s still with us. He’s just nicer.
I decide to keep going to the meetings. They tell me the best way to do it is to go for ninety meetings in ninety days. I wonder how many I can get to in the ninety hours I have left to change my life. I’m indifferent to what happens in the meetings. When I’m there I drift in and out. No one intrudes and no one touches me, which is great. I sometimes speak to people at meetings. They tell me stories. I don’t like these conversations. I want to get away. I want a drink and a line. I look at my watch often, counting the minutes away. Some of the people in the group don’t speak. Others fill the time with Tales of Misery and Despair. I find these Tales reassuring. They are like fairy tales that teach me that my life at its worst doesn’t seem too bad by comparison: Once upon a time there was a man who lived all his life on the streets. His wife left him. His kids disowned him. So he drank and drank and drank until he couldn’t drink anymore and that’s when he slashed his wrists with a broken beer bottle. When he was discharged from hospital he went back on the streets and drank all night and cried all day. Lincoln, on the other hand, was having a Great Time banging all the Wraps in Soho and snorting coke off their arses . . .
By the end of the second meeting I’m pretty sure I don’t have a drink problem and if I do it’s as mild as a common cold, while the rest of the poor fuckers in the meeting have a serious dose of the plague. However, I am changing my life, so I will stick to Abstinence until the end of the week and I’m surprised at how good I feel. After one of the meetings, I share a bottle of water on the top floor of Soho House with John, who has been in recovery for two years. I never liked Soho House. Too full of pissed-up actors. We sit on a couple of battered leather chairs. The place is heaving. Someone bumps into me as I walk across the creaking floorboards. Someone else touches my glass before I can pick it up off the bar. I want to kill them both but the feeling passes. It passes. Without any broken bones or bleeding noses. I like John. He is in his mid-forties, dressed in jeans and a casual brown jacket. I admire his indifference to how he looks. He used to work as an A&R man at a big record label before he lost his job for turning up pissed to work once too often. I say:
—I thought being pissed was part of your employment contract in that industry.
—It is. But what you mustn’t do is be so pissed you forget your place.
I don’t ask what happened. I don’t need to. When he cleaned himself up, he began working at an art gallery.
—I don’t really enjoy it. Looking all day at conceptual crap that could have been done by failed art college students.
—Why work there then?
—Because it takes absolutely nothing out of me. Nothing.
—Don’t you want to be more challenged?
—That’s the last thing I want. I need every ounce of energy I have to keep me dry, so having a job that takes nothing out of me is just what I need.
—What happens when you get bored?
—It happens all the time and I love being bored at work. Gives me time to think, prepare for a meeting if I’m leading it. I don’t know, just lots of space, lots and lots of space, that’s what I need.
—Surely you can’t go on forever like this? There has to come a time when you want more.
—Forever? Most days I can’t look forward twenty-four hours. Recovery isn’t something I can bolt on to my life. It is my life. It has to be. If I had cancer or motor neurone disease or I was paralysed from a stroke, I would put everything I have into my recovery. Drinking like I do is a terminal illness. If I forget that I’m fucked. So what more do I need in my life than getting through another day without killing myself?
I leave Soho House just after ten to go to The Club. As I walk down Old Compton Street I can smell aniseed. I turn and Esurio is walking with me:
—Well, he was a barrel of laughs, wasn’t he, Lincoln?
—Give it a fucking rest.
—I’m not trying to be difficult but sometimes I feel compelled to speak truthfully.
—Truthfully?
—Yes, truthfully. If there’s one thing you can rely on me for, it’s honesty, and I have to say the more of these people I see, the more I’m certain they’re not good for you, Lincoln, not good for you at all.
—These people?
—These . . . Believers . . . Evangelists . . . the Devoutly Wretched.
—Give them a break. They’re just struggling.
—And so, may I remind you, was every martyr who ever walked the face of the earth before leaving it in a blaze of stupidity.
—What are you talking about?
—Life is for living, Lincoln, not for dying, and these new friends of yours may be walking and breathing but they are dead. They died the day they gave over their lives to one small, sneaky, dirty little word.
—And what word is that then?
—NO. The worst word ever created.
He keeps on at me until we get to The Club but I stop listening to him. When I leave him, he is standing in the drizzle outside The Club going on about the Truth. Inside there’s not many punters. They tend to turn up from about midnight onwards. Two guys in front of me walk into The Club. They’re pounced on by Wraps. It’s White Lingerie Night, and they disappear into a snowstorm of barely covered tits and pussy. I don’t like it, it’s too much, so when the guys are trapped in a booth with a couple of Russian Wraps, I let a few of the girls know what I think:
—Always give the guys time. If you keep doing that they’ll all fuck off and then you won’t earn anything.
They ignore me. I don’t like being ignored. I need a drink. The Boss is sitting on his throne in his restaurant. He calls me over.
—I’m proud of you, Lincoln.
—What for?
—Giving up the booze.
—Thanks.
I forget I need a drink. The Boss matters to me. There’s not a lot of people that do, but he’s one of them. He gets up and puts his arm around my shoulder. He’s wearing a turquoise suit with Ziggy Stardust written down the outside of one trouser leg. The glitter in his hair and on his clothes glistens in the roller-ball lights. All the Wraps look at him. He ignores them. He leans into my ear:
—Don’t let this go. It’s the right t
hing for you to be doing. I never want to see you hammered in here again. Who’s coming tonight?
—I’ve got more bankers than usual and a lot of punters, sorry, Gentlemen, coming from the hotels. I’ve been sending three girls out every day to get at the concierges.
Sometimes I hope I’m right. Usually I’m too pissed to care whether I’m right. Tonight I know I’m right. That’s what being sober does for me. Instead of thinking I’m the best Sales Director in the universe, I know I’m the best Sales Director in Soho because I’m sober. The Boss’s mantra bounces around my head:
—Keep it real, Lincoln, keep it real.
Rik and his gang turn up at about one in the morning. I haven’t seen him since he was banging a Wrap in my bed. He offers to buy me a drink. I tell him I’m not drinking. I think he doesn’t hear me because he offers again. I tell him I’m not drinking. He can’t hear me, so he buys me a drink anyway. I sit him at one of the best tables downstairs, right in front of the stage, and order two bottles of house champagne on my account. I sit with him for a few minutes. He pours me three glasses. I don’t drink any of them. When I get up to leave they’re still standing in a row on the table. He can’t see them. He asks me if I enjoyed them, tells me he’s glad I’m drinking again and gets back to the Wraps.
The Hunger Page 10