Eat My Heart Out Read Online Free PDF Page A

of sewage was unbearable. It was dark and I was alone except for the mice. We turned this space into a screening room a few months ago.
    Our Super-8 installations flickered like sun on water. There I was dressed up in a mohair jumper and white shirt, my hair coiffed, my ankle-socks pristine, preparing milk and cookies in a Formica kitchen, kissing two child actors whom Freddie had hired for the day, laying them down for a nap, duct-taping the bedroom door shut and sticking my head in the oven. There I was dressed up in an Edwardian hat, traipsing into the River Cam in the middle of the night, piling rocks into my pockets, looking depressed though ready. Drowning. There I was gassing myself in a parked car in a garage – that was Anne Sexton. She was less well known, but Freddie had wanted a trilogy. His lucky number was three, but only if pressed – really, he wasn’t superstitious at all. He’d won a young film-makers’ bursary from Sundance.
Dear Vic,
    Do you want to skype? My username is purposedestiny7.
    Ann-Marie X
    Samuel decided to make a cocktail called Aqua Fortis because a friend of a friend who’d been to Williamsburg had said it was deck, so off he went to Gerry’s specialist off-licence in Soho to buy marjoram-infused Lillet Blanc, El Jimador Reposado, and Meletti Amaro. He returned hours later, empty-handed.
    Samuel couldn’t get served. He couldn’t get served because he was only seventeen.
    â€˜Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’ I demanded.
    â€˜I gave all that up.’ He was standing against the wall in the kitchen, his hands behind his back.
    Freddie sat at the table, morose and smoking.
    â€˜Samuel.’ I spoke very slowly. ‘Do your parents know where you are?’
    Samuel started to nod, but then he shook his head. I saw the tears. ‘They think I’m at The Custard—’ Now the tears flowed.
    â€˜Is that your tuck shop?’ I said.
    â€˜No. The Custard Collective is my squat. East. I ran away to The Wick, as they say!’
    â€˜They don’t say that,’ I said. ‘I’ve never heard anyone say that.’ I came very close to his face. ‘You are in a lot of danger. Hackney is a very dangerous place for a boy like you. They will get you.’
    â€˜I don’t care! I don’t care!’ He went hysterical, grabbing at the copper pans hanging from the stove, banging them together. It reminded me of Allegra’s performance back in my college room all those years ago. Three years ago.
    â€˜Sit down!’ I commanded.
    He sat next to Freddie, who was repeating: ‘I want a drink. I want a drink.’
    â€˜I was born to be a DJ!’ said Samuel, with passion. ‘Or a lifestyle – a style consultant.’
    â€˜Samuel’s an Enlightenment polymath,’ said Freddie, darkly. ‘I’m going to make him a star.’
    Samuel turned to Freddie with the light of true love in his eyes. He buried his face in Freddie’s neck and said again and again: ‘I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.’
    I had agreed to buy the drink, but I had no intention of going all the way to Gerry’s because I was due in Soho in two hours anyway to start my shift. I considered trying to find Vic’s house after work and using Freddie’s drink money to pay him to go out with me. I had £150 cash in my hand. I had never felt so free. But soon my freedom became a burden again.
    I walked around the pond on Clapham Common, eyeing the men in tents. Their fishing-rods trailed in the freezing water. A tree bent its gnarled body all the way over so that its branches disappeared in the depths. Yuppies walked their dogs despite the adverse temperature. One mongrel bounded towards a collie of some kind; they yelped at each other and then sniffed each other’s backsides in a circular dance of mysterious sweetness before their owners appeared in running-gear and ruined the friendship. I passed