The Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page B

pride. You might as well be naked.
    In the early days, Esurio didn’t even trust me to go shopping.
    —You don’t sell vans anymore, Lincoln. You’re a
bon viveur
and you’ve got to look the part.
    Once he knew he was going to be a big part of my life, he wrote this on a sheet of A4 and taped it to my bedroom door:
    PRINCIPLES OF SARTORIAL ELEGANCE
    1. A FINE DRESS SENSE IS THE KEY TO A LIFE OF EXCESS
    2. PEOPLE HAVE NEITHER THE WILL NOR THE DESIRE TO SEE BEYOND APPEARANCES
    3. IT IS BETTER TO BE POOR AND LOOK RICH THAN TO BE RICH AND LOOK POOR
    4. WOMEN ARE EASILY SEDUCED AND LACK A CRITICAL FACULTY WHEN IT COMES TO MEN WITH A SENSE OF STYLE
    5. ALWAYS WEAR A HANDKERCHIEF WITH A SUIT
    6. IF YOU EVER DEGRADE YOURSELF BY BUYING CLOTHES FROM A HIGH STREET STORE ALWAYS REMOVE THE LABEL
    7. CARRY A CANE OR WEAR A GARMENT THAT MAKES YOU STAND OUT SUCH AS A GOLDEN SHOE OR A FABULOUS HAT
    8. A FINE SUIT WILL STAND IN YOUR PLACE WHEN AN EXCESS OF ALCOHOL HAS NECESSITATED YOUR ABSENCE
    9. NEVER BUY A WATCH SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TIME
    10. LIVE AND DIE BEFORE A MIRROR
    Despite the fact that Esurio is a smug cunt and treats me like a fucking five-year-old, his Principles do the job, and I always get a better night’s banging if at least a part of my day is
spent before a mirror. It’s not just the clothes. My grooming habits have become legendary in Soho. I go to a spa every week and I shave my chest at least once a fortnight. I wear designer
perfumes, have chemical peels every month and dye my hair with particular care taken over the colour and density of my eyebrows. I have become obsessive about finding and plucking tiny hairs from
pretty much every orifice, especially my nose and ears, and I’ve developed a habit of bending over, facing away from the mirror, and shaving every hair that dares to grow around my arse. I
often blame Esurio for this, especially when the clippers catch a haemorrhoid, but the real cause is my compulsion to feed on Wraps: a hunger for pounding young pussy and an obsession with removing
unwanted body hair go hand in hand.
    I put my drink on the bar and am about to run over to the booth to get my handkerchief when David, the Floor Manager, comes walking over to me, hankie in hand.
    —I can’t prove what you did in there but you know the rules, Lincoln. No drugs in The Club. No sex in The Club. Not even any touching in The Club. You can play by your rules on the
outside. In here, you play by The Boss’s rules. And if you break The Boss’s rules, he’ll fuck you off whoever you are.
    I am too ashamed to tell him I didn’t break The Boss’s rules, and I never will. Appearances are everything, so I say:
    —Fuck you! I’ll do what I want!
    I grab my hankie, turn and go back to the bar. The Director of Consumer Affairs at a leading British bank is sniffing the air.
    —There’s definitely the smell of a really fine absinthe around here.
    Esurio smiles at me and raises his glass. The Director is in his late sixties, moving his eyes and nose in search of the cause of his nostalgia.
    —Haven’t smelt one of those for years. A real vintage.
    Esurio says:
    —A man of impeccable taste. Actually, it’s an Absinthe Jade 1901. One of the finest ever made.
    I ignore him. Once he gets onto absinthe, he’s like a broken fucking record. Absinthe La Maison Fontaine. Absinthe Edouard Pernod. Absinthe Capricious.
    —
Capricieuse
, Lincoln,
Capricieuse!
    He knows them all. Yet whatever he puts in his mouth or up his nose he never seems to get hammered. Here’s the evidence:
    7 September 2009
    I was with Esurio all night, except when I left him at the bar to go to the toilets three times to pound a Wrap. Because my memory is fucking horrendous I had a notebook with me
to write down what he took. When I looked at the notebook in the morning I had written: eleven glasses of absinthe, two bottles of red wine, four liqueurs and four lines of coke. I made a note in
the margin: perhaps it’s