Read Online I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story by Glen Duncan - Free Book Online Page A

porous. The
hairline's not exactly struggling to conceal its upcoming
recession, and the pot belly (too much booze, too much fat,
zero exercise - the corporeal side of the basic adult human
story) doesn't help at all. The flesh on the nose is thickening
and the slightest dropping of the head reveals a putative
double chin. He looks, all in all, like an under-the-weather
chimp. I doubt very much he's washed his ears since childhood. At seventeen, eighteen, he might have taken you in with his Navajo granddad story (supported by the usual nonsense: long hair, silver and turquoise jewellery, beads); you see
him at thirty-five and look for a much less glamorous explanation: spic-mix, wog-cocktail, decaf wop. Truth is: Irish
Roman Catholic mum boozily knocked up in a moment of
weakness (I thank you) by a saucy Sikh from Sacramento at
a friend's birthday party in Manchester. Ships in the night,
bun in the oven, he's gone, she's Catholic: enter beige Gunn,
fatherless and feeble at five pounds, six ounces. She brings
him up on her own. He loves her and hates himself for
blighting her young life. Grows up with bog-standard
Virgin-Whore dichotomy as far as women go (with which
I'm now lumbered, thank you very much); rabid Oedipus
complex replaced during teen years by terrifying phase of
homoerotic fantasies (I'll find a use for them before I'm
done, you watch), before sexual imagination stabilizes
around mild heterosexual sado-masochism in early twenties,
concomitant with discovery of some effeminacy of body, a
loathing for manual labour, a penchant for the arts and a
much mauled but still virulent belief in the Old Fellah and
yours truly.

    I'ni not wild about his wardrobe, either. I wish there was
a more exciting way of telling you it's dull, but there
isn't: Declan Gunn's wardrobe is dull. Two pairs of jeans,
one black, one blue. The baggy charity shop strides to
which I had recourse after my debut wankathon. Half a
dozen t-shirts, a couple of woolly jumpers, a beige (!?)
fleece, a greatcoat, a pair of brandless trainers and a pair of
DM shoes. I look like a tramp. Doesn't even own a suit.
They've done this deliberately, to assault my dignity, to
wound my much-talked-about pride. Gunn, needless to say
after the extravagance of his unsellable and suicide-inspiring
opus, A Grace of Storms, can't afford new clothes, what with the first two books now out of print and his agent, Betsy
Galvez, only ever seeing his name because he's immediately
after Guiseppe's Pizzeria in her Rolodex. He should have
stolen some money. Should've mugged a pensioner.
Pensioners are loaded. Tartan shopping trolleys? Full of gold
ingots. Why do you think they move so slowly? They die of
hypothermia and no one mentions all the loot they've saved
by never eating or turning the heating on. I love old people.
Seven or eight decades of me whispering to them about all
the faggots and coons (it turns out they fought for!) and by
the time death comes calling they're oozing malice and
hawking-up spleen. The souls of old people are ten a penny
in Hell. Honestly. We've got a slush-pile.

    Gunn lives alone in a second-floor one-bedroom excouncil flat in Clerkenwell. One small bedroom, one small
living room, a small kitchen and a small bathroom. (I looked
for other adjectives.) Outside, a courtyard. The surrounding
buildings go up six floors so Gunn's place is starved of light.
He had dreams of moving in with Violet. Violet didn't.
Violet had dreams of Gunn using the money from the sale of
his then-in-progress masterpiece to tart the Clerkenwell
place up and sell it so that they could move to Notting Hill.
From the sale of his ... Yes. There's the rub. All things considered, I can't honestly say I'm surprised our boy had settled
on suicide. Some humans survive concentration camps,
others are driven over the edge by a broken fingernail, a forgotten birthday, an unpayable phone bill. Gunn's somewhere
in-between.