Underneath: The Hookup

Although The Hookup is only the second short story in Pills, it was the last I wrote for the collection.

Something was missing, and it was my love Jim Thompson. I wanted a louche narrator whispering in your ear. A sleazy dickhead, trawling bars for coke and sex.

Initially, it was called Fucking Your Brains Out and was about a one night stand that ended when one of the coupling couple’s heads exploded. Worked well as an initial idea, but soon became quite stupid. I wanted to ground the story in the same universe as the rest of the collection, so I made the death more ambiguous, which in turn made it more sinister.

Like several stories in Pills, The Hookup is so grimy, you’ll probably want to take shower after reading it. Also, like many of the stories in the collection, it is pretty fucking true.

As a side note – there was a certain part of my life in which people would only ever play Interpol at parties, like they represented the renaissance of rock music and weren’t actually some third-rate Joy Division rip off. Still, at least they were better than Editors. Fuck me, what a relentless drone.

Also the thing about Kate Moss is based on a true story.