Fight Club

Like, Ireland.

New London, Australia.

New London, India.

New London, Idaho.

New York, New York.

Fast-forward to the future.

This way, when deep-space exploitation ramps up, it will probably be the megatonic corporations that discover all the new planets and map them.

The IBM Stellar Sphere.

The Philip Morris Galaxy.

Planet De

Every planet will take on the corporate identity of whoever rapes it first.

Budweiser World.

Our waiter has a big goose egg on his forehead and stands ramrod straight, heels together. "Sir!" our waiter says. "Would you like to order now? Sir!" he says. "Anything you order is free of charge. Sir!"

You can imagine you smell urine in everybody's soup.

Two coffees, please.

Marla asks, "Why is he giving us free food?"

The waiter thinks I'm Tyler Durden, I say.

In that case, Marla orders fried clams and clam chowder and a fish basket and fried chicken and a baked potato with everything and a chocolate chiffon pie.

Through the pass-through window into the kitchen, three line cooks, one with stitches along his upper lip, are watching Marla and me and whispering with their three bruised heads together. I tell the waiter, give us clean food, please. Please, don't be doing any trash to the stuff we order.

"In that case, sir," our waiter says, "may I advise against the lady, here, eating the clam chowder."

Thank you. No clam chowder. Marla looks at me, and I tell her, trust me.

The waiter turns on his heel and marches our order back to the kitchen.

Through the kitchen pass-through window, the three line cooks give me the thumbs-up.

Marla says, "You get some nice perks, being Tyler Durden."

From now on, I tell Marla, she has to follow me everywhere at night, and write down everywhere I go. Who do I see. Do I castrate anyone important. That sort of detail.

I take out my wallet and show Marla my driver's license with my real name.

Not Tyler Durden.

"But everyone knows you're Tyler Durden," Marla says.

Everyone but me.

Nobody at work calls me Tyler Durden. My boss calls me by my real name.

My parents know who I really am.

"So why," Marla asks, "are you Tyler Durden to some people but not to everybody?"

The first time I met Tyler, I was asleep.

I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash. I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life. I was tired and bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn't see any way to change things.

Only end them.

I felt trapped.

I was too complete.

I was too perfect.

I wanted a way out of my tiny life. Single-serving butter and cramped airline seat role in the world.

Swedish furniture.

Clever art.

I took a vacation. I fell asleep on the beach, and when I woke up there was Tyler Durden, naked and sweating, gritty with sand, his hair wet and stringy, hanging in his face.

Tyler was pulling driftwood logs out of the surf and dragging them up the beach.

What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand, and Tyler was sitting in the palm of a perfection he'd made himself.

And a moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

Maybe I never really woke up on that beach.

Maybe all this started when I peed on the Blarney stone.

When I fall asleep, I don't really sleep.

At other tables in the Planet De

"No," Marla says, "you don't sleep."

Tyler Durden is a separate personality I've created, and now he's threatening to take over my real life.

"Just Eke Tony Perkins' mother in Psycho," Marla says. "This is so cool. Everybody has their little quirks. One time, I dated a guy who couldn't get enough body piercings."

My point being, I say, I fall asleep and Tyler is ru

The next night, I'd go to bed earlier.

That next night, Tyler would be in charge a little longer.

Every night that I go to bed earlier and earlier, Tyler will be in charge longer and longer.

"But you are Tyler," Marla says.

No.

No, I'm not.

I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is fu

I'm not Tyler Durden.

"But you are, Tyler," Marla says.

Tyler and I share the same body, and until now, I didn't know it. Whenever Tyler was having sex with Marla, I was asleep. Tyler was walking and talking while I thought I was asleep.

Everyone in fight club and Project Mayhem knew me as Tyler Durden.

And if I went to bed earlier every night and I slept later every morning, eventually I'd be gone altogether.

I'd just go to sleep and never wake up.

Marla says, "Just like the animals at the Animal Control place."

Valley of the Dogs. Where even if they don't kill you, if someone loves you enough to take you home, they still castrate you.

I would never wake up, and Tyler would take over.

The waiter brings the coffee and clicks his heels and leaves.

I smell my coffee. It smells like coffee.

"So," Marla says, "even if I did believe all this, what do you want from me?"

So Tyler can't take complete control, I need Marla to keep me awake. All the time.

Full circle.

The night Tyler saved her life, Marla asked him to keep her awake all night.

The second I fall asleep, Tyler takes over and something terrible will happen.

And if I do fall asleep, Marla has to keep track of Tyler. Where he goes. What he does. So maybe during the day, I can rush around and undo the damage.

24

HIS NAME IS Robert Paulson and he is forty-eight years old. His name is Robert Paulson, and Robert Paulson will be forty-eight years old, forever.

On a long enough time line, everyone's survival rate drops to zero.

Big Bob.

The big cheesebread. The big moosie was on a regulation chill-and-drill homework assignment. This was how Tyler got into my condominium to blow it up with homemade dynamite. You take a spray canister of refrigerant, R-12 if you can still get it, what with the ozone hole and everything, or R-134a, and you spray it into the lock cylinder until the works are frozen.

On a chill-and-drill assignment, you spray the lock on a pay telephone or a parking meter or a newspaper box. Then you use a hammer and a cold chisel to shatter the frozen lock cylinder.

On a regulation drill-and-fill homework assignment, you drill the phone or the automatic bank teller machine, then you screw a lube fitting into the hole and use a grease gun to pump your target full of axle grease or vanilla pudding or plastic cement.

It's not that Project Mayhem needed to steal a handful of change. The Paper Street Soap Company was backlogged on filling orders. God help us when the holidays came around. Homework is to build your nerve. You need some cu

Instead of a cold chisel, you can use an electric drill on the frozen lock cylinder. This works just as well and it's more quiet.

It was a cordless electric drill that the police thought was a gun when they blew Big Bob away.

There was nothing to tie Big Bob to Project Mayhem or fight club or the soap.

In his pocket was a wallet photo of himself huge and naked at first glance in a posing strap at some contest. It's a stupid way to live, Bob said. You're blind from the stage lights, and deaf from the feedback rush of the sound system until the judge will order, extend your right quad, flex and hold.