Fight Club

looking the way a sculptor or an art director says.
    Like Tyler says, even a soufflé looks pumped.
    My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?
    My dad didn’t know.
    When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn’t know, so he said, get married.
    I’m a thirty-year-old boy, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer I need.
    What happens at fight club doesn’t happen in words. Some guys need a fight every week. This week, Tyler says it’s the first fifty guys through the door and that’s it. No more.
    Last week, I tapped a guy and he and I got on the list for a fight. This guy must’ve had a bad week, got both my arms behind my head in a full nelson and rammed my face into the concrete floor until my teeth bit open the inside of my cheek and my eye was swollen shut and was bleeding, and after I said, stop, I could look down and there was a print of half my face in blood on the floor.
    Tyler stood next to me, both of us looking down at the big O of my mouth with blood all around it and the little slit of my eye staring up at us from the floor, and Tyler says, "Cool.”
    I shake the guy’s hand and say, good fight.
    This guy, he says, "How about next week?”
    I try to smile against all the swelling, and I say, look at me. How about next month?
    You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club. When it’s you and one other guy under that one light in the middle of all those watching. Fight club isn’t about winning or losing fights. Fight club isn’t about words. You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything. There’s grunting and noise at fight club like at the gym, but fight club isn’t about looking good. There’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved.
    After my last fight, the guy who fought me mopped the floor while I called my insurance to pre-approve a visit to the emergency room. At the hospital, Tyler tells them I fell down.
    Sometimes, Tyler speaks for me.
    I did this to myself.
    Outside, the sun was coming up.
    You don’t talk about fight club because except for five hours from two until seven on Sunday morning, fight club doesn’t exist.
    When we invented fight club, Tyler and I, neither of us had ever been in a fight before. If you’ve never been in a fight, you wonder. About getting hurt, about what you’re capable of doing against another man. I was the first guy Tyler ever felt safe enough to ask, and we were both drunk in a bar where no one would care so Tyler said, "I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”
    I didn’t want to, but Tyler explained it all, about not wanting to die without any scars, about being tired of watching only professionals fight, and wanting to know more about himself.
    About self-destruction.
    At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.
    I looked around and said, okay. Okay, I say, but outside in the parking lot.
    So we went outside, and I asked if Tyler wanted it in the face or in the stomach.
    Tyler said, "Surprise me.”
    I said I had never hit anybody.
    Tyler said, "So go crazy, man.”
    I said, close your eyes.
    Tyler said, "No.”
    Like every guy on his first night in fight club, I breathed in and swung my fist in a roundhouse at Tyler’s jaw like in every cowboy movie we’d ever seen, and me, my fist connected with the side of Tyler’s neck.
    Shit, I said, that didn’t count. I want to try it again.
    Tyler said, "Yeah it counted,” and hit me, straight on, pow , just like a cartoon boxing glove on a spring on Saturday morning cartoons, right in the middle of my chest and I fell back against a car. We both stood there, Tyler rubbing the side of his neck and me holding a hand on my chest, both of us knowing we’d gotten somewhere we’d never been and like the cat and mouse in cartoons, we were still alive and wanted to see how far we could take this thing and still be alive.
    Tyler said, "Cool.”
    I said, hit me again.
    Tyler said, "No, you hit me.”
    So I hit him, a girl’s wide roundhouse to right under his ear, and Tyler shoved me back and