Fight Club

breakdown for a chain of movie houses. A movie travels in six or seven small reels packed in a metal case. Tyler’s job was to splice the small reels together into single five-foot reels that self-threading and rewinding projectors could handle. After three years, seven theaters, at least three screens per theater, new shows every week, Tyler had handled hundreds of prints.
    Too bad, but with more self-threading and rewinding projectors, the union didn’t need Tyler anymore. Mister chapter president had to call Tyler in for a little sit-down.
    The work was boring and the pay was crap, so the president of the united union of united projection operators independent and united theaters united said it was doing Tyler Durden a chapter favor by giving Tyler the diplomatic shaft.
    Don’t think of this as rejection. Think of it as downsizing.
    Right up the butt mister chapter president himself says, "We appreciate your contribution to our success.”
    Oh, that wasn’t a problem, Tyler said, and grinned. As long as the union kept sending a paycheck, he’d keep his mouth shut.
    Tyler said, "Think of this as early retirement, with pension.”
    Tyler had handled hundreds of prints.
    Movies had gone back to the distributor. Movies had gone back out in re-release. Comedy. Drama. Musicals. Romance. Action adventure.
    Spliced with Tyler’s single-frame flashes of pornography.
    Sodomy. Fellatio. Cunnilingus. Bondage.
    Tyler had nothing to lose.
    Tyler was the pawn of the world, everybody’s trash.

    This is what Tyler rehearsed me to tell the manager of the Pressman Hotel, too.
    At Tyler’s other job, at the Pressman Hotel, Tyler said he was nobody. Nobody cared if he lived or died, and the feeling was fucking mutual. This is what Tyler told me to say in the hotel manager’s office with security guards sitting outside the door.
    Tyler and I stayed up late and traded stories after everything was over.
    Right after he’d gone to the projectionist union, Tyler had me go and confront the manager of the Pressman Hotel.
    Tyler and I were looking more and more like identical twins. Both of us had punched-out cheekbones, and our skin had lost its memory, and forgot where to slide back to after we were hit.
    My bruises were from fight club, and Tyler’s face was punched out of shape by the president of the projectionist union. After Tyler crawled out of the union offices, I went to see the manager of the Pressman Hotel.
    I sat there, in the office of the manager of the Pressman Hotel.
    I am Joe’s Smirking Revenge.
    The first thing the hotel manager said was I had three minutes. In the first thirty seconds, I told how I’d been peeing into soup, farting on crème brûlées, sneezing on braised endive, and now I wanted the hotel to send me a check every week equivalent to my average week’s pay plus tips. In return, I wouldn’t come to work anymore, and I wouldn’t go to the newspapers or the public health people with a confused, tearful confession.
    The headlines:
    Troubled Waiter Admits Tainting Food.
    Sure, I said, I might go to prison. They could hang me and yank my nuts off and drag me through the streets and flay my skin and burn me with lye, but the Pressman Hotel would always be known as the hotel where the richest people in the world ate pee.
    Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth.
    And I used to be such a nice person.

    At the projectionist union office, Tyler had laughed after the union president punched him. The one punch knocked Tyler out of his chair, and Tyler sat against the wall, laughing.
    "Go ahead, you can’t kill me,” Tyler was laughing. "You stupid fuck. Beat the crap out of me, but you can’t kill me.”
    You have too much to lose.
    I have nothing.
    You have everything.
    Go ahead, right in the gut. Take another shot at my face. Cave in my teeth, but keep those paychecks coming. Crack my ribs, but if you miss one week’s pay, I go public, and you and your little union go down under lawsuits from every theater owner and film distributor and mommy whose kid maybe saw a hard-on in Bambi .
    "I am trash,” Tyler said. "I am trash and shit and crazy to you and this whole fucking world,” Tyler said to the union president. "You don’t care where I live or how I feel, or what I eat or how I feed my kids or how I pay the doctor if I get sick, and yes I am stupid and bored and weak, but I am still your responsibility.”

    Sitting in the office at the Pressman Hotel, my fight club lips were still split into