Fight Club

don’t talk about fight club,” the mechanic says. "And the last rule about Project Mayhem is you don’t ask questions.”
    So what can he tell me?
    He says, "What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God.”
    Behind us, my job and my office are smaller, smaller, smaller, gone.
    I sniff the gasoline on my hands.
    The mechanic says, "If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?”
    This is all Tyler Durden dogma. Scrawled on bits of paper while I was asleep and given to me to type and photocopy at work. I’ve read it all. Even my boss has probably read it all.
    "What you end up doing,” the mechanic says, "is you spend your life searching for a father and God.”
    "What you have to consider,” he says, "is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen.”
    How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate is better than His indifference.
    If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
    We are God’s middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.
    Unless we get God’s attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption.
    Which is worse, hell or nothing?
    Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved.
    "Burn the Louvre,” the mechanic says, "and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa . This way at least, God would know our names.”
    The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. The farther you run, the more God wants you back.
    "If the prodigal son had never left home,” the mechanic says, "the fatted calf would still be alive.”
    It’s not enough to be numbered with the grains of sand on the beach and the stars in the sky.
    The mechanic merges the black Corniche onto the old bypass highway with no passing lane, and already a line of trucks strings together behind us, going the legal speed limit. The Corniche fills up with the headlights behind us, and there we are, talking, reflected in the inside of the windshield. Driving inside the speed limit. As fast as the law allows.
    A law is a law, Tyler would say. Driving too fast was the same as setting a fire was the same as planting a bomb was the same as shooting a man.
    A criminal is a criminal is a criminal.
    "Last week, we could’ve filled another four fight clubs,” the mechanic says. "Maybe Big Bob can take over running the next chapter if we find a bar.”
    So next week, he’ll go through the rules with Big Bob and give him a fight club of his own.
    From now on, when a leader starts fight club, when everyone is standing around the light in the center of the basement, waiting, the leader should walk around and around the outside edge of the crowd, in the dark.
    I ask, who made up the new rules? Is it Tyler?
    The mechanic smiles and says, "You know who makes up the rules.”
    The new rule is that nobody should be the center of fight club, he says. Nobody’s the center of fight club except the two men fighting. The leader’s voice will yell, walking slowly around the crowd, out in the darkness. The men in the crowd will stare at other men across the empty center of the room.
    This is how it will be in all the fight clubs.
    Finding a bar or a garage to host a new fight club isn’t tough; the first bar, the one where the original fight club still meets, they make their month’s rent in just one fight club Saturday night.
    According to the mechanic, another new fight club rule is that fight club will always be free. It will never cost to get in. The mechanic yells out the driver’s window into the oncoming traffic and the night wind pouring down the side of the car: "We want you, not your money.”
    The mechanic yells out the window, "As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself.”
    The mechanic yells into the wind, "You’re not your name.”
    A space monkey in the back seat picks it up: "You’re not your problems.”
    The mechanic yells, "You’re not your problems.”
    A space monkey shouts, "You’re not your age.”
    The mechanic yells, "You’re not your age.”
    Here, the mechanic