Fight Club

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 cunning. Build your investment in Project Mayhem.
    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.
    Put your hands where we can see them.
    Extend your left arm, flex the bicep and hold.
    Freeze.
    Drop the weapon.
    This was better than real life.
    On his hand was a scar from my kiss. From Tyler’s kiss. Big Bob’s sculpted hair had been shaved off and his fingerprints had been burned off with lye. And it was better to get hurt than get arrested, because if you were arrested, you were off Project Mayhem, no more homework assignments.
    One minute, Robert Paulson was the warm center that the life of the world crowded around, and the next moment, Robert Paulson was an object. After the police shot, the amazing miracle of death.
    In every fight club, tonight, the chapter leader walks around in the darkness outside the crowd of men who stare at each other across the empty center of every fight club basement, and this voice yells:
    "His name is Robert Paulson.”
    And the crowd yells, "His name is Robert Paulson.”
    The leaders yell, "He is forty-eight years old.”
    And the crowd yells, "He is forty-eight years old.”
    He is forty-eight years old, and he was part of fight club.
    He is forty-eight years old, and he was part of Project Mayhem.
    Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.
    And the crowds yell, "Robert Paulson.”
    And the crowds yell, "Robert Paulson.”
    And the crowds yell, "Robert Paulson.”
    I go to fight club tonight to shut it down. I stand in the one light at the center of the room,