Fight Club

supply enough oxygen for that burning. This burns so fast, it’s an explosion.
    Barium peroxide and zinc dust.
    Ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminum.
    The nouvelle cuisine of anarchy.
    Barium nitrate in a sauce of sulfur and garnished with charcoal. That’s your basic gunpowder.
    Bon appétit.
    Pack the computer monitor full of this, and when someone turns on the power, this is five or six pounds of gunpowder exploding in their face.
    The problem is, I sort of liked my boss.
    If you’re male, and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.
    Except Tyler didn’t like my boss.
    The police would be looking for me. I was the last person out of the building last Friday night. I woke up at my desk with my breath condensed on the desktop and Tyler on the telephone, telling me, "Go outside. We have a car.”
    We have a Cadillac.
    The gasoline was still on my hands.
    The fight club mechanic asked, what will you wish you’d done before you died?
    I wanted out of my job. I was giving Tyler permission. Be my guest. Kill my boss.
    From my exploded office, I ride the bus to the gravel turnaround point at the end of the line. This is where the subdivisions peter out to vacant lots and plowed fields. The driver takes out a sack lunch and a thermos and watches me in his overhead mirror.
    I’m trying to figure where I can go that the cops won’t be looking for me. From the back of the bus, I can see maybe twenty people sitting between me and the driver. I count the backs of twenty heads.
    Twenty shaved heads.
    The driver twists around in his seat and calls to me in the back seat, "Mr. Durden, sir, I really admire what you’re doing.”
    I’ve never seen him before.
    "You have to forgive me for this,” the driver says. "The committee says this is your own idea sir.”
    The shaved heads turn around one after another. Then one by one they stand. One’s got a rag in his hand, and you can smell the ether. The closest one has a hunting knife. The one with the knife is the fight club mechanic.
    "You’re a brave man,” the bus driver says, "to make yourself a homework assignment.”
    The mechanic tells the bus driver, "Shut up,” and "The lookout doesn’t say shit.”
    You know one of the space monkeys has a rubber band to wrap around your nuts. They fill up the front of the bus.
    The mechanic says, "You know the drill, Mr. Durden. You said it yourself. You said, if anyone ever tries to shut down the club, even you, then we have to get him by the nuts.”
    Gonads.
    Jewels.
    Testes.
    Huevos.
    Picture the best part of yourself frozen in a sandwich bag at the Paper Street Soap Company.
    "You know it’s useless to fight us,” the mechanic says.
    The bus driver chews his sandwich and watches us in the overhead mirror.
    A police siren wails, coming closer. A tractor rattles across a field in the distance. Birds. A window in the back of the bus is half open. Clouds. Weeds grow at the edge of the gravel turnaround. Bees or flies buzz around the weeds.
    "We’re just after a little collateral,” the fight club mechanic says. "This isn’t just a threat, this time, Mr. Durden. This time, we have to cut them.”
    The bus driver says, "It’s cops.”
    The siren arrives somewhere at the front of the bus.
    So what do I have to fight back with?
    A police car pulls up to the bus, lights flashing blue and red through the bus windshield, and someone outside the bus is shouting, "Hold up in there.”
    And I’m saved.
    Sort of.
    I can tell the cops about Tyler. I’ll tell them everything about fight club, and maybe I’ll go to jail, and then Project Mayhem will be their problem to solve, and I won’t be staring down a knife.
    The cops come up the bus steps, the first cop saying, "You cut him yet?”
    The second cop says, "Do it quick, there’s a warrant out for his arrest.”
    Then he takes off his hat, and to me he says, "Nothing personal, Mr. Durden. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
    I say, you all are making a big mistake.
    The mechanic says, "You told us you’d probably say that.”
    I’m not Tyler Durden.
    "You told us you’d say that, too.”
    I’m changing the rules. You can still have fight club, but we’re not going to castrate anyone, anymore.
    "Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the mechanic says. He’s halfway down the aisle holding the knife out in front of him. "You said you would definitely say that.”
    Okay so I’m Tyler Durden. I am.