Fight Club

seven reels. The small reels pack into a pair of hexagonal steel suitcases. Each suitcase has a handle on top. Pick one up, and you’ll dislocate a shoulder. They weigh that much.
    Tyler’s a banquet waiter, waiting tables at a hotel, downtown, and Tyler’s a projectionist with the projector operator’s union. I don’t know how long Tyler had been working on all those nights I couldn’t sleep.
    The old theaters that run a movie with two projectors, a projectionist has to stand right there to change projectors at the exact second so the audience never sees the break when one reel starts and one reel ran out. You have to look for the white dots in the top, right-hand corner of the screen. This is the warning. Watch the movie, and you’ll see two dots at the end of a reel.
    "Cigarette burns,” they’re called in the business.
    The first white dot, this is the two-minute warning. You get the second projector started so it will be running up to speed.
    The second white dot is the five-second warning. Excitement. You’re standing between the two projectors and the booth is sweating hot from the xenon bulbs that if you looked right at them you’re blind. The first dot flashes on the screen. The sound in a movie comes from a big speaker behind the screen. The projectionist booth is soundproof because inside the booth is the racket of sprockets snapping film past the lens at six feet a second, ten frames a foot, sixty frames a second snapping through, clattering Gatling-gun fire. The two projectors running, you stand between and hold the shutter lever on each. On really old projectors, you have an alarm on the hub of the feed reel.
    Even after the movie’s on television, the warning dots will still be there. Even on airplane movies.
    As most of the movie rolls onto the take-up reel, the take-up reel turns slower and the feed reel has to turn faster. At the end of a reel, the feed reel turns so fast the alarm will start ringing to warn you that a changeover is coming up.
    The dark is hot from the bulbs inside the projectors, and the alarm is ringing. Stand there between the two projectors with a lever in each hand, and watch the corner of the screen. The second dot flashes. Count to five. Switch one shutter closed. At the same time, open the other shutter.
    Changeover.
    The movie goes on.
    Nobody in the audience has any idea.
    The alarm is on the feed reel so the movie projectionist can nap. A movie projectionist does a lot he’s not supposed to. Not every projector has the alarm. At home, you’ll sometimes wake up in your dark bed with the terror you’ve fallen asleep in the booth and missed a changeover. The audience will be cursing you. The audience, their movie dream is ruined, and the manager will be calling the union.
    You wake up at Krissy Field.
    The charm of traveling is everywhere I go, tiny life. I go to the hotel, tiny soap, tiny shampoos, single-serving butter, tiny mouthwash and a single-use toothbrush. Fold into the standard airplane seat. You’re a giant. The problem is your shoulders are too big. Your Alice in Wonderland legs are all of a sudden miles so long they touch the feet of the person in front. Dinner arrives, a miniature do-it-yourself Chicken Cordon Bleu hobby kit, sort of a put-it-together project to keep you busy.
    The pilot has turned on the seat-belt sign, and we would ask you to refrain from moving about the cabin.
    You wake up at Meigs Field.
    Sometimes, Tyler wakes up in the dark, buzzing with the terror that he’s missed a reel change or the movie has broken or the movie has slipped just enough in the projector that the sprockets are punching a line of holes through the sound track.
    After a movie has been sprocket run, the light of the bulb shines through the sound track and instead of talk, you’re blasted with the helicopter blade sound of whop whop whop as each burst of light comes through a sprocket hole.
    What else a projectionist shouldn’t do: Tyler makes slides out of the best single frames from a movie. The first full frontal movie anyone can remember had the naked actress Angie Dickinson.
    By the time a print of this movie had shipped from the West Coast theaters to the East Coast theaters, the nude scene was gone. One projectionist took a frame. Another projectionist took a frame. Everybody wanted to make a naked slide of Angie Dickinson. Porno got into theaters and these projectionists, some guys they built collections that got epic.
    You wake up at Boeing