Fight Club

heels. His hair, blond under the straw cowboy hat. A belt with a big metal buckle holding up blue jeans. His skinny white arms, tanned smooth as the pointed toe on each cowboy boot.
    His eyes veined with a forest of little red lines, he says to grab hold of the rope and grip it—tight. And pulling the rope, he starts down, his cowboy heels hammer a step, then another step, another hard wooden knock into the dark basement. There, in the dark, dragging me, his breath the whiskey smell, the same as the cotton ball in a doctor’s office, the cold touch of rubbing alcohol the moment before an injection.
    There, another step into the dark, the cowboy says, "The first rule of the Haunted Tunnel Tour is you don’t talk about the Haunted Tunnel Tour.”
    And I stop. The rope still a loose sagging smile between us.
    "And the second rule of the Haunted Tunnel Tour,” the cowboy, his whiskey smell says, "is you don’t talk about the Haunted Tunnel Tour….”
    The rope, the feeling of braided fibers, is twisted hard and greasy smooth in my hand. And still stopped, pulling back on the rope, I tell him: Hey…
    From the dark, the cowboy says, "Hey, what?”
    I say, I wrote that book.
    The rope between us going tighter, tighter, tight.
    And the rope stops the cowboy. From the dark, he says, "Wrote what?”
    Fight Club, I tell him.
    And there, the cowboy takes a step back up. The knock of his boot on a step, closer. He tilts his hat back for a better look and pushes his eyes at me, blinking fast, his breath boilermaker strong, breathalyzer strong, he says:
    "There was a book? ”
    Yes.
    Before there was the movie…
    Before 4-H clubs in Virginia were busted for running fight clubs…
    Before Donatella Versace sewed razor blades into men’s clothing and called it the "fight club look.” Before Gucci fashion models walked the runway, shirtless with black eyes, bruised and bloodied and bandaged. Before houses like Dolce and Gabbana launched their new men’s look—satiny 1970’s shirts in photomural patterns, camouflage-print pants and tight, low-slung leather pants—in Milan’s dirty concrete basements…
    Before young men started scarring kisses into their hands with lye or Superglue…
    Before young men around the world took legal action to change their names to "Tyler Durden”…
    Before the band Limp Bizkit bannered their Web site with "Dr. Tyler Durden recommends a healthy dose of Limp Bizkit…”
    Before you could walk into Office Depot, shopping for plain, matte white labels, and there on the Avery Dennison package (product item 8293) was a sample label, printed: "Tyler Durden 420 Paper St. Wilmington, DE 19886”…
    Before nightclub fist fighting in Brazil, where some nights young men would fight to their deaths…
    Before The Weekly Standard announced "The Crisis of Manliness”…
    Before Susan Faludi’s book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man…
    Before the students of Brigham Young University fought for their right to beat one another on Monday nights, insisting there was nothing in Mormon law that prohibited their "Provo Fight Club”…
    Before the son of Utah governor Mike Leavitt was charged with disturbing the peace and trespassing for running a fight club in a Mormon church…
    Before The Onion newspaper ran an exposé on "The Quilting Society,” where old ladies would meet in a church basement, lusting for "bare-knuckled, hand-stitching action,” where "the first rule of the quilting society is you don’t talk about the quilting…”
    Before Saturday Night Live featured "Fight-Like-A-Girl Club”…
    Before magazine and newspaper editors started calling, asking where to find a typical fight club in their area, so they could send an undercover reporter to write a feature story, assuring me they wouldn’t screw up the secret nature of any club chapter…
    Before magazine and newspaper editors started calling to cuss me out, swearing at me because I insisted the whole idea of fight clubs was just an invention. Just my imagination…
    Before national political cartoons featured "Congressional Fight Club”…
    Before the University of Pennsylvania hosted conferences where academics dissected Fight Club with everything from Freud to Soft Sculpture to Interpretive Dance…
    Before a zillion "Fuck Club” porn sites…
    Before a zillion restaurant reviews headlined: "Bite Club”…
    Before Rumble Boys, Inc. started labeling their men’s grooming products, hair mousse and gel, with Tyler Durden