You wake up at SeaTac.
Set your watch back two hours.
The shuttle takes you to downtown Seattle, and the first bar you go into, the bartender is wearing a neck brace that tilts his head back so far he has to look down his purple smashed eggplant of a nose to grin at you.
The bar is empty, and the bartender says, "Welcome back, sir."
I've never been to this bar, ever, ever before.
I ask if he knows the name Tyler Durden.
The bartender grins with his chin stuck out above the top of the white neck brace and asks, "Is this a test?"
Yeah, I say, it's a test. Has he ever met Tyler Durden?
"You stopped in last week, Mr. Durden," he says. "Don't you remember?"
Tyler was here.
"You were here, sir."
I've never been in here before tonight.
"If you say so, sir," the bartender says, "but Thursday night, you came in to ask how soon the police were planning to shut us down."
Last Thursday night, I was awake all night with the insomnia, wondering was I awake, was I sleeping. I woke up late Friday morning, bone tired and feeling I hadn't ever had my eyes closed.
"Yes, sir," the bartender says, "Thursday night, you were standing right where you are now and you were asking me about the police crackdown, and you were asking me how many guys we had to turn away from the Wednesday night fight club."
The bartender twists his shoulders and braced neck to look around the empty bar and says, "There's nobody that's going to hear, Mr. Durden, sir. We had a twenty-seven-count turn-away, last night. The place is always empty the night after fight club."
Every bar I've walked into this week, everybody's called me sir.
Every bar I go into, the beat-up fight club guys all start to look alike. How can a stranger know who I am?
"You have a birthmark, Mr. Durden," the bartender says. "On your foot. It's shaped like a dark red Australia with New Zealand next to it."
Only Marla knows this. Marla and my father. Not even Tyler knows this. When I go to the beach, I sit with that foot tucked under me.
The cancer I don't have is everywhere, now.
"Everybody in Project Mayhem knows, Mr. Durden." The bartender holds up his hand, the back of his hand toward me, a kiss burned into the back of his hand.
My kiss?
Tyler's kiss.
"Everybody knows about the birthmark," the bartender says. "It's part of the legend. You're turning into a fucking legend, man."
I call Marla from my Seattle motel room to ask if we've ever done it. You know. Long distance, Marla says, "What?" Slept together. "What!" Have I ever, you know, had sex with her? "Christ!" Well? "Well?" she says. Have we ever had sex? "You are such a piece of shit." Have we had sex? "I could kill you!" Is that a yes or a no? "I knew this would happen," Marla says. "You're such a flake. You love me. You ignore me. You save my life, then you cook my mother into soap."
I pinch myself.
I ask Marla how me met.
"In that testicle cancer thing," Marla says. "Then you saved my life." I saved her life?
"You saved my life."
Tyler saved her life.
"You saved my life."
I stick my finger through the hole in my cheek and wiggle the finger around. This should be good for enough major league pain to wake me up.
Marla says, "You saved my life. The Regent Hotel. I'd accidentally attempted suicide. Remember?"
Oh.
"That night," Marla says, "I said I wanted to have your abortion." We've just lost cabin pressure.
I ask Marla what my name is.
We're all going to die.
Marla says, "Tyler Durden. Your name is Tyler Butt-Wipe-for-Brains Durden. You live at 5123 NE Paper Street which is currently teeming with your little disciples shaving their heads and burning their skin off with lye."
I've got to get some sleep.
"You've got to get your ass back here," Marla yells over the phone, "before those little trolls make soap out of me."
I've got to find Tyler.
The scar on her hand, I ask Marla, how did she get it?
"You," Marla says. "You kissed my hand."
I've got to find Tyler.
I've got to get some sleep.
I've got to sleep.
I've got to go to sleep.
I tell Marla goodnight, and Marla's screaming is smaller, smaller, smaller, gone as I reach over and hang up the phone.
22
ALL NIGHT LONG, your thoughts are on the air.
Am I sleeping? Have I slept at all? This is the insomnia.
Try to relax a little more with every breath out, but your heart's still racing and your thoughts tornado in your head.
Nothing works. Not guided meditation.
You're in Ireland.
Not counting sheep.
You count up the days, hours, minutes since you can remember falling asleep. Your doctor laughed. Nobody ever died from lack of sleep. The old bruised fruit way your face looks, you'd think you were dead.
After three o'clock in the morning in a motel bed in Seattle, it's too late for you to find a cancer support group. Too late to find some little blue Amytal Sodium capsules or lipstick-red Seconals, the whole Valley of the Dolls playset. After three in the morning, you can't get into a fight club.
You've got to find Tyler.
You've got to get some sleep.
Then you're awake, and Tyler's standing in the dark next to the bed.
You wake up.
The moment you were falling asleep, Tyler was standing there saying, "Wake up. Wake up, we solved the problem with the police here in Seattle. Wake up."
The police commissioner wanted a crackdown on what he called gang-type activity and after-hours boxing clubs.
"But not to worry," Tyler says. "Mister police commissioner shouldn't be a problem," Tyler says. "We have him by the balls, now."
I ask if Tyler's been following me.
"Funny," Tyler says, "I wanted to ask you the same thing. You talked about me to other people, you little shit. You broke your promise."
Tyler was wondering when I'd figure him out.
"Every time you fall asleep," Tyler says, "I run off and do something wild, something crazy, something completely out of my mind."
Tyler kneels down next to the bed and whispers, "Last Thursday, you fell asleep, and I took a plane to Seattle for a little fight club looksee. To check the turn-away numbers, that sort of thing. Look for new talent. We have Project Mayhem in Seattle, too."
Tyler's fingertip traces the swelling along my eyebrows. "We have Project Mayhem in Los Angeles and Detroit, a big Project Mayhem going on in Washington, D.C., in New York. We have Project Mayhem in Chicago like you would not believe."
Tyler says, "I can't believe you broke your promise. The first rule is you don't talk about fight club."
He was in Seattle last week when a bartender in a neck brace told him that the police were going to crack down on fight clubs. The police commissioner himself wanted it special.
"What it is," Tyler says, "is we have police who come to fight at fight club and really like it. We have newspaper reporters and law clerks and lawyers, and we know everything before it's going to happen."
We were going to be shut down.
"At least in Seattle," Tyler says.
I ask what did Tyler do about it.
"What did we do about it," Tyler says.
We called an Assault Committee meeting.
"There isn't a me and a you, anymore," Tyler says, and he pinches the end of my nose. "I think you've figured that out."
We both use the same body, but at different times.
"We called a special homework assignment," Tyler says. "We said, `Bring me the steaming testicles of his esteemed honor, Seattle Police Commissioner Whoever."'
I'm not dreaming.
"Yes," Tyler says, "you are."
We put together a team of fourteen space monkeys, and five of these space monkeys were police, and we were every person in the park where his honor walks his dog, tonight.
"Don't worry," Tyler says, "the dog is alright."
The whole attack took three minutes less than our best run-through. We'd projected twelve minutes. Our best run-through was nine minutes.
We have five space monkeys hold him down.
Tyler's telling me this, but somehow, I already know it.
Three space monkeys were on lookout.
One space monkey did the ether.
One space monkey tugged down his esteemed sweatpants.
The dog is a spaniel, and it's just barking and barking.
Barking and barking.
Barking and barking.
One space monkey wrapped the rubber band three times until it was tight around the top of his esteemed sack.
"One monkey's between his legs with the knife," Tyler whispers with his punched-out face by my ear. "And I'm whispering in his most esteemed police commissioner's ear that he better stop the fight club crackdown, or we'll tell the world that his esteemed honor does not have any balls."
Tyler whispers, "How far do you think you'll get, your honor?"
The rubber band is cutting off any feeling down there.
"How far do you think you'll get in politics if the voters know you have no nuts?"
By now, his honor has lost all feeling.
Man, his nuts are ice cold.
If even one fight club has to close, we'll send his nuts east and west. One goes to the New York Tuner and one goes to the Los Angeles Timer. One to each. Sort of press release style.
The space monkey took the ether rag off his mouth, and the commissioner said, don't.
And Tyler said, "We have nothing to lose except fight club."
The commissioner, he had everything.
All we were left was the shit and the trash of the world.
Tyler nodded to the space monkey with the knife between the commissioner's legs.
Tyler asked, "Imagine the rest of your life with your bag flapping empty."
The commissioner said, no.
And don't.
Stop.
Please.
Oh.
God.
Help.
Me.
Help.
No.
Stop.
Them.