Fight Club

by Chuck Palahniuk

  Maybe I never really woke up on that beach.

  Maybe all this started when I peed on the Blarney stone.

  When I fall asleep, I don’t really sleep.

  At other tables in the Planet Denny’s, I count one, two, three, four, five guys with black cheekbones or folded-down noses smiling at me.

  “No,” Marla says, “you don’t sleep.”

  Tyler Durden is a separate personality I’ve created, and now he’s threatening to take over my real life.

  “Just Eke Tony Perkins’ mother in Psycho,” Marla says. “This is so cool. Everybody has their little quirks. One time, I dated a guy who couldn’t get enough body piercings.”

  My point being, I say, I fall asleep and Tyler is running off with my body and punched-out face to commit some crime. The next morning, I wake up bone tired and beat up, and I’m sure I haven’t slept at all.

  The next night, I’d go to bed earlier.

  That next night, Tyler would be in charge a little longer.

  Every night that I go to bed earlier and earlier, Tyler will be in charge longer and longer.

  “But you are Tyler,” Marla says.

  No.

  No, I’m not.

  I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not.

  I’m not Tyler Durden.

  “But you are, Tyler,” Marla says.

  Tyler and I share the same body, and until now, I didn’t know it. Whenever Tyler was having sex with Marla, I was asleep. Tyler was walking and talking while I thought I was asleep.

  Everyone in fight club and Project Mayhem knew me as Tyler burden.

  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.

  ∨ Fight Club ∧

  Twenty-One

  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, and the club cheers. To everyone here, I’m Tyler Durden. Smart. Forceful. Gutsy. I hold up my hands for silence, and I suggest, why don’t we all just call it a night. Go home, tonight, and forget about fight club.

  I think fight club has served its purpose, don’t you?

  Project Mayhem is canceled.

  I hear there’s a good football game on television…

  One hundred men just stare at me.

  A man is dead, I say. This game is over. It’s not for fun anymore. Then, from the darkness outside the crowd comes the anonymous voice of the chapter leader: “The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

  I yell, go home!

  “The second rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

  Fight club is canceled! Project Mayhem is canceled.

  “The third rule is only two guys to a fight.”

  I am Tyler Durden, I yell. And I’m ordering you to get out!

  And no one’s looking at me. The men just stare at each other across the center of the room.

  The voice of the chapter leader goes slowly around the room. Two men to a fight. No shirts. No shoes.

  The fight goes on and on and on as long as it has to.

  Picture this happening in a hundred cities, in a half-dozen languages.

  The rules end, and I’m still standing in the center of the light.

  “Registered fight number one, take the floor,” yells the voice out of the darkness. “Clear the center of the club.”


  I don’t move.

  “Clear the center of the club!”

  I don’t move.

  The one light reflects out of the darkness in one hundred pairs of eyes, all of them focused on me, waiting. I try to see each man the way Tyler would see him. Choose the best fighters for training in Project Mayhem. Which ones would Tyler invite to work at the Paper Street Soap Company?

  “Clear the center of the club!” This is established fight club procedure. After three requests from the chapter leader, I will be ejected from the club.

  But I’m Tyler Durden. I invented fight club. Fight club is mine. I wrote those rules. None of you would be here if it wasn’t for me. And I say it stops here!

  “Prepare to evict the member in three, two, one.”

  The circle of men collapses in on top of me, and two hundred hands clamp around every inch of my arms and legs and I’m lifted spreadeagle toward the light.

  Prepare to evacuate soul in five, in four, three, two, one.

  And I’m passed overhead, hand to hand, crowd surfing toward the door. I’m floating. I’m flying.

  I’m yelling, fight club is mine. Project Mayhem was my idea. You can’t throw me out. I’m in control here. Go home.

  The voice of the chapter leader yells, “Registered fight number one, please take the center of the floor. Now!”

  I’m not leaving. I’m not giving up. I can beat this. I’m in control here.

  “Evict fight club member, now!”

  Evacuate soul, now.

  And I fly slowly out the door and into the night with the stars overhead and the cold air, and I settle to the parking lot concrete. All the hands retreat, and a door shuts behind me, and a bolt snaps it locked. In a hundred cities, fight club goes on without me.

  ♦

  FOR YEARS NOW I’ve wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.

  I’m with Marla in room 8G at the Reagent Hotel. With all the old people and junkies shut up in their little rooms, here, somehow, my pacing desperation seems sort of norms and expected.

  “Here,” Marla says while she’s sitting cross-legged on her bed and punching a half-dozen wake-up pills out of their plastic blister cart. “I used to date a guy who had terrible nightmares. He hated to sleep too.”

  What happened to the guy she was dating?

  “Oh, he died. Heart attack. Overdose. Way too many amphetamines,” Marls says. “He was only nineteen.”

  Thanks for sharing.

  When we walked into the hotel, the guy at the lobby desk had half his hair torn out at the roots. His scalp raw and scabbed, he saluted me. The seniors watching television in the lobby all turned to see who I was when the guy at the desk called me sir.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  Right now, I can imagine him calling some Project Mayhem headquarters and reporting my whereabouts. They’ll have a wall map of the city and trace my movements with little pushpins. I feel tagged like a migrating goose on Wild Kingdom.

  They’re all spying on me, keeping tabs.

  “You can take all six of these and not get sick to your stomach,” Marla says, “but you have to take them by putting them up your butt.”

  Oh, this is pleasant.

  Marla says, “I’m not making this up. We can get something stronger, later. Some real drugs like cross tops or black beauties or alligators.”

  I’m not putting these pills up my ass.

  “Then only take two.”

  Where are we going to go?

  “Bowling. It’s open all night, and they won’t let you sleep there.”

  Everywhere we go, I say, guys on the street think I’m Tyler burden.

  “Is that why the bus driver let us ride for free?”

  Yeah. And that’s why the two guys on the bus gave us their seats.

  “So what’s your point?”

  I don’t think it’s enough to just hide out. We have to do something to get rid of Tyler.

  “I dated a guy once who liked to wear my clothes,” Marla says. “You know, dresses. Hats with veils. We could dress you up and sneak you around.”

  I’m not cross-dressing, and I’m not putting pills up my ass.

  ♦

  “It gets worse,” Marla says. “I dated a guy, once, who wanted me to fake a lesbian scene with his blow-up doll.”

  I could imagine myself becoming one of Marla’s stories.

  I dated a guy once who was a split personality.

  “I dated this other guy who used one of those penis enlargement systems.”

  I ask what time is it?

  “Four A.M.”

  In another three hours, I have to be at work.

  “Take your pills,” Marla says. “You being Tyler Durden and all, they’ll probably let us bowl for free. Hey, before we get rid of Tyler, can we go shopping? We could get a nice car. Some clothes. Some CDs. There is an upside to all this free stuff.”

  Marla.

  “Okay, forget it.”

  ∨ Fight Club ∧

  Twenty-Two

  That old saying, about how you always kill the thing you love, well, it works both ways.

  And it does work both ways.

  This morning I went to work and there were police barricades between the building and the parking lot with the police at the front doors, taking statements from the people I work with. Everybody milling around.

  I didn’t even get off the bus.

  I am Joe’s Cold Sweat.

  From the bus, I can see the floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor of my office building are blown out, and inside a fireman in a dirty yellow slicker is whacking at a burnt panel in the suspended ceiling. A smoldering desk inches out the broken window, pushed by two firemen, then the desk tilts and slides and falls the quick three stories to the sidewalk and lands with more of a feeling than a sound.

  Breaks open and it’s still smoking.

  I am the Pit of Joe’s Stomach.

  It’s my desk.

  I know my boss is dead.

  The three ways to make napalm. I knew Tyler was going to kill my boss. The second I smelled gasoline on my hands, when I said I wanted out of my job, I was giving him permission. Be my guest.

  Kill my boss.

  Oh, Tyler.

  I know a computer blew up.

  I know this because Tyler knows this.

  I don’t want to know this, but you use a jeweler’s drill to drill a hole through the top of a computer monitor. All the space monkeys know this. I typed up Tyler’s notes. This is a new version of the lightbulb bomb, where you drill a hole in a lightbulb and fill the bulb with gasoline. Plug the hole with wax or silicone, then screw the bulb into a socket and let someone walk into the room and throw the switch.

  A computer tube can hold a lot more gasoline than a lightbulb.

  A cathode ray tube, CRT, you either remove the plastic housing around the tube, this is easy enough, or you work through the vent panels in the top of the housing.

  First you have to unplug the monitor from the power source and from the computer.

  This would also work with a television.

  Just understand, if there’s a spark, even static electricity from the carpet, you’re dead. Screaming, burned-alive dead.

  A cathode ray tube can hold 300 volts of passive electrical storage, so use a hefty screwdriver across the main power supply capacitor, first. If you’re dead at this point, you didn’t use an insulated screwdriver.

  There’s a vacuum inside the cathode ray tube so the moment you drill through, the tube will suck air, sort of inhale a little whistle of it.

  Ream the little hole with a larger bit, then a larger bit, until you can put the tip of a funnel into the hole. Then, fill the tube with your choice of explosive. Homemade napalm is good. Gasoline or gasoline mixed with frozen orange juice concentrate or cat litter.

  A sort of fun explosive is potassium permanganate mixed with powdered sugar.
The idea is to mix one ingredient that will burn very fast with a second ingredient that will 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 appetit.

  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.