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“Do you think that went well?”
I did.
Tyler knew this because I knew this.
“I think that was a load of shit.” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Why should we pay some sixty year old cat lady to baby us like we’re the child she can’t conceive, when every good bar in town will bend over backwards to serve us liquid sedation for free.”
“I thought the breathing exercises were nice,” I offered. In. Out. Count to ten and imagine your happy place. “You seemed calmer then.”
Tyler shrugged, pulled a fresh pack of marlboros out of his fur coat’s pocket and lit one as he held it to his lips. We were standing at the bus stop around the corner from the therapy center. It was an outpatient clinic meant to serve community members in need, which was their polite way of saying “poor people.” $10 a session and in exchange they record you spilling your guts out the whole forty-five minutes worth, then they repurpose that video into an educational resource for undergraduate freshmen. Imagine how many eighteen year old trust fund babies watch those tapes, studying us like a freak lab rat. Reel one: me, as good as sobbing, only without the tears because even after everything, I still can’t cry while I’m watched. I’m front and center, offering our counselor juicy contrition well above her pay-grade. Not quite whining like a baby, but my voice all wobbly and cracking and my face as red and serious as the Fight Club floor at five in the morning. Complaining about how sorry I feel for myself for turning my boring life into a miserable one before I shot my own cheek out.
I wonder how many dorm room soon-to-be-dropouts, with their thousand dollar eye frames and a Prius in the garage, huddle in circles around projection screens taking notes on Tyler’s tapes. Reel two: him shoving things around. Throwing things. Him cursing out our counselor for being too weak to understand the way things should be and the way things are. We’re all space monkeys and she’s docile cattle, you already know the spiel. None of Tyler's opinions on therapy would surprise you. I can remember most of his time out, when I try to, but it’s not something I like to remember.
One time when he threatened our counselor, he must’ve crossed some line because the next thing I know security’s barged in, handcuffs and tranquilizers at the ready. Lab rat. I bet the hospital still has us on a list somewhere, our paper records on speed dial. But it was no problem once the guards saw his face. “I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the lady, sir. It’s against the clinic’s policy, sir. But I’m sure you’re under a lot of stress right now, sir. Do you want us to wave your fee for you, sir.” I should’ve known Tyler knew what he was doing. It works out like that every time he gets himself into trouble and it makes him spoiled. The judge jury and executioner take one look at us and at the holes in our cheeks and suddenly it’s sir, sir, sir, and their reasonable requests backtrack into serfdom and Tyler gets away with whatever he wants. I seem to be the only one with any handle on him anymore.
I guess that’s better than the alternative. I’d rather not go back to the hospital. Or I’ll be hearing “sir” all day like an ear worm. “How are you feeling today, sir?” More meds, less meds, group therapy at eight like a discount support group where everyone calls me Tyler even when I’m me. Even though that’s not the name on my documentation. It’s my name on my documentation, on my license, on my lease. It’s always “Tyler, sir” to everyone anyway.
That’s what I liked so much about our counselor. For all the preaching Tyler gave about “a generation of men raised by women,” in the end it was only women who I could trust. Any man who looked at me for more than a sideways glance was prime suspect number one on the next “sir” that’d hammer against my eardrums or the next wink I’d have to stomach.
They always say if you're not paying exorbitant fees for a product, you’re the product. That never felt more true to me than our time at that clinic. We had the money for better treatment. I’m sure there were women just as motherly in the more expensive clinics. I’m sure the more expensive clinics would’ve gotten their info on D.I.D. somewhere other than WebMD. We could’ve gone anywhere within driving distance, which is pretty far when you’re unemployed, and we wouldn’t have been selling ourselves like one of Tyler’s movies the way we were. Me, the punching bag protagonist. Changeover. Tyler, the megalomaniac. Switch. Me, who’s power animal is a penguin guiding meditation. Switch. Tyler, who still finds ways to sneak chemicals out in our briefcase, even when I ask him not to. Why? I don’t know. Our counselor asks him why he brought his briefcase to our session. He doesn’t know either. Switch. It gets tiring doesn't it? Reel One. Reel Two. On and on and on and on and the audience knows the difference this time because Tyler isn’t paid to splice film anymore. He’s still paid not to whistleblow, but I’ve been forwarding most of those checks to charity. We were in uncharted territory. Episodic. I’m sure we were a very valuable resource for the students at Wilmington U.
The reason we didn’t go to the more expensive clinics was because Fight Club was no longer ours. The experiment took control of the lab and now it was its own beast out in the world making its own kills unrelated to us. Project Mayhem too, but to differentiate them would be to miss the point. If I wanted to, I could’ve used the perks of being Tyler Durden to get anywhere in life. Best house on the block, best entrees at every five star restaurant in town, never worry about money again. Tyler, being Tyler, could’ve used that perk too. But I asked Tyler, politely, not to, so we didn’t. I didn’t feel right using Fight Club for my benefit after it turned into what it turned into. Mr. Reel One and Reel Two and Marla all together in our own apartment, leaving Fight Club in the past, it was almost like what our father wanted for us, if we squinted and held our nose.
Paper Street Soap Company was a different story, but not by much. Tyler enjoyed making soaps, that was always more than a money making scheme, but he enjoyed chemical burns too. Can’t have one without the other. You can’t un-splice everything. The first thing Marla and I decided upon once I got myself checked out of the hospital was no more chemicals. Only the most organic of cleaning solutions were allowed in our unfurnished apartment, and only generic brand pre-made soaps. No more loose glycerin. No more nitroglycerin. No more mixing gelatin explosives with black gloves and goggles.
No more kissing the back of my hand, not like that.
No more rendering human fat in the kitchen and skimming the tallow off.
No more lye.
No more soap making.
We were standing at the bus stop, around the corner of our clinic, when I asked Tyler, “Do you think Marla is going to be in tonight?”
He said, “She better.”
Tyler didn’t make soap anymore but I knew he wanted to because when he wasn’t throwing a tantrum in therapy, he talked about soap. He talked about the different kinds of soap, the different scents you can give it if add the right blades of grass, the different colors you can dye it with this or that food coloring or pigment, the chemicals you can use to make it -
No chemicals. Our counselor reminded Tyler that I didn’t want him talking about chemicals.
No chemicals. No bombs. No lye.
I am Joe’s gag order. I am Joe’s censored tongue.
Tyler hates it but he doesn’t always put up a fight. Sometimes he goes back to talking about soap and the pothole is narrowly averted ninety miles per hour down the freeway. Swerve left, swerve right, straighten out again and it’s as if the obstacle was never there in the first place.
Tyler tells her about how you can carve soap. You can carve soap into all sorts of different shapes. Easily. It’s an art form, he says. It’s a sculptural medium. He says, look it up. You can make soap into anything you can carve wood into and with a knife twice as dull. Carve it into a flower. Carve it into a twelve inch dick. Carve it into a penguin.
I don’t know if our counselor looks it up. We only pay her $10 a session.
We’re standing at the bus stop and the sky is overcast and the air is rainy. Grey drops race down the plastic shelter. If Marla is in tonight we’ll have dinner together. As a couple. With as few self inflicted burns as possible, Tyler or I will throw together whatever we can pass off as a home cooked meal. We’ll serve it on our IKEA plates and Goodwill silverware and Marla will light a candle if she’s not in a bad mood. Our counselor thinks it’s very important that we do things as a couple.
Tyler asks, “Do you mean Marla and him,” referring to me, “as a couple, or do you mean Marla and me as a couple?”
Our counselor says it doesn’t matter as long as Marla is happy with the relationship too.
I say, “How am I supposed to know if Marla is happy or not. How am I supposed to know what she wants?”
Our counselor says I should just ask her. As if it’s as easy as her behavioral therapy book, sixth edition, says it is.
Tyler doesn’t listen. He asks, “If you mean both Marla and him as a couple and Marla and me as a couple, does that mean he and I are a couple too? Or is this a fucked up in-law situation.” I can taste the sarcasm on his lips.
Our counselor says it’s between Tyler and me to define the nature of our relationship.
I am Joe’s “it’s complicated” status.
Tyler tells her he’s not gay, but he doesn’t use the word “gay” because if you say the word “gay” you might as well be confessing that you’re gay yourself. Tyler says the word you say when you want to talk about gay people and still keep it clear that you’re not one of them, like you have a leg up in society above them. Like they’re rock bottom and you’re not there yet. Our counselor suggests Tyler not use that word and I roll my eyes because now Tyler’s on the defensive. He’s not gay, he says, without using the word gay, and in fact Ms. Cat Lady thinking he’s gay is all the proof he needs that she doesn’t understand him the way she thinks she does and now I’m the jackass for wasting $10 a week forcing him to come here so Ms. Cat Lady can call him gay.
Ms. Cat Lady Counselor asks Tyler if he wants to do a breathing exercise, because of how worked up he’s gotten himself, and I laugh, on accident, because I’m the only one in the room who seems to remember this is all over Tyler not being gay.
Plenty of respectable men are gay, I tell Tyler.
I am not one of your respectable men, Tyler tells me.
I go back to thinking about tonight. If Marla is in I’ll throw together a dinner for us and we’ll talk about our day. Marla will ask me about therapy and I’ll ask Marla about her job leading support groups at First Eucharist, making minimum wage off donations and fundraisers. If Tyler decides to join us maybe he’ll talk about soap again. Or he’ll call our counselor a bitch and ask Marla if she wants to do it. One of the two.
If Marla isn’t in tonight, however, it’ll be because she’s decided to be a human butt wipe somewhere else after her shift. I imagine Marla Singer smoking alone in a car park somewhere, avoiding my brand of crazy, cigarette burns up her arms matching Tyler’s. It doesn’t escape me that she needs therapy too.
One challenge at a time.
One challenge at a time is the polite way of saying “I have too many challenges to deal with at once, God help me.”
It’s been years and progress with Tyler has been slow. Unfortunately shooting myself didn’t kill him nor cure me any more than Chloe could’ve cured her brain parasites with a gun. The disease known as Tyler Durden is a part of me. I’ve accepted Tyler. Marla’s accepted me. And Tyler’s accepted next to nothing. One challenge at a time.
Tyler kicks my leg when the bus pulls up.
We sit together in the back row, our shoes squeaking on the wet floor. It’s just us on the bus and one old man in the front. Too old for Fight Club, so not a threat. I relax and pretend not to notice the bus driver’s shaved head. One challenge at a time. I wonder if Marla will be in tonight.
“If you think too much, you’ll tire yourself out. You’re not a philosopher, compost pile. Don’t think, do. Look at the world around you and live it.”
Tyler’s two cents isn’t always worthless. I get out of my head and I look around. Out the bus window is a foggy street, worn down houses, the edge of the city. Our stop is in front of our apartment, ten stops away. The old man in the front seat hunches over and snores, or at least I hope it’s a snore. An empty water bottle rolls around under the seats as the bus makes a turn.
“We should go for a run sometime,” I say. They’re re-doing the sidewalks in this part of town, tearing up the old ones and pouring new cement. “That’s what adults are supposed to do, isn’t it?”
I’m an almost-forty year old boy, raised by women, trying to figure myself out before my incoming midlife crisis.
Tyler shrugs. Something you notice about Tyler if you care enough about him is that he only shrugs when he doesn’t want to answer you. And if he doesn’t want to answer you, that’s usually because he agrees with you. I choose not to make anything of it this time and instead I focus my attention on the dog walker outside. A little pug on a leash with a matching rain poncho. What a ripoff, I think, what kind of person buys a raincoat for a dog.
Tyler picks up my hand and traces the scar. I imagine this must be how a bull feels when it’s branded.
Tyler’s been doing this more lately. He picks up my hand. He looks at the scar. He traces the scar with his fingers. He only does it when I’m distracted. I try not to wonder what it means.
We’re nine stops away from our apartment now. Every few blocks the bus lurches to a halt throwing our stomach into roll. The folding doors squeal open letting in a cold draft and nothing else. We sit here for a minute in the limbo of a stopped bus before the doors close and it continues down the road all the same. As we go further into the city, the distance between stops shrinks. First it takes five empty blocks or so between them. Then three blocks of houses and run down tattoo parlors. Soon it’ll be a stop on each block until home sweet home.
I am Joe’s car sick nausea.
Tyler tells me to suck it up. He’s listening to my thoughts again, but he’s nauseous too. I know this because Tyler knows this. He leans back in his seat smoking the same cigarette as before, not a beautiful care in the world. Other than his upset stomach. Because he’s not real, the no smoking sign doesn’t apply to him. Though even if it did I doubt the bus driver would tell The Tyler Durden to put it out, sir. I bet the driver would gladly join him. Fuck society's rule or whatever, yeah yeah yeah. The driver catches my eyes in the rear view mirror and I tense up as I look away. Tyler is still touching my hand.
Eight stops to go.
We could drive to therapy if we wanted to, but we only have one car and Marla’s using it today. We could get another car for free if we wanted to, but Fight Club is not my current challenge and I’m taking it one challenge at a time. Maybe one day I’ll face that beast and dissect what I created, and maybe I’ll come out of it and decide a new car is worth it, but for now we have one car and I choose not to think about it.
I need to stop thinking, like Tyler says. Don’t think, do. Why doesn’t he say anything halfway clever around our cat lady counselor. Impress the undergrads for once, pretend we’re something more than a human butt wipe disaster lab rat.
For now he just holds my hand. That’s what this is. He’s holding my hand, and we’re sitting in the back of a bus, and if Marla is in tonight we’ll make dinner and pass ourselves off as next to normal, and maybe Tyler and Marla will do it while I sleep but I don’t care because our counselor says we can both date Marla if we want to and I trust Marla to know the difference. Fucked up in-law situation. Or something like that.
I wonder if this is how it feels to be in one of those polyamorous relationships, stuck between two people like this. I wonder if this is a good thing. I haven’t decided yet. It’s been years since I shot myself on the roof and years since I left the hospital, so you’d think I’d have it figured out by now. Maybe I need Tyler to be a little more cooperative before I can begin to unpack the baggage he throws at me each day. With his free hand Tyler adjusts his fur coat and I catch a glimpse of his blond hair falling into his face, cigarette bit between his front teeth. How’d I end up in a polyamorous relationship with two fur coat chainsmokers.
Don’t call us polyamorous, Tyler corrects me, that makes us sound gay.
I ask him why he cares and he shrugs. Like I know what that means. Stop shrugging, I say. Why do you care?
Because I’m not gay, Tyler argues seven stops away from our apartment, cold air and mist making its way to the back of the bus. He’s still holding my hand as he says this, and he still refuses to say the word gay. He spits out his cigarette and he steps on it.
“You like Marla,” he explains it to me, “And I fuck Marla. Think of it as a consensual love triangle.”
Like a polyamorous relationship.
“No. Like a love triangle. We -” He points to me and him. “- are not involved with each other.”
Six stops away from our apartment and I am not Joe’s oblivious observation. I ask Tyler, is that how it is?
“That’s how it is.”
Yeah sure.
Maybe I feel like getting on Tyler’s nerves tonight.
Tyler drops my hand when we’re five stops away. The buildings outside the window are taller by now, in better quality, and lit up like overtime pay Christmas trees. Tyler is tense beside me like he could use a good punch to the jaw to loosen up a bit, but he doesn’t tell me to hit him, because he knows that I won’t. I ask Tyler, “Why do you hold my hand if you’re not gay.”
He doesn’t have an answer prepared. I know this.
He redirects and says he’s not holding my hand, he’s looking at my scar. The scar he gave me.
“Why’d you kiss my hand if you’re not gay?”
I’m a real firestarter tonight. God’s problem child acting out. Maybe I don’t miss Fight Club as much as I think I do because here I am throwing punches at Tyler testing how much it'll take before he punches back. In my defense, he deserves it if he’s going to act like this. After all, I don’t care if he’s gay. It doesn’t affect me. I’m only making it as big of a deal as he made it in front of that stupid video camera in therapy today.
He’s terse. Says he didn’t kiss my hand, he burned it. With saliva. In the shape of his lips. Which he pressed to the back of my hand to seal our promise. If I turned this conversation into a drinking game, I’d be drunk.
Four stops away from our apartment and I tell him it was a kiss, which isn’t necessarily gay, and I’m just fucking with him. Maybe I’m not a firestarter after all. I tell him it’s not a big deal and if we use the microwave tonight we won’t have to boil water on the stove to make pasta.
He swears at me under his breath and I kick the empty water bottle when it rolls to my feet. The bus’ heating system turns on and smells like burnt dust and weed.
I’m a professional arsonist once again. “If you’re not gay, then what’s with all the outfits?”
The outfits? He asks.
“Yeah. The outfits.” I say.
He’s surprised and offended and amused. What about my outfits?
Fur coats, mesh shirts, fishnet sleeves. Pink fuzzy robes with cutesy decals and crop tops underneath. Low cut Hawaiian shirts tucked into your high cut pants. “I’ve known you for how many years, Tyler, and every day you’re dressed like a -”
“Like a what?”
I don’t know.
T minus three stops to go, and Tyler laughs at me. His laughter comes as a relief. I like it when I make him laugh, really. Maybe I prefer it to his other habits. I don’t know.
He laughs at me and calls me decaying organic matter and says maybe I’m the one who’s gay.
I say, maybe. I’m too old to care.
I really wish Tyler wouldn’t care. Let go. Slide. I ask Tyler if he wants to do a breathing exercise or if he’s good. He tells me to stick my breathing exercises up my butt, therapy is done for the day.
I rest my head against the window just to feel the bus vibrate against my skull. The engine hums through me and for a perfect minute my head is silent because I can’t hear anything over the sound bruising my skin, rattling in time with the heater above me. The bus stops, I’m sent forward, my forehead collides with the metal window frame.
“Two more stops,” Tyler lets me know.
I say thanks and rub my head. The old man must’ve gotten off at the last stop because now it’s just us. I look at Tyler and I look at the bus and I look at him again.
I can’t think of anything else to say so I stay silent when the bus rolls forward. There’s not much traffic tonight. Must be the rain.
“And what if I were gay,” Tyler starts, exactly like that. I try not to laugh or roll my eyes this time. Tyler is full of useful introspection today and I’m fine with that if he is. “They tell you, ‘get a wife, have two kids, then buy a townhouse with a picket fence’ but you don’t need any of that. This country is a corporation masquerading as a lifestyle.”
I tell Tyler, well when you put it that way you almost make it sound like being gay is a civic duty.
Tyler doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t find my joke funny and I pretend not to care. If I were a space monkey I wouldn’t care, maybe that’s what Tyler wants from me.
“Why did you break our promise,” Tyler asks me.
“When you gave me my scar?” I tell him he already knows why, and I don’t know why he’s bringing this up now.
Cold fog pools around us, dim bright overhead lights shine on our faces. Tyler takes my hand in his again. I remember when we made that promise, he didn’t burn my hand right away. First I knelt beside Tyler in front of the fridge and he showed me my hands. The life line. The love line. The mounds of Venus and Mars.
“Why did you break our promise?” He asks me again.
I’m frustrated now. I don’t like it when he repeats things to me. I don’t like that he’s bringing this up now. I can feel the bus rattling through the cheap cushioning of the seat. I can smell the heater ready to give out. “You know why,” I say, “Don’t ask me a third time.”
He smiles, flashing a canine, his eyes wrinkling in the corners. He presses his thumbs against my scar, without losing eye contact for a second. “Why’d you break our promise?”
“You know why. Because I know why.”
“Exactly,” he says, “Now three times you’ve admitted it. I know what you know. And, you know what I know.”
I hate it when I don’t understand Tyler.
“Next stop is ours. Be with me for a moment. Enough thinking, enough distracting yourself. Enough jokes. Be present. Open your eyes. Look at me.”
I’m looking at him.
“What if I were gay?”
I don’t know why he’s asking me this.
He looks at me.
Around the corner is our apartment. Marla, microwave water and pasta, my life. But here in this bus beside me is Tyler, his face as scarred and bruised and tired as mine is, and this is my life too. I know this because Tyler knows this.
I know what he knows.
And I know why he’s asking me this question.
Tyler leans in and he kisses me not on my hand but on my lips. I don’t move because to anyone else I look like I’m alone, but I feel him against me as real as he felt when I first met him.
For a perfect moment it’s his rugged skin against mine and I’m seeing the sun over the nude beach, reflected over the shallow water, and it’s just us together warm and sweating and gritty with sand. Just us moving from one perfect moment to the next. I see him in the kitchen tilting a can of lye over my hand in his, his kiss a bonfire against me. He holds me in his arms as I cry out for vinegar and he tells me about all of human history. The death. The pain. The sacrifice. And how it all came together to birth soap you can carve into delicate little flowers. I feel Tyler wet against my lips and this is our next perfect moment. Then he’s gone again. Looking at me from the bus seat next to mine.
I don’t have to say anything. He already knows what I’m thinking. We’re coming up on our stop anyway. The bus pulls over, loud and slow. We get up and brace for the cold weather in the five feet between the stop and the apartment doors. For once I don’t have challenges, one at a time.
I step off the bus and for now I am Joe’s swelling heart.