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Unfamiliar arms were closed around my head, that is, unfamiliar until this night. Now I am very much familiar with the hands that have been beating me senselessly into a pulp this whole night. I do not know the owner of said hands and do not care to learn.
It’s Saturday. Fight club night. Like always, I have clocked in for my weekly shift of controlled violence right on the dot. A gross parody of the sterile corporate workplace I’m used to during the day.
You’re getting thrown around the floor like a ragdoll.
Punch.
Slam.
Squelch.
I fall to the ground with a thump, that sounds like a sack of potatoes getting thrown across the basement, and feel blood rush in and pool in my mouth that I’m now forced to swallow. The taste of blood, no matter if mine or others, is the closest you get to a coffee break or the trip to the office water dispenser during your shift at fight club. Wincing, I try to sit up, but freeze up as soon as I try to move my left leg. Great.
Here the cushy computer chairs and office tables are replaced with a luxuriously sweat and blood-dirtied cardboard sheet on the cold basement floor. The business casual attire of ties and ironed light blue shirts is replaced with bare torsos and naked feet. I feel the piercing cold of the glacial basement floor through the almost wet cardboard sheet. Hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Through the haze of mind-numbing pain, I make eye contact with Tyler in the crowd. I’m the one fighting tonight, he just came here to watch and deliver another one of his enlightening lectures to overeager students, his followers who drink in every single word he mutters. As if I’m better than any of them.
He gives me a worryingly blank look. Tyler sometimes gets like this during fight club nights when I actually get my turn to fight. I ignore it.
“Huh belle of the ball again, aren’t we,” he said tonight, before roughly patting me on the back and pushing me forwards into our modest DIY boxing ring.
Now he looks at me like I’m some piece of candy. Realistically, a piece of candy that has been rolling around in the mud, getting stepped on and thrown around for the last 20 minutes. My tonight’s other half, my partner in one of the most depraved waltzes ever danced, is some eerily tall retail worker with enough customer service-induced pent-up anger to smash through a concrete wall. His ginger hair has been flashing around in my vision like an orange-tinted ophthalmologist’s flashlight.
Now let’s check your pupillary light reflex, shall we?
Can you look up? Now to the left? Now follow the light with both eyes as closely as you can.
A doctor’s appointment from which you go home with a blood receipt, a limp, and worse vision than you had before the appointment.
A carelessly thrown, yet solid fist connects with my nose and I’m brought out of the Tyler-induced trance. My head bangs on the floor from the impact with a worryingly loud thud. Pain shoots through my body and I take the wet feeling of blood all over my face and chest as a sign to put up my hand and call it a night. I feel embarrassed to stop the fight, like a stuttering virgin that came too early, but if Tyler’s expression is anything to go by, I probably currently look like a murder victim.
Next thing you know, Tyler’s carrying you up the basement stairs. My whole body leaning on his sturdy frame for support. I can barely hear a thing that’s happening. I’m not fully alert. This is what a drug overdose must feel like, except my drug is a consensual masochistic tendency for violence. I wonder what would Marla say to this opulence of metaphorical Xanax.
You take weak step after weak step until you find yourself in the parking lot of Lou’s tavern. The night air feels crisp and fresh on my gleaming newborn bruises. The sort of feeling you get when you go outside after crying your eyes out, face still wet with tears and everything feeling oddly subdued.
I feel reborn, like a young staggering deer.
Knees shaking.
My left leg feels almost useless, with pain shooting through it with every step, like getting shot with a gun repeatedly.
Tyler carries us to a street light and sits me down on the sidewalk. He huffs out a giggle, sticks a fresh cigarette between his lips, and starts rummaging through his pockets for a lighter.
“You really took a beating like a champ tonight. Did you even try to fight back, or did you just want to play dress-up as a punching bag tonight?”
Shut up, Tyler, I sigh. It comes out through a gurgle of blood.
I see a flash of orange again, but it’s just Tyler’s pink lighter committing an act of arson on the tip of the cigarette that’s been stuck in Tyler’s mouth. It’s destiny decided.
“Hey, I’m proud of you,” he sits down beside me, taking a sizzling drag of smoke, and throws his arm across my shoulders. I wince. “You’re finally trying to hit bottom like a good boy.”
He lets out a gray cloud of smoke. Some of it hits my face.
Thank you, Tyler.
Everything feels like static, only Tyler’s voice and body warmth guiding me to reality. The front of my shirt, that Tyler forced me to pull back on before carrying me out of the basement like a fresh corpse, is already getting completely soaked with the blood that had been sticking to my chest this whole time. A wet dark red stripe down the middle.
I shiver and instinctively lean closer to Tyler’s warmth. He turns his head to me and brings the cigarette he has been smoking to my lips. I bring my hand up and take it from him, my fingers brushing against his for a second. His hand, being now free, closes in on my face and his soft soapmaker fingers contrastingly harshly wipe some of the blood from my cheek.
I suck in a smoke-filled breath and let out a hiss when his uneven nail seemingly accidentally scratches a gash open.
“Without pain and suffering, you would have nothing,” he starts, eyes following the fresh trail of blood flowing down my chin. I gulp down a mouthful of blood that had been collecting in the back of my throat.
“Blood was used as an ancient sacrificial offering to the Gods in ancient Greece, along with other disposable parts of the cattle. You must also lose a part of your superfluous self to find your true self.”
My wet shirt is the blood-covered altar of the modern world.
Tyler smiles and reaches up to the bleeding scratch that pulses on my cheek. He wipes it with his thumb and, retracting his arm back, licks the vine red blood off his finger, accepting my flesh’s offering.
I watch the smudge of blood shine on his lip.
He takes back the cigarette, that has now made its way back to him, after being passed around like the only girl in a straight two-man-one-woman threesome, and continues.
“Prometheus found a way to outsmart the God and Father of Gods Zeus himself, so humans could keep the necessary parts of animals. You must do the same for yourself and be the cattle of the sacrifice. Sacrifice the unneeded parts of yourself to the God that hates you and find yourself in the process of cleansing.”
He breathes in the spirit of nicotine and I fixate on the blood smudge that has now stained the tube. My blood.
“That’s what you went towards back there tonight,” Tyler says.
Thank you, Tyler, I feel metamorphosed.
Tyler fixes me with a look. Then sighs and gets up. He walks to the street lamp and leans against it continuing to puff away at the cig. I’m still staring at the lipstick red blood stain. He looks satisfied. Maybe even happy. My gaze shifts to the corner of his mouth and lips that, illuminated in the moon glow, show off my blood stain. He seemingly notices and turns his head to me.
A beat.
My head is spinning like a centrifuge and I realize I’m vomiting too late. I feel like I’m spewing out a part of myself on the slightly wet, grimy pavement. A part of my being left on the street, a puddle of blood and vomit. Fitness girls should try out this new and healthy detox method, the results are undeniable. I feel 5 pounds lighter already!
I hear Tyler kick and smash an empty beer bottle that had been innocently lying next to the graffitied street lamp with a resounding crash. “Come on, up you go now,” Tyler says, throws down the smoke, putting it out with the sole of his shiny shoe, and helps me get up, patting my back.
Lesson learned. Don’t look at Tyler’s lips.
I glance at him, then back down at the street. I see a white pearl among the spill of bloody puke. Huh , I now notice and poke at an empty spot among my teeth with my tongue. More blood. The empty space among my teeth spits out a splash of metallic taste coupled with a dose of sparkling pain.
I say, did I hit bottom, tonight?
“What do you think,” Tyler huffs out a laugh.
I don’t know what to say so I don’t say anything.
It’s too late to take the bus so Tyler tells me to “walk it off, sitting won’t help you”. I want to remind him about my leg, but he just offers his right side for me to lean on without saying anything. We truly must look like two happy campers.
My scout uniform:
CRUMPLED BLOODY SHIRT
UNTIED SHOES
GRAY DRESS PANTS: TORN
THE FACE OF A BEAT-TO-DEATH MURDER VICTIM
Tyler just looks like he always does. Untouched, yet a bit artfully messed up in a depraved way. Like a fashion school dropout who has been forced to live on the street for a week. Cropped thrifted shirt that looks like he stole it from a preschooler, red jacket, and pants that look too tight to be meant to be worn by a man. His hipbones protrude like two mountains, creating a valley that trails to the clasp that holds his pants together. Tyler doesn’t wear a belt, for that matter, Tyler doesn’t wear underwear, it’s seemingly beneath him. How scandalous.
Step.
Ache.
Step.
Throb.
Tonight truly aged my joints, yet I feel like a little baby that just crawled out of the Mother Earth’s vaginal vault, waddling its way through the dark city like it just learned to walk on two legs. I am barely conscious, I am cold, and I am pulsing with pain, yet I’m also a Hindu cow, I am reborn . Enlightened.
The pain seemingly takes over my sense of time and I snap out of my ache-induced coma when Tyler is pushing open the front door of the Paper Street house, it slamming open with no resistance at all. No locks and a barely functioning door handle. We have nothing worth stealing here anyway.
It takes some maneuvering to get to the kitchen. We fumble through the house like teenagers after a night out. Tyler crashes into a book pile from the combined force of both of our masses clinging together, stuck together with wax, sending me stumbling and digging my fingers further into his shoulder.
I let go of him when we reach the cluttered kitchen table and cling to the table as if it were my new savior. My nose is dripping red puddles on the floor.
“You should probably get that cleaned up,” he says.
Drip , blood hits the floor.
I lean my hip on the table, the old and definitely-not-from-Ikea surface taking on my whole weight, and look down at my shirt and bloody hands. The blood has started to dry and turn into a shit-brown layer that sticks the indents of my palm together. I flex my fingers. They stick and sting, my knuckles covered in tiny cuts. There is drying blood underneath my fingers.
I hear Tyler snooping through the cupboards while I’m contemplating the poor state of my hands, and when he returns he is carrying a bottle (no label, its print rubbed off from frequent use) and some dirty kitchen towels that are probably supposed to serve as some poor gauze or cotton pad stand-in. Paper Street Urgent Care Facility - soap company on the side.
He stands in front of me, entrapping me between him and the table, and lays out the supplies. Seems like even Tyler Durden sometimes cares.
“Do you know what the alchemical Great Work is? The Magnum Opus, if you will.”
Drip , blood hits my upper lip.
I say, I do not. He takes a sepia-toned rag and turns towards the sink. Water shyly, with a screeching sound, greets the cloth. He returns in front of me and starts swiping away at the pools of blood covering my nose, mouth and chin. I wonder how safe it is to use the water from our pipes to clean fresh cuts and bruises, but it doesn’t seem to bother Tyler.
“Alchemy. But I don’t want you to worry your little head over that,” He swipes the cold towel over my bloody neck, “The process was split into three parts. Nigredo, albedo, rubedo.”
Black.
White.
Red.
He says, you are the prima materia, ready for transformation. This is your time for the first phase, which has already been set into motion. Blah blah here the spirit feels the most anguish of separation from its perceived truth. Blah blah.
Sometimes I feel like he pulls these lectures out of thin air, and Tyler is full of such interesting information today. It doesn't seem like he even cares that I’m not fully listening. For God's sake , I’m the one here with a potential head injury.
Tyler tosses the now even more dirty towel somewhere in the pile of garbage that’s been gathering on the table. Both of us know that it’s not going to be washed and the remains of my blood will be engrained in its DNA . You wouldn’t want to know how many bodily fluids reside in the average Paper Street towel.
He steps back to get to the fridge and I’m wondering what he could possibly need in there, but he comes back after a second and presses a cold chuck of frozen fat in my left hand. Is this his attempt at an ice pack? The plastic clings to my hand and I try not to think about the origins of said fat.
I press it to my thumping head nonetheless.
He settles back in front of me and grabs my right arm in a steady grip. He sets it against his shoulder to get to my bicep, where there is a worryingly large, yet shallow gash.
“You’re gonna want to sit down for this”
I blink.
He starts pouring the contents of the blank bottle on my arm. Must be hydrogen peroxide. I hiss and stumble further back on the table on my ass, dropping the frozen chunk of human remains on the table with a smack . Somehow this feels different from the pain I already got used to tonight. A much more controlled and sterile pain.
I grab Tyler’s cropped shirt to keep my balance. I am almost hanging on to Tyler like a little kid would hang on to his mother’s apron. The bruises, that have now become a permanent part of my look, being Tyler’s apron strings. Tied to me perpetually.
I am Tyler’s.
He leans closer, “Now, do you think you can lose the remaining excess of your forged self?”
Yes, Tyler.
He digs a finger into my shoulder. My pulsating, purifying wound. Like he’s testing me. Ruining the cleanse of sizzling chemicals.
I gasp and whimper and, not unlike a puppy, search for his eyes. They have glazed over in an expression that reminds me of the one I saw during the fight.
I want you to know that I’m doing this for your own good , he says.
You will thank me in the end , he says.
Tyler digs his fingers out from my shoulder and takes my chin in his blood-stained hand.
Fresh red blood under his nails.
He takes my right hand in his and brings it toward his face.
Dried black blood under my nails.
I feel like we’re stuck in time. Stuck in between nowhere. Not a living soul in the vicinity of our lonely, beat-up house.
I watch my hand be moved towards his lips, almost by an invisible force. The back of it touching his skin lightly. He doesn‘t take his eyes off mine. My hand is being stained with a new layer of blood, this one being granted to me by Tyler, himself.
I realize I’m a little bit afraid, of him, of his thoughts. I think I hate Tyler a little. I admit, I wanted to kiss him, which wasn’t all that different from wanting to pound at him until blood gushed from his nose and lips. His face hidden away by a blood blanket so don’t have to see him looking at me with knowing eyes.
He licks his lips and kisses the back of my hand. It’s wet and just in a moment his warm lips are gone, my skin now wet. A glimmering imprint left by Tyler. Another signature of his left on my flesh.
In an unexpected moment of bravery, I reach up towards his face and rub off the lipstick stain of my blood that has been clinging to his lips all this time. My finger slips too close to the crevice of his mouth. I tremble. He smiles at me.
I am Jack’s palpitating heart.
He is taking my hand back in his bruising grip and leaning towards me. I have nowhere to run, my knees held open by his body pressing closer to me. I have nowhere to run and hide myself. I have nowhere to fall, but the steady kitchen table.
You’re in the middle of Paper Street.
It’s the middle of the night and you’re sitting on the dirty kitchen table.
You’re kissing Tyler Durden.
I don’t know when our lips connected, but they’re pressed together like two magnets. I wouldn’t be able to pull away even if I wanted to. If a positive charge and a negative charge interact, their forces act in the same direction.
He is licking into my mouth like an unstoppable force and I’m just left there to let him do so. The blood that has been collecting in my mouth is let out, like floodgates being opened. It drenches my chin and Tyler’s mouth red. I think my nose is still bleeding. He pulls back and looks like he has been eating out a girl on her period. I don’t think he minds the blood.
I can’t help but reach back towards him, wrapping my arms around his neck to keep him in place. I card my fingers through his messed-up hair. I’m laid out like an offering.
Tyler, deliver me from modern society.
Tyler, be my new mercifully cruel God.
Tyler, accept my sacrifice.
I wanted him in the way that you want to strangle someone in a moment of rage. Only this anger seemed to never fade or lose spontaneity. I thrust my head and neck back towards him and give him another taste of my blood vine. I’m clinging to Tyler’s lips like a newborn would cling to his mother's breast. I feel pathetic. Like a leech that Tyler is just so kind to let freeload. The taste of salt and metal is all I taste.
It is a Saturday night and you’re the prima materia beginning to rot.
It is a Saturday night and you have found your new lifeline.
It is a Saturday night and Tyler is touching you in ways you have never imagined.
A chunk of cold fat melts on the kitchen table. A partial rebirth.