Work Text:
Tyler knows what he's doing.
It's the first thing he says. "Shut up, I know what I'm doing."
Which is great, because I don't. I want to ask what it is he thinks he's doing, but by now he has his hand inside my bathrobe and it's become a stupid fucking question. Like it never was at first.
He's good at it. I think I knew he would be, like he's good at anything else he gets off on – chaos, showing off, drinking, fighting. I wonder if this is what he does when Marla's not here, or if this is just one of his businesslike tugs; putting his jizz in the mushroom soup at the Hilton. A lot of people have eaten Tyler's jizz.
It's not weird. It should be weird, but it's not weird.
Until Tyler gets out this monster silicone cock with the kind of grin that usually means explosions. Breaking glass. Golf clubs. Pigeon shit. Mayhem.
I tell him, that's not going anywhere near my asshole.
It looks kind of familiar and I'm pretty sure it's Marla's. Marla's enough of a size bitch to own a dildo that's more than a third of her body length. Just to piss off potential boyfriends.
Tyler says, "You're being fucked up the ass by society every day. What's one more dick?"
And I say, "Jesus, does everything have to be a symbol with you?"
I don't say I'd rather it was his dick because that'd be gay, but I'd rather it was. What he has in his hand, what he is smearing in handfuls of water-based lubricant (silicone does not rot with petroleum-based jelly but habit is habit), is not his dick. It's Marla's dick. He's going to fuck me up the ass with Marla's dick.
"Look," I tell him, trying to fend him off, "this is – "
"Shut up," Tyler says, "I know what I'm doing."
He might have slapped me. The next day I have a new bruise forming.
"Every day of your life," Tyler says, "you're being fucked up the ass and you don't even notice. All I'm doing is opening your eyes."
Nothing is ever simple with Tyler. The only thing that's simple is Fight Club. There is no symbolism in the crack of bones and the smell of blood hitting bare floor, and if there is I don't have to hear it.
The part of me that was owned by a condo and a car and a lifestyle is worried. Is this hygienic? She's probably used it on him. Or he's used it on himself. This dick has been up Tyler's asshole too.
The rest of me says it's no different than when, after a good fight, we're slippery with each other's blood, and I kiss him on the mouth. Or he kisses me. A good fight, a good kiss. How can you know who you are if you've never done that?
Tyler says, everything you buy is just a dick to fuck yourself with.
It's Marla's dildo (we can use the definite article here: her dildo. Not "a" dildo. Marla's dildo). It's been used on her. The competition. The bitch. The enemy. And I don't see Marla using a condom on the thing. I don't see Marla using a condom on anything, but I'd still love to shove one down her throat.
Tyler says, "Are you going to open your legs or am I going to knee you in the balls?"
I open my legs.
It's kind of surprising how easy it goes in. How gentle he is. How well it fits.
The female G-spot, Tyler says, is a spot three quarters of the way up the vaginal canal where the wall is thin enough to allow contact with the urethra. What we think is an intense orgasm is in fact mild incontinence.
He is pinching and twisting one of my nipples. Fight Club has my nerves so deadened that it actually feels good instead of agonising.
The male G-spot, Tyler says, is the prostate gland. Three quarters of the way up the rectum. Something the size of an almond which, when a man reaches that special age when birds' nests begin to grow up his nose, gets cancer. Becomes the size of a walnut. Kills him.
He's moved off my chest and is stroking and pulling my dick with suspicious ease.
This thing that kills you, Tyler says, you catch it at the right angle enough times and you come so hard you almost go blind.
His thumb goes over the head of my dick.
What kind of god, Tyler asks me, puts a man's pleasure button up his ass? What kind of god makes that button your destroyer? If you wanted proof that God's a woman, this is it.
Everything below my waist is on fire.
The sad part is, Tyler says, we are reduced to jamming baseball bats and radio-controll cars and coke bottles up our own asses in order to feel good, in order to feel like God loves us, when in reality all we ever needed was for someone to hi the spot for us. Fuck God.
He hits the spot, and I come so hard I think I'm going to black out. Like my balls are being emptied by a vacuum. Like someone flipped a switch.
By the time I can focus my eyes again Tyler is gone. I have jizz all over my chest and all over my hand. I lick it off the side of my fist, thinking it'll taste of something weird because of how it was made.
It tastes the same as always.
Maybe he did this more than once.
"Have you been using my dildo?"
Marla is here again. She hangs around the house like a bad smell, and because Tyler won't see her when they're not fucking, she talks to me instead. I ignore her and carry right on bleaching blood stains out of my work shirt.
"I knew you'd get hooked on it," she says, idly burning holes in her petticoat with her cigarette, kicking her legs on the table like a little girl. "All men do."
"No, Marla, I have not been using your dildo."
"Denial doesn't look good on you."
Nothing looks good on her. She looks like a cancer victim with hickeys. She looks like a tumour. Marla is a disease.
"Are you gay?" she asks. I am rinsing bleach from my shirt and ignoring her hand on my crotch. Her chin is like a knife in my back, sudden, sharp, unwelcome. "It's okay if you are." Magnanimous Marla. "I've fucked plenty of gay guys."
I don't say, that's because you look like a fourteen-year-old boy. I don't say, fucking you made them gay. I just rinse the bleach from my shirt, over and over, and Marla grabs my ass and squeezes until blood vessels burst.
Maybe he did it a lot.
Changeover. Had I been sleeping more, or has Tyler been using our body more?
"We fucked."
I'm in a hotel room in Cincinnati that I don't remember checking in to. He's on the end of the bed.
"What?"
"We can't be the same person, Tyler. We fucked."
He makes at jerking-off gesture with his fist, slow and obscene. And that's it.
"I'm a manifestation of your innermost desires," Tyler drawls for a second time, "I dress like you wanna dress. I act like you wanna act. I fu- "
"Are you saying I'm secretly gay? I'm not gay, Tyler."
He laughs and tells me I'm not gay, I'm just a massive narcissist. And I tell him that whatever I am, I don't want it to stop.
But I'm asleep in seconds and when I awake he's not there and I'm not where I started.
With a gun in my mouth I'm faced with a decision, a choice. Who do I love more, Marla or Tyler?
Who do you love more, Mommy or Daddy?
It isn't really a choice. Tyler's a figment of my imagination, all six foot sweaty two inches of him, all of his shaven head and his toned stomach and his stare and his sneer and his male stink. He's just in my head. Marla's the real deal. Her dress is stained and her hair looks like she's been in ECT and there's motor oil on her face, or soot.
Who do I love more, Marla or Tyler?
I think I know, and I think it's
Me.
When I was released from hospital I wasn't prosecuted. I tried to get myself committed, but there stitches on the psychiatrist's cheek and when I tried to make a confession to the cops the lawyer I hadn't asked for backhanded me.
I don't miss Tyler as much as I thought I would. Marla takes up plenty of space at Paper Street, and she knows how to wield that monstrous silicone thing well enough. I guess she's had a lot of practice.
In reality, all we need is for someone to hit that spot for us.