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I think I might be Tyler Durden's trophy wife.
My hands fumble awkwardly with the fabric of his tie, and he grumbles something about the size of the stick up my ass, and I scoff. Tyler, I say, you completely screwed up the knot, I can't just adjust it. I have to redo the whole thing. I can feel his throat flutter under my fingers as he grunts in acknowledgement, and I finish up the knot.
I pat him on the shoulder harder than is appropriate for a friendly gesture, hoping it'll bruise, and he blows smoke from the cigarette dangling between his lips into my face. The stinging of my eyes hardly registers anymore. It's practically a sign of endearment for him. I sniff indignantly as he flashes that crooked grin of his.
"Why, thank you, dear," he says, voice dripping with mockery. He juts his cheek forward and taps it. "No goodbye kiss?"
I shove him away from me. Bye, Tyler, I say, and he saunters out the door, cocky smile still plastered on his face. The image of a woman wishing her husband a good day at the office assaults my mind. Only instead of toiling away at some dead-end desk job, Tyler will be pissing in huge pots of lobster bisque to dish out to the unsuspecting patrons of the Pressman Hotel.
Blooming yellow and green bruises littered like hickies.
Tenderly dressing each other's wounds.
Sharing cigarettes out on the back porch.
Mr. and Mr. Durden.
Tyler catches me thumbing through an Ikea catalogue one day. An old, waterlogged thing from that stack of magazines in the basement. I think it's from the '80s. His eyebrows shoot up slightly. I should rattle off something witty about consumerism, Tyler's words parroted back at him just like he wants. All I say is shut up, Tyler, even though he hasn't said anything.
I don't want to go back to my condo life. Really, I don't. That's not why I'm looking. Somehow, my reason is even more horribly indulgent than any beige-tinted fantasy of hazy middle-class living.
I'm squinting my eyes at the soggy pages, ready to dissolve into colorful mush between my fingertips, and trying to envision our furniture taking the place of the Morava dresser or the Stratus lamp. Swedish passages spewing in poetic prose about my moldy bare mattress. Our rotting kitchen table displayed in glossy print, rusty nails sticking out, tetanus included free-of-charge. All for the low, low price of rejecting comfortable mediocrity and accepting your inevitable fate as worm food.
Our heretical life put out on display, meticulously organized in some perversion of the usual perfectly designed home bullshit these catalogues peddle. Maybe they could even condense Tyler's waxing philosophical about corporate evil into a marketable motto.
My face must be twisting up somehow, because Tyler is leaning over me with an amused glint in his eyes.
"I don't understand you, man." Evidently, he doesn't care to try, because he immediately follows that up with: "I'm going to the store. You coming?"
It wasn't really a question. Wherever Tyler went, I went. He once called me a lost puppy. I socked him across the face extra hard at fight club that night.
So we go to the store. Tyler knocks things into the cart at his leisure, barely glancing at them and striding forward faster than I can keep up with. I'm mumbling what we need, mostly to myself, as I careen the cart around corners trying to match his frenetic pace.
Unfortunately, Tyler hasn't fully beaten the corporate wage slave out of me yet. Neon sales stickers make me do a double-take. I feel like a recovering alcoholic in a bar. I stop for too long looking at a box of Corn Pops with a buy-one-get-one tag slapped on it and jump when I hear Tyler's voice against my ear.
"See something you like, Ikea-Boy?"
His voice rumbles low in his throat and I can feel his hot breath tickle the shell of my ear. He's snuck up behind me while I was busy debating our need for mediocre cereal. I want to blow my brains out at how quickly I start blushing like a virginal schoolgirl. I elbow him off of me, jabbing right between his ribs. I don't even hear him react. I'm almost sorry at the immediate loss of touch as he recoils.
I am Jack's dire need for intimacy.
I ask, are we even paying for this stuff? Tyler seems to think for a long moment before just shrugging. "Do what you like, man. I don't give a shit."
That's Tyler's way of saying he's not footing the bill.
I grab the Corn Pops, and five minutes later we're darting our eyes around to make sure no one notices as we smuggle the cart and the copious groceries inside with us. It's a miracle we don't get caught, but it seems like I can do just about anything when Tyler's around.
When we get home, we bicker about who crushed the bread at the bottom of the pile. We eat our cans of fruit at the kitchen table in bitter silence. I can practically hear the wedding bells now.
Visions of my warped domesticity with Tyler begin to take over everything I do. I'm certain if a psychiatrist dared to put a Rorschach test in front of me, I'd only be able to see inkblot silhouettes of us sharing a beer in the backyard like in some cheesy romance flick.
Maybe I'm attracted to him, or maybe I've entirely skipped that stage and landed on the unhappy marriage point of our relationship. I'm not too worried about the details. Or maybe I just don't want to think about it.
I see an issue of Better Homes and Gardens at the checkout of a corner store while I pick up cigarettes for us. I imagine the Paper Street house on the front cover in all of it's dilapidated glory. In the paper, Macy's advertises they're having a sale on photography services. I imagine me and Tyler posing in front of a disturbingly sterile background, his arm snaked around my waist and my hand splayed on his chest, leaning into the crook of his shoulder. Black eyes and chipped teeth prominently on display. No matter where I go, I can't help but imagine Tyler and I tainting everything with our taboo lifestyle. The only thing nuclear about our household is the potential levels of radiation from whatever goes on at the paper mill.
It doesn't matter if Tyler's fucking Marla within an inch of her life every other night.
It doesn't matter if the closest we've ever been is our purpled knuckles slamming into each other, breaking each other's fight-hardened-ruined skin.
We will always come back to each other.
Tyler's a part of my life, and I'm a part of his. We are inextricable from one another. Attached, fused by bone at the hip like some Lovecraftian monstrosity.
And I want to make it the world's problem.
I want Tyler to kick me in the stomach and dig his stupid Gucci loafers into my spleen when I come home from work.
I want him to knock my molars loose each morning like a kiss, feel them rattle as I eat the burnt toast he graces me with.
I want him to bend my limbs so the bones grind and splinter against each other, twisting them out of their sockets while telling me he loves me.
And I used to be such a nice guy.
When it happens, I'm almost not surprised. We're both recouperating after fight club. I pounded some skinny kid working as a gas station clerk into the battle-warmed concrete, Tyler only watched. He has a cigarette, almost burned to a nub, pressed between his lips, splayed out on the couch. I always wonder if he secretly uses gloss.
I must be wondering too hard, because Tyler's gaze snaps from whatever celebrity gossip garbage is propped up on his lap to me, staring dumbly at those stupidly plush lips. He plucks the sorry excuse for a cigarette out of his mouth and crushes the butt of it against the pockmarked couch.
My heart hammers, aortas working overtime to make my heart thud, thud, thud against my ribcage like it's trying to tear through my chest. For some fucking reason, my eyes are still dutifully trained on his face. Maybe I'm waiting for him to tell me to roll over so I can get a treat.
He kneels down next to me, and I feel his breath warm against my skin. His face is unreadable, and remains that way as he reaches his calloused hands up to cup my face, stroking against my cheekbone and pressing hard with his thumb against a patch of bruised skin. My mouth falls open, I'm pliant and ready for something, anything, and I know better than to even feign that the hiss of air through my teeth is because of anything but pleasure.
He leans in, our mouths connect, and I feel every joint loosen, every stiff muscle relax, like my body is trying to liquify and merge into Tyler's, trying to meld our flesh together. I don't even know if I'm kissing back or just letting Tyler work his mouth against mine, love-dumb and slack.
It's chaste, and it's over before I can truly understand it. "You remember we gotta sell that soap tomorrow, yeah?" I nod. "Good. I'm going to bed. Get some gauze, man, you look like shit."
He claps me on the back. I watch him leave, and I start to wonder if insomnia can cause tangible hallucinations.
We don't talk about it, but I am definitely Tyler Durden's trophy wife now.
That night, we sleep spooning. He kisses the back of my neck, gentler than I thought was possible for Tyler despite the scratch of his beard. I wake up with bruises on my legs that definitely weren't there when I went to sleep. I don't know why I get so giddy over them. Tyler gives me bruises all the time. These ones, though, I press down on through my slacks at work and smile at the dull ache. I make a routine of mapping them in the mornings so I know where to dig my nails into later.
He still beats the shit out of me, thankfully. Sometimes, he moves from wrapping his fingers around my neck to wrapping them around my cock five minutes after, which is a nice change of pace.
He gives me comically large hickies in plain view. I want to grin to myself whenever my boss gives me an odd glare or the other men in fight club exchange looks. It feels good to be so openly Tyler's. I wish Marla still came around so I could shove them in her stupid face and say look, Marla, he never did this for you. I'm his new favorite. I wonder if this is how people feel when their friends fawn over their shiny new engagement rings.
So I'm fixing Tyler's tie again, feeling the silk slide against the tips of my fingers. I finish it off and give him a kiss on the jaw. I say, you really should be able to do this by now.
He chuckles and says, "You wanna stop doing this for me, is that it?"
No, of course not, I say, and I give him another kiss, this time on the lips. He pulls away with a grin. "That's what I thought." He kicks me in the shin. "Shoo, I gotta go to work."
I must look annoyed, or lonely, or something equally embarrassing, because he rolls his eyes and pulls me flush against him by my waist. He leans in, cheek against mine, and says lowly, "I swear I won't save it all for the cream of mushroom soup tonight."
I want to give him a black eye so bad.
Instead, I grumble something unintelligible, and he lets go of me and heads for the door. As he leaves, he calls out that we need groceries, and I try to remember the best time to go to avoid employees lingering near the exit doors.
Not much has changed between us, really.
I am Jack's perverse domestic bliss.