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Tyler is saying something about soap. Nitroglycerin and fat separating. Something about being a boy scout. Something about lye. It's hard to listen, but I do try.
I always make an effort to listen when Tyler talks. Sometimes, it's just really mind numbing.
I feel guilty about how little of this I'm absorbing.
It also doesn't help that Tyler's jeans are sitting as low on his hips as humanly possible, and that he just lifted the bottom of his shirt.
I feel like a puritan. A victorian man being flashed an ankle.
The imagery of all five feet, eleven inches of Tyler in a tiny boy scouts uniform doesn't help either.
But that one was entirely my fault.
I'm going to hell, if such a place exists.
“Can I see your hand please?”
Please Is not a word that often leaves Tyler’s mouth. He's very demanding.
I probably should have gathered what he was going to do to me, given the safety glasses and heavy duty gloves he puts on while waving a bottle of lye around. But I thought nothing of it.
I am Jack's naivety.
I give him my hand, because I can't deny Tyler a thing.
And he said please. I’d be an ungrateful fool to refuse him.
Gloved fingers wrap around my wrist, skimming across my knuckles on the way.
He licks his lips, glancing up at me, and I want to ask what the hell is going on.
Questioning Tyler is almost never wise.
Tyler kisses my hand. His lips are surprisingly soft for someone who doesn't really take care of himself outside of trimming his fingernails and keeping his hair a reasonable length for fight club.
Which is already hard to believe, from looking at him.
I wonder what chapstick he uses.
I am Jack's racing heart.
Forget wise.
“What is this?”
Tyler doesn't do physical affection. Our most intimate moments consist of bleeding knuckles and knocked out teeth.
Not that I've ever complained.
A punch from Tyler may as well be a gentle caress. I feel the impression of his lips on the back of my hand like a brand. Which will become ironic in about five seconds.
Maybe you can see where this is going.
I never do.
Predicting Tyler Durden is a losing game. One I stopped playing almost immediately after meeting him.
A guy who you expected to be a single serving friend earnestly asking you to hit him will do that.
Not that Tyler will ever know this, but that is not at all the direction I expected his proposition to go.
‘Oh can I stay with you?’
‘If you do me a favor..’
I wouldn't have said no.
I didn't even consider it.
A tall, muscular, well dressed, charming, blonde guy propositioning me?
As if I would say no to that. I'd be insane.
Well, more than I already am.
Anyway, It would be an understatement to say I was surprised.
Surprise is not good for the heart long term.
And it's a lot harder to be surprised if you don't try and guess where something is going.
Or so I thought.
“This, is a chemical burn.”
He pours the lye over my hand.
Probably lye, anyway.
Again, it's hard to pay attention.
Pain. Blinding, white-hot pain.
I scream.
“It'll hurt more than you've ever been burned, and you will have a scar.”
He relays this information to me like he's reading it out of the newspaper.
‘This just in: You're about to experience unimaginable suffering.’
“What are you doing !?”
Guided meditation worked for cancer, it could work for this.
A forest, peaceful. Birds chirping, wind in my-
“Stay with the pain, Don't shut this out.”
Fuck Tyler Durden. Fuck his persuasive words. Fuck his self satisfied smile. Fuck Tyler Durden.
“Look at your hand. The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes. Like the first monkey shot into space.”
I don't want to be a space monkey Tyler. I don't want to be a hero-
“Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.”
I'm okay with that, I'm really, really okay with that-
I close my eyes. I try not to think of the pain, or the word sear, or the word flesh.
Trees, birds chirping-
“Stop it! This is your pain, This is your burning hand, it's right here!”
Tyler presses his fingers just above the searing flesh.
“I'm going in my cave, I'm going in my cave- I'm gonna find my power animal-”
I close my eyes again.
A cave of cold ice, cold that soothes the pure fire I'm feeling in the real world.
Marla. laying on the floor. Her face morphs into Tyler's. First that wicked smile he gave me outside of Lou's-
'I want you to hit me as hard as you can.'
Then his maniacal laugh, I can't place what memory it's from.
Lastly, I see Tyler yelling at me in my cave, gripping my wrist, a table between us.
Distraction has never done much when it comes to Tyler Durden.
I don't know why I try.
He's always been the focus of my attention.
Tyler knows this because I know this.
Cave walls flash rapidly between Ice, the interior of an airplane, and the walls of Paper house, like a slot machine preparing to tell you what you've won.
Ding
Ice.
Ding
Airplane.
Ding
The kitchen.
Ding, ding, ding, dingdingding-
“No! don't deal with this the way those dead people do!”
Tears are falling from my eyes, one lands on the pile of white, making me howl.
“See? That's what happens when you try to ignore the present!”
“Okay, okay!" I shout, my voice comes out like a whine, and Tyler smiles at me wolfishly. I feel as if I'm about to be tackled to the ground and torn limb from limb.
I Blink. A wolf on an airplane. A wolf in a bar.
My brain has never been very subtle.
“Jack! Look at me!”
He shouts, grabbing my face.
“I am looking at you! I get it, I get it!”
I whine, my hand still trying to pull away from Tyler's grasp without my permission.
“No, what you're feeling is premature enlightenment.”
Sharp teeth flash at me again.
Enlighten me then Tyler. Haven't I been a devout follower? Haven't I kneeled before your cross? Haven't I given up my worldly possessions to devote myself to the temple of Tyler Durden?
“I'm trying!”
Don't I pray to you every morning? Don't I?
Tyler sighs.
Please don't be disappointed in me.
“This is the greatest moment of your life.”
Tyler runs his latex covered thumb across my trembling bottom lip. A stark contrast to the bruising grip holding my traitorous hand firmly in place.
Believe me, I know.
In some fucked up way, my brain registers this as intimacy. If you take away the chemical reaction, Tyler is holding my hand, caressing my face.
“Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?”
Fathers. Right.
“I don't know-”
I whimper, my free hand white-knuckle gripping the table.
Tyler flings his safety glasses across the room.
“Listen to me. You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you.”
That's funny. If God was my father, yes.
But God is spikey blonde hair. God is an ugly pink bathrobe. God is a business card.
God is a pair of soft lips.
Deliver me Tyler.
“He never wanted you, in all probability, he hates you.”
Things would be much, much simpler if that were true.
If God hit me because he hated me. If God fucked Marla Singer to spite me.
“My father holds no power over me! What kind of God is inconsequential !?”
I shout, my voice quivering on every other word.
I am Jack's desperate plea for mercy.
“Exactly! That's why we have to stop believing in him.”
No Tyler. That's why we absolutely have to believe in him.
“If you let some asshole you don't know control your life, what kind of a life is that? Are you really living?”
At some point I must have stopped crying, because I see Tyler clearly. Like clouds opening up to show me my savior.
Save me Tyler Durden.
I shake my head.
“I know God very well..!”
I stare at him. Blue eyes stare back. Blue like the walls of my cave.
Tyler grabs something and dumps it over my hand. The pain stops.
It becomes very apparent what it was when the smell reaches my nose.
Vinegar.
Tyler has a talent for reading between the lines of my words. Now is no exception.
“You can run water over it and make the pain ten times worse. Or you can use vinegar to neutralize the burn.”
His voice is calmer now.
He hasn't let go of my hand.
More vinegar washes over the angry red splotch in the shape of Tyler's lips, clearing the last of the lye off of my hand.
Tyler lets go, rounding the table.
He bends over to the pile of stuff I knocked off of said table, producing a roll of gauze.
“It's not every day that you surprise me Psycho-boy.”
I wish I could say the same.
Tyler takes my hand again. This time the touch is gentle. This time I find it hard to scold my brain for perceiving intimacy.
He wraps the puffy scar in gauze, saying nothing as he does so.
Tyler surprises me for the second time in a day.
He kisses the bandage.
“No tricks this time.”
He grins at me.
I'm stunned.
He rolls up part of my sleeve, and kisses the bone of my wrist. He flips my hand over. My palm, my pulse point, the scar I got from falling on broken glass when I was around eight or nine years old.
(Glass that I plucked out by myself, because my mom wasn't home.)
Time seems to freeze. It could be minutes or it could be hours that passed just like that. This happens frequently with Tyler.
It reminds me of losing time when I fall asleep in random places, but I've never been more awake in my life.
That also happens frequently with Tyler.
Being around Tyler Durden is like shooting caffeine directly into your veins. Or, I imagine, doing cocaine.
He's still kissing me, and every press of his lips seem to burn more than the lye.
Up my arm, in the crease of my elbow through my shirt.
So much for not doing intimacy, right?
Another kiss lands on my shoulder, then my collar bone. Tyler nudges my face to the left with his crooked, seemingly always broken nose, and leaves a kiss right over the racing pulse on my neck.
I swallow, Tyler smiles against the skin of my throat.
He licks a stripe along my neck and I shiver.
For once my brain has nothing clever to say based on Reader’s Digest pages.
'How's that working out for you?'
"What?"
'Being clever.'
If this is what devotion gets me, Tyler would love the sick shit that goes through my head on the daily.
It feels like my heart might burst out of my chest and fly away with how fast it's beating.
That may sound romantic but it's not.
I feel as if Tyler is about to reach his hand into my chest and tear it out himself. Maybe eat it after with those sharp teeth.
I get a brief visual of Tyler in his waiter uniform, lifting the lid off a tray and presenting my bloody, beating heart to a table of people.
How long does a human being live without a heart?
They should put that in Reader’s Digest.
And then his wolf teeth are pressing into my skin, and this is more what I'm used to from Tyler.
A lungful of air escapes my lips at the feeling anyway.
My hand clutches desperately at his shoulder, bunching up his Hawaiian shirt in my fist.
Tyler licks over the indentation his teeth left, and he starts sucking a bruise into my skin.
I whine, not dissimilar to the sound I made while my hand was being eaten through by chemicals.
This is not helping Tyler's assertion that God hates me.
Not that I would ever claim to understand God.
Understanding and knowing are two different things.
I know that Tyler sees something in me, something he takes the time to try to bring to the surface with these fucked up little life lessons.
Do I understand what exactly it is he's seeing? Not at all.
I know that Tyler has a grand plan, for me, for his followers, and for the world.
But I don't understand that plan.
Tyler hasn't graced me with that knowledge yet.
Is it naive of me to think he will eventually? Possibly. Maybe even probably.
I hope for it anyway.
Isn't that what faith is?
Believing when you can't see it yourself?
God's plan.
Tyler's hand runs through my hair and tugs. He lost the gloves at some point. I didn't notice. (Can you blame me?)
I do notice an identical scar on his hand.
It's not the first time I've seen it, though it is recent. He had a bandage on his hand last week.
Sue me, I stare notice things. Tyler could change the way he wears his shirts and I'd notice.
Briefly I feel something akin to jealousy at the thought of someone kissing his hand, before I realize that's ridiculous and he obviously did it himself.
He surfaces from my neck and stares at me with half-lidded eyes.
In the next second I feel his lips on mine.
Cabin pressure, or whatever.
Priests take a vow of celibacy to ensure they've fully devoted themselves to God.
No wives, no children. Some nuns even consider themselves married to God.
Some priests too I'm sure.
I wonder, in this moment if that upsets people.
If the churchgoers curse that vow thinking sleeping with a priest or a nun would bring them closer to their God.
Tyler bites my bottom lip, licking into my mouth when I gasp.
He hums in self satisfaction. I don't think Tyler is ever not satisfied with himself.
Which is probably a sin. Pride or whatever.
But Tyler always feels like a religious experience. And doesn't God get to determine what is sinful and what isn't?
In that way, Tyler can do no wrong.
In other ways, everything Tyler does is wrong.
I'm sure he relishes that fact.
He's pulling me away from the table, pushing me to my knees on the ground.
For once, I do know where this is going.
It doesn't take any prediction.
Tyler runs his hands through my hair, looking down on me.
Purely in the literal sense.
Tyler looks down on me all the time, but at this moment, I feel like his most devoted follower, receiving a reward for my dedication to the church.
He undoes his belt, the sound of metal loud in the otherwise quiet room.
The Lord be with you, and with your spirit. Lift up your hearts, we lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, It is right and just.
Tyler pumps his cock in his hand.
Humbly we pray that partaking of the Blood and the Body of Christ, we may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit.
Tyler pushes his thumb past my lips, pulling open my jaw.
Our father, who art thou in heaven, hallowed be thy name-
Tyler pushes his cock into my mouth, groaning while he does it.
I don't close my eyes, instead I look up at him, watching his face.
My hand throbs.
The hands in my hair are startlingly gentle, petting through the strands as he pulls me forward. I let him. Of course I let him.
I gag about halfway down, and he chuckles at me. But the laugh is not cruel like it so often is.
I make a conscious effort to breathe through my nose, willing my throat to relax.
I lick the bottom of the shaft and Tyler curses, his hands tightening in my hair.
I push forward, taking more of him in my mouth, and miraculously I don't choke until my nose brushes against wiry hair and sculpted hip bone.
“Good, that's good..”
He mutters.
It's somewhat startling to hear him talk after being bathed in silence for so long.
It's definitely startling to hear him praise me.
I know how to express my gratitude.
I hum around his dick, sucking lightly as I pull my head back. His eyes flutter closed.
It's almost a meditative experience. What does that say about me?
I don't really care.
This is ten times more enjoyable than power animals and balls of healing light.
Distantly I worry that this will carry over into my guided meditation. That instead of a power animal, or even Marla, I'll walk into my cave and see myself sucking on Tyler's cock.
Would that be such a bad thing?
Yes, probably.
It's not good practice to pop a boner in a room full of dying people.
Although Chloe would probably appreciate it.
Tyler groans above me, long and sweet.
I get about two more minutes of bobbing my head before Tyler's grip turns more firm and he starts bucking his hips into the heat of my mouth.
I moan at the sensation, causing Tyler to follow suit, a little feedback loop that goes on for a few repetitions.
“Fuck, Jack-”
His hands twitch in my hair, fingers curling into the strands, making an effort not to pull.
For some reason.
I go lax in his grip, letting him move me how he wants. Reminiscent of our entire relationship.
God's plan, and whatnot.
Oh Tyler, take me by the hand, your most faithful servant, lead me to my demise and my following rebirth. Pull me off a cliff and let me prove to you how far I would go on your command.
There's not a thing I wouldn't do.
Tyler knows this because I know this.
He groans again, thrusting into my mouth more forcefully, and this time, I do choke.
Which must feel good because his hands tighten in my hair, making my scalp sting.
I'm not complaining.
His mouth hangs open and his eyes fall closed, and I think that someone ought to paint that expression, hang it next to the Virgin Mary. Museum worthy.
Tyler drives into my mouth more frantically, and I don't even try to suppress the way this makes me gag. He doesn't seem to mind.
“Jack-”
He says it like a prayer, and for a second I get the impression that we're both having a religious experience.
How lucky am I? God praying to me.
Drool coats my chin, dripping down the corner of my mouth and onto the floor.
I do my best to lap at the shaft, although it's difficult in perpetual motion.
I have no idea how long I've been here, on my knees. But I feel pleasantly lightheaded and my dick strains painfully against my pants.
“Shit…Yeah, there you go..”
He murmurs, watching from above as his cock disappears past my lips.
I have to fight to keep my eyes open as his words reach me.
Aren't you supposed to close your eyes for communion?
Who cares? I'd rather not miss the way Tyler’s face twists in pleasure when I manage to swirl my tongue around him.
Salt overwhelms my taste buds. More pleasant than that little cracker I'd imagine.
But I'm biased.
His grip tightens more and I whine at the feeling, which seems to be the last straw as Tyler buries himself to the hilt in my mouth, warmth flooding down my throat. I don't really even have to swallow.
He pants above me, his hands remaining in my hair after he pulls out of my mouth.
I cough, my forehead resting against his thigh.
He laughs at me again, petting through my hair in a soothing motion.
I expect that to be the end of it, for Tyler to walk away and leave me on the floor. But he tucks himself back into his pants, and sits on the floor in front of me.
I don't have the opportunity to show my confusion, because he grabs me by the waist and hauls me into his lap, my thighs on either side of his hips.
Tyler undoes the button on my pants, pushing them and my underwear down in one go before wrapping his hand around my dick.
I keen quite loudly, embarrassingly so, and bury my face in his neck.
He strokes me fast and without mercy, drawing a wide variety of humiliating sounds from my lungs.
“Tyler- Oh God..”
Very on theme.
He chuckles, a hand returning to my hair, much slower than the other in its motions.
He twists his wrist around the tip, and I whine into his ear pathetically.
My hands bury themselves in the front of Tyler's shirt, hanging on for dear life.
This is not how I imagined my demise.
But then again, I didn't imagine he'd touch me at all.
His palm is soft, free of callouses, I guess handling soap does that.
A stark contrast to the back of his hand, where his knuckles are perpetually healing from being split open on someone's face.
Most recently, mine.
I have the bruises to match, blossoming across my cheekbone, traveling to my eye.
Any touch from Tyler feels like a blessing.
Bruises are simply evidence that he graced me with it.
It doesn't take long at all for me to cum over his fingers, which he wipes on some spare cloth from the pile of stuff I sent crashing to the floor earlier.
Again, he surprises me when he allows me to fall against his chest, cradling the back of my neck.
Some time passes. I couldn't say how much.
He presses a kiss to my temple, sliding me off of his lap.
Something about surprise, Tyler, prediction, blah blah.
Something about God, I don't know right now.
He stands, taking a few seconds to observe me and says:
“You should go lay down, we have big plans tomorrow.”
Not sleep, he knows me too well for that.
Again, the hope rises in my chest. Big plans, the word ‘we’.
Yes Lord, whatever you say.
“Okay Tyler.”
Distantly, I register the possibility that this was some kind of intermittent reinforcement to keep me in line.
But faith, or whatever.