Part 20 (1/2)

I take out my wallet and show Marla my driver's license with my real name.

Not Tyler Durden.

”But everyone knows you're Tyler Durden,” Marla says.

Everyone but me.

n.o.body at work calls me Tyler Durden. My boss calls me by my real name.

My parents know who I really am.

”So why,” Marla asks, ”are you Tyler Durden to some people but not to everybody?”

The first time I met Tyler, I was asleep.

I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash. I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life. I was tired and bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn't see any way to change things.

Only end them.

I felt trapped.

I was too complete.

I was too perfect.

I wanted a way out of my tiny life. Single-serving b.u.t.ter and cramped airline seat role in the world.

Swedish furniture.

Clever art.

I took a vacation. I fell asleep on the beach, and when I woke up there was Tyler Durden, naked and sweating, gritty with sand, his hair wet and stringy, hanging in his face.

Tyler was pulling driftwood logs out of the surf and dragging them up the beach.

What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand, and Tyler was sitting in the palm of a perfection he'd made himself.

And a moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

Maybe I never really woke up on that beach.

Maybe all this started when I peed on the Blarney stone.

When I fall asleep, I don't really sleep.

At other tables in the Planet Denny's, I count one, two, three, four, five guys with black cheekbones or folded-down noses smiling at me.

”No,” Marla says, ”you don't sleep.”

Tyler Durden is a separate personality I've created, and now he's threatening to take over my real life.

”Just like Tony Perkins' mother in Psycho Psycho,” Marla says. ”This is so cool. Everybody has their little quirks. One time, I dated a guy who couldn't get enough body piercings.”

My point being, I say, I fall asleep and Tyler is running off with my body and punched-out face to commit some crime. The next morning, I wake up bone tired and beat up, and I'm sure I haven't slept at all.

The next night, I'd go to bed earlier.

That next night, Tyler would be in charge a little longer.

Every night that I go to bed earlier and earlier, Tyler will be in charge longer and longer.

”But you are Tyler,” Marla says.

No.

No, I'm not.

I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not.

I'm not Tyler Durden.

”But you are, Tyler,” Marla says.

Tyler and I share the same body, and until now, I didn't know it. Whenever Tyler was having s.e.x with Marla, I was asleep. Tyler was walking and talking while I thought I was asleep.

Everyone in fight club and Project Mayhem knew me as Tyler Durden.

And if I went to bed earlier every night and I slept later every morning, eventually I'd be gone altogether.

I'd just go to sleep and never wake up.

Marla says, ”Just like the animals at the Animal Control place.”

Valley of the Dogs. Where even if they don't kill you, if someone loves you enough to take you home, they still castrate you.

I would never wake up, and Tyler would take over.

The waiter brings the coffee and clicks his heels and leaves.

I smell my coffee. It smells like coffee.

”So,” Marla says, ”even if I did believe all this, what do you want from me?”

So Tyler can't take complete control, I need Marla to keep me awake. All the time.

Full circle.