I'm finally done holy shit. 2.6k words please enjoy
Here's your honorary proof:
anyyyyway soapshippers enjoy. win for the community I hope
A minute. A minute consists of sixty seconds. However you break that down – two lots of thirty seconds, four of fifteen, six of ten, sixty of one, every minute that passed was sixty seconds. In sixty seconds, Tyler could do a lot.
In sixty seconds, Tyler could do something like pour lye into his mixture for soap, or onto someone’s hand following a very personal kiss. He could hit somebody so hard their orbital shattered, or their eardrum burst. He could break somebody’s nose. He could give an order that set fire to a store, or he could drag somebody into the only disabled bathroom stall in a nearby truck stop and lock the door behind him, simultaneously emptying the contents of a small gym bag into the sink. He had found the place a few weeks ago, he said. He’d patched another guy up in here first, maybe himself, evident by the leftover bandages and blood.
In that disabled bathroom stall, with the door locked behind us, Tyler and I looked an unlikely duo. At thirty looking all of fifteen, still scrawny and unbalanced like a boy going through his parent’s break-up, I paled in comparison to him. He had a thin tan line going up over his hip, like a thong, and a body like something from a Calvin Klein ad beneath the loose shirt and khaki pants. It was an uncomfortable reminder of our first chance meeting, him perched in the hand of God as naked as a baby.
I sat on the provided stool and tried very carefully not to pull the daunting red cord hanging from the ceiling.
“Take your shirt off,” Tyler commands.
Okay, I say. Tyler takes a tour of my visible injuries. His gaze lingers on the bone-deep scraze over my shoulder, and the two-finger width cut on my stomach from the concrete floor. In all reality, that would need stitches. Allowing Tyler and a needle anywhere near my abdomen seemed like a bad idea, and so I resigned it to being held together by two pieces of medical tape.
His eyes trace the outline of the bruise map, and he chews over his lip, tonguing the split for all it was worth like a trashy hooker, or like Marla Singer–
Most days after Fight Club, work was bearable. Corporate decomposition in corporate wounds was sped up by corporate maggots that liked the sweet taste of your newly broken rib.
After waking up and spending an hour looking at the flowering bruises spanning from your hips to your chest, you’d contemplate the migrated bone in your knuckle.
Then, you’d put on your only clean shirt and a tie in a half-baked half-windsor knot, only as tight as your broken fingers could pull it. Maybe you’d even wear a belt, if those same fingers could handle fumbling with the clasp.
Lastly, you’d slip your feet into shoes that folded at the back when you put them on, and you’d leave your briefcase at home because there were always pencils at the office, and the reports were always re-printable. They were only half-completed anyway.
However, most nights after Fight Club, you’d find yourself falling as hard as you could into bed with blood still dripping from your mouth.
Choking down your teeth, you’d brew enough water for a packet of Cup-a-Soup and mix it together and drink it as fast as you could to get rid of the taste. Then you’d lay down in bed like a patient on a crash cart and imagine the wires strapped to your body to soothe your throbbing head into oblivion.
Either that, or you sucked it up and sat for a half hour idle outside the bathroom while the designated rookie-of-the-night dug pieces of broken nails and bits of bone out of wounds ready to be wiped with peroxide and sent to Examination Room 1.
If you needed the ER, you’d go alone. If you passed out on the street, too bad – you should have gone sooner. Of course, going two, three nights in a row negated whatever fixing could be done.
Thus provides a causal explanation for why a white button-up was apparently the right choice to wear when Tyler and I went again tonight.
“–Cool, thanks.” Tyler says over his shoulder, watching me undress in the mirror while he himself contemplates the idea. The buttons are harder to convince the lower my fingers get, especially with the distraction of Tyler similarly slipping off his shirt. They seem as captivated as I am.
Once the battle is finally won (though, not the battle of ego, as that would have required all ten fingers in place and functioning, and Tyler not to have stripped right down to his birthday suit), Tyler corners me once again.
“You’ve been bleeding through that shit all day, did you know that?” Tyler says matter-of-factly. “Yeah. I tossed you a clean one in the bag, and it's in the sink, but you need that fucking thing bandaged up, ‘kay?”
Yes, Tyler, I reply. “Cool,” he says. He grins, running his tongue across his teeth. “It does need to be cleaned first, though.”
He lines up the items in the sink. A bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a small bottle of lye powder, a roll of bandages, a clean outfit, and a small box kit with medical thread and needles. They sit lined up like The Beatles.
So? Wait, Tyler. You’re not using hydrogen peroxide on it.
Tyler stares at me expectantly.
Absolutely not. I’m not letting you do that.
“I think,” Tyler says patiently, “You need to consider the idea that getting better is going to hurt a little.”
Tyler, if you open that bottle of peroxide, I’m pulling this goddamn cord.
“By all means, go ahead. But you’ll have to walk to the ER alone once you finally decide it’s bad enough to warrant treatment, and God save you if you collapse on the way there. Then again, God doesn’t really like you. I do. I’ll do it right now. You won’t even feel it.”
Yes I fucking will! It’s hydrogen peroxide!
“Okay, fine. Iodine then.” He says with a shrug. He rifles around in the sink, producing another small bottle. He approaches me like a rescue worker walks towards a stray cat. He gets on his knees in front of me, bottle of iodine and a piece of toilet paper in hand.
The iodine stings a little. Not as badly as hydrogen peroxide would’ve, but it still elicits a hiss every now and then. Tyler is digging his hand into the two-finger cut harder than necessary, but if I whine, he digs them in harder. “You good?” asks Tyler. Yes, I reply, strained. “Cool,” he says. “I’m almost done.”
While he cleans each individual cut of the scraze, Tyler talks to me. I’m not even listening to half of it, just chiming in with the occasional
Yes, Tyler. Thanks, Tyler. Wow, Tyler. That’s So Great.
And it slowly sets in that I am so tired. Tyler also seems to realize this. He stands up to get the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I scramble to wrap my hands tightly around the cord, like a baby desperate for release from the womb.
Tyler, if you bring that bottle anywhere near my goddamn wounds, I will yank this cord down. I’m not messing with you.
“Oh, I know,” he says. “That’s why I cut it earlier.”
I look up. The cord indeed is no longer attached to its mysterious hole in the ceiling, instead tied to one of the railing supports. It slides down uselessly with a single yank. Tyler advances with the bottle. Tyler, I warn. Tyler!
“They need to be clean before I bandage them, do you understand?” Tyler says, far too easily grappling my hands and winding them up in the cut cord. A devilish grin spread over his face. I shake my head frantically. Tyler leans down over me with his newly retrieved bottle of hydrogen peroxide. “This is going to get all the dirt and shit out. All the nasty shit you don’t want in your body.”
Yeah, and all the healthy tissue too.
He uncaps the bottle and crouches as I lay helplessly, shirtless and bound with my arms above my head. “It’s going to sting a little, ‘kay? Cool.”
Tyler tips the bottle over the two-finger cut.
The feeling of the peroxide burns worse than lye. I know this, because I know that the chemical compounds are different.
H2O2. Two hydrogen atoms, two oxygen atoms – Hydrogen peroxide is incredibly dangerous to wounds. It doesn’t just eat the dead tissue and bacteria, but everything alive, too. That bubbling you see when somebody pours it over their scraped knee? It bubbles when it comes into contact with catalase, an enzyme that the body releases when tissue is damaged. Those little bubbles are oxygen escaping cells on their way to the heart.
NaOH. One sodium atom, one oxygen atom, one hydrogen atom – Lye is used in alkaline cleansers for very, very rich people to rub on their faces, fancy brands like Albolene and Roche-Posay. It’s supposed to be good for you, but in reality it eats your skin alive. It digs into every crevice of available dermal tissue. It eats through subcutaneously, and it really does open up your pores.
Every muscle in my stomach spasms and jolts. My mind is wandering to work.
My boss, Richard Chesler (Regional Manager, Compliance & Liability Division, 39210 North Pennfield Blvd, reachable at (288) 555-0138 or simply by walking into his office – because that office is open at any time, to any of his employees!) had once stapled his hand. They had solved this issue by dabbing a tissue dipped in hydrogen peroxide onto it, and he had been in so much pain he’d almost pissed himself.
I’m sure I have already pissed myself, as Tyler pours a significant helping of peroxide onto my shoulder. It dribbles down my chest in burning streams and catches every tiny wound it can find. I try not to think about how stupid I must look with my hands bound above my head and my pleasantly fitting work pants soaked through with piss. I try not to think of agony –
Ag · o · ny
noun
agony (noun) · agonies (plural noun)
extreme physical or mental suffering:
“He writhed about in agony.”
–Or the fact that Tyler stands triumphantly above me. He resets his fingers one by one, correcting all the migrated knuckles or errant phalanges. Then he perches on the stool and sets about cleaning a scrape on his calf with a small bottle of iodine. I kick my feet and scream as loud as I can. He pays no mind. He lights a cigarette.
Imagine your pain as a white ball of healing light. That’s right, your pain, the pain itself, is a white ball of healing light. Follow it to the door in your heart. Go to your cave, and find your power animal.
I screw my eyes shut. Go to your cave. That’s right, go to your cave. The floor is ice. The penguin is sitting there plainly.
Slide, it utters. Slide.
“Man, are you even listening to me?” Tyler’s voice cuts in and so does the scalding pain of the peroxide. “Don’t tell me you’re doing that stupid pseudo-therapy bullshit again. This is like your hand. You’ve gotta feel it, man!”
You don’t know what it’s like, Tyler! You don’t know how bad this hurts!
Tyler turns around to reveal white, blistered wounds on his back. Once again, he has beaten me to the punch. “Five more minutes, man. Then I’ll bandage you up.” Five more minutes, he tells me, and I tell myself, but I know it’s a lie. Five more minutes won’t change a thing. Slide, I utter.
I feel like Richard Chesler (Regional Manager, Compliance & Liability Division, 39210 North Pennfield Blvd, reachable at (288) 555-0138 or simply by walking into his office – because that office is open at any time, to any of his employees!) with his hand firmly in somebody untrained’s grasp. How did the hydrogen peroxide feel in his stapler wound? How many people in that office heard him screaming and came running?
I’m screaming, but no one hears. No one cares. Tyler certainly doesn’t. Five more minutes. Count back from sixty, five times. Three-hundred seconds.
Five minutes. Five minutes consists of three-hundred seconds. However you break that down - two lots of one-hundred-fifty seconds, four of seventy-five, six of fifty, three-hundred of one, every five minutes that passed were three-hundred seconds. In three-hundred seconds, Tyler could do a lot.
In three-hundred seconds, Tyler could do something like pour lye onto the sizzling peroxide, or onto the bubbling scrapes. He could kick somebody so hard their already broken rib snapped a little further back, or a little further forward. He could break somebody’s finger. He could yell an order to stop crying so damn hard, or he could finally wet a scrap of bandages and start wiping the hydrogen peroxide and lye mixture out of somebody’s wounds.
In the next sixty, he could throw somebody the clean change of clothes from the side of the sink. He could cut their hands loose and he could take his cigarette outside the bathroom. He could sit on the sidewalk and smoke.
I get up. Stare into the mirror. Who is this? This imposter with bloodshot eyes, peeling scabs and a five o’clock shadow that screams neglect? I splash water on my face, rinsing away the bubbles of dead cells clinging to my skin. Parts of my genetic information wash away down the drain. Dead parts of my genetic information, but parts nonetheless.
Clean clothes feel like dressing a corpse. Of course, it’s a temporary fix, like a band-aid on a bullet wound, but it’s all I’ve got. I’m moving like autopilot. Maybe I can kick back in my chair and let autopilot do its job. Reach the cruising altitude of 42,000 feet. Wait for the air hostesses to bring me a neatly packed microwave meal that doesn’t taste like anything, kicking just short of inedibly bland.
The air hostesses seem to be doing a good job, because within the next ten minutes, I’m bandaged up and clothed. Clean, but reeking of piss and sweat. Whoever cleans this bathroom will find a pair of urine-soaked pants and boxers in the garbage. If they look underneath that, they will also find a bloodstained shirt belonging to an average corporate everyman. If they even found the pants, that is.
Tyler is not sitting outside on the curb when I walk out in a pair of khakis and a nobody-knows-what-show graphic tee. Looking for Tyler isn’t a way to pass the time. The city’s a blur of gray and monotony. In the distance, people are moving like automatons, each lost in their own personal hell. I wonder if they feel it too. I wonder how they would feel if they had hydrogen peroxide poured onto their softest, weakest parts. I wonder how they would deal with their stomach spasming and cramping as they walk home. I wonder how they would feel losing everything, down to the last drop of dignity.
Losing everything brings you closer to yourself, I suppose. It hasn’t helped me yet, but it brought me closer to Tyler.
Speaking of, Tyler is nowhere to be found. At work, I’m just another cog in the machine, pushing paper and pretending it matters. At work, Tyler is a savior. He saved me from mediocrity. He also saved me from infection.
I pass a car with a book lying in the passenger seat. Something by Friedrich Nietzsche.
I remember from Beyond Good and Evil: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.” Too late, Nietzsche. I’m already there. I wonder if Tyler is, too. Or, I wonder if he feels like one.
The walk back to Paper Street is long. Tyler will be nowhere to be found.
(thanks so much to @soapycatsbath for proofing this about two million times because I cannot shut the actual fuck up. also @jacksprostate for the ability to write the narrator somewhat convincingly and @paperstreetlocal for their stupid fucking instagram stories I love you all and have a good morning. sorry for the yapping.)
