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Tyler comes on to me one day after work, and I let her. There isn't much else to do, and sex isn't entirely unpleasant if I ignore myself, focus on anything else. I put my suitcase on the floor and she drags me by my tie to the couch, hurriedly taking it off me. I wonder if she does this often. Not sex. I've heard her and Marlon. I wonder if she does it on the couch often. If she dominates him like this. I don't mind her enlightening me. She takes my shirt off. I look down at myself and try to see myself through her eyes. I'm bony, and my breasts are small. My nipples poke through my undershirt. I'm glad I'm not wearing a bra. Tyler would kill me.
I try not to think about how dirty the couch is as she talks to me. I focus on only her.
She asks me if I want it and I barely nod before she's knelt in front of me, pulling of my pants. My shoes come off too. She makes me get up, and she sits where I was a moment ago. I kneel, and she smiles. I feel like a dog who just learned a new trick. I show my teeth to her in what used to be a smile. She grabs my hair. I do what she wants.
She's not wearing underwear. She's wet. I tongue at her clit, spreading out the folds with my fingers. She grips my hair more tightly and I take it as encouragement, swiping my tongue as softly as I can up and down, up and down, circling the nub with my tongue, saliva dripping. I can tease her like this. I feel a sense of satisfaction that she wanted me to do this to her, that I am somehow valuable to her.
I put one, than two fingers inside of her, making shallow bumps into her. I feel awkward, but I force myself to continue. I need to do this for her. I need to do this for myself.
She pulls my hair, guides me away from her, and I whine. My fingers slide out, and I curl them into my palm, feeling the wetness. I’m immediately embarrassed. She laughs at me, but I don’t mind.
“Hold on, psycho girl,” she says. I wait for her sermon, kneeling dutifully.
I expect something about porn, or penetration and gender roles, or virginity or something of the sort. She looks at me as if she knows what I'm thinking. Her eyes are light but still serious, knowledgable. I feel like I'm part of an inside joke.
"Later." She doesn't clarify what.
"Right now, you need to tell me what you've learned from me." She smiles.
I almost short circuit.
Uh, I say, dumbly.
"Give me a little more than that," she says. I feel like a toddler who forget their line in the school play.
You've taught me everything, Tyler, I say. She grabs at my hair and pulls my head up so I'm looking right at her.
"That's right. You're nothing without me. Don't fucking forget it," she says.
I blink at her, waiting for her to tell me what to do, and she waves her hand lazily.
"You know what to do," she says, and I can't disappoint her.
Clinically, orgasms and sex and humans and everything are boring. Animalistic, in the worst way. Excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution, rinse and repeat until everyone's dead. The theatrics of it are stupid, some neat little show, mutual temporary benefit, and then static. When my mouth is inside Tyler's cunt I don't have time to muse about the human condition, the pretentious poetry of it all. I lick at her clit, broadly, trying to get her off the best of my ability.
I think of what it would feel like if she were doing it to me, what I would want. I would probably want it to hurt, I think as I bring my fingers back to spread my spit down her thighs, exhaling hard. I look to her, up at my God, and she shoves me back down. I smile into it.
I think about killing my father as my fingers twist inside of her, trying to find a good angle.
I know she's about to come because she makes a sound like a pained deer, shot in the leg but not dead yet. I think about how long it's been since I've started and I can't even guess. I pull away from her, and she stares at me questioning. She doesn't get mad like I thought she maybe would. Just looks. I place a hand on the inner part of her thigh, notice how it's corded with muscle, and press my fingernails into her.
Is this. Uh. Something? I ask.
"Do you want it to be?" She looks at me, smirking, still somehow above it after I have my tongue and fingers inside her.
Tyler. Please. I say. I don't know what I'm asking for. Tyler looks at me like she knows exactly how pathetic I am.
"What psycho girl? What do you want? I can't read your mind." She says, and my knees hurt. I have no idea what to say. The silence spreads, thick like congealed blood slammed into concrete, gnashing teeth in desperate quiet.
Tyler. You know I want you. I say.
I want her to laugh at me. I want her to make me get her off. I want her to do something besides just stare.
"Okay." She says. "Okay."
I am not a person. I am all her desires and frustrations and speeches and bloody knuckles and chipped teeth. I am everything Tyler Durden wants me to be.
Right before she reaches her peak, I pull away again. She grabs me, not as rough as I expect.
"What? Are you gonna make another confession?" She asks, her voice hazy. I am not a person.
I love you, I say.
A pause. "Okay," she breathes out, closes her eyes.
Okay. I say.
That's all I need. My fingers are wet with her as my fingers flick over her clit a few more times, grabbing at her and pushing my mouth in as she clenches and flutters, hips grinding up into my face, and I am not a person. I am Tyler Durden's own personal hell.
Nobody could ever know. No man or woman. Marlon could fucking never really know how it feels. Just me and her. Me and her.
She doesn't offer anything to me, and I don't ask. I reach down and barely touch myself before I come. It would be awkward if I cared enough, and I fish my hands out of my panties, standing up uncertainly. Tyler's eyes are closed. I sit next to her, looking at her breasts, her muscles, everything I am not. I don't know when she took her shirt off.
I feel her shift towards me.
"You did good," she says, legs still spread open, pubic hair slick with my spit. I only glance once but she catches my eyes flicker down, because of course she does. She laughs, a shallow puff of air.
Thanks, I say. I scratch my hip, wanting to feel her on me, the weight of her crushing me down into the mattress or the floor, I don't care. The weight of her fists are better than the weight of my blanket over me at night. I want her always.
There should be something happening. Tyler always knows what to do. I always know how to follow her. She is perfectly relaxed and my hackles are raised. I need something to latch on to, to do, to think about. Her silence is smothering me.
She stretches her arms above her head, fingers interlocked, bone sliding against bone, some popping sounds. She is carefree. I am going to chew through my cheek if I don't do something.
I think about church. I think about holy communion. I think about lambs.
Ashes to ashes to ashes to ashes to dust.
In church, when I was about seven, there was a girl who sat in the pew in front of me. She had silk hair and pretty dresses. She reminded me of a doll. I can't remember her face. I remember my jealousy. I can't remember her eyes. This probably means something.
I blink sluggishly. I focus on anything but her. It’s hard to not be pulled into her magnetism, her effortless ability to just be alive.
I think about pulling out my hair in a public bathroom. I think stars that have burnt out hundreds of years ago that still shine bright. I think about bleeding. I think about God. I think about Tyler. I think about myself.
I don’t need to be anything next to her. Everything I am, everything I do, is with her in mind.
I don’t know how I lived without her. What is my purpose when she’s not around? To slave away, to be a mindless worker bee? To live? I can’t live without her. This thought might’ve scared me a few years ago, but now it’s comforting.
I wonder what Tyler was like as a child. It’s hard to imagine her as anything but what she is now, never an awkward teenager, never a toddler. Never born.
I’ve tried to lean back, tried to get comfortable. Tyler doesn’t need to try. She just is.
I am Jane’s hopeful self pity.
I close my eyes. I hear her move a bit, and I’m drifting in and out of reality. I feel warm.
I have work tomorrow. I want to ask Tyler to make me stay home, to listen to her talk about the price of capitalism on women while she makes soap, somehow extremely focused and uncaring. I her to drag me by my hair away from normalcy.
I put my hands in my lap, intertwining my fingers. I want to hold her hand.
I wonder if she wants to ‘get to know me’. I wonder if she cares what my childhood is like, my middle school years, my favorite teacher. I hope she does. If I were her, I don’t think I would. The thought makes me unreasonably sad. If I were Tyler, I don’t think I would care. I wouldn’t know what to do if I were Tyler.
She clears her throat, coughs, the sound breaking the lazy silence. I look over to her. I scrape my tongue along the edge of my teeth.
“Women’s magazines are suburbia’s bible. Scripture for women who don’t know how to be alive.” She moves her head over to my direction.
“Mothers who give birth to their pain and read what they want to be.” I’ve opened my eyes.
I nod. She continues on and I listen to every word. She puts her hand in my knee, close to a bruise. I want her to push down on it.
She moves on to casual alcoholism and I am hooked. Sometimes, this gets annoying, but I guess I’m in the mood for her rants tonight. She eventually fades off, her hand still on my thigh. I think about nothing as she traces her fingers around mottled bruises on my pale thigh.
I wonder if she had a journal when she was a kid. Would she make people listen to her thoughts? I could ask her. I want to know everything about her, but that seems somehow too personal.
As her fingers drift across my leg, I think to myself I would let her do anything to me. She shakes her hair away from her face, some strands still framing it, curled slightly around her ears.
She stands up, and I blink out of my stupor. I don’t want her to leave me. She saunters away from me, slowly, confident, as if she has all the time in the world, and before she turns the corner, she tilts her head back and with my eyes glued on her, she says, “I love you too.”