When I can't sleep, when my mind is a sloppy mess of hastily-strewn manure across a garden of trash, there is only one thing I do. It doesn't make sense for me to do this, but I do it anyway.
I watch Fight Club.
Fight Club is meant to be watched twice. The first time, it's a trip. Your mind is thrown, you become obsessed with the...twist. The second time you watch it, your eyes are open. Everything seems clearer, and you feel...intelligent.
There is not supposed to be a third time. If there is, it should be three years down the road, at your best friend's party or the day you decide to ditch work for no good reason. I've watched Fight Club more times than I can remember since I bought it with a birthday gift card. Sometimes I watch it every night. Sometimes I fall asleep ten minutes in. Sometimes I pass out during the third viewing in a row.
This is wrong. The point of a movie like Fight Club is to shock the mundane out of the boring saps who see it. Doing anything many times in a row makes it feel normal. Casual.
Comforting.
The point of Fight Club is to shock the viewer into re-examining their average life. By the twentieth, thirtieth, fortieth viewing, the only thing left to re-examine is the desire to continue watching.
I always skip two scenes: when Tyler is confronted by he owner of the bar where they hold Fight Club and when the narrator fights the poor bleach-blonde space monkey. I skip these scenes because they are examples of pure, senseless violence. Bloody, gory, graphic violence. I did not grow up immune to troubles. I was not raised away from the inevitabilities of a mortal body. But the act of destroying something beautiful for the sake of shocking the world or making yourself feel alive or, God forbid, appealing to the Halo-obsessed youth sends me into a state akin to illness. I do not get physically ill. I simply become so overwhelmed at the sight of the beautiful, rich blood spilling so vibrantly and explosively across a canvas of concrete that I react violently. Emotionally violent.
In my schoolgirl days, I prided myself on my strong stomach, callous sensibilities and daring nature. I ate the worm when the boys wouldn't. I stared staunchly at the screen when the girls sheltered their eyes. I told stories of blood with a smile on my face that was nearly cruel.
I was only this way because I was sickened by the world around me, with it's casualties and complexities and fanciful faux pas. In a way, I was trying to bring Fight Club into my own world. I was trying to make those around me understand the values of Fight Club. But I didn't have Fight Club to guide me; I didn't even know what I was trying to do. I knew I had something to prove to the world, but it wasn't until I was 18, legally an adult, that I finally put it all together.
And by that time, I was too late. The whole world had already seen it, contemplated it, dismissed it. And I was left with nothing but the movie. The movie that I've seen so many times that I don't need to watch the screen to follow along. And still I have no one to fight with, because the world has passed it by.
But I continue to feel as if I have something to prove. I've never been in a fight, after all. And how much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?
