You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Old Man Fight Club.
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
It’s one of the classic movies of all time. Brad Pitt. Ed Norton. Two men battling as one alter ego.
They are disgruntled men, bare fisted miscreants, fighting in parking lots and in the basement of ratty bars.
Bam. Pow. A bloody jack to the jaw!
It’s a movie. The pain is cinematic. The stars fall down. They gather themselves, inhale and say “Damn I’m alive.”
“I don’t want to die without any scars.”
The 1st rule of fight club – You don’t talk about Fight Club.
God I love that.
It means nothing and at the same time, it means everything.
It’s a secret club of humans lost in the void, all searching for the light to reignite their inner furnace.
These fight club anarchists ache for something more than being a mouse pushing stale cheese in a maze.
It all starts with a jack to the jaw, a knee to the ribs, a kick to the skull.
The 1st rule of Fight Club?
I know what this feels like.
I remember standing outside a bar in South Central and watching two random dudes throw down in the parking lot.
One guy was getting pummeled.
Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was just the simmering crazy that always seems to percolate not far from the surface.
I jump in.
Suddenly I started fighting the guy who was winning.
There is pain and punches and scraped elbows.
I hear grunts and snot is blowing and there’s a yelp of some sort from someone.
Suddenly we are surrounded by security officers pulling us by body parts out of the mix.
“Which buddy’s yours?” the security guy asks me, trying to sort out this embroglio.
I’m panting, swearing. “Neither,” I reply wiping the blood from my mouth.
He looks at me strangely.
And that’s when I realize, sometimes you have to get jacked in the jaw to feel life.
“I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
Today I’m standing outside an apartment building. It is boarded up today with plywood. There is yellow crime tape around the door. There are bricks and glass and wood splinters on the sidewalk.
It’s here that a woman got into an argument with another resident. She drove away. Then somewhere along the road she turned around, anger fueling her insanity. She floored it as she got to the parking lot. Her car jumped the curb and the Ford crashed through the brick wall of the four-plex.
Several people were injured. The driver called 911 herself. She was oddly calm, composed as she asked for medic units.
That woman is now in jail charged with 9 counts.
I look up and I see a man eye balling me with anger.
He has a face like a hampster, covered with hair. His eyes are dark and I wonder if he is on medication. He is wearing a hat pulled down low concealing a mop of hair. He is not large, he is not young. He just is. He is one of the nameless, faceless, perspiring Americans that benefit from food stamps and live off the system.
He is listening to me as I interview a young woman about the crash.
“It was a loud boom,” she exclaims.
“Have em tell ya how the other gal started it,” he blurts out from the periphery.
I stop my interview. I look at him. Suddenly I’m a 19 year old college boy. I feel fight club surging inside of me. I feel crazy, I feel like seeing how life feels.
“I am Jack’s unadulterated urge to emote!”
I stop my interview and walk up to this perspiration stain.
“You look angry sir.”
“I’m not angry,” he says surprised.
“Yeah, you look angry.”
He eye balls me hard.
It would seem the table has turned unexpectedly.
“You have something you need to say?”
“I don’t wanna be on no TV, but that was my wife. She’s bi-polar and I can’t get her no medicine.”
I stare at the man. I hear his words, but I secretly wonder what it would be like if he just jacked me in the jaw.
Would it hurt? Would it wake me up and remind me that life is more than this maze of mindless zombies in forgettable parking lots bleeding and stinking and dripping with sweat.
“I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise. I am Jack’s Broken Heart.”
I don’t want to fight this guy. But then again, I have an itch. I kind of wonder what would it be like if he just tagged me in the nose.
POW
See stars. Shake my head. Feel the snot loosen in my skull.
I get close and let this human stain know that it’s all about him, that this can go any number of ways and all he has to do is light the fuse.
I’m going to benefit either way.
I am going to get a good story. I am going to be Jack’s Lack of Surprise main lining some angry ass adrenaline.
“You want to talk to me old timer?”
“I don’t want to talk on camera,” he says lowering his eyes like a wolf that knows he is about to get bit.
“You just let me know if that changes,” I say. We both know this is not a journalistic offer.
I’m Jack’s testy regurgitation offering him a chance to absolve all sin.
I step back into the neutral zone of the parking lot away from this billy goat.
My photographer looks at me with wide eyes.
We don’t know each other long, but I think he knows I’m ticking to a different timing mechanism.
“Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.”
The 1st Rule of Fight Club? You don’t talk about fight Club.
The 2nd Rule of Fight Club? You don’t talk about Fight Club.
I understand what this means. A jack to the jaw. A moment of realization that you are alive, that everything can boil down to one insane second of adrenaline, fused with pain, mixed with realization that maybe there is something more than a cheeseless treadmill.
“So tell me what you saw next?” I ask the young girl.
I don’t care what she says.
I feel the pulse of Fight Club.
It’s a good pulse.
I’m happy.
Go spend your food stamps old wolf.
I got a job to do.
Life’s Crazy™