I am Jack's Crippling Fear of Inadequacy

"I really like you, Marla."

I wasn't lying when I said that. Tyler was there because I needed a way to be with her. I needed Tyler to toughen me, to restore my masculinity – to get rid of the emasculated living I had suffered from for so long. But then it had gone too far; I often wonder what the point of reclaiming my masculinity would have been if the world had been destroyed, like Tyler had wanted. Would I have died and been remembered as a real man, larger and better than God? Or would I have been another nameless face lost in a cause that I didn't understand until too late?

Marla and I, we grow together; we start from that bottom that Tyler brought us to, and we climb upwards at a slow, unsteady pace. I fear falling asleep for months, wondering if Tyler will resurface from the deepest orifice of my brain when I do. Marla tells me not to be stupid, shaking her head: then she softens only slightly and tells me that if "Tyler" comes back, we'll handle him together. We go back to the hospital where they give me more medication that I don't want to take, and I receive counselling from a doctor with a bristled, ugly beard. I'm sure he's never been a part of Fight Club or Project Mayhem, as he doesn't say all the things the others do. He genuinely seems to want to help me. Or maybe he just wants to get rid of me quickly so that he never has to stare at my ugly face-splitting grin again.

When I have sex with Marla, it's strange. I get flashes, scraps, of memories but they are gone before I can fully grasp them: my hands close around empty air a second too late. I've had sex before, but this is somewhat different: this is Marla Fucking Singer. There is an otherworldly beauty to her, with her messy dark hair, her half-hooded eyes caked in slightly messy misapplied make-up. I have hurt her before, but now…now I really like her. She is not Tyler's (my) fuck-buddy – I won't treat her the way that my other self did.

Her mouth tastes like cigarettes, her skin simultaneously salty and sweet as my tongue traces my name on her, like it matters because it really does. My fingers twitch nervously, a reflex, as I touch her breasts, her nipples; I trace the scars on her body, revelling in the feel of her. She's real. She's so real. I am not asleep and I am not Tyler – she is not Tyler's. Marla isn't anyone's, really, but I like to think that I'm hers in some way; she is my anchor, holding me down in a sea of confusion and the mess that Tyler Durden left the world in.

I am Jack's ridiculously sentimental thoughts.

Marla knows what she's doing; she tells me about a guy she once had sex with as she brings my hand down to cup her. Her fingers are nimble, nails sharp and biting into my skin as she flips us over; she sits above me, and I have no choice but to look up at her like a dying man taking his last breath seeing God above him for the first time. She makes her own way down my body, feeling my own imperfections and marks. I still have bruises left over from Fight Club, even now. They throb in a way that is both pleasurable and painful. Her hand grips me by the shaft of my cock, and her mouth turns up in a sultry half-smile at the groan I make. I think it's the closest to pure happiness I've seen in her.

We move around again until I am above her, holding myself up on trembling arms. She's getting somewhat impatient, telling me to get on with it, but at the same time she's studying my face carefully; she's looking for a sign that I'm not there anymore, that the doctors fucked up my meds and Tyler is re-emerging again. I tell her it's me, and then I think that there's no way I'm letting even Tyler-Butt-Wipe-for-Brains-Durden get in the way, and it's true. Tyler isn't real – he's just another version of myself really – and he has no hold over me, not anymore. Tyler can fucking wait if he wants to come out, and even then I won't let him get in the way of this precarious relationship I've developed with Marla. It's fucked up enough without a second personality in my head.

I wonder briefly what this is classified as: making love? Casual sex? Or, as Tyler once dubbed it, "sport-fucking"? Any terms I come up with are either too sentimental or too flippant.

When we're doing it (whatever "it" is defined as), I briefly wonder about how Tyler did this; even though Tyler is (was?) me, he's a whole separate entity. When Tyler was in control of my body, he fucked this girl hard enough to break her down to almost nothing and make her scream. How? Was there a particular technique? Was it just raw and primal? Should I attempt to mimic what he was doing, attempt to draw out that reaction from Marla again but this time as my actual self? Tyler said it so himself: he fucked like I wanted to fuck.

I wonder if Marla is lying there underneath me, contemplating and comparing the memory of then with what I'm doing to her. Tyler was confident, cocky, spectacular in bed – I'd resigned myself years ago to jerking off on the toilet whenever the need arose, with a tissue ready to catch anything I spilt. I wasn't forceful or dominant or any of those things that Tyler was. I have to live up to the standard I don't remember setting.

I am Jack's crippling fear of inadequacy.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly depending on your world views), it doesn't make too much of a difference to Marla; she's moaning and panting and rolling her hips upwards to meet my unsure thrusts. We are so close that she inhales what I exhale and vice-versa; I've given up passive smoking but kissing Marla is like taking a drag of a cigarette anyway – better than a cigarette. I could probably put myself at risk of lung cancer if I continuously breathed in Marla's used air.

It's been a long time since I got laid. I come within a few minutes. When I realize Marla is so nearly there, I ask her what I can do to help; she just takes my hand, and for a crazy second I think it's a gesture of sentimentality... No, it's not. She brings my hand down her body, right there, and I suddenly know what I'm doing.

When I fall asleep, it's with slick tired fingers and Marla Singer's high-pitched scream of ecstasy echoing in my ears like a cave.

We leave the house on Paper Street; it's a dilapidated piece of shit that's barely standing, and the doctors say I have better chance of recovering if I'm not given reminders every day of that fake second personality. Instead I end up staying with Marla in her crumby hotel room; it's full of even more shit than the old house but it seems to be the only option I have since my apartment went up in flames so I take it.

Marla once asked Tyler (me) to keep her up all night because of the pills she took – now I ask her to do the same thing for me at least three times a week. Sometimes we sit and talk about things, about life and the last year – most of the time, though, we just have sex all night. I feel kind of sorry for the people living below Marla as I know that the walls and ceilings are thin, and we're far from quiet when we fuck. I'd like to say that it's just Marla but it's not.

Although I try to be what Tyler was in those moments, sometimes Marla ends up being the dominant one; I watch her as she straddles me, the concentrated look on her face and the slight quiver in her thighs when she moves. I let her go ahead and do whatever she wants; like I said, I really care about her and I want her to get off too. The bed springs are always creaking and crying because of our combined weight moving together; it's a wonder that we don't break the goddamn bed.

I'm smug when I think that Marla's not using her stupid dildo anymore.

First rule of Fight Club fanfiction is that you review...joking. (or am I?)