I came to Tyler already on the breaking point.

The way my life was crashing around me, the pale cadaver way my face looked, you'd think I was dying, it was that bad.

When I got to the porch with my things, Ricky was there immediately. Just another barking dark face. Oh, what a surprise.

Yeah, well, whatever.

Three days on the porch would be nothing. I was used to this, sleeping in weird places, in the open air, not eating for stretches of time. This is the day in the life of the lower class. The outsiders, the vagabonds.

Three days was nothing, because my soul was going to be saved.

I stood there, heels together, on my first day, and it was Bob's second day, and I was arrogant and not worried.

"Where are you from?" Bob asks, "And how did you end up here?"

Dover, I say, and it's a long story, but we've got time.

Big Bob, he tells me all about his life. You've heard it before. The muscles, the divorces, the kids, the chest-expansion program. The Wistrol. The racehorses.

I tell him about growing up a Catholic choir boy with six brothers. I'm the next youngest, and my brother Gage is eighteen, I say. I tell him about how when I was sixteen my mother got liver cancer, and by age seventeen, she was died. I tell him that my father is a drunk and I don't talk to him anymore. I explain my jobs, my day job at an Italian restaurant and my night job at a gay strip club.

Except I don't say gay, I just say, strip club.

And I don't tell him I strip, I just say I work at one.

I think he filled in the blanks, anyways.

My looks always kind of tip me off. My voice, the way I smile, the way I'm perfectly plucked and scrubbed and exfoliated, that kind of stuff. The healthy shine of my fingernails. The smell of my hair putty.

Self improvement is masturbation.

These were the things I did to keep up appearances, to keep the guys at the strip club coming back to me. Shaved all my body hair, went to spas to keep my fingernails buffed and polished and my face blemish free and angelic.

Maybe this is why Tyler dubbed me Angel Face.

Cherry stock body, what a waste.

Fight club, this is what allows me to become imperfect. This allows me to be incomplete. Discontent. Tyler Durden is my liberator.

The sick puppy way I looked at Tyler, you'd think I'd never had contact with another human. This man could be the father I always wanted. This man could be the lover I'd pined away for.

This man was my own personal savoir, and to be saved, I'd suffer three days of crucifixion.

Me and Bob, we talk about our childhood until night comes. The air is still September-mild, and it's easy to fall into and uneasy sort of trance-like sleep, sitting crosslegged with our backs against the porch railing, side by side.

I hardly even flinch when Tyler comes out to scream at us.

"You're too young!" Tyler screams at me.

I'm too ZEN to notice.

Tyler, he kicks my things into the street and screams more and smacks me with a broom, hard, across the shoulders, but I'm a Hindu cow, and I don't even notice.

I am the ZEN MASTER. I am so COOL and ENLIGHTENED, just like you taught me to be, Tyler.

But, really, it kind of hurts.

Just a little.

But he goes back inside when he notices I'm not moving. Bob is silent.

This is my three days on the cross. This is my life.