It was more people than Erno had ever seen in the Oxygen Warehouse. Even though Tyler Durden had not yet taken the stage, every table was filled, and people stood three deep at the bar. Rosamund, the owner, bustled back and forth providing drinks, her face glistening with sweat. The crush of people only irritated Erno. He had been one of the first to catch on to Durden, and the room full of others, some of whom had probably come on his own recommendation, struck him as usurpers.
Erno forced his way to the bar and bought a tincture. Tyrus and Sid, friends of his, nodded at him from across the room. Erno sipped the cool, licorice flavored drink and eavesdropped, and gradually his thoughts took on an architectural, intricate intellectuality.
A friend of his mother sat with a couple of sons who anticipated for her what she was going to see. “He’s not just a comedian, he’s a philosopher,” said the skinny one. His foot, crossed over his knee, bounced in rhythm to the jazz playing in the background. Erno recognized him from a party he’d attended a few months back.
“We have philosophers,” the matron said. “We even have comedians.”
“Not like Tyler Durden,” said the other boy.
“Tyler Durden-who gave him that name?”
“I think it’s historical,” the first boy said.
“Not any history I ever heard,” the woman said. “Who’s his mother?”
Erno noticed that there were more women in the room than there had been at any performance he had seen. Already the matrons were homing in. You could not escape their sisterly curiosity, their motherly tyranny. He realized that his shoulders were cramped; he rolled his head to try to loosen the spring-tight muscles.
The Oxygen Warehouse was located in what had been a shop in the commercial district of the northwest lava tube. It was a free enterprise zone, and no one had objected to the addition of a tinctures bar, though some eyebrows had been raised when it was discovered that one of the tinctures sold was alcohol. The stage was merely a raised platform in one corner. Around the room were small tables with chairs. The bar spanned one end, and the other featured a false window that showed a nighttime cityscape of Old New York.
Rosamund Demisdaughter, who’d started the club, at first booked local jazz musicians. Her idea was to present as close to a retro Earth atmosphere as could be managed on the far side of the moon, where few of the inhabitants had ever even seen the Earth. Her clientele consisted of a few immigrants and a larger group of rebellious young cousins who were looking for an avant garde. Erno knew his mother would not approve his going to the Warehouse, so he was there immediately.
He pulled his pack of fireless cigarettes from the inside pocket of his black twentieth-century suit, shook out a fag, inhaled it into life and imagined himself living back on Earth a hundred years ago. Exhaling a plume of cool, rancid smoke, he caught a glimpse of his razor haircut in the mirror behind the bar, then adjusted the knot of his narrow tie.
After some minutes the door beside the bar opened and Tyler Durden came out. He leaned over and exchanged a few words with Rosamund. Some of the men whistled and cheered. Rosamund flipped a brandy snifter high into the air, where it caught the ceiling lights as it spun in the low G, then slowly fell back to her hand. Having attracted the attention of the audience, she hopped over the bar and onto the small stage.
“Don’t you people have anything better to do?” she shouted.
A chorus of rude remarks.
“Welcome to The Oxygen Warehouse,” she said. “I want to say, before I bring him out, that I take no responsibility for the opinions expressed by Tyler Durden. He’s not my boy.”
Durden stepped onto the stage. The audience was quiet, a little nervous. He ran his hand over his shaved head, gave a boyish grin. He was a big man, in his thirties, wearing the blue coveralls of an environmental technician. Around his waist he wore a belt with tools hanging from it, as if he’d just come off shift.
“ ‘Make love, not war!’ ” Durden said. “Remember that one? You got that from your mother, in the school? I never liked that one. ‘Make love, not war,’ they’ll tell you. I hate that. I want to make love and war. I don’t want my dick just to be a dick. I want it to stand for something!”
A heckler from the audience shouted, “Can’t it stand on its own?”
Durden grinned. “Let’s ask it.” He addressed his crotch. “Hey, son!” He called down. “Don’t you like screwing?”
Durden looked up at the ceiling, his face went simple, and he became his dick talking back to him. “Hiya dad!” he squeaked. “Sure, I like screwing!”
Durden winked at a couple of guys in makeup and lace in the front row, then looked down again: “Boys or girls?”
His dick: “What day of the week is it?”
“Thursday.”
“Doesn’t matter, then. Thursday’s guest mammal day.”
“Outstanding, son.”
“I’m a Good Partner.”
The queers laughed. Erno did, too.
“You want I should show you?”
“Not now, son,” Tyler told his dick. “You keep quiet for a minute, and let me explain to the people, okay?”
“Sure. I’m here whenever you need me.”
“I’m aware of that.” Durden addressed the audience again. “Remember what Mama says, folks: Keep your son close, let your semen go.” He recited the slogan with exaggerated rhythm, wagging his finger at them, sober as a scolding grandmother. The audience loved it. Some of them chanted along with the catchphrase.
Durden was warming up. “But is screwing all there is to a dick? I say no!
“A dick is a sign of power. It’s a tower of strength. It’s the tree of life. It’s a weapon. It’s an incisive tool of logic. It’s the seeker of truth.
“Mama says that being male is nothing more than a performance. You know what I say to that? Perform this, baby!” He grabbed his imaginary cock with both of his hands, made a stupid face.
Cheers.
“But of course, they can’t perform this! I don’t care how you plank the genes, Mama don’t have the machinery. Not only that, she don’t have the programming. But mama wants to program us with her half-baked scheme of what women want a man to be. This whole place is about fucking up our hardware with their software.”
He was laughing himself, now. Beads of sweat stood out on his scalp in the bright light.
“Mama says, ‘Don’t confuse your penis with a phallus.’ ” He assumed a female sway of his hips, lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes: just like that, he was an archetypal matron, his voice transmuted into a fruity contralto. “ ‘Yes, you boys do have those nice little dicks, but we’re living in a post-phallic society. A penis is merely a biological appendage.’”
Now he was her son, responding. “ ‘Like a foot, Mom?’”
Mama: “ ‘Yes, son. Exactly like a foot.’”
Quick as a spark, back to his own voice: “How many of you in the audience here have named your foot?”
Laughter, a show of hands.
“Okay, so much for the foot theory of the penis.
“But Mama says the penis is designed solely for the propagation of the species. Sex gives pleasure in order to encourage procreation. A phallus, on the other hand-whichever hand you like-I prefer the left-”
More laughter.
“-a phallus is an idea, a cultural creation of the dead patriarchy, a symbolic sheath applied over the penis to give it meanings that have nothing to do with biology…”
Durden seized his invisible dick again. “Apply my symbolic sheath, baby… oohhh, yes, I like it…”
Erno had heard Tyler talk about his symbolic sheath before. Though there were variations, he watched the audience instead. Did they get it? Most of the men seemed to be engaged and laughing. A drunk in the first row leaned forward, hands on his knees, howling at Tyler’s every word. Queers leaned their heads together and smirked. Faces gleamed in the close air. But a lot of the men’s laughter was nervous, and some did not laugh at all.
A few of the women, mostly the younger ones, were laughing. Some of them seemed mildly amused. Puzzled. Some looked bored. Others sat stonily with expressions that could only indicate anger.
Erno did not know how he felt about the women who were laughing. He felt hostility toward those who looked
