Invisible Monsters Remix

by Chuck Palahniuk

Nowadays, whatever purchase you moon over, whatever person you lust after, most likely it’s presented on a smooth glass or plastic screen. On a laptop or a television. And no matter what the technology, you’ll catch sight of your own reflection. In that electric mirror, there hovers your faint image. You’ll be superimposed over every email. Or, lurking in the glassy surface of online porn, there you are. Fewer people shut down their computers anymore, and who can blame them? The moment that monitor goes black, you’re looking at yourself, not smiling, not anything. Here’s your worst-ever passport photo enlarged to life size. Swimming behind the eBook words of Jane Austen, that slack, dead-eyed zombie face, that’s yours. That’s you.

No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen-heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That’s how your whole life will feel someday.

When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you’d never stare long enough to get if she’d ever just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.

There’s an age where a woman has to move on to another kind of power. Money, for example. Or a gun.

ennui.

“Miss Rona says nothing is gross,” Brandy says. “Miss Rona says the only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”

To my breasts in the rearview mirror, Seth says, “The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

No one’s parked on the streets around Seattle Center, people are all home watching television, or being television if you believe in God.

“Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.” A kiss, and the card’s on its way toward Lake Washington. From Seth: “When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” A kiss, and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard. “Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

“When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.”

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.”

“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

Lurid.

he told me that your folks are like God because you want to know they’re out there and you want them to approve of your life, still you only call them when you’re in crisis and need something.

All these thousands of miles later, all these different people I’ve been, and it’s still the same story. Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that’s usually how you end up crying? How is it you can keep mutating and still be the same deadly virus?

say, “That crafty old dead brother of mine, he’s so thoughtful.” I say, “He shouldn’t have. He really, really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. He needs to maybe move away from denial and coping and just get on with being dead. Maybe reincarnate.” I say, “His pretending he’s still alive can’t be healthy.”

And Ellis was right, you only ask people about themselves so you can tell them about yourself.

tintinnabulation

“First,” Manus says, “your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.”

cancellous

I’ll just keep wearing my veils. If I can’t be beautiful, I want to be invisible.

Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.

Brandy yells, “I’m only doing this because it’s just the biggest mistake I can think to make. It’s stupid and destructive, and anybody you ask will tell you I’m wrong. That’s why I have to go through with it.” Brandy says, “Don’t you see? Because we’re so trained to do life the right way. To not make mistakes.” Brandy says, “I figure, the bigger the mistake looks, the better chance I’ll have to break out and live a real life.” Like Christopher Columbus sailing toward disaster at the edge of the world. Like Fleming and his bread mold. “Our real discoveries come from chaos,” Brandy yells, “from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.”

A sexual reassignment surgery is a miracle for some people, but if you don’t want one, it’s the ultimate form of self-mutilation. She says, “Not that it’s bad being a woman. This might be wonderful, if I wanted to be a woman. The point is,” Brandy says, “being a woman is the last thing I want. It’s just the biggest mistake I could think to make.” So it’s the path to the greatest discovery.

We’re so trapped that any way we could imagine to escape would be just another part of the trap. Anything we want, we’re trained to want.

My whole life is moving farther away from any reason to hate her. It’s moving far away from reason itself.

Everybody here thinks the whole story is about them. Definitely that goes for everybody in the world.

You Loved Me Because Even If You Didn’t Recognize Me, You Knew I Was Your Sister. On Some Level, You Knew Right Away So You Loved Me.

rube.

Me, I just want Shane to be happy. I’m tired of being me, hateful me. Give me release. I’m tired of this world of appearances. Pigs that only look fat. Families that look happy. Give me deliverance. From what

Be famous. Be a big social experiment in getting what you don’t want. Find value in what we’ve been taught is worthless. Find good in what the world says is evil. I’m giving you my life because I want the whole world to know you. I wish the whole world would embrace what it hates. Find what you’re afraid of most and go live there.

And I leave behind the idea that this attention was worth what I did to get it.

In this way, Shane, we are very much brother and sister. This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.

This makeover would make piercings and tattoos and brandings look so lame, all those little fashion revolts so safe that they themselves only become fashionable. Those little paper tiger attempts to reject looking good that only end up reinforcing it.

trying the way we do every time we look in a mirror to figure out exactly who that person is.

Use me. Change me. I can be thin with big breasts and big hair. Take me apart. Make me into anything, but just love me.

“You can’t be beautiful,” Brandy says about a thousand times, “until you feel beautiful.”

Because beauty is power the way money is power the way a loaded gun is power.

Did he look, you know, too gay? Gay guys only wanted guys who acted straight. “I don’t want guys to see me as a big passive bottom,” Manus would say. “It’s not like I’d just flop there and let just any guy bone me.”

Manus would hunch over his drink and say, “Guys are so fucked up.” And I’d be, like, no duh. And I told myself it was okay. Any relationship I could be in would have these rough times.

We were all running from something. Vaginoplasty. Aging. The future.

“Honey,” she says, “times like this, it helps to think of yourself as a sofa or a newspaper, something made by a lot of other people but not made to last forever.”

“It helps to know you’re not any more responsible for how you look than a car is,” Brandy says. “You’re a product just as much. A product of a product of a product. The people who design cars, they’re products. Your parents are products. Their parents were products. Your teachers, products. The minister in your church, another product,” Brandy says. Sometimes your best way to deal with shit, she says, is to not hold yourself as such a precious little prize.

Nothing of you is all-the-way yours. All of you is inherited. “Relax,” Brandy says, “Whatever you’re thinking, a million other folks are thinking. Whatever you do, they’re doing, and none of you is responsible. All of you is a cooperative effort.”

“You’re a product of our language,” Brandy says, “and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before you,” she says. “Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You’re safe because you’re so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can’t imagine any way to escape. There’s no way you can get out,” Brandy says. “The world,” Brandy says, “is your cradle and your trap.”

The books on plastic surgery, the pamphlets and brochures, all promised to help me live a more normal, happy life; but less and less this looked like what I’d want. What I wanted looked more and more like what I’d always been trained to want. What everybody wants. Give me attention. Flash. Give me beauty. Flash. Give me peace and happiness, a loving relationship, and a perfect home. Flash. Brandy says, “The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don’t be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.” She says, “Don’t do what you want.” She says, “Do what you don’t want. Do what you’re trained not to want.” It’s the opposite of following your bliss. Brandy tells me, “Do the things that scare you the most.”

hen you go out with a drunk, you’ll notice how a drunk fills your glass so he can empty his own. As long as you’re drinking, drinking is okay. Two’s company. Drinking is fun. If there’s a bottle, even if your glass isn’t empty, a drunk, he’ll pour a little in your glass before he fills his own. This only looks like generosity.

Almost all the time, you tell yourself you’re loving somebody when you’re just using them. This only looks like love.

“They cut out two of my ribs, and I never saw them again,” Brandy says. “There’s something in the Bible about taking out your ribs.” The creation of Eve. Brandy says, “I don’t know why I let them do that to me.”

What I love is myself. I was so beautiful. My love cargo, Manus Locked in the Trunk, Manus Trying to Kill Me, how can I keep thinking I love Manus? Manus is just the last man who thought I was beautiful. Who kissed me on the lips. Who touched me. Manus is just the last man who ever told me he loved me. You count down the facts and it’s so depressing. I can only eat baby food. My best friend screwed my fiancé. My fiancé almost stabbed me to death. I’ve set fire to a house and been pointing a rifle at innocent people all night. My brother I hate has come back from the dead to upstage me. I’m an invisible monster, and I’m incapable of loving anybody. You don’t know which is worse.