#inspired by me recently having to do govt stuff. wasnt this but its what i could think of something coming up 4 the narrator

[jacksprostate]

Tyler is hopping around on his pogo stick again. When he lands, it's with a mushy thump as he sinks into the rotting floorboards. Sometimes he gets stuck and just tips over instead of bouncing back up. It makes him stumble and jump ship. Moment of perfection ruined.

I need to renew my driver's license, I say.

"What are you telling me for?"

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

If Tyler's bed had a backboard, this is how it would sound before he and Marla pounded through to the next room.

I am Jack's throat of bile.

"Fine," Tyler says. "We'll go."

I do not say, we? Questioning Tyler is an amateur move I've managed to avoid for two months now.

Getting to the DMV takes three buses and a thirty minute walk. Presumably, they've decided you'll be driving there. Sometimes I think about the Audi I had before my Dakapo halogen torchiere speared it. One of Zeus' modern day lightning bolts, making sure the debris from my exploded condo totaled my car.

I could've gotten the windshield replaced. Somewhere, in a junkyard filled with unloved 50s salvage, there's the crushed up cube remains of this year's luxury sedan.

Tyler spends the entire time walking one half step behind me, making me lead him around. It makes me feel blind, like I'm a thirty year old boy still trying to get his father to take him places. I am the world's most easily played instrument. Whenever I look back he's grinning, chipped teeth and split lips.

It's a Saturday and we've arrived two hours or so after opening. This means that when I get my ticket stub, it reads an obscenely high number. I will be sitting here for the next six hours. Give or take.

The thing about seating in a government building is they know you have no choice to be there for at least two hours, if you're lucky. Naturally, the chairs are cheap, yawning plastic bolted into the floor at a height most optimal for slightly tall seven year olds.

Tyler and I toss ourselves into the only two person gap we can find, between a large man giving Bob a run for his money on hormone reversal and a frail woman in her eighties. Both look like I'd see them on a weeknight. I wonder if this is where Marla lurks in the time between when she's fucking Tyler and fucking up my support groups.

"You don't need this shit," Tyler says.

He's slouching into the chair, arms crossed and legs long and in the way. If I were to look where his shirt is rucked up, I'd see his skin disappear into the dark gap between his chiseled hip and the beige slacks he puts on when he pretends he's pretending to be a nice person. It's an obvious farce, since he hasn't even bothered to put underwear on.

This is one of those things that I try not to think too hard about, but I have something like four hundred minutes left to wait around here. I should've brought a few National Geographics.

I need a driver's license for my job, Tyler, I say. The old woman gives me a look.

"Christ." Tyler spits on the floor. I try not to be jealous. My seat neighbor, she gets right up and goes to the other end of the building. "Just roll over, why don't you."

I can tell, this will be a lesson. He gets this huge sureness about himself, like his dick is so big it's slapped his face into that smug false contemplation.

I need some kind of ID, Tyler.

Tyler says, "No you don't. Your bank already has you by the balls with your social security number. You ride the bus around. You're at the airport so often the airline staff recognize you. You only drive when work sends you to a small town, which happens fuck all three times a year. Tell me, you get a good fake, you think the overworked and underpaid car rental employee writing down your information would notice it unless you crashed his car? You know if that happened it'd be because you did it to kill yourself, so where's the problem?"

You could be a perfect driver and die on the road at any second, I protest.

We're attracting attention. Not Bob shifts around. Our conversation is quiet but unnerving.

Tyler says, "Does it feel nice, signing yourself up like a feedlot steer?"

Fucking hell, Tyler. It's not like anyone wants to do this. No one wants to be here. Not everyone can work three night shifts and have no identity according to the government.

Tyler says, "The only thing stopping you is the little set of rules you've set up for yourself."

What does Tyler know about my ability to do things?

"More than you," Tyler says. "You didn't think you could fight. You didn't think you could live without your perfect IKEA nest."

He's right. I still want to kick him to the floor and introduce his teeth to the tile. I notice, Not Bob has cleared the area. Retreat to safety. Bomb detonation in five, four. We've got a three seat berth on each side with people standing packed against the walls of the place.

A lone security guard floats our way.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave, sir."

It's not the way that the men at fight club have started calling me sir. The security guard is looking at me like he knows about my condo blowing up, and he feels awfully sure about the cause.

I need to renew my driver's license.

Tyler says, "If we pay taxes for this building, these workers, doesn't that mean we pay your salary? You're going to kick out your kindest boss?"

"If you don't leave, I'll have to call the police."

Tyler says, "Can't even do it yourself?"

I think, every second of this day has been excruciating, and I have been awake for 77 hours.

Tyler socks the security guard right in the jaw, and the crowd goes wild.

It happens like this: Tyler hits the security guard with all four knuckles, all the people start screaming, and the security guard goes for his gun. I am standing in the middle of this hurricane, calm like a baby that's just been left in the car in 90 degree weather. I start walking.

Behind me, Tyler wrestles for the gun. He tosses it towards the kiosk that spat out my waiting ticket. He lets the security guard hit him in the gut. The face. The face again. He's on the ground, bloody spit threading his rebroken smile, and the security guard is kicking him in the gut. Tyler curls into a ball, the security guard kicks him in the kidneys. This will give Tyler bruises like size thirteen boots and make him piss blood for three weeks.

I reach the door, and Tyler's crawling after me. The security guard has come out of his haze, and now the crowd is staring at him. The headline: local DMV worker brutally bludgeons mentally ill constituent. People stare at him, now aware of the violence he is capable of. They wonder. He wonders.

Tyler limps out the door. We get on the bus and the driver stares at us and does not make us pay when we walk past him to the seats. The driver had a black eye. We saw him at fight club last week.

We sit, and I tell Tyler, because of him I'm definitely on a list now. Like they had for all those communists, but now it's for schizophrenics who might bomb their local state Department of Motor Vehicles location. I tell him if I get a letter saying I have to show up in court because I beat up a government worker, I'm sending him, and he can have fun explaining that to whatever rancid old judge presides over our case.

He laughs, and laughs, and laughs.