LOSER

Chuck Palahniuk

THE SHOW STILL LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE when you were sick with a really high fever and you

stayed home to watch TV all day. It’s not Let’s Make a Deal. It’s not Wheel of Fortune. It’s not Monty

Hall, or Pat Sajak. It’s that other show where the big, loud voice calls your name in the audience, says

to “Come on down, you’re the next contestant,” and if you guess the cost of Rice-A-Roni, then you fly

round-trip to live for a week in Paris.

It’s that show. The prize is never anything useful, like okay clothes or music or beer. The prize is

always some vacuum cleaner or a washing machine, something you might maybe get excited to win if

you were, like, somebody’s maid.

It’s Rush Week, and the tradition is everybody pledging Zeta Delt all take this big chartered school bus

and need to go to some TV studio and watch them tape this game show. Rules say, all the Zeta Delts

wear the same red T-shirt with, printed on it, the Greek Zeta Delta Omega deals, silk-screened in black.

First, you need to take a little stamp of Hello Kitty, maybe half a stamp, and wait for the flash. It’s like

this little paper stamp printed with Hello Kitty you suck on and swallow, except it’s really blotter acid.

All you do is, the Zeta Delts sit together to make this red patch in the middle of the studio audience and

scream and yell to get on TV. These are not the Gamma Grab’a Thighs. They’re not the Lambda Rape’a

Dates. The Zeta Delts, they’re who everybody wants to be.

How the acid will affect you—if you’re going to freak out and kill yourself or eat somebody alive—

they don’t even tell you.

It’s traditional.

Ever since you were a little kid with a fever, the contestants they call down to play this game show, the

big voice always calls for one guy who’s a United States Marine wearing some band uniform with

brass buttons. There’s always somebody’s old grandma wearing a sweatshirt. There’s an immigrant

from some place where you can’t understand half of what he says. There’s always some rocket scientist

with a big belly and his shirt pocket stuck full of pens.

It’s just how you remember it, growing up, only now—all the Zeta Delts start yelling at you. Yelling so

hard it scrunches their eyes shut. Everybody’s just these red shirts and big, open mouths. All their hands

are pushing you out from your seat, shoving you into the aisle. The big voice is saying your name,

telling you to come on down. You’re the next contestant.

In your mouth, the Hello Kitty tastes like pink bubblegum. It’s the Hello Kitty, the popular kind, not the

strawberry flavor or the chocolate flavor somebody’s brother cooks at night in the General Sciences

Building where he works as a janitor. The paper stamp feels caught partway down your throat, except

you don’t want to gag on TV, not on recorded video with strangers watching, forever.

All the studio audience is turned around to see you stumble down the aisle in your red T-shirt. All the

TV cameras zoomed in. Everybody clapping exactly the way you remember it. Those Las Vegas lights,

flashing, outlining everything onstage. It’s something new, but you’ve watched it a million-zillion times

before, and just on automatic you take the empty desk next to where the United States Marine is

standing.

The game show host, who’s not Alex Trebek, he waves one arm, and a whole part of the stage starts to

move. It’s not an earthquake, but one whole wall rolls on invisible wheels, all the lights everywhere

flashing on and off, only fast, just blink, blink, blink, except faster than a human mouth could say. This

whole big back wall of the stage slides to one side, and from behind it steps out a giant fashion model

blazing with about a million-billion sparkles on her tight dress, waving one long, skinny arm to show

you a table with eight chairs like you’d see in somebody’s dining room on Thanksgiving with a big

cooked turkey and yams and everything. Her fashion-model waist, about as big around as somebody’s

neck. Each of her tits, the size of your head. Those flashing Las Vegas kind of lights blinking all

around. The big voice saying who made this table, out of what kind of wood. Saying the suggested

retail price it’s worth.

To win, the host lifts up this little box. Like a magician, he shows everybody what’s underneath—just

this whole thing of bread in its naturally occurring state, the way bread comes before it’s made into

anything you can eat like a sandwich or French toast. Just this bread, the whole way your mom might

find it at the farm or wherever bread grows.

The table and chairs are totally, easily yours, except you have to guess the price of this big bread.

Behind you, all the Zeta Delts crowd really close together in their T-shirts, making what looks like one

giant, red pucker in the middle of the studio audience. Not even looking at you, all their haircuts are

just huddled up, making a big, hairy center. It’s like forever later when your phone rings, and a Zeta

Delt voice says what to bid.

That bread just sitting there the whole time. Covered in a brown crust. The big voice says it’s loaded

with ten essential vitamins and minerals.

The old game show host, he’s looking at you like maybe he’s never, ever seen a telephone before. He

goes, “And what do you bid?”

And you go, “Eight bucks?”

From the look on the old grandma’s face, it’s like maybe they should call some paramedics for her

heart attack. Dangling out of one sweatshirt cuff, this crumpled scrap of Kleenex looks like leaked-out

stuffing, flapping white, like she’s some trashed teddy bear somebody loved too hard.

To cut you off using some brilliant strategy, the United States Marine, the bastard, he says, “Nine

dollars.”

Then to cut him off, the rocket science guy says, “Ten. Ten dollars.”

It must be some trick question, because the old grandma says, “One dollar and ninety-nine cents,” and

all the music starts, loud, and the lights flash on and off. The host hauls the granny up onto the stage,

and she’s crying and plays a game where she throws a tennis ball to win a sofa and a pool table. Her

grandma face looks just as smashed and wrinkled as that Kleenex she pulls out from her sweatshirt

cuff. The big voice calls another granny to take her place, and everything keeps rushing forward.

The next round, you need to guess the price of some potatoes, but like a whole big thing of real, alive

potatoes, from before they become food, the way they come from the miners or whoever that dig

potatoes in Ireland or Idaho or some other place starting with an I. Not even made into potato chips or

French fries.

If you guess right, you get some big clock inside a wood box like a Dracula coffin standing on one end,

except with these church bells inside the box that ding-ding whatever time it is. Over your phone, your

mom calls it a grandfather clock. You show it to her on video, and she says it looks cheap.

You’re onstage with the TV cameras and lights, all the Zeta Delts call-waiting you, and you cup your

phone to your chest and go, “My mom wants to know, do you have anything nicer I could maybe win?”

You show your mom those potatoes on video, and she asks: Did the old host guy buy them at the A&P

or the Safeway?

You speed-dial your dad, and he asks about the income-tax liability.

Probably it’s the Hello Kitty, but the face of this big Dracula clock just scowls at you. It’s like the

secret, hidden eyes; the eyelids open up, and the teeth start to show, and you can hear about a millionbillion

giant, alive cockroaches crawling around inside the wood box of it. The skin of all the

supermodels goes all waxy, smiling with their faces not looking at anything.

You say the price your mom tells you. The United States Marine says one dollar more. The rocket

science guy says a dollar higher than him. Only, this round—you win.

All those potatoes open their little eyes.

Except now, you need to guess the price of a whole cow full of milk in a box, the way milk comes in

the kitchen fridge. You have to guess the cost of a whole thing of breakfast cereal like you’d find in the

kitchen cabinet. After that, a giant deal of pure salt the way it comes from the ocean only in a round

box, but more salt than anybody could eat in an entire lifetime. Enough salt, you could rim

approximately a million-billion margaritas.

All the Zeta Delts start texting you like crazy. Your in-box is piling up.

Next come these eggs like you’d find at Easter, only plain white and lined up inside some special kind

of cardboard case. A whole, complete set of twelve. These really minimalist eggs, pure white…so white

you could just look at them forever, only right away you need to guess at a big bottle like a yellow

shampoo, except it’s something gross called cooking oil, you don’t know what for, and the next thing is

you need to choose the right price of something frozen.

You cup one hand over your eyes to see past the footlights, except all the Zeta Delts are lost in the

glare. All you can hear is their screaming different prices of money. Fifty thousand dollars. A million.

Ten thousand. Just loony people yelling just numbers.

Like the TV studio is just some dark jungle, and people are just some monkeys just screeching their

monkey sounds.

The molars inside your mouth, they’re grinding together so hard you can taste the hot metal of your

fillings, that silver melting in your back teeth. Meantime, the sweat stains creep down from your armpit

to your elbow, all black-red down both sides of your Zeta Delt T-shirt. The flavor of melted silver and

pink bubblegum. It’s sleep apnea only in the day, and you need to remind yourself to take the next

breath…take another breath…while the supermodels walking on sparkly high heels try pimping the

audience a microwave oven, pimping a treadmill while you keep staring to decide if they’re really

good-looking. They make you spin this doohickey so it rolls around. You have to match a bunch of

different pictures so they go together perfect. Like you’re some white rat in Principles of Behavioral

Psychology 201, they make you guess what can of baked beans costs more than another. All that fuss to

win something you sit on to mow your lawn.

Thanks to your mom telling you prices, you win a thing like you’d put in a room covered in easy-care,

wipe-clean, stain-resistant vinyl. You win one of those deals people might ride on vacation for a

lifetime of wholesome fun and family excitement. You win something hand painted with the Old World

charm inspired by the recent release of a blockbuster epic motion picture.

It’s the same as when you felt sick with a high fever and your little-kid heart would pound and you

couldn’t catch your breath, just from the idea that somebody might take home an electric organ. No

matter how sick you felt, you’d watch this show until your fever broke. All the flashing lights and patio

furniture, it seemed to make you feel better. To heal you or to cure you in some way.

It’s like forever later, but you win all the way to the Showcase Round.

There, it’s just you and the old granny wearing the sweatshirt from before, just somebody’s regular

grandma, but she’s lived through world wars and nuclear bombs, probably she saw all the Kennedys get

shot and Abraham Lincoln, and now she’s bobbing up and down on her tennis-shoe toes, clapping her

granny hands and crowded by supermodels and flashing lights while the big voice makes her the

promise of a sports utility vehicle, a wide-screen television, a floor-length fur coat.

And probably it’s the acid, but it’s like nothing seems to add up.

It’s like, if you live a boring-enough life, knowing the price of Rice-A-Roni and hot dog wieners, your

big reward is you get to live for a week in some hotel in London? You get to ride on some airplane to

Rome. Rome, like, in Italy. You fill your head full of enough ordinary junk, and your pay-off is giant

supermodels giving you a snowmobile?

If this game show wants to see how smart you really are, they need to ask you how many calories in a

regular onion–cheddar cheese bagel. Go ahead, ask you the price of your cell phone minutes any hour

of the day. Ask you about the cost of a ticket for going thirty miles over the speed limit. Ask the roundtrip

fare to Cabo for spring break. Down to the penny, you can tell them the price of decent seats for the

Panic at the Disco reunion tour.

They should ask you the price of a Long Island iced tea. The price of Marcia Sanders’s abortion. Ask

about your expensive herpes medication you have to take but don’t want your folks to know you need.

Ask the price of your History of European Art textbook, which cost three hundred bucks—fuck you

very much.

Ask what that stamp of Hello Kitty set you back.

The sweatshirt granny bids some regular amount of money for her showcase. Just like always, the

numbers of her bid appear in tiny lights, glowing on the front of her contestant desk where she stands.

Here, all the Zeta Delts are yelling. Your phone keeps ringing and ringing.

For your showcase, a supermodel rolls out five hundred pounds of raw beefsteak. The steaks fit inside a

barbecue. The barbecue fits onboard a speed boat that fits inside a trailer for towing it that fits a

massive fifth-wheel pickup truck that fits inside the garage of a brand-new house in Austin. Austin,

like, in Texas.

Meantime, all the Zeta Delts stand up. They get to their feet and step up on their audience seats

cheering and waving, not chanting your name, but chanting, “Zeta Delt!” Chanting, “Zeta Delt!”

Chanting, “Zeta Delt!” loud enough so it records for the broadcast.

It’s probably the acid, but—you’re battling some old nobody you’ve never met, fighting over shit you

don’t even want.

Probably it’s the acid, but—right here and now—fuck declaring a business major. Fuck General

Principles of Accounting 301.

Stuck partway down your throat, something makes you gag.

And on purpose, by accident, you bid a million, trillion, gah-zillion dollars—and ninety-nine cents.

And everything shuts down to quiet. Maybe just the little clicking sounds of all those Las Vegas lights

blinking on and off, on and off. On and off.

It’s like forever later when the game show host gets up too close, standing at your elbow, and he hisses,

“You can’t do that.” The host hisses, “You have to play this game to win…”

Up close, his host face looks cracked into a million-billion jagged fragments only glued back together

with pink makeup. Like Humpty Dumpty or a jigsaw puzzle. His wrinkles, like the battle scars of

playing his same TV game since forever started. All his gray hairs, always combed in the same

direction.

The big voice asks—that big, deep voice booming out of nowhere, the voice of some gigantic giant

man you can’t see—he demands, can you please repeat your bid?

And maybe you don’t know what you want out of your life, but you know it’s not a grandfather clock.

A million, trillion…you say. A number too big to fit on the front of your contestant desk. More zeroes

than all the bright lights in the game show world. And probably it’s the Hello Kitty, but tears slop out

both your eyes, and you’re crying because for the first time since you were a little kid you don’t know

what comes next, tears wrecking the front of your red T-shirt, turning the red parts black so the Greek

Omega deals don’t make any sense.

The voice of one Zeta Delt, alone in all that big, quiet audience, he yells, “You suck!”

On the little screen of your phone, a text message says, “Asshole!”

The text? It’s from your mom.

The sweatshirt grandma, she’s crying because she won. You’re sobbing because—you don’t know why.

It turns out the granny wins the snowmobiles and the fur coat. She wins the speedboat and the

beefsteaks. The table and chairs and sofa. All the prizes of both the showcases, because your bid was

way, way too high. She’s jumping around, her bright-white false teeth throwing smiles in every

direction. The game show host gets everybody started clapping their hands, except the Zeta Delts don’t.

The family of the old granny climbs up onstage—all the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids of hers

—and they wander over to touch the shiny sports utility vehicle, touch the supermodels. The granny

plants red lipstick kisses all over the fractured pink face of the game show host. She’s saying, “Thank

you.” Saying, “Thank you.” Saying, “Thank you,” right up to when her granny eyes roll up backward