The Average American Marriage Read online

  the average american marriage

  a novel

  chad kultgen

  contents

  chapter one: Christmas with the Wife and Kids

  chapter two: Happy Fucking Birthday to Me

  some chapter: He Smiles

  chapter three: Meeting with My Boss

  chapter four: Human Garbage

  some chapter: An Average Sunday

  chapter five: The Intern

  chapter six: My Gay Buddy

  some chapter: Reverse Grip

  chapter seven: Holly’s First Day

  chapter eight: Scheduling Castration

  some chapter: Facebook Stalking

  chapter nine: Maria Reynaldi

  chapter ten: Maturity

  some chapter: Caught with the Babysitter

  chapter eleven: A Ride Home

  some chapter: The Romance Is Gone

  chapter twelve: Team Building

  chapter thirteen: Professional Help

  chapter fourteen: First Taste

  chapter fifteen: The Morning After

  some chapter: Sexting

  chapter sixteen: Open and Honest

  chapter seventeen: Nooner

  some chapter: The Sleeper Has Awakened

  chapter eighteen: The Thought Does Not Count

  chapter nineteen: Walking Dead

  some chapter: Gay Wisdom

  chapter twenty: Second Session

  chapter twenty-one: Burlesque Show

  some chapter: Father’s Son

  chapter twenty-two: Amateur Porn

  chapter twenty-three: Mistakes Were Made

  chapter twenty-four: First Night

  some chapter: Repairs

  chapter twenty-five: The Meet

  some chapter: The Thing I Miss Most

  chapter twenty-six: Snip

  chapter twenty-seven: Demands Are Made

  some chapter: First Load

  chapter twenty-eight: Old Man on Campus

  chapter twenty-nine: My Plus-One

  chapter thirty: Remnants

  some chapter: Blowjob Ass Cramp

  chapter thirty-one: Gay Wedding

  chapter thirty-two: Secondary Contact

  some chapter: What Never Was

  chapter thirty-three: Tagged

  some chapter: The Herpe

  chapter thirty-four: Public Knowledge

  chapter thirty-five: Chance Encounter

  some chapter: Shitdick

  chapter thirty-six: You Got Served

  chapter thirty-seven: Another Chance Encounter

  some chapter: John Larroquette

  chapter thirty-eight: Happy Fucking Birthday to You

  chapter thirty-nine: The Biggest Fucking Shark

  chapter forty: Kid’s Birthday Party

  some chapter: Advice from a Pro

  chapter forty-one: The Transfer

  some chapter: Getting Legal

  chapter forty-two: Mea Culpa

  chapter forty-three: Evaluation

  some chapter: Getting Old

  chapter forty-four: Welcome Home

  chapter forty-five: Feels Like the First Time

  some chapter: The Day Is Ruined

  chapter forty-six: Long Story Short

  chapter forty-seven: The End

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  also by chad kultgen

  credits

  copyright

  about the publisher

  chapter one

  Christmas with the Wife and Kids

  Same old bullshit.

  chapter two

  Happy Fucking Birthday to Me

  We drop the kids off at Alyna’s friend Isabelle’s house. I stare at Isabelle’s tits as Alyna tells her what time the kids should be in bed and what type of shit they should eat for dinner. I stare at her ass as Alyna hands over the giant bag of shit we constantly carry around with us, which contains various bottles, asswipes, books, DVDs, toys, etc. Isabelle is not hot. She has a dumpy ass, sloppy tits, big gums, and a forehead that’s noticeably too small for a human face. I want to fuck the shit out of her. I know the only reason I want to fuck the shit out of her is that she is not Alyna. Knowing this doesn’t make the desire any less tangible, doesn’t make me wonder what her pussy tastes like any less. I imagine several babysitting scenarios in which the kids are asleep and I fuck Isabelle in various positions, locations, and holes.

  We kiss and hug the kids and then we each give Isabelle a hug before we leave. At the end of my hug I purposely brush her ass with my right hand. It’s too brief to give me any concrete information about the make of her ass, but I imagine it must be disgusting naked. I still want to fuck her.

  Alyna drives, because wherever she’s taking me for dinner is supposed to be a surprise. She says, “So, you really have no idea where we’re going?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good. I think you’ll like it.”

  “We can just go home and order in if you want. A night without the kids is the best present you could give me.”

  “Don’t be a dick.”

  “I’m not. It’s just been a while since we’ve had a night to ourselves. I actually can’t even remember the last one.” This is a lie. The memory of the last night we spent alone feels like it was burned into my fucking brain with a soldering iron. Alyna’s parents were in town staying in a hotel and they wanted to spend the night with the kids so we left them in the hotel. It was the last time Alyna and I fucked—at least two months ago.

  She says, “Well, I want to take you out to dinner and then we’ll have all night together.”

  We drive from Woodland Hills over the hill into LA proper and pull up in front of Jar. I fucking hate Jar. Alyna loves it. We’ve eaten here a dozen or so times, always at her request. I told Alyna that I liked one of the imported beers they have once. To Alyna, this means I like the restaurant. She says, “You excited for some St. Peter’s Cream Stout?”

  I say, “Yeah.”

  Although she’s gotten better about it, Alyna dominates ninety percent of the conversation by asking how I think the kids are doing with her friend Isabelle. She brings up things like the fact that they’ve never stayed with her before, things like it’s a weekend so Andy, at least, will be used to staying up a little later, things like wondering if she remembered to put Jane’s Pocahontas doll in the bag of shit we left with Isabelle. She misses the kids already.

  Strangely, I do, too, but only a little. Not enough to keep me from almost jerking off under the table at the promise of the fucking that’s going to follow the shitty meal I choke down at Jar. I drink five St. Peter’s Cream Stouts during the dinner, which is enough to get me pretty drunk, already planning to attempt anal sex, knowing that I can use my inebriation as an excuse for the attempt if my birthday isn’t enough to make Alyna receptive to the idea from the start.

  Alyna pays the bill with our joint credit card and says, “So, how’d you like your birthday dinner?”

  I say, “It was great. Thank you. Now let’s get out of here.”

  “Aren’t we an eager beaver? You know
there’s a second part to your birthday present tonight.”

  “What’s the second part?”

  “You’ll have to wait until we get home.”

  Once we’re home, I take off my clothes and get in bed. She tells me to wait, that she has to get the second part of my present, and I’m already guessing that it’s some lingerie I couldn’t care less about. She comes into the bedroom and I’m right. She’s wearing a black lace bra and panties that I’m sure she bought with the joint credit card, too. She says, “You like?”

  I don’t give a shit. I say, “Yeah. You’re hot. Now take it off and get over here.”

  She says, “Not yet, just watch. I worked on this.”

  She proceeds to do an uncoordinated strip routine around the room. It’s a bizarro version of some of the worst strippers I can remember seeing in places like Reseda and Torrance. I can almost appreciate the effort, but it’s completely unnecessary, a waste of what might be the only time we’ll have without the kids for the foreseeable future. I get up out of bed and cut her routine short by pulling her panties off and undoing her bra so she’s completely naked. I drag her back down onto the bed and kiss her. It’s been so long since anyone but me has touched my cock that when I feel her hand start to go down my stomach I instantaneously get a hard-on that could drill a hole in concrete.

  She starts sucking my dick. I try to remember the last blowjob I got from her and I can’t. I reach down and grab one of her legs, pulling on it, giving her the hint that I want to sixty-nine. She says, “Just let me do you.”

  I say, “It’s my birthday and I want your pussy in my face.”

  “Okay, okay, calm down.”

  With the birthday obligation initiated she has no choice but to straddle my face while she sucks my dick. As she brings one of her legs across my face and settles her cunt back toward my mouth, I overlook the patch of leg hair on her ankle where she missed the last time she shaved to notice two more-important things that I’ve been completely unaware of for the entirety of the past year because we haven’t sixty-nined or fucked in any position that would yield this specific view. Number one: The backs of her legs are covered in cellulite. Her ass has gotten much larger since we got married. There’s no denying that. I find that I don’t really mind it. I even kind of like it. Even though it’s big, it has a nice shape. But the shape looks like it’s been sitting on hot gravel for the past year. The cellulite is not easy to ignore. But since I have no fucking choice, I do my best to ignore it by moving my eyes to her pussy. And that’s when I notice Number two: The inch or so of skin between Alyna’s pussy and asshole, which used to be smooth and perfect, is mangled by what looks like a scarred-over hacksaw wound.

  There’s only a split second in which I am completely confused by it, completely in the dark as to what could have caused it and how I never noticed it before. Then I remember: She had to have an episiotomy when she had our youngest kid, Jane. As I lick at her clitoris I think about the fact that we haven’t done the sixty-nine since Jane was born, a little over a year ago. I think about the fact that Alyna used to have a perfect pussy and a perfect asshole and a perfect inch-long piece of cute pink skin in between them that always smelled like cinnamon and peaches. These things, as superficial as they may seem, attracted me to her originally. I think about the fact that she’ll never be the same. She’ll never be the girl I saw for the first time on that airplane. The view of her asshole and her pussy in this position will never be as good as it was. I wonder if she knows about the scar. I don’t know what my taint looks like. She probably doesn’t either.

  I lick at the scar a little bit just to see what it feels like on my tongue. I try to remember what her pussy felt like in my mouth before the scar. I can’t.

  After a few minutes of sixty-nining, Alyna says, “I bet you want some reverse cowgirl, don’t you?” She knows it’s my favorite position.

  I can’t handle looking at the episiotomy scar anymore, which is unfortunate because all of my favorite sexual positions would give me a direct view of it. Suddenly, my preplanned attempt at anal sex is now just conjuring up irrational images in my mind of Alyna’s episiotomy scar being split open by my dick. So on the one night that I’m granted sexual carte blanche, I realize I’ll have to settle for something far more mundane than I would have normally. Even more depressing to me is the fact that I haven’t fucked in so long that fucking missionary, or having Alyna ride my dick, will probably make me blow a load just as quickly as any other position would have, even if her pussy wasn’t hideously disfigured.

  I say, “No, just get on top.”

  She reaches over to the nightstand and gets out a rubber, which she claims to hate using in our increasingly infrequent sexual encounters but also makes no effort to remedy by going back on the pill. She says she wants to try to lose weight now that we’re done having kids and the pill makes it difficult.

  She does me the courtesy of ripping the wrapper open but hands me the rubber to put on myself. This exact interaction before fucking has become too routine for her to even think about putting the rubber on my dick herself, even on my birthday.

  Once I put the rubber on, and she checks to make sure it’s rolled down my cock far enough and securely fitted, she rides me for what I estimate to be about ten minutes before saying, “Just finish.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t know if I can tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t think I can. I’m thinking about the kids.”

  “Do you want me to go down on you or something? What can I do? I want you to cum, too.”

  “It’s just one of those nights. I don’t think I can. You should just finish.”

  I can’t remember the last time I made Alyna cum. Since we had our first kid, Andy, the frequency of our sexual encounters fell off the charts, but so did her interest in them, and so did her ability to achieve orgasm as easily as she used to. I was hoping that on my birthday she could muster enough enthusiasm to enjoy herself while we fucked, and even if she couldn’t cum maybe she’d at least fake it well enough that I could delude myself into thinking she was having a decent time. The more I think about it as I fuck her, the more I realize that the thing that bothers me the most about her not cumming has nothing to do with me feeling inadequate or feeling like less of a man or even a basic desire to give my wife pleasure. What’s actually disappointing me is that she doesn’t seem to care at all about the fact that she can’t cum. The act of achieving an orgasm has somehow become so uninteresting or unimportant to her that she’s not even willing to attempt it. I wonder why she fucks me at all and I can only come to the conclusion that it’s just to placate me. This would explain the extremely low frequency with which we engage in any kind of sexual activity.

  She says, “Come on. Cum for me.”

  I’m tempted to just stop fucking her, to watch some poker or How It’s Made while she falls asleep and then sneak into the office to jerk off to some Riley Steele porn. Since I don’t know when the next time I’ll get to fuck might be, though, instead I grab her by the hips, squeeze into the fat around the upper part of her ass, and fuck her as hard as I can from underneath.

  There isn’t a glimmer of pleasure or ecstasy or anything even approaching sexual arousal in her eyes as she looks down at me, not even caring enough about any of it to hope it will be over soon. It’s like she’s waiting for the parking pay machine at the Beverly Center to spit her ticket back out after she’s paid her two dollars. She says, “Yeah, fuck me until you cum,” but she doesn’t mean a word of it. I’ve never fucked a RealDoll, but I imagine it’s something like this— except that a RealDoll would have a better body, a tighter pussy, and no episiotomy scar.

  After a minute or so I close my eyes, try to remember one of the first times we fucked in my old apartment on a rare rainy day in Westwood, and reach up and grab one of her tits, which have both begun to sag
significantly, probably as a result of her insistence on breast-feeding both of our kids. I squeeze it hard enough to make her say, “Ouch,” and then I blow my load.

  She gets off of me before my dick is even finished spitting out the last pump of cum, kisses me on the cheek, says, “Happy birthday,” then rolls over and turns on the TV. I get up and go to the bathroom. I peel off the rubber and wrap it in a wad of toilet paper, mash it down as far as I can in the trash so my kids won’t accidentally find it, then wonder how in the fuck this became my life.

  some chapter

  He Smiles

  I get off work at six. I get home at six forty-five. I eat dinner with Alyna and the kids at seven. Alyna gives the kids their baths at seven-thirty. So the thirty minutes from seven-thirty to 8 P.M. on every weeknight are mine. I can usually get in at least two games of Modern Warfare, sometimes three. I’m in the middle of my second game of Team Deathmatch on the Paris map and somebody on the opposite team just got Juggernaut when my son, Andy, comes out of the bathroom naked. I just catch him out of my peripheral vision, trying not to turn my full attention away from the game, when he says, “Look, Daddy, he smiles.” He’s four. He says fucked-up things that make no sense all the time. I stopped trying to figure out most of the shit he says a long time ago, but the phrase “Look, Daddy, he smiles” implies that my son wants me to look at something, and I’m curious who this “he” is. So I look away from the game and see my son standing by the hallway that leads back to the bathroom. He’s completely naked, hair still wet from his bath, and he’s holding his cock, looking down at it and laughing. But he’s not just holding his cock. He has the head kind of turned sideways so the hole in his dick is horizontal instead of vertical, and he’s pinching the head with the index finger and thumb on each of his hands, stretching the hole and twisting it up on the ends so it does, in fact, look like a tiny smile. I look away from his cock and back to my game as quickly as I can, wondering if I did shit like that when I was his age. Probably.