The Average American Marriage Read online

  She says, “Should I open another bottle?”

  I say, “I’m game.”

  She gets another bottle and pours us two more glasses. She takes a big sip and says, “Okay, I think I’m drunk enough to do this now.” I can feel my dick starting to get a little hard at the prospect of fucking my wife again. I wonder if she shaved for tonight. I’m hoping she has if she’s planning on us fucking. She says, “So, the reason I asked you over here tonight is . . .”

  I’m ready for her to stand up, turn around, and hike her skirt up so I can see her ass or something equally enticing. Maybe she’ll tell me she missed the taste of my cock or just needed to be fucked again.

  She says, “ . . . I have some demands.”

  This is not exactly what I was expecting, but I’m still thinking maybe they’ll be filthy demands. Maybe she’ll demand that I fuck her in the ass and cum on her face.

  She says, “I have some demands, and I think that’s okay given the situation. And I think the only way this is going to work is if you meet all of them.” It’s sounding less and less like fucking to me.

  She takes out a little piece of paper and unfolds it. She says, “I wrote these down so I could just go through them and not forget any and so I could get it all out, so just listen.”

  This is definitely not about sex in any way. This is the worst dinner in my own home that I’ve ever had in my life.

  She says, “Demand number one. You cannot have any contact with this girl ever again.”

  I say, “I work with her.”

  Alyna says, “Shut up. Demand number two. You can drive to and from work. That’s it. All other times you have to be here, at home, with us. If you want to hang out with Todd and have beers or something, he has to come here.” She looks at me, waiting for a protest that I don’t offer. She continues, “Demand number three. I will have full access to your cell phone and your Facebook and whatever else you use to talk to anyone that’s not me. Demand number four. You will have exactly one minute to respond to any text message or phone call that you receive from me. If you don’t respond within the minute, I’ll assume you’re cheating on me and this is all over. And the last one—demand number five. You will not even think about asking me for sex until I tell you I’m ready again.”

  I say, “What did Roland say about all of this?”

  She says, “He doesn’t know. I stopped going to Roland because he didn’t really help all that much, in case you haven’t noticed. So . . .”

  I say, “So what?”

  She says, “So what do you think? Can you do this? Can you make this right and do what I need you to do here?” I have no idea what to say. I’m a fucking deer in the headlights. There’s no way it’s even possible for any human being to meet those demands. But I know I want to live in my house again. I want to see my kids again. I think I want my wife back again. At least I want my old wife back again, the one who used to fuck me. But after this I don’t even know if that’s ever going to be possible. I say, “Why’d you have the kids stay with Isabelle?”

  She says, “Because I wanted us to be able to talk about this without interruption and without the kids influencing any of this.”

  I say, “But they do influence it. How can they not?”

  She says, “Okay, well then, how are they influencing it? What’s your decision?”

  I say, “Do I have to have one right now? This is a lot to take in.”

  She says, “If you don’t want to make this right badly enough to know the answer now, immediately, then you don’t want to make it right.”

  I say, “Alyna, that’s not it. This is just a lot to deal with. And some of those demands don’t even seem remotely possible to meet.”

  She says, “Which ones?”

  I say, “Like the one about texting you back within a minute. What if I’m in a meeting or something, or I leave my phone in my office when I go to lunch?”

  She loses her forced politeness and she loses the rest of her composure, too. She starts crying. “You just want to fuck that little whore some more, don’t you? And then, once you think you’ve gotten it all out of your system, you’ll come crawling back. Well, that’s not how it works. I’m willing to extend this olive branch right now. You take it or it disappears. That’s it.”

  I say, “Alyna, can I have a day to process this?” That sounds like something Roland would say.

  She says, “Get the fuck out. I knew this was a stupid idea. You’re an asshole and you ruined our family. Get the fuck out of this house.”

  I don’t argue. I don’t take another bite of food or another sip of wine. I stand up and walk out the front door. She doesn’t follow me so I lock the door to my own house behind me.

  some chapter

  First Load

  I wake up with a hard-on that feels like a roll of quarters. Per my doctor’s orders I haven’t jerked off in six days. This is day seven. I don’t know if I’m supposed to wait until day eight to blow a load or if the week officially ends on day seven. I decide to take a chance. Before I even get out of bed or take a piss, I start going to town.

  I’m on my back, imagining that Holly is straddling me with my cock in her ass. It only takes me a minute or so of solid jerking until I can tell I’m about to blow my load. So far nothing feels strange or painful, but I still have a general unease about what might happen next. I slow my stroke for a second, unable to help thinking about my balls exploding in my scrotum and ejaculating blood. I’m reminded of the scene in Antichrist when Willem Dafoe gets his cock smashed while he’s unconscious but his wife still jerks him off to completion and he blows a load of blood. I don’t want this to happen to me. I purge these thoughts from my mind and reason that I need to get this out of the way. Sooner or later I have to blow a load, and it’s going to be now.

  I picture Holly’s asshole when she’s sitting on my face, and I get back to work. When I’m about to cum, I power through the momentary apprehension and blow a load all over my hands and stomach. The orgasm itself doesn’t feel any better or worse than normal. I let it settle and wait for any tinge of pain to set in my balls or dick or abdomen. There is none. I look at the load. It’s white—completely normal. It’s actually a little bigger than normal, but I assume this has to do with not cumming for a week.

  I wipe my hands off on the sheets and use a pillowcase to clean the cum off my stomach. The best thing about living in a hotel is you can blow loads all over the sheets if you want and they’ll be clean and changed by the time you’re back from work. I could never count on that with Alyna.

  chapter twenty-eight

  Old Man on Campus

  It’s Saturday. I haven’t talked to Alyna or my kids in a few days. I wonder when I’ll see them next and I wonder what they think of me being gone. I try to put it out of my mind as I drive to CSUN. Holly is involved in a charity fundraiser to get credit for some class. She’s running a booth selling cupcakes at a fair on campus, and she’s asked me to show up and buy a few cupcakes. This will obviously lead to fucking, so I decide to oblige.

  I ask the guy at the parking structure for directions, then park my car and start walking toward the fair. For some reason I expected there to be more of a family presence at the fair, but everyone involved—the people running the booths and the people buying things there—are all students. I’m the oldest person there by fifteen or so years. I assume they’ll all think I’m a professor.

  I meander around through the booths for a minute before zeroing in on Holly’s. She’s wearing a skin-tight skirt and a shirt that pushes her tits up and out. Even though I think about fucking almost every other female student I see walking around the place, it’s clear that Holly is the hottest of them all—and I personally know she can fuck like a maniac, so my fantasies involving her are much less fantasy than actual memory. I wonder if the other girls on campus fuck like her. I assume they probably do, given t
hat they were all raised on porn.

  I go up to Holly’s booth and say, “I’ll take a cupcake, please.”

  She smiles and says, “Hey, you made it.”

  I say, “I told you I’d be here.”

  She says, “Well, thanks for coming,” hands me a cupcake, then says, “That’ll be five dollars, please, sir.”

  I hand her the cash and take the cupcake, then say, “When are you relieved of your duties here?”

  She looks at her phone and says, “In about an hour. If you want to hang around, check out some of the other things. We can hang out after.”

  Knowing there’s a high probability of me getting my dick sucked if I hang around, I say, “Cool. Just text me when you get done.”

  I lean in to kiss her on the cheek. She pulls back a little but allows it. Her inability to return physical affection is strange to me. I try not to question it too much. I say, “See you later,” then take my cupcake and walk around a little bit.

  I look at all the booths raising money for various charities. I have no interest in any of them, so I walk a little farther away from the charity fair and take a seat near a fountain and start eating my cupcake. As I eat it I watch the students walk around me and try to remember what it was like to be that young, what it was like to be in college and not really know about bills or a mortgage or having kids or any of it. I can’t. I remember specific things about my college experience—professors I had, chicks I fucked, a few parties I went to—but I can’t remember what it felt like. I can’t remember what my attitude about life was. I can’t remember what I thought my life would be like when I became the age I currently am. I’m pretty sure I didn’t think it would be what it has become, though. I wonder if any of the kids I see walking around think about what their lives will be like when they’re my age and I wonder if any of them are accurate in their expectations.

  I finish the cupcake and walk around campus. The girls all walk around staring intently at their phones, oblivious to anything around them, which makes it very easy to stare at their tits and asses and imagine fucking them in their dorm rooms, which I assume are all like Holly’s.

  Later I get a text from Holly asking me to meet up with her at her cupcake stand. I do, and then we head back to her dorm room and I fuck her in the ass, then she sucks my dick until I cum down her throat. I wonder if I’ll remember how I felt on this exact day in another fifteen years, or if I’ll just remember the event.

  chapter twenty-nine

  My Plus-One

  Carlos and I are eating lunch. After divulging all of the recent events of my life to him, he says, “So you literally and figuratively got your balls cut off.”

  I say, “My balls were not cut off.”

  He says, “I was making a joke, you stupid fuck.”

  I say, “So, anyway, it’s obviously just going to be me coming to your wedding solo.”

  He says, “Oh no, motherfucker. We already paid for the caterer and we put you down for two plates.”

  I say, “I’ll pay you back.”

  He says, “It’s not even about that.”

  I say, “Then why did you say it was?”

  He says, “Don’t be a dick. Look, you know I love Alyna, and I sincerely hope you two work everything out, and I have the utmost faith that you will. That said, just bring your new fucktoy.”

  I say, “I don’t know about that, man.”

  He says, “Why not?”

  I say, “It’s still kind of new. It might be overstepping some bounds or something. I don’t want her to think I’m trying to replace my wife with her, you know?”

  He says, “You’re so fucking stupid. If you went on Craigslist right now and fucking posted something that was like, ‘Recently separated straight asshole seeks a lady to take to a wedding in Boston and please be ready to fuck and suck dick, also it’s a gay wedding,’ you’d be drowning in a fucking tidal wave of pussy.”

  I say, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He says, “Straight women love weddings, and the cool ones—which, from everything you’ve told me about this little minx, she seems like she’s cool—fucking love gay weddings. When you invite her, don’t say, ‘Hey, come to this wedding with me and I’ll make you my next wife.’ Just say something like, ‘Hey, I have to go to one of my best friend’s weddings and I’d love for you to be my date. And, just to let you know, it’s a gay wedding.’ You just showed me her picture. She’s hot. Hot chicks love gay guys. That little bitch’s panties will be wet in a second.”

  I say, “I don’t doubt that chicks like weddings, asshole. I’m just saying I don’t want her to think that I’m making a big deal out of it, you know, making it like we’re in a relationship or anything.”

  He says, “And is that because you don’t want a relationship with her, or is that because you don’t want to scare her away by getting too serious too quick?”

  I say, “I don’t know. I don’t really know much about anything right now. I just know that I’m not sleeping in my own bed anymore and I’m not fucking my wife anymore—”

  He says, “But you weren’t fucking her when you were sleeping in your own bed.”

  I say, “You know what I mean. And I’m not seeing my kids anymore. Yeah, I like Holly. I like fucking her a lot. But . . .”

  He says, “But nothing. I want to meet this little homewrecker now, so you’re bringing her. She’s your plus-one. It’s settled.”

  I say, “I’ll think about it.”

  He says, “Well, thinking with your dick got you this far. Just keep doing it and you’ll be fine.”

  When I get back to the office I stare at a picture of Holly’s ass on my phone for a while. Then I stare at it in real life while she dicks around on Facebook just outside my office. I get some work done and think about whether or not I should take her to the wedding. At the end of the day, when she’s walking out, I bring her into my office.

  I say, “Hey, I know this might seem weird, but it’s not. I just need a date to something and I’d love for you to be that date.”

  She says, “What is it?”

  I say, “A wedding.”

  She lights up immediately and says, “Ooh. I’ll get to wear a dress.”

  I say, “Yeah, and you’ll get to have a little vacation, too,” and I wait for her to start getting a little uncomfortable with the idea but she doesn’t. She actually claps a tiny clap and makes a squealing noise.

  She says, “Oh my god, a destination wedding?”

  I say, “It’s not like that exactly. It’s in Boston and it’s my gay friend Carlos and his boyfriend.”

  She hugs me. It’s the first time in a week that she’s shown me any physical affection that was unsolicited and not overtly sexual. She says, “This is going to be so fun. I can’t wait. I love gay guys.”

  In my hotel room that night, after we fuck, she curls up next to me and waits until I fall asleep to roll over to the other side of the bed, instead of doing it immediately after I blow my load, the way she usually does.

  chapter thirty

  Remnants

  After lunch, I get an e-mail from Alyna informing me that I should drop by the house after work and pick up anything I might need or want because she’s moving all of my shit into storage the following day. This is the first practical step she’s taking toward a formal separation. It makes me feel shitty, but I’m not ready to stop fucking Holly. I feel like I need to hang on to that for as long as I can. But this certainly makes it seem like I’ll have a much more limited amount of time to fuck her than I previously thought if I have any chance of salvaging my marriage.

  When I get to the house—my house, the house I have made every mortgage payment on—I sit in the car and look at it for a few minutes. I remember the day we moved in and ordered pizza and fucked on the living room floor because we didn’t have any furniture yet. I
remember the day we brought Andy home from the hospital. I remember the day Jane took her first steps and smashed her head on the coffee table. It doesn’t feel any different to me. It’s still my house. I just don’t actually live there anymore.

  I walk up to the front door and take out my keys. I look at the lock and then put them back in my pocket and ring the doorbell. Now it feels different.

  Alyna answers the door holding Jane in one arm. Andy’s hiding behind her leg. When he sees it’s me he yells, “Daddy! Come in!”

  I try to lean in and kiss Jane, but Alyna spins around so I can’t get to her. I give her a look that basically says, “I know this is shitty, but do you really have to be that much of a cunt?” But I can’t blame her, and I even kind of admire her for being so protective of our kids. It makes me feel like, even if she kicks me out for good, files for divorce, and never lets me back into the kids’ lives, they’ll be okay. She’ll take care of them.

  I bend down and pick up Andy. He kisses me on the cheek and says, “You work a real lot, Daddy.” I say, “I know. Things have been really busy.” Obviously Alyna still hasn’t told them anything about what’s actually going on. She can put my shit in storage and force me to live in a hotel, but until she tells the kids what’s actually happening I think she’s probably holding out some hope that we can resolve this.

  Andy says, “Do you want to watch Toy Story with me?”

  I look at Alyna. She shakes her head. I don’t see any reason to piss her off further or to make this any more uncomfortable than it has to be. I say, “I’d love to, bud, but I have to get back to work. I just stopped by to pick up a few things.”

  Andy says, “Oh, then I’ll wait until you get back from work to watch it. I want you to see it, too,” and I start tearing up. I almost lose my shit right then and there. But I hold it together. I think about whatever I can that makes me mad. I think about what an asshole Lonnie is. I think about the bank losing one of my deposits. I think about Sherri Shepherd. These thoughts push the tears back as I put Andy down and head back into the bedroom. Alyna and the kids stay in the living room.