The Average American Marriage Read online

  I take a drink of my beer as Zip says, “Fuck, bro. That’s some hardcore shit.”

  I say, “Yes, Zip, that is indeed some hardcore shit,” and pat him on the back.

  We all smoke a little more and talk a little more about things that aren’t as important or depressing. Eventually, I notice that Holly still isn’t back. I say, “Katrina, where’s the bathroom?”

  She says, “There are some inside, or you can just piss out here on a tree or something if you want. And if you have to, like, shit, just don’t do it in the upstairs bathroom that’s attached to my parents’ bedroom. My dad got super-pissed last time because somebody streaked his toilet.”

  I say, “Okay. Thanks,” and head inside, partially because I do have to piss and partially because I want to find Holly and kiss her and rub her shoulders. As I think this, I tell myself to remember that I should definitely get a prescription for marijuana.

  Once inside, I ask around if anyone has seen Holly. Someone says they saw her out on the front lawn with some other people, so I stop in the nearest bathroom, take a piss while looking down at Katy Perry on the cover of an Entertainment Weekly lying next to the toilet, then head out front. Holly is standing with a few other people. They’re all laughing and having a good time, and whatever hesitation I had about coming to this party with her is gone. No one seems to care that I’m older than everyone, and I’m with the hottest chick at the party, so fuck them if they do.

  I move up next to Holly and say, “Hey.”

  She says, “Hey.”

  I put my arm around her and lean down to kiss her. She’s slightly hesitant but still kisses me. The kiss is bad. It’s just a little peck on the lips. I wonder if it’s because she doesn’t want to be associated with me in front of her friends. I wonder if that’s why she left me by the keg and disappeared for so long. Fuck that. I look at her and lean back in, forcing an open-mouth kiss with tongue. She obliges, but she doesn’t seem comfortable, and I notice a strange taste in her mouth. It’s something I find vaguely familiar. The taste is like a smell I know but can’t quite place. I pull back from her and taste the inside of my mouth. She watches me intently. She says, “You okay?”

  I say, “Yeah. You taste kind of weird. What is that?”

  She says, “What’s what?”

  Then it hits me. My mind rushes back to a night when I was with my old girlfriend Casey and she was on the pill. After I blew a load in her pussy, she asked me to go down on her. I just licked her clit and tried my best to stay away from the hole I’d dumped my semen in, but some got in my mouth. And it definitely tasted exactly like the inside of Holly’s mouth.

  I look at Holly, and I can feel my head getting hot. My scalp feels like it’s fucking melting. She can tell I’ve figured it out. I feel sick to my stomach. Not only did she suck some guy’s dick at a party I gave her a ride to, but she let me lick his cum out of her mouth. I want to kill everyone at this party, starting with Holly. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should make a scene right here, just start yelling at her right in front of everyone, or if I should play it cool. But I don’t want to be the crazy old dude who went insane at a college party, and as hard as it is to tamp down my boiling, venomous rage, I say, “Nothing,” and put my arm back around her like everything’s cool.

  We stay at the party for another few hours. I spend my time staring at every guy there like I’m going to rip his balls off and shove them up his asshole, in the hope that one of them will reveal himself. By the time we get back in my car, however, I’ve gained no conclusive information regarding the identity of the recipient of Holly’s clandestine blowjob.

  I wait for her to put her seatbelt on, then I say, “So. You sucked some guy’s cock at this party.”

  She doesn’t even try to deny it. With no apparent guilt, she says, “I’m sorry,” as though I’ve offended her by even bringing it up.

  I say, “You’re sorry? I brought you to this party. I’m your fucking ride. And you sucked some other guy’s dick.”

  She says, “Yeah. So what? I’m going home with you. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  I say, “What? I mean, we never talked about being exclusive, but I guess I just assumed that, even if you were fucking other guys, you’d have the courtesy to do it more discreetly than fifteen feet away from me at a party I’m also attending.”

  She says, “First of all, I didn’t fuck him. And I don’t even like the guy, so chill out.”

  I say, “Then why’d you suck his dick?”

  She says, “I owed him.”

  I say, “Wait. What?”

  She says, “Do we really have to get into this?”

  I say, “How can we not get into it? I tasted another guy’s fucking cum in your mouth. I’d say we’re about as into it as we can fucking get. I mean, I bought you a fucking MacBook.”

  She says, “I tried to stop you from kissing me.”

  I say, “That was very considerate. Now, please tell me what the hell you’re talking about, owing this guy.”

  She says, “He used to deal me weed and I’d give him blowjobs. He floated me the last time, and I said I’d get him back the next time I saw him. I didn’t know he was going to be at the party and he decided to collect.”

  I look at her. She’s so hot that, for a split second, I can almost rationalize this. For a measurement of time that’s almost imperceptible, I tell myself that if I don’t get over this I’ll never fuck her again. I can almost agree with her logic. I can almost see some value in the fact that she honored her bargain with this guy. Then reality takes hold again. I say, “I’m assuming this wasn’t a one-time thing, then. You’ll have to suck his dick again?”

  She says, “No. I just get weed from my roommate now.”

  I say, “Do you get other things from other guys for blowjobs?”

  And that’s the line that puts it over the edge. She says, “Hey, I never said I was your girlfriend or anything. I can fuck anyone I want or suck any dick I want. We’re not a couple.”

  I know this before she says it, but the impact of actually hearing her say it is difficult to withstand. She continues: “I don’t know what you think is going on between us, but it’s just fucking. I mean, I like hanging out with you and everything, and I like sex. I just don’t let my emotions get involved in the sex part of things. So the guys I fuck, I fuck them because it’s fun, and the guys I hang out with, I hang out with because they’re fun. There’s only a few guys that I do both with, and you’re one of them. So if that’s not enough for you, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

  When I drop her off at her dorm we do not kiss.

  some chapter

  Advice from a Pro

  Todd calls me. He says, “You in the mood for a little booze?”

  I am. I say, “Yes.”

  He says, “Forty-five minutes? Zons?” I meet him forty-five minutes later at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. It’s a Sunday night, so it’s not that crowded. A few out-of-town businessmen who didn’t fly back to wherever they’re from on Sunday morning sit around the lounge as Todd and I take two seats at the bar. We get our drinks and he says, “So, how you managing the shitstorm?”

  I say, “Not too well, man. Alyna wants me to sign divorce papers and Holly sucked some guy’s dick last night at a party that I drove her to.”

  He says, “By ‘some guy’ you don’t mean you, right?”

  I say, “I do not mean me.”

  He says, “Sorry, man. That’s some real shit. I know I always say this, but seriously, thank you for constantly reminding me why I will never get married.”

  I say, “Fuck you.”

  He says, “Lighten up. This shit will all be behind you in a year or two.”

  I say, “I don’t know if you remember that I have kids. So, no, it won’t.”

  He says, “I know, man. I know.”
<
br />   I notice a woman next to us, dressed a little too slutty for the Four Seasons, sipping a Diet Coke by herself. She’s wearing enough perfume so that I can smell her from where I’m sitting. She smells good. She looks over at an old bald guy sitting at the end of the bar, then slides down a few chairs so she’s sitting next to him and she says, “Hey, how’s your night going?”

  I look at Todd and say, “You see that shit?”

  He says, “Yeah.”

  I say, “You ever had a chick do that to you?”

  He says, “Dude, she’s a fucking pro.”

  I say, “What? How do you know?”

  He says, “The Zons, the Peninsula, Beverly Wilshire—high-class pros hang out in the bars and pick up rich dudes who are staying in the hotel.”

  I say, “Are you fucking serious?”

  He says, “Yeah.”

  I turn and watch the prostitute work her game on the old guy. She says, “You staying here?”

  He says, “Yeah.”

  She says, “Very nice. I love this hotel.”

  He says, “Yeah. I stay here when I’m in town.”

  She says, “You leaving tomorrow?”

  He says, “Yeah.”

  She says, “Well, you should make sure you have as much fun as you can on your last night here.”

  He raises his drink and says, “I think I’m just going to finish my drink and then go to bed.” He fucking knows the drill. I wonder if he’s fucked prostitutes before. Maybe he’s even fucked this one before.

  She says, “Okay. Well, it was nice to meet you.” I wonder if she’s fucked him before and doesn’t even remember.

  The old bald guy downs his drink, pays his tab, and heads off into the hotel. The pro looks around at her prospects, which are not too good, checks her phone, and then slides back over to us. In a tone completely devoid of any of the sexual charm she used on the old bald guy, she says, “How’s your night going?” to Todd and me.

  Todd says, “Not bad. You?”

  She says, “Pretty slow.” She’s not completely divulging the fact that she’s a prostitute, but she might as well be.

  Todd says, “Can I ask you something?”

  She says, “Sure.”

  Then, without even asking if it’s okay with me, he says, “My friend here is going through a shitty divorce. Seems to me like you might know more than the average person about how relationships and shit like that work. You got any advice for him?”

  Without skipping a beat she says, “Well, who cheated on whom?”

  I say, “Uh . . . I guess technically I did the cheating.”

  She says, “But it was because the Mrs. wasn’t sucking your dick anymore, right?”

  I say, “In so many words.”

  She says, “And was the pussy you got worth ruining whatever you had with the Mrs.?”

  I say, “I thought it might be, but I don’t think so now.”

  She says, “So lesson learned. You fucked up. Do you think you fucked up?”

  I really think about this for a minute. I don’t know if I think I did or not. I do actually feel at least semi-justified in fucking Holly. I don’t know if I did or not. For argument’s sake I say, “Sure.”

  She says, “Well, that doesn’t sound too sincere. But you just need to go back to the Mrs. and say, ‘Listen, honey, I fucked up.’ ”

  I say, “I don’t know if it’s that simple.”

  And this is when the prostitute turns to me and says something I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life. She says, “It’s always that simple. I fucked up. I’m sorry. That’s all she wants to hear—that you’re sorry for fucking up, and that you’ve learned something from it, and that because of whatever you learned you’re not even capable of doing it again. Everyone makes mistakes. She just wants to know that you know it was a mistake. Unless you kill somebody, it’s pretty rare that the mistake is bad enough to fuck something up forever.”

  When I get back to my hotel room at the Marriott, I force myself to jerk off thinking about Alyna’s ass and tits. Memories of fucking Holly creep in from time to time, but when I blow my load I’m thinking back to a time when Alyna sucked my dick in the shower of my old apartment a few months after we first started dating. I fucked up.

  chapter forty-one

  The Transfer

  I haven’t seen or talked to Holly since the party, and when I walk into the office Monday morning I’m not exactly sure what to expect. It doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that she’ll be sucking Lonnie’s dick while she’s getting fucked by some asshole from Legal or something similar. This is not the case, though.

  I walk out of the elevator and onto our floor, and just as I do every morning, I pass Holly’s desk on the way to my office. And, just like every morning, she’s on Facebook and she says, “Hey,” when I walk past. But in a divergence from my usual practice, this time I don’t respond. I just go to my office, sit down, and open a spreadsheet. I don’t look at her Facebook page. I don’t send her an IM. I even try not to look at her, but that can’t be helped. I take in a few long glances at her ass and her back and try as hard as I can to remember the good things about her. In some way they all involve fucking.

  I go back over almost every second we spent together and I can’t recall one in which I was having fun with her that my dick wasn’t in her or I wasn’t high or drunk. Even if this isn’t true, I force myself to believe it is. I force myself to take the image of her I have in my head and transform it into that of a retarded person who’s really good at fucking and nothing else. Then I get an IM from her. It reads, “Are we cool?”

  I’m not sure how to respond to this. The fact that she’s even asking this can only mean that there’s still some possibility of fucking her again, and I can’t discount this. I try to force myself to imagine the taste of some other guy’s semen in her mouth, but I know rationally that she’s probably brushed her teeth and possibly even used mouthwash. I’m not sure I’m capable of never fucking her again if I know I still have the opportunity. The same logic the Four Seasons prostitute gave me about my marriage can also be applied here. Holly just fucked up. Her IM is her way of saying she fucked up. My fingers are on the keyboard and I’m about to write her back. I’m about to tell her that we’re cool, and to see if she wants to get dinner after work, which always leads to fucking in my hotel room.

  Then I look out at her and see her flirting with one of the young guys from the mail room. He has his hands on her shoulders. They’re laughing. I don’t know if it’s her age, or her looks, or a combination thereof, but with a girl like Holly this will always be the case. She has too many options and too little regard for the importance of intimacy to ever give anyone anything approaching normal. I imagine her at my age, after her tits have started sagging, after her ass isn’t quite as perky, after guys stop paying her the same attention they do now, and I feel like I know what she’ll be. She’ll just be another pretty girl who wasted her youth thinking it would never end, or not even realizing what she had while she had it. It’s kind of sad, but I take comfort in the fact that I had my dick in every one of her holes when she was in her prime.

  I minimize my IM window and compose the following e-mail to the head of HR:

  “Holly McDonnel has performed with skill at her position of unpaid intern in the Accounts department. Her assignments, however, have come to a conclusion, and I strongly recommend utilizing her talents in another department, possibly Legal. Thank you.”

  I send the e-mail, and by the end of the day someone from HR comes up and talks to her. Before she leaves our floor she comes into my office and says, “Hey. They’re moving me to Legal.”

  I say, “Oh. Good luck.”

  She says, “What’s up? Are you, like, still pissed off about the other night?”

  I say, “No, Holly, I’m not mad at all. I get it. I get y
our whole thing and it’s fine. It’s just not something I’m interested in anymore.”

  She slumps down in the chair across from my desk and starts crying. I panic. I don’t know if I should shut the door so that no one sees her crying in my office or if that would be even more conspicuous. Through tears she says, “I’m sorry. Please can we still hang out?”

  I say, “No. I don’t really think that’s a good idea anymore,” and then I realize: She’s never been rejected before in her life. Every one of the hundreds of guys that comment on her status on Facebook have all either fucked her and want to again or are trying to for the first time. And that’s the thing she needs. She needs to know that every guy she ever meets approves of her and wants her, and that’s more important to her than having anything real with any one of them. I kind of feel bad for her. I kind of feel bad for her entire generation, because they all seem to be like that to me. I hope that, by the time my daughter is Holly’s age, Facebook has become something else and girls have become something else. I briefly wonder what I’ll be doing in twenty years, if I’ll be fucking a girl who is my daughter’s age.

  I hand Holly a Kleenex and say, “We had fun. I think we just wanted different things out of this and that’s fine.”

  She says, “What did you want? A girlfriend or something?”