The Average American Marriage Read online

  Mrs. Banks says, “Oh no. No, no, no. I didn’t mean to imply that. It’s very clear that this isn’t the case at all. Without prying, I’m just curious if everything is stable at home, or if there have been any significant changes in your relationship or your behavior. Maybe due to a situation at work, or anything at all. At this age children begin to learn how to read emotion in their parents, and quite often that can reflect in their own emotional well-being.”

  It’s clear to me that Mrs. Banks doesn’t know shit about the fact that I haven’t lived at home for a while, or about me fucking Holly, or about any of it. I don’t know how to respond to the question. I don’t want to air our dirty laundry, but some piece of me thinks that Alyna might appreciate it if I own up and say I’ve been a shitty husband recently but I’m working on it. I’m a second away from opening my mouth to that end when Alyna looks at me and says, “Well, you have been working a lot more lately, and coming home late, and Andy isn’t seeing as much of you as he usually does.” Then she turns to Mrs. Banks and says, “Could that be it?”

  Mrs. Banks says, “That could absolutely be it. And, again, this isn’t any cause for real alarm unless it persists or becomes worse.”

  I say, “How would it become worse?”

  Mrs. Banks says, “Well, if his feelings were to manifest through actions instead of his artwork, that could be problematic.”

  I say, “I see. Well, I, uh, don’t really know what the situation with my job is going to be like. It’s not really up to me.” I look at Alyna and say, “It’s actually completely out of my hands.”

  Alyna looks at me and says, “It seems to me like you can probably figure something out so you can spend some more time at home this week.”

  I look at her and say, “You think so?”

  Alyna says, “It seems pretty likely.”

  Mrs. Banks says, “I’m sorry, I was under the impression that you were a stay-at-home mother. Do you two work together now?”

  Alyna says, “I am. We don’t work together. I was just saying, for Andy’s sake, I’m sure we can figure it out.”

  In that moment, for the first time in all of this I start to feel normal again. It’s not happiness. It’s not relief. It doesn’t feel good. It just feels normal.

  some chapter

  Getting Old

  I’ve had ingrown hairs before. This one is particularly painful and it’s a fucking pubic hair. Thankfully it’s not on the base of my dick, but more in the general pubic area, kind of toward my left hip. It’s formed a whitehead, and I figure I should pop it, get the shit out and let it heal, so it stops causing me pain as soon as possible.

  In the bathroom I pull my pants down, kind of squat over the toilet for some reason, and bend over so I can get my eyes as close to the area as I can. I’m sure I look like some hunchbacked psychopath who’s on the verge of jerking off, but it must be done.

  I get a thumbnail on either side of the offender and give it a good squeeze. It pops, and a little pus comes out, along with about half an inch of curly pubic hair. At this point, two things happen: I’m happy to have the hair free, and I’m horrified to see that the hair is, to my knowledge, the first gray hair anywhere on my body.

  chapter forty-four

  Welcome Home

  I jerk off one last time in my bed at the Marriott, thinking about all the times I fucked Holly in it. I treat it as a kind of symbolic last hurrah with her, even though I know I’m going to think about her asshole and her tits and how she sucked dick every time I jerk off for the foreseeable future, and I assume I will be doing a lot of jerking off until Alyna actually lets me fuck her again, if she does. She added a demand to her list that I get an STD test, which conjures two reactions in me. I’m slightly scared that it might come back with something, because I did fuck Holly a few times without a rubber, but I’m also encouraged that Alyna would ask for this, because it means she’s already thought about fucking me again.

  I blow my load in the sheets and leave it there for the housekeepers to clean up. I take a final shit and give the place one last look, trying to force myself to see it as a bad place, a place I should have never had to be in at all, but the memories of fucking Holly are too good for me to do that. I know I’ll always think fondly of this hotel. Every time I drive by, whether Alyna and the kids are in the car with me or not, I’ll always remember it as something special. I got to fuck my Maria Reynaldi, and I got to do it here in this room.

  I toss the room key on the bed and walk out.

  When I get home, even though all I have with me is my duffel bag, it still feels like I’m moving back in. The kids are happy to see me. Andy gives me a big hug and says, “Are you finally done with work now, Daddy?”

  I say, “Yep. All done.”

  He says, “Finally. Jesus Christ.”

  I look at Alyna. She says, “He just started saying it a few days ago.” I laugh and he says it again. She says, “Don’t laugh or he’ll just keep doing it.”

  I say, “But it’s funny.”

  Andy says, “You think I’m funny, Daddy?”

  I say, “I think you’re extremely funny,” and tickle him until he screams and I feel more normal than I did at the parent-teacher evaluation.

  I pick up Jane and she says, “Daddy. Drink.”

  Alyna hands me a cup of juice from the counter and I help Jane take a sip. She says, “Thanks you,” and I feel even more normal. These small things are not Holly. These small things are not fucking. These small things are not exciting. These small things are my life, and the realization of this fact makes me neither happy nor sad. It just makes me feel normal, and that is better than not feeling normal.

  We let the kids stay up a little later than they normally would, and I watch American Idol with my family, and we eat a pizza from Papa John’s. We drink soda and we laugh. When the show is over, Alyna gives the kids their bath and I play Modern Warfare. When the kids are clean and in bed, Alyna comes out into the living room and says, “I’m going to bed.”

  I say, “Okay.”

  She says, “I know this is weird, but are you coming?”

  I say, “If you want me to.”

  She says, “What else are you going to do? Sleep on the couch?”

  I say, “I’m going to do whatever makes you comfortable.”

  She says, “We’re going to have to sleep in the same bed at some point. Might as well get it out of the way.”

  In bed we do not fuck. We do nothing that even approaches fucking. I don’t expect us to. I also don’t expect Alyna to do what she does. For several minutes I lie staring at the ceiling, comparing the pattern of the flecked white surface with the ceiling in the hotel room. Alyna is on her side of the bed with her back to me. I think about the last time Holly and I were in the same bed. After we fucked she rolled over to the edge of the bed, like Alyna is now, and I stared at the ceiling, like I’m doing now.

  Just as I’m trying not to think about the fact that the only difference between Alyna and Holly in this circumstance is that Holly fucked the living shit out of me before rolling over and offering me no affection, Alyna rolls over to face me and without saying anything snuggles into my armpit and puts a hand on my chest.

  I’m frozen by it. I don’t know if she’s trying to initiate a reconciliation fuck or if she’s just trying to get used to sleeping with me in the bed again. Eventually she says, “We have to do this, right? And I’m not talking about sex. Don’t get the wrong idea. But is this okay? I mean, is this weird?”

  I lower one of my arms and put it around her as I say, “No, this isn’t weird at all. I think it’s completely normal.”

  I feel her out-of-shape body against my out-of-shape body and it feels completely normal as I drift into a dreamless sleep with my children and my wife sleeping under the same roof that I am.

  chapter forty-five

  Feels Like th
e First Time

  I’ve been home for a week and a half when my STD test comes back clean. I breathe a small sigh of relief that none of the possible nightmare scenarios I concocted in my head are true. Aside from the obvious and almost impossible scenario in which I got AIDS or something, I did have a minor concern that I might have gotten herpes, in which case Alyna would definitely have made me fuck with a rubber for the rest of my life, or just never fucked me at all, or possibly even divorced me. But I’m clean.

  After work I show her the test results and she says, “That’s good news, I guess.”

  I say, “What do you mean, you guess?”

  She says, “Nothing. I mean it’s good news.”

  That night, I decide to try to initiate our first fuck with me back in the house. I help her bathe the kids and put them to bed, and then, based on the level of comfort she’s developed with me when we cuddle at night in bed, I assume she’ll be receptive to an impromptu back rub. At first she’s clearly hesitant to relax with my hands on her, but then she gives in a little bit and says, “Fuck, I needed this.”

  I keep rubbing for ten or fifteen minutes, and then I decide to make my move by kissing the back of her neck. She immediately moves away from me and says, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I say, “Kissing my wife’s neck.”

  She says, “Whoa. Back rub is one thing, but this is another thing.”

  I say, “I’m not trying to push anything. I just thought maybe tonight would be the night, you know?”

  She says, “I know we’re eventually going to have to do this—”

  I want to dive through a window. That phrase, “have to do this,” makes it clear to me that she has even less interest in me sexually than she did before I cheated on her, which was almost zero. Where before she might have found sex with me to be a boring chore she needed to do every once in a while, clearly she now finds it a deplorable event she’s going to have to endure against her will. I think about scrapping the whole idea. I think about just telling Alyna that it was all a mistake trying to make this work, and then walking out.

  I ask myself why it was so important to make this work, to salvage my relationship with a woman who will very likely never want to fuck me like she used to. My kids are certainly one of the main reasons, but there’s something beyond the obvious reason. From somewhere deep down, another feeling emerges—that I actually miss my old life, my married life. I miss sitting in a chair watching football with my daughter asleep on my chest. I miss having full cable and a backyard. I miss sleeping in a bed that’s not in a hotel or a dorm room. I miss being an adult.

  I say, “We don’t have to do anything. I want you to be comfortable with this. I want you to be happy that I’m back.”

  She says, “I am happy you’re back. You know that. I want our kids to have their father back.”

  I say, “What about you?”

  She says, “What about me?”

  I say, “Do you want your husband back?”

  She says, “Do you want me to be honest?”

  There is no way whatever she says next will be anything I actually want to hear. I say, “Of course.”

  She says, “You’re still the same dad Jane and Andy’s always had. They don’t know what you did. They don’t know anything except that you had to ‘work late’ for a little while. And I want it that way. Believe me, I don’t want them to ever know what happened. I want you to be their dad forever and not the shitbag dad who cheated on their mom.”

  I say, “Thanks.”

  She says, “But to me, you’re not the same husband. The husband I married is gone. I honestly don’t think I can ever think of you as that same person again.”

  This is what I imagine it feels like to hear that you’ve been diagnosed with lung or brain cancer. There is no hope for something better. Each successive moment you live will be slightly worse than the last, until you die.

  I say, “So what do we do, then?”

  She says, “I don’t know.”

  We brush our teeth next to each other in silence. We get in bed next to each other in silence. She doesn’t snuggle up next to me like she’s been doing. Eventually she says, “There aren’t any condoms anyway.”

  This is my opening. I say, “I got a vasectomy. Remember?”

  She says, “Really?”

  I say, “Yeah. You were the one who wanted me to do it. It was scheduled and everything, so I decided I should still do it.”

  She says, “Why?”

  And I feel like da Vinci painting the final brushstroke on the Mona Lisa as I say, “Because it was a decision we made together and I always had hope that we’d be in the same bed again, in the same house. That this would work out.”

  She moves toward me and kisses me. She’s nervous. I try to go down on her but she says, “No, let’s just do this.” She only touches my dick once, when she climbs on top of me and positions it so it’s angled toward the opening of her pussy, which is not wet at all. She sits back on my dick a few times, inching the head in little by little as it sticks to the sides of her dry vagina.

  I say, “Just let me go down on you.”

  She says, “No. Just . . . it’s almost in.”

  She sits down on my dick a few more times with more force. I’m starting to lose my boner as I think about how devoid of any sexual enthusiasm this whole thing is. Then she finally gets my dick in her and nature takes over.

  I thrust upward from the bottom into her pussy as she sits motionless on top of me. She looks down at me with what looks like contempt on her face. The last memory I have of fucking her is similar. I only have to replace the look of contempt with boredom. I say, “We really don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”

  She says, “I’m never going to be ready. This will get better, but I just need to do this again with you or this might never feel right again.”

  I say, “Do you want me to do something different or another position or something?”

  She says, “Just cum.”

  I say, “As fast as I can? Do you just want it over with?”

  She starts crying and she says, “No. I need to know that you still want me like this, after you’ve been with that girl who’s so much prettier than I am and so much younger and I’m sure so much better at sex.”

  I’m horrified. This is easily the worst sexual experience of my life. I can feel my dick shrinking. Eventually Alyna clinches her vagina and my limp dick pops out. She slumps down next to me and says, “I’m sorry.”

  I say, “No. There’s nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry. I’m the one who fucked this all up.”

  I hold my wife as she cries and I know that Roland was the tip of the fucking iceberg. I’m going to be in couples therapy for the rest of my life. As she sobs in my arms, I go through the possible scenarios in which I could turn this night around and still fuck her. They all involve some worldwide-destruction-type disaster that would give us only minutes to live. And even then I assume she’d probably rather spend her last minutes on Earth with the kids.

  The sobbing eventually stops as she falls asleep and breathes heavily through her nose on my forearm, which is wet from her tears and snot. I can’t sleep after having my dick in a pussy without blowing a load, so I sneak into my office and jerk off to some Brooke Lee Adams porn while my wife sleeps in a puddle of her own tears that I caused by fucking a twenty-one-year-old girl.

  some chapter

  The Day Is Ruined

  I still feel happy when I wake up in my own house. I wonder how long it will be before the old malaise sets in again, before the simple feeling of comfort in my own bed will be replaced by a dull boredom with every aspect of my life.

  Alyna’s not in bed with me, even though it’s a Saturday. I can hear her out in the living room with the kids, watching what I think is Dora the Explorer based on the Spanish dialogue
I can make out. I roll out of bed and head to the bathroom.

  I turn the shower on, a little hotter than I normally do so I get that good sting that’s just on the verge of pain, and I stand under the water for a minute letting it pound the back of my neck, breathing in the steam. I scrub down, wash my hair, use some of Alyna’s conditioner, and then stand under the water for another minute once I’m rinsed off, just feeling the heat. I step out of the shower, dry off, brush my teeth, and shave. I feel clean. Then it hits me. I have to take a shit.

  I’m disappointed, to say the least, as I sit down on the toilet. It was a great fucking shower. All I can hope is that my turd will be rock-hard—the kind that comes out so solid you probably wouldn’t even have to wipe if you didn’t want to. The turd I shit out isn’t that type of turd. It’s a fucking mashed banana. It takes seven wipes before the toilet paper comes back with only minor brown smudges instead of inch-thick pudding smears. It takes three more wipes after that to get to toilet paper with nothing on it. It doesn’t matter, though. I feel dirty. The shower was wasted. I think about taking another one, but I decide not to. Instead I go into the bedroom, get dressed, and walk out into the living room hating the fact that I didn’t even get to have a few hours of being completely clean after one of the best showers in recent memory. It’s all fucking ruined.

  chapter forty-six

  Long Story Short

  In the week after our first attempt to fuck, Alyna and I made no other attempts. She offered no blowjobs, no hand jobs, nothing even remotely sexual, although she would still cuddle with me in bed before sleep.

  In the month after our first attempt at reconciliation sex, Alyna and I fucked once. It wasn’t as terrible as the first attempt, but it wasn’t good. She insisted we fuck doggy-style. I don’t know if she thought that’s what I wanted or if she just didn’t want to look at my face. I came, but she didn’t, and she refused my offer to go down on her to completion after we fucked.