The Average American Marriage Page 5

  I keep my hands where they should be and give her waist a little squeeze that I hope reciprocates but doesn’t overstep the level of contact she initiated. We separate and she says, “Thanks again. See you tomorrow,” then gets in her Mini Cooper and drives off.

  I get home at nine-thirty or so. The kids are both in bed and Alyna is asleep on the couch. I can still smell Holly on me. I get in the shower and jerk off standing out of the stream of water so I can still smell her. After I blow my load I scrub down so that Alyna won’t pick up any strange perfume, even though she’ll probably be suspicious of me taking a shower, and I go back out in the living room. I wake her up by rubbing her feet. She says, “Oh, you’re home. What’d you have to do that kept you so late?”

  I say, “The new intern couldn’t figure out our filing system so I stuck around to help.”

  She says, “Oh, that was nice. Did he finally get it?”

  “Yeah.”

  chapter eight

  Scheduling Castration

  Alyna has been up my ass much more aggressively than usual lately about getting a vasectomy. We both agree that two kids is the limit, and she keeps claiming that she hates using condoms. I don’t understand how she can even develop a hatred for something we only use two or three times a month.

  I’m sitting in my doctor’s office on my lunch break. He’s giving me the phone number of a urologist friend of his who he claims is the best at clipping guys’ balls. I’m sure my doctor just gets a kickback for every sucker he refers to this guy, but whatever. It seems like a pretty simple procedure. I’ve heard of only a few mishaps where vasectomies are concerned. My irrational fears of losing my dick or testicles during the procedure give way to an even more irrational thought: I find myself actually hoping that getting a vasectomy will increase the number of times Alyna and I fuck per month. Then the far more rational part of me chimes in and I realize I’m doing this to placate her so she’ll get off my back about it. And even if we still only fuck a few times a month, at least I’ll get to feel what it’s like to have my bare dick in a pussy again. That would excite me more if it wasn’t Alyna’s pussy.

  Before I leave my doctor’s office, I ask him if he’s had a vasectomy. He’s a little older than me and is married with kids. It makes sense to me that he might have. He laughs and says, “My wife’s on the pill, thank god,” without even realizing that this doesn’t make me feel any better about the decision.

  Once I’m back at work, I make a point of walking past Holly’s desk a little closer than I should so I can smell her. She smells so good. I wonder if her pussy smells like that, if her asshole smells like that. I wonder what her mouth tastes like and assume it’s probably like some kind of candy. I wonder what she looks like after she gets fucked hard. I wonder if she likes to cuddle after sex and what that might feel like if she does. I wonder when my daughter will start eliciting thoughts like these in men, and I wonder who the first man will be to have them about her. I hope that man is not like me but know that he most likely will be.

  When I walk by Holly’s desk she’s on her Facebook page posting the lyrics to a song I’ve never heard as her status update. I don’t recognize the lyrics or the band, which is called Rumspringa. I wonder if I’m too old to know the band or if they’re actually just a bunch of guys she knows from college, all of whom I imagine are immense douchebags and at least one of whom I imagine to have fucked her because he’s in the band and she is young and naive.

  When I get back to my desk, I Google the band and find out that my first inclination was the right one, which surprises me. I listen to some of their music and find that I enjoy it. I try to remember the last time I heard a new band and can’t. I wonder how that happened—how I became a guy who doesn’t really care about music anymore, not even enough to attempt to hear new music.

  I call the urologist my doctor recommended, assuming I’ll be setting up a time to meet and talk with him about setting up a time to get a vasectomy. Instead his office tells me I can just set up a time to get the actual vasectomy. No discussion with the doctor is necessary for what they call “such a minor procedure.” Despite the fact that I know there will be laser beams and possibly knives in my ball bag, this puts me at ease a little. I schedule it for the following month, allowing ample time to talk myself out of it should I need to.

  After I hang up, I find some Rumspringa on the Internet and play it loud enough for Holly to hear. With luck, this will come across as a natural and coincidental display of similar interest, not as a transparent attempt to attract her attention.

  I roll my chair out from behind my desk and to the left and peer through my open doorway to see if she notices. As I watch, she actually cocks her head up and back like a deer in the forest who’s detected some faint but familiar noise. She scoots her chair a little closer to my office. I slide mine back to my desk before she can turn and look for the source of the music. I pretend to be working on something just in case my bait actually lures her into my office. It does.

  She knocks on my door frame. I look up from my fake work—tracing over the logo on a piece of letterhead. She says, “Hey.”

  “Hey. What’s up? More filing troubles?”

  She laughs. She’s hot. She says, “No. I think I got that down now, thanks to you.”

  “Glad to be of service.” I want to be of several other kinds of service to her.

  She says, “Are you listening to Rumspringa?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “They’re like one of my favorite bands right now.”

  “Yeah, they’re good.”

  “What’s your favorite song?”

  I glance quickly at the screen to see that a song called “Shake ’em Loose” is playing. I say, “ ‘Shake ’em Loose.’ ”

  She says, “ ‘Shake ’em Loose Tonight’?”

  I glance back at the screen and realize that the last word in the song title was cut off in the window where I had the song playing. I say, “Yeah.”

  She says, “I love that one. I really like ‘Queer Eyed Boy,’ too, though.”

  “That’s a great one.”

  “Yeah. How’d you hear about them? They’re not that big yet.”

  “Uh . . . you know. I’m into music. Always trying to find new bands and stuff.”

  “That’s so cool. Have you seen them?”

  “Live?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I want to, but I never hear about their shows in time.”

  “Oh, I could totally let you know next time they’re playing. They’re local. Well, LA local.”

  “Yeah, that would be awesome.”

  She smiles. I can’t tell if she’s flirting with me or if she’s had a sudden and unexpected realization that she’s attracted to me or if she thinks it’s funny that she has anything in common with a guy my age or if she’s just young and hot and I’m reading far more into it than I should. Whatever the actuality is, she smiles and says, “Cool. I will.” Then she turns around and goes back to her desk.

  A few minutes later I get a Facebook friend request from her.

  some chapter

  Facebook Stalking

  I’m in my office at home. I log onto Facebook. I have forty-six friends. They are all actually my friends or at least people I know. Holly has 739 friends. I can’t imagine they are all actually her friends or at least people she knows.

  I have four profile photos: one of myself in a suit that was taken at work for my employee file, one of myself and my wife that was taken at the company holiday party last year, one of myself and my two kids that was taken by my wife in our backyard, and one of our entire family that Alyna hired a photographer to take about a year ago to be sent out as our family Christmas card. Beyond this I have a handful of other photos that I posted to my wall at various times for various meaningless reasons.

  Holly has 324 profile photos and 2
,543 other photos. I sift through the first twenty or thirty until I realize they’re all essentially of three varieties: Holly taking a picture of herself from a high angle, Holly taking a picture of herself in a mirror, or Holly taking a picture of herself with a female friend in the picture.

  My relationship status is “married.” Holly’s is “married” also. I click on her spouse and find it’s another twenty-one-year-old girl, Megan Larrion. Holly is not actually married.

  I scroll through the last twenty or so status updates she’s posted. They’re all from the last four hours. They range from “<3 New Girl <3 Zooey” to “Can someone please teach me to fly a plane?” They all have no less than fifty likes and no less than twenty-five to thirty comments, mostly from guys her age who don’t even try to hide the fact that they want to fuck her, if they haven’t already.

  The post that really drives the nail in the coffin of my realization that I have nothing in common with anyone from this generation reads, “Can’t find my socks!!!” The post has seventy-eight likes and fifty-four comments. Many of the comments are jokes—things like “Try looking on your feet. LOL!!!” or pieces of advice like “Just don’t wear any!!!” But one comment by a guy with gouged ears and a lip ring named Tanner Dempsey, which reads “Holy crap! I lost my socks too!!!” actually gets Holly to respond.

  Her response reads, “Oh noes! Where did you find them?”

  Tanner’s reply reads, “I just bought some new ones.”

  Holly’s reply reads, “I don’t have time to go buy new ones. Where should I look?”

  Tanner’s reply reads, “I guess in the dryer or something.”

  Holly’s reply reads, “I did. There not there.”

  Tanner’s reply reads, “You want to borrow a pair?”

  Holly’s reply reads, “They won’t fit. LOL!!!”

  Finally a guy named Tom Brown adds a comment that reads, “How can you only have one pair of fucking socks? LOL.”

  And that’s the end of the thread. The degree of meaningless stupidity in all of her posts is beyond astonishing to me. I realize these are the things she’s doing at work when she’s on Facebook. I had imagined that she was sending out invitations to parties or posting links to articles about contemporary politics or world events.

  The degree of physical attraction I have to her, and the fantasy relationship I’ve built with her over the few moments we’ve shared at work, make it far easier than I would have thought to dismiss all of this, to maintain my mental image of her as a smart and mature-for-her-age young college girl. I reason that I just must be out of the loop when it comes to kids her age and how they interact with one another. By placing too much importance on the hug we shared in the parking lot, I’m able to ignore the obvious fact that she’s very probably the vapid type of young girl who needs attention from men so desperately that she’s willing to spend hours on end fishing for men to give her that attention by constantly communicating her every thought and action on Facebook, including her missing socks. Just as I’m deciding that all of this is cute and innocent after all, my wife walks into our home office with her iPad in one hand and Jane in her other arm and says, “Who is Holly McDonnel?”

  I log out of Facebook and say, “The new intern at work, why?”

  “Why’d you friend her?”

  “She sent me a request.”

  “Uh-huh. Is this the intern you told me was a guy?”

  “I never said she was a guy.”

  “Yeah, I was under the impression the new intern was a guy, so you must have.”

  “What, are you pissed or something?”

  “No. Not pissed.”

  I stand up and take Jane from her, in what I hope is a display of my loyalty to our family, even though I would love nothing more than to fuck the girl of whom my wife is now justifiably jealous. As Alyna walks away back into the living room she says, “She doesn’t seem like the smartest tool in the shed.”

  I nod my head in agreement, then sit back down at the computer with Jane in my lap and log back on to Facebook. I look at Alyna’s profile. She posts maybe one status update every three or four days, the last of which reads, “Watching some Yo Gabba Gabba with the kids.” It has no comments and no likes.

  chapter nine

  Maria Reynaldi

  Todd has a monthly poker game at his place in Hollywood. Alyna lets me go every four to six months. I never win money at these games, but I do take the opportunity to get drunk and complain about work and wives and kids with all of the other guys, who mainly complain about the same shit. Todd is the only guy at the game who isn’t married with kids.

  Todd says, “Done-zo. I’m a free motherfucking man, gentlemen. Kind of sucks, but also kind of feels fucking great. So, all of you married losers, let it be known that you’re all on permanent wingman rotation.”

  A guy named Reggie Manning, who used to work with Todd, says, “You wouldn’t want me as a wingman. I’ve been stomped in the cock so many times by my wife I don’t think I’d even be able to talk to a chick.”

  Todd says, “Reggie, you should take notes from my man over here,” and nods in my direction. He says, “This fucker’s been married for what?”

  I say, “Five years.”

  Todd says, “Five fucking years and the other night he was like a fish to water with these two sluts at Firefly. You should have seen it. Thing of fucking beauty.”

  I say, “It wasn’t as crazy as he’s making it out to be. We just had a few beers with these chicks. That was it.”

  A guy named Carl Cryzenski, who used to play in another weekly poker game with Todd, says, “Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to have a few beers with some random skanks in a bar again. How often does your wife let you fuck her?”

  I say, “Who, me?”

  He says, “Yeah.”

  I say, “Probably two or three times a month.”

  He says, “I’m about the same. The shitty part is, though, she doesn’t even want to. It’s like she’s obligated or something. I’d almost rather jerk off.”

  I realize that everyone sitting at this table is involved in a similar scenario except Todd. I wonder if the trade-off of having a family, having a woman and children you know will be there at your deathbed, is worth the price of sexual retirement in your mid-thirties.

  Todd says, “You guys are a pack of fucking fags.”

  A guy named Lewis Carver, who I think is a friend of Carl’s, says, “We’re not fags for having families, dude.”

  Todd says, “Well, you talk like a pack of fags.”

  Todd laughs at this and tries to get the hand back on track by forcing Lewis, whom the action has been on for the length of this conversation, to bet or fold. He folds. Todd says, “You know what we should do instead of this? Seventh Veil.”

  Reggie says, “What’s Seventh Veil?”

  Todd says, “How long have you lived in LA?”

  Reggie says, “I live in Toluca Lake.”

  Todd says, “It’s the filthiest strip club of all time. Fully nude, so no booze. Or I think they serve beer or some shit now. But we should still get hammered here and then head over.”

  Carl says, “I told my wife I’d be sleeping on your couch anyway. I’m in.”

  I say, “Sure.”

  Lewis says, “It’s only ten. I can’t go home yet.”

  Todd says, “Ooh, the fags are growing some balls.”

  Lewis says, “Fags have balls, you retard. They fucking lick each others’ balls and jizz all over each others’ faces with the cum in those balls.”

  Todd says, “You know what I’m saying, douche.”

  Reggie displays visible signs of an impending anxiety attack as he makes his decision.

  Todd says, “Reggie, what kind of tits does your wife have?”

  Reggie says, “Pretty big. Why?”

  Todd says, “B
ecause the Veil will have a skank who has small tits.”

  Reggie almost gets a far-off look in his eye, like he’s really thinking about some imaginary girl with small tits. He says, “I could be into seeing something like that.”

  Todd says, “Fuck seeing it. Twenty bucks will get it right in your face.”

  We all pound some shots of whatever shitty tequila Todd has at his place, and half an hour later we’re drunk, paying our cover at the Seventh Veil. Once we’re inside we all get seats next to each other around one of the stages, where a stripper who’s easily forty-five bounces her ass up and down unenthusiastically as she watches the front door. Her tits are fake and enormous. This goes on for the length of Drake and Lil Wayne’s “I’m on One,” during which all the other guys get picked off by trolling strippers and make their way to the back room for private dances.

  Then it’s just Todd and me sitting out at the stage holding out dollar bills for the next stripper, who comes out and wipes down the pole with a rag. I notice that she’s definitely too fat to be a stripper when I see her taking bills from customers by snapping them against the fat rolls on her hips with her G-string. As she snags one of my dollars in this manner, Todd says, “So, you miss this shit or what?”

  I get another dollar out. “Not really, man. This is actually kind of shitty.”

  Todd points directly to the fat stripper’s cunt, which she is exposing and spreading an inch from Todd’s index finger, and says, “No, man. How is this shitty?”