The Average American Marriage

by Chad Kultgen

  I say, “I don’t know. You know what I’m thinking about right now?”

  Todd looks to the fat stripper, gives her a ten-dollar bill, and says, “Can you shut him up with your tits, please?”

  I manage to get out the following as she smothers my face in her tits: “I’m thinking about my fucking kids.”

  She goes back to the stage and gets on her pole. Todd says, “But you’re not thinking about your wife. Kids are something I’ll never get, so I’ll grant you that, but you wouldn’t be in here right now if you were getting the right pussy from wifey.”

  I say, “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to fuck more, but we have kids. Fucking isn’t what it’s about anymore for us.” Even as I say it, it sounds stupid. It sounds like something a guy like me is supposed to say to a guy like Todd at our age. I want to laugh at it, but instead I can feel something hot twisting and burning in the pit of my stomach. For a fleeting moment I think back to a time when I was with Casey, my girlfriend before Alyna. I remember one night after we got back from some art thing she wanted to go to at LACMA—some Gustav Klimt exhibit, I think. We hadn’t fucked in a few days and I tried to initiate something by grabbing her tit and kissing her when we walked through her front door. She turned to me and said something about how our relationship didn’t always have to be about sex. I remember how much I wanted to smash something when she said that, how much I wanted to scream in her face that our relationship was only about sex, that I would have no reason to ever hang out with her if she didn’t fuck me. Relationships between men and women are only about sex. The rest of the shit is incidental.

  Todd says, “Fucking is always what it’s about, man. I saw you the other night. As much as you didn’t want to fucking admit it, you were into those chicks flirting with us. I know you, man. Maybe you have some kids now, but there’s the heart of a hunter in there, motherfucker,” he says, hitting my chest with the flat of his hand.

  I say, “Those chicks wouldn’t have fucked me.”

  Todd says, “Yeah, that one would have. Fuck her, though. You got any skanks at work or anything who are game? I know there’s got to be some hot piece of ass running around that place who you just want to fucking gut like a fish.”

  I say, “There’s a new intern.”

  Todd laughs and says, “There’s that fucking hunter, strapping on his bow and arrow.”

  I say, “It’s stupid. I’m sure she’s not interested. And even if she was, I can’t fucking cheat on my wife.”

  He says, “Why not? Who gives a fuck? Dude, listen up. My fucking dad told me this.” I look at him quizzically. “You remember a few years back when he was really sick and shit and I had to go back home and take care of him and do the funeral and all that shit?”

  I say, “Yeah,” as the fat stripper rakes up her bills like leaves and a new stripper named Raven takes the stage. Raven is actually hot. Petite, pale, blue eyes, black hair. She has a tattoo on her ribcage in Latin: AUDACES FORTUNA IUVAT. She comes over to Todd and me at once. I assume it’s because she saw us handing out bills to her fat friend. She spreads her legs to reveal a perfect pussy and asshole. I say to Todd, “Yeah, I remember.”

  Raven leans toward me and grazes my face with her perfect, hard, early-twenties tits. She smells like candy. Todd says, “Well, there were a few minutes on his last day when it was just me and him in his hospital room.”

  Raven whispers in my ear, “Hey, cutie.” I can feel a hard-on starting.

  Todd says, “My mom was out getting food or some shit and my sister was shitting or some shit. My dad fucking told me some shit.” Raven turns around and spreads her perfect ass. Todd says, “He started his little speech off by saying some bitch’s name. He was like, ‘Maria Reynaldi.’ And I was like, ‘Who in the hell is that, Dad?’ I thought he was having dementia or something, right?”

  Raven licks her own left nipple, looks at me, then smiles.

  Todd says, “So he told me Maria Reynaldi was some bitch he had the chance to bang at some company Christmas party or some shit, but it would have meant cheating on my mom so he didn’t fucking do it. He said that when you’re on your fucking deathbed, like he actually fucking was—I mean, he literally died like less than a day after telling me this—he said, you don’t give a fuck that your family is there. They don’t stop the fact that you’re dying. And he also said that the only thing you think about is fucking one last time, which you know you can’t do. So you start thinking back over your life in terms of fucking—not about seeing your kid win some good-attendance award, not about the shit you did in your career, not even about shit like your wedding day or the day your kids were born, just about the fucking you did. And he said, you don’t look back happily at the chicks you actually did fuck. He said, you’re tormented by the ones you know you could have fucked but didn’t because you were married or you didn’t have the balls or whatever the reason might have been. He told me to fuck as many chicks as I could before I died no matter what. Even if I was married, had a girlfriend, or whatever, he made it real fucking clear that I should take every opportunity I could to fuck, so that the last thing that flashes through my brain before I die won’t be some skank who got away like Maria fucking Reynaldi.”

  Raven’s song ends. She leans over the stage railing and whispers in my ear, “You want a private dance?”

  I say, “I’d like to, but I have to get back home to my wife and kids.”

  Todd says, “I don’t have a wife and kids. I’ll take a private dance.”

  I say, “Tell the guys I went home.”

  Todd says, “Pussy,” as he and Raven head to the back room.

  When I get home, everyone is asleep. I take a shower and get into bed. Alyna wakes up for a few seconds and says, “How’d poker go? You win any money?”

  I say, “No. I lost forty bucks.”

  She says, “Sorry, honey,” then goes back to sleep. I get out my phone and Google Raven’s tattoo. AUDACES FORTUNA IUVAT. “Fortune favors the bold.”

  chapter ten

  Maturity

  I’ve been working on a proposal for exactly twenty-seven minutes and I’m ready to jump out my fucking window I’m so bored. I check my e-mail three times and then decide I need a real break. I get up and head to the kitchen, where I plan to spend at least ten minutes stirring two packets of Splenda into a cup of green tea while I think about fucking Holly. When I get to the kitchen, I find Holly there, talking to some kid we just hired in the mail room. He can’t be older than twenty-three.

  As I pass Holly, I say, “Hey.”

  She says, “Hey,” back to me and then continues her conversation with this douchebag while I make my tea.

  The douchebag says, “No, this place is seriously chill. You’ll love it here.”

  Holly says, “How long have you worked here?”

  The douchebag says, “I’m in my third month. Just doing that mail-room thing until I get promoted, which is probably going to be any day.”

  I want to kick this little fucker in his balls so hard he dies. Instead I say nothing and take my hot water out of the microwave and drop a teabag in it. As I let it steep, I continue listening.

  Holly says, “That’s cool.”

  The douchebag says, “Yeah, I know. I figure I’ll work here for a few years, work my way up that old chain, then bounce to a new place, get that salary bump and shit.”

  Holly says, “That’s a good plan.”

  The douchebag says, “Yeah.”

  It’s only at that point that I realize that neither of them is actually doing anything in the kitchen. They’re not getting drinks. They’re not making food. I can only guess this little shit saw her go into the kitchen for something and followed her in. Even though she’s dicking off just as much as he is, I rationalize that she’s only an intern, and immediately place the blame for their slacking on him. Nonetheless, I say nothing as I pour two
packets of Splenda into my tea and start stirring as I listen to their conversation.

  The douchebag says, “You should hang some time. Me and like four of my boys are renting this sick pad in the hills. We party up there constantly.”

  Holly says, “Five of you? How many bedrooms?”

  The douchebag says, “Three. It’s chill, though. Big bedrooms, and we have a sweet couch to crash on if one dude wants the room to himself for . . . you know, like if we have a chick over or something.”

  Holly says, “Cool.”

  The douchebag says, “Yeah, it’s fly. So hook me up with your number and I’ll text you when we have our next party.”

  Holly says, “You know what, I just switched phone numbers and I can’t even remember what my new one is.”

  The douchebag says, “What’s your e-mail then?”

  I can’t tell if he can’t take a hint or if he’s just a ballsy little fuck who won’t take no for an answer. Either way, she caves and gives him her e-mail. He says, “Sweet, I’ll hit you up,” then leaves.

  Holly turns to me and says, “I thought that guy would never leave.”

  I say, “Why’d you give him your e-mail then?”

  She says, “To get rid of him.”

  I say, “He was kind of a douche, wasn’t he?”

  She says, “All guys my age are. They’re just stupid little boys.”

  An irrational wave of images of Holly and me dating floods my head. I conjure scenarios in which she agrees to be my secret mistress. I imagine Alyna and my kids dying in a car crash and Holly being there to console me and eventually becoming my much younger wife. I feel immediately guilty about actually imagining my children dying.

  I say, “You don’t date guys your own age?”

  She says, “I have, but I think I’m ready for a guy who’s like a little older, you know? Like mature and everything.”

  I can’t help myself. I say, “How much older are you talking about?”

  She smiles and says, “I don’t know, maybe like around however old you are.”

  I wonder if she can possibly imagine how hard I’m fucking her in the fantasy I’ve conjured of me ripping her skirt off and bending her over the table in the kitchen. I wonder if she knows that me thinking about her ass and pussy and tits is what has rendered me incapable of speech. I wonder if she knows exactly how to play me and that’s what she gets off on. I wonder if she has no intention of dating a guy my age, of dating me. I wonder if the thought of us fucking repulses her. I don’t care. It doesn’t repulse me.

  She says, “Well, I should probably go file some things or something. I’ve been in here a while.”

  I say, “Yeah,” and watch her perfect ass bounce out of the kitchen. I sip my tea and wish I was young but hope she wasn’t just fucking with me, because I am not young. I am mature.

  some chapter

  Caught with the Babysitter

  Alyna and the kids are in the backyard. She has filled up the little plastic swimming pool and they’re fucking around, splashing each other and screaming. The kids like to do this on the weekends and it gives me thirty minutes to an hour of time when I don’t have to deal with them. On this particular day, I decide to use my weekly allotment of free time to sneak into the office and jerk off. I haven’t been able to jerk off during the middle of the day in a while, which seems like a special treat to me, and I also know that tonight I’ll have to rub Alyna’s back until she goes to sleep, and I won’t want to manifest the effort necessary for me to leave our bed and sneak into the office to jerk off. So this is likely the only time in the next twenty-four hours I’ll have free to blow a load.

  I go into the office and drop the blinds that look out into the backyard. I can still kind of hear Alyna and the kids, which makes it a little weird, but I have no choice. I block them out and log in to NudeVista.com. I’m not in the mood for anything in particular, so I just click on the first thumbnail that looks good. It looks like a couple seducing a babysitter. Ever since we’ve had children, babysitter porn has become far more appealing to me than it ever was before.

  I press PLAY on the clip and scroll through until I get to a part in which the young babysitter is riding the guy’s dick while the wife, who’s the same age as the guy, alternately licks his balls and the babysitter’s asshole. I unbutton my pants, pull my underwear down a little bit, and start jerking off in my office chair. It takes me about forty-five seconds to get close to blowing a load, and then I hear from a few feet behind me, “What are you doing?”

  A bunch of things happen at the same time that I have no control over. I just go into abort mode. I reflexively pull my underwear back over my dick, then close the window I had the porn playing in, then reset the browser history, then turn around to see Alyna with a disgusted look on her face and say, “Nothing, just some work stuff.”

  She says, “You were masturbating. I saw you.”

  I’m caught. There’s nothing I can do. She’s not being a good sport about this. I say, “Yeah. Sorry. I was horny.”

  She says, “Was that a guy and a babysitter or something?”

  I say, “Yeah.”

  She says, “Are you into that?”

  I say, “I don’t know. It’s porn.”

  As she stares at me like she walked in on me shitting into an ice cream cone and eating it, I try to imagine what it would be like if the roles were reversed. If I were to walk in on her fingering herself while she was watching porn, I’d go down on her instantaneously. I’d fuck the shit out of her until she came ten times. It would turn me on so much if I were to see her masturbating that I wouldn’t be able to help myself. But Alyna is disgusted by it. She says, “Can you at least lock the door or something if you have to do that?”

  If I have to do that. That phrase is all I can think about. She doesn’t realize or care that I only “have to do that” because she has lost all interest in fucking me. But even if we were fucking, I’d still need to jerk off, because I’m a fucking man. I wonder if she wants to fuck other people or if she’s lost interest in sex altogether. Somehow knowing that she just didn’t want to fuck me specifically anymore would be easier to understand, but I don’t think that’s the case.

  I say, “Why are you so pissed about this? We used to watch porn together when we first started going out. You used to have favorite actresses. You used to fucking bring porn home and suggest we do the shit the actors were doing.”

  She stands there not knowing how to react to this. The person I had to remind her she used to be is so far gone, she can’t even conjure the memory.

  She finally says, “Our kids are literally right outside the window,” then walks out of the office and back into the backyard.

  I sit there in my office chair, my hard-on softening, and look through the blinds. I see a woman who is disgusted by the sight of her husband experiencing sexual pleasure. I see my wife.

  chapter eleven

  A Ride Home

  I’m closing down my computer at work and finishing a list of calls I need to make in the morning when Holly knocks on the door frame of my office.

  I say, “Hey.”

  She says, “Hey.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Uh, I know this is probably like a serious hassle, and it’s no big deal if you can’t do it, but I kind of need a favor.”

  “Sure, what do you need?”

  “I kind of need a ride home. My sister borrowed my car to go to Santa Barbara for some work thing this morning, and she was supposed to have it back by now but she got stuck up there, and all of my friends are doing stuff and can’t pick me up and you’re like the only person I really know here, so I thought I’d ask. And, seriously, it’s no problem if you can’t. I can just call my parents or something but I was trying to not have to deal with them.”

  I imagine her giving me a hand job while I drive. I imagi
ne her sucking my dick while I drive. I imagine pulling over on the freeway and fucking her in the passenger’s seat as cars speed by. I imagine smelling her pussy on my fingers the next day at work. I say, “No problem, just give me a few minutes.”

  She says, “Cool. Thank you so much,” and then goes back out to her desk.

  I sit back down at my desk and send Alyna a text telling her I’ll be home a little late because my boss wants me to get some reports that don’t actually exist ready for an early meeting tomorrow that will not actually take place. She texts back acknowledging my excuse and asking if she should leave dinner out or in the fridge. I respond by telling her to put it in the fridge and to kiss the kids goodnight for me if I don’t make it back in time to tuck them in. I end by telling her that I love her, which is technically still true. She responds that she will kiss the kids goodnight for me and that she loves me, too. She ends her text by telling me not to wake her up when I get home because she is very tired and will definitely be asleep by ten.

  The ride to CSUN is uneventful. There are no hand jobs. There are no blowjobs. There is no fucking. We talk about mundane things. She asks me about my family. I ask her about hers. There is no hint of the girl who openly flirted with me in the kitchen a few days before.

  When we get to CSUN, she directs me to her dorm, which is slightly surprising to me. For some reason I thought she would have lived in an apartment. I pull up in front of her dorm and say, “Well, there you go. See you tomorrow.”

  I expect her to thank me and get out of my car. Instead she says, “Do you, you know, want to come in for a beer or something?”

  My head floods with images of hand jobs, blowjobs, and fucking under the posters of Katy Perry and the vampires from Twilight that I’m sure must exist in her dorm room. I say, “Sure. I can stick around for a beer,” then park my car.

  She opens the door to her dorm room, and it’s like walking into a solid wall of marijuana smoke. Her roommate is in the room, sitting on her bed and smoking pot from a bong shaped like a baseball bat. Holly says, “This is my roommate, Carly.” Carly exhales a giant cloud of weed smoke and says, “Hey, dude.” Carly is not initially attractive, but she is young, and although she is chubby I can tell it’s a tight kind of chubby. She’s plump, not fat. She’s the kind of chubby that yields a fat ass that’s extremely attractive in certain positions, I would assume.