The Average American Marriage

by Chad Kultgen

  I say, “Any time.”

  After dinner, the DJ starts playing music and the reception is not as disappointing in terms of blatant gayness as the ceremony itself was. Gay guys are having movie-style dance challenges with one another, and they’re really good dancers. Gay guys are making out in the bushes. Carlos and Tedward are drunk and in love, slow-dancing to songs that shouldn’t be slow-danced to. It’s a spectacle.

  At one point Carlos comes up to Holly and me and says, “Thank you so much for coming to this. Really. It means a lot to me.” Then he starts crying.

  I say, “Hey, man. You know I wouldn’t miss this.”

  He hugs me, getting snot and tears all over my jacket, then says, “You two need a picture.” He takes out his phone and snaps a picture of me with my arm around Holly. Holly says, “Can you e-mail that to me?”

  She tells him her e-mail address and he e-mails the picture to her, then says, “You two are so fucking cute.” Then he pinches Holly’s cheek and slaps me on the ass before wandering back onto the dance floor to find his new husband.

  That night, after the reception winds down, Holly and I fuck, but it’s not like we normally do. She gets on top of me and says, “Let’s do it slow.” She looks in my eyes the whole time and we kiss. After she cums, I half-expect her to say she loves me, but she doesn’t. I wonder if she wants to. I wonder if she wants me to say it to her. I don’t. We fly back to LA the next morning.

  chapter thirty-two

  Secondary Contact

  I’m sitting at my desk, watching a douchebag from Sales named Trent Packer flirt with Holly out at her desk. He has no reason to be on our floor at all. It wouldn’t bother me so much, but she seems to be receptive to his bullshit. She laughs at whatever stupid shit he’s saying to her. She feigns interest in the other stupid shit he’s saying. I try to tell myself that I shouldn’t let this get to me, that she’s not my girlfriend, that I have no claim, that I’m technically still fucking married. It doesn’t help.

  My cell phone rings. It’s Andy’s preschool. His teacher, Mrs. Banks, says, “Hello, is this Andy’s father?”

  I say, “Yeah.”

  She says, “Sorry to bother you at work. Your wife is listed as Andy’s primary contact, but we couldn’t get in touch with her. You know it’s incredibly important to list the contact that is most likely to be available during the day, otherwise we end up spending a lot of time trying to contact that contact and we could just be trying to contact the secondary contact, which is what you are.”

  My heart is trying to bust through my throat. All I can think is that Andy fell off the monkey bars and split his fucking head open, or lost his arm in some weird merry-go-round accident, and this bitch is going on about the importance of who gets listed as the fucking primary contact. I say, “Right. Is Andy okay?”

  She says, “Oh, heavens. Yes. I didn’t mean to scare you. He’s just come down with a touch of something and he seems to have, well . . . vomited a little bit. He’s in the nurse’s office now, and I was just calling so you can arrange to have someone pick him up.”

  I say, “Thanks. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  As I drive across town, I build up a nice head of steam wondering where the fuck Alyna is and why she wouldn’t have answered her phone when she saw it was a call from Andy’s preschool. I conjure images of her fucking some other guy, which doesn’t piss me off as much as it should, and not because I’m fucking someone else, too, but because I find that I just don’t really care. I imagine her out at a brunch that went too long with her cunt friends complaining about what an asshole I am, and all of them agreeing with her as they suck down mojitos and put more cellulite on their asses. Then I imagine her dead. No matter how irrational it may seem, I imagine her in a twisted heap of metal on the freeway somewhere and I momentarily feel good, like a weight has been lifted off me. If she were dead, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this shit. I’d get the kids and the house and I could fuck Holly and that would be that. I tell myself that I don’t actually hope she’s dead, but I kind of do. It would just make life so much easier.

  When I get to Andy’s preschool, the nurse tells me that he’s been drinking 7-Up and he’s been complaining of a stomachache. When he sees me he lights up and says, “Daddy! I thought Mommy was going to pick me up.”

  I say, “I think she’s busy, bud. You’ll have to settle for me.”

  He says, “I like this better,” and as much as I don’t want either of my kids to get caught up in whatever shit goes down between Alyna and me, I’m glad he seems to be on my side. I say, “Come on. I’ll take you home,” and we leave.

  Once we get in the car Andy says, “I feel better. Can we get McDonald’s?”

  I say, “Didn’t you just puke?”

  He laughs and says, “Yeah, and I pooped.”

  I say, “In your pants?”

  He says, “No, Daddy, in the potty.”

  I say, “Okay. That’s cool.”

  He laughs and says, “No, it’s not. It’s gross.”

  I say, “What do you want from McDonald’s?”

  He says, “Ice cream.”

  I say, “Okay,” and kiss him on the cheek. My nose gets close enough to his face to tell that his mouth still kind of smells like puke.

  As we’re pulling away from the drive-thru, I get a call from Alyna. It comes through the car speaker, so Andy can hear it, too. She sounds frantic. She says, “I got four missed calls from Andy’s preschool. Do you know what’s happening?”

  I say, “Yeah. Do you have Jane?”

  She says, “Yes. Of course she’s with me.”

  I say, “Good,” knowing that not filling her in on what’s going on with Andy is eating her alive.

  After a second of silence she says, “Well, fucking tell me what’s going on!”

  Andy laughs and says, “Mommy, you said a bad word.”

  She says, “Oh my god. Did you abduct him?”

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

  She says, “Why is he with you?”

  I say, “Because he got sick at school and they tried calling you but you didn’t answer so they called me. His secondary contact.” I want to get into it with her, but not with Andy listening. I feel like I have a pretty firm hold on being his favorite parent and I want to keep it that way.

  She says, “Well, you have to take him home right now.”

  I say, “We’re on our way. See you in ten minutes,” then I hang up on her.

  Andy says, “Why was Mommy so mad?”

  I say, “I don’t know, bud. Sometimes people just get mad.”

  Andy says, “You never get mad, Daddy.”

  I say, “I’ll never get mad at you.”

  As he smears ice cream all over his face I wonder how old he should be before I start trying to convince him to never get married.

  some chapter

  What Never Was

  I’m in bed in my hotel room watching the old Seinfeld episode where they lose their car in a mall parking garage and Jerry has to take a piss. Jerry gets caught by the security guard and then it breaks for a commercial. The first shot in the commercial is of Casey, my old girlfriend before Alyna. She’s in a kitchen with two kids who are complaining that they never have anything cool in their lunch. She saves the day by tossing some fruit-roll-up things in their lunch sacks and then she smiles at the camera.

  I haven’t talked to Casey in a long time—years. She always wanted to get married. I wonder if she ever did, or if the closest she’ll come to being a wife and a mother is that commercial.

  I try to imagine what my life would have been like if I’d stayed with her instead of dumping her and winding up with Alyna. I see us living in a house much like the one Alyna and I bought. I see us having two kids much like Andy and Jane, maybe with fatter asses. I see us never fucking and
I see me cheating on her with Holly. I realize it probably wouldn’t have mattered at all which girl I ended up with, but I know that’s wrong. There were times—there was a long time, in fact—when Alyna was nothing like Casey, when she was the opposite of Casey. For most of our relationship, in fact, Alyna was the best person I knew. The hottest, the dirtiest in bed, the smartest, the most fun to be around. Eventually that all changed, but for a time she was incredible. Casey had moments of incredible in the beginning, but she never lived in it like Alyna once did.

  I think about e-mailing Casey just to see if she’s with a guy, if she’s married, if she’s happy. Instead I jerk off to a memory of Casey going down on me in one of her friend’s bathrooms when we first started dating, and I blow a spermless load all over my hand.

  chapter thirty-three

  Tagged

  I’m on my way to pick up Holly from her dorm. She just finished writing a paper and she wants to celebrate by getting drunk and fucking. I have no problem with this form of celebration. I’m on the 405, listening to Crystal Castles, because it reminds me of the first time I went to her dorm room, when the music cuts out and my phone rings over my car’s speakers. I look at the caller ID in the console screen and see it’s Alyna. As much as I don’t want to talk to her, I assume it’s serious if she’s calling me. I press the answer button on my steering wheel and she says, “So you took that little fucking whore to Carlos’s wedding?”

  I don’t know what I should say. She obviously found out, but if she found out through hearsay, I might still be able to salvage this with some deft bending of the truth or some unabashed outright lying. I say, “What?”

  She says, “I was supposed to go to that wedding with you.”

  There’s something in the way she says that last bit, some outrage that I don’t think she’s earned the right to have, that really pisses me off. Carlos was always my friend. Alyna was only invited because she’s my wife. In my head it makes perfect sense that I should be able to take whoever I fucking want to take to his wedding. I say, “I know you were, but things have obviously changed.”

  She says, “No shit, asshole. I just didn’t think you’d take that little slut to a wedding I was supposed to go to. I thought you’d just go by yourself. But I forgot—you have no class.”

  I’m curious why she thinks I took Holly, and I want to see if there’s any way out of this. I say, “Are you just assuming I took her?”

  She says, “No, you stupid piece of shit, I saw a picture of you two together on her Facebook page.”

  I say, “Are you fucking stalking her on Facebook?”

  She says, “Uh, no, dickhead. I’m not as hopelessly desperate to know everything you’re doing as you think I am. She fucking tagged you in it and I got an alert.”

  I want to drive my car through the guardrail and go careening off the side of the 405 freeway into the 7-Eleven I’m passing. I say, “Oh.”

  She says, “Oh is right, dickhead. I don’t know why I thought there might be some way for us to work this out, or salvage anything, at least for the kids’ sake, but this little bitch has you so wrapped around her finger it’s disgusting. I can’t even think about you in the same way. You’re like a different person. I mean, I never thought you of all people could get so warped by something so clichéd. And the sad thing is, you don’t even see it. She’s using you. She got a free trip to Boston out of it. I bet you buy her dinners and pay for all kinds of things. And what does she have to do for that? Suck your dick? Shit, sign me up.”

  And I lose any ability to maintain my composure. I’m fuming. I want to kick my windshield out and scream until my throat bleeds. I say, “You were signed up for that shit. But you stopped doing the dick-sucking part.”

  I can hear Alyna on the other end of the phone gasping or trying to speak or something, but no words come through my car’s speakers for a few seconds. Then the phone call ends and Crystal Castles comes back through the speakers.

  I drive angry all the way to Holly’s place. When I get there, I don’t mention how stupid it was of her to tag me in that photo on her Facebook page. I assume she wouldn’t agree with me or even understand why I wouldn’t want to be tagged, because she puts photos of everything she does on her Facebook page and tags everyone in them and they all seem to be fine with this. Privacy is a concept that has no meaning to Holly.

  That night, as I fuck her doggy-style, I grip the back of her neck harder than usual. I want it to hurt a little. I want it to seem like punishment, or at least like I’m exerting control over her, but it just makes her cum faster than usual. When I blow my load in her face, making sure to get some in her eyes, she genuinely thinks it’s hot, as evidenced by the way she wipes my infertile load out of her eyes with her fingers and then licks them.

  On the drive back to my hotel room I contemplate deleting my Facebook account but realize that the damage is already done—and that without my Facebook account, I’d have no way of knowing how many guys want to fuck Holly besides me.

  some chapter

  The Herpe

  I’m taking my usual morning piss in my hotel bathroom, and when I jiggle my dick to get the last droplet of piss off, I notice a red mark on my shaft. I know what an ingrown pubic hair looks like, and this is definitely not that. It’s too high up on my shaft even to be a hair at all. I immediately think that Holly gave me herpes when I fucked her without a rubber at the wedding.

  I get slightly nauseated at the idea of having to tell any future sexual partners that I have herpes. I imagine the conversation I’d have to have with Alyna if we were to patch things up. I can’t decide if it would be a deal-breaker for her or if she’d be happy because it would give her a legitimate medical reason not to have to fuck me.

  I make an appointment with my doctor for lunch and spend the rest of the morning looking up pictures of herpes outbreaks on the Internet. Every image I come across is far worse than the thing on my dick, but I assume the images online are the worst-case scenario. I look at dozens of dicks and pussies that are covered in red blisters so thick you can’t see the normal skin tone anywhere around the genital region. Despite all of my efforts I can’t find any images of what an initial outbreak looks like, what to expect when you detect the first blister.

  By the time I get to my doctor’s office, I’m convinced that the spot on my dick is just the first in what is about to be a wave of hundreds of open lesions on my cock. He says, “So what’s the problem?”

  I say, “I noticed something on my penis this morning.”

  I expect him to recoil or to be disgusted in some way, but that’s not the case. Without any visible reaction to me basically telling him he’s about to have to look directly at another man’s penis—and that the penis in question will have something on it that could potentially be the result of an STD—he says, “Okay, let’s see it.”

  I pull down my pants and stand in front of him. He puts on some rubber gloves, then wheels a little stool over and sits on it as he leans in and gets a good look at what’s on my dick. I look down to see a guy basically fondling my genitals but I’m too horrified of hearing him say, “Well, you’ve got herpes,” to really think about how gay this seems.

  After maybe ten or fifteen seconds he wheels his chair back, peels off the rubber gloves, and tosses them in the trash can. I’m still standing there with my cock out, lifting up my shirt like a little kid. He says, “You can pull your pants up.” I do.

  He says, “The good news is, you don’t have an STD.”

  I say, “Jesus Christ. Seriously? That’s not herpes?”

  He says, “No.”

  I say, “Well, what’s the bad news?”

  He says, “There is no bad news.”

  I say, “Then why’d you say, ‘The good news is’?”

  He says, “Because I thought it was good news.”

  I say, “That phrase kind of implies that there’s
also bad news.”

  He says, “Oh. Sorry. No bad news.”

  I say, “Well, then, what is it?”

  He says, “It’s just a regular, tiny abrasion. You might want to, uh, take it down a notch on the frequency or the, uh, enthusiasm level when you masturbate.”

  I say, “You really think I did this to myself? I would have noticed that, I think.”

  He says, “Well, maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe the wife was a little too worked up. Maybe a tooth got involved in a certain process, if you get my meaning.”

  And I think back to the last blowjob Holly gave me. She took my cock so far down her throat that she gagged, and I remember one of her back teeth digging into my cock a little too hard. It didn’t stop me from throat-fucking her, but I’ll bet that’s what it was. I say, “I think I actually know exactly when it happened. Sorry for wasting your time.”

  He says, “No problem. Better safe than sorry with things like this. It’s always good to have peace of mind. You might just want to put some Neosporin on it or something. But you should be fine.”

  On my way back to work, I remember back to a time when Alyna and I first started dating. I think she would have been capable of giving me a blowjob wound like this. I wonder if Holly will ever get tired of sucking dick. If she does, I wonder if I’ll still know her when that happens. I hope not.

  chapter thirty-four

  Public Knowledge

  My boss, Lonnie, knocks on the door frame of my office and says, “Need to talk to you for a second.”

  I say, “Okay.” As he walks in, he shuts the door behind himself. My neck starts getting hot as I jump to the conclusion that he’s going to fire me for some reason. Spending too much time on Facebook or looking up too many herpes websites are the first offenses that come to mind. I make a mental note that if I do have to get another job after this conversation I will only use my phone to look at non-work-related items.