The Average American Male

by Chad Kultgen

  It will never be like it was. It will never be better than this.

  chapter forty-seven

  The End

  After an entire morning of lying in my bed watching TV and not fucking, we’re sitting outside eating lunch at Swingers in Santa Monica.

  She says, “So I think I’ve figured out what I want to do with this whole acting thing.”

  I take a bite of scrambled eggs.

  “I mean, I like taking acting classes and everything, but I don’t think I’m getting anywhere with it. I need to change it up a little.”

  I take another bite.

  “I’m not sure straight acting is what I really want to do anymore. I think I want to try to be like a funny actress, you know, on a sitcom or something. Some of my friends from school are going to take some comedy classes at Improv Olympic and I think I’m going to do it with them, then try to go on some auditions or something. I mean, I live in L.A., right? I might as well give it a shot.”

  I look over through the big glass wall at a guy sitting across from his girlfriend inside Swingers. She’s talking about something as he eats his scrambled eggs and stares into space. I’m pretty sure she’s telling him that she wants to be a comedic actress and I’m also pretty sure that they lay in his bed for the entire morning before coming here and I’m also pretty sure she didn’t fuck him either.

  As Alyna keeps telling me how much fun she thinks comedic acting class will be, I come to a sudden realization that is as horrifying as it is liberating. The uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach for the past five or six months isn’t due to the fact that Alyna seems to have lost her desire to fuck me. It’s caused by something else entirely and knowing its source alleviates it completely.

  Alyna has slowly become Casey. Aside from her ass, which I’m sure will eventually match Casey’s, Alyna has become everything in Casey that made me not want to marry her. Or maybe she was like Casey from the very start but she fucked me so much in the beginning I couldn’t see it. Either way, this realization changes something in me.

  I look at all the other bitches in Swingers and they all might as well be Casey, or Alyna, or whoever they are.

  I take another bite of scrambled eggs knowing that any bitch I ever fuck will ultimately become any other bitch I’ve ever fucked and they’ll all become the fat old bitch eating yogurt in the airport. I look at Alyna and see Casey, Jenna, Katy, and every bitch I’ve ever fucked or gotten head from or a hand job or even thought about while I jerked off. There is nothing better. There is no fucking escape.

  That night we’re lying in my bed, both completely naked, watching Conan O’Brien. As Conan interviews Molly Shannon I try to think of all the possible excuses Alyna might use to avoid fucking me tonight. She uses one I did not think of, which is that she’s too excited about going to sign up for Improv Olympic classes, and unwittingly sets the following inevitable conversation in motion:

  “Alyna?”

  She rolls over and says, “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking about some things today.”

  “What things?”

  “Just about us and about you.”

  “What about us and me?”

  “Alyna…”

  “What?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  Her lack of hesitation as she accepts disgusts me. I wade through an hour of faked joy and hugs and kisses and assurances that we are going to be happy forever. After Alyna calms down, I wait for her to fall asleep without touching my dick and then go to the bathroom and jerk off.

  acknowledgments

  Mom, thanks for always encouraging me to write and be creative. I’m sorry the end result of that encouragement is something you will not want to read.

  Dad, thanks for teaching me self-discipline and thanks for giving me a good education. I know this isn’t the same as playing pro-baseball, but it’s still pretty cool.

  I love you guys and I hope this book doesn’t lose you any friends or anything.

  about the author

  chad kultgen graduated from the University of Southern California School of Film and Television. He lives in California. This is his first book.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  An Excerpt from

  The Average American Marriage

  A Novel

  By Chad Kultgen

  Available February 2013

  Chapter One

  Christmas With The Wife And Kids

  Same old bullshit.

  Chapter Two

  Happy Fucking Birthday To Me

  We drop the kids off at Alyna’s friend Isabelle’s house. I stare at Isabelle’s tits as Alyna is telling her what time the kids should be in bed by and what type of shit they should eat for dinner. I stare at her ass as Alyna hands over the giant bag of shit that we constantly carry around with us containing various bottles, asswipes, books, dvds, toys, etc. Isabelle is not hot. She has a kind of dumpy ass, sloppy tits, big gums and a forehead that’s noticeably too small for a human face. I want to fuck the shit out of her. I know the only reason I want to fuck the shit out of her is because she is not Alyna. Knowing this doesn’t make the desire any less tangible. I imagine several babysitting scenarios in which the kids are asleep and I fuck Isabelle in various positions, locations and holes.

  We kiss and hug the kids and get in the car. Alyna drives because wherever she’s taking me for dinner is supposed to be a surprise. She says, “So, you really have no idea where we’re going?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good. I think you’ll like it.”

  “We can just go home and order in if you want. A night without the kids is the best present you could have given me.”

  “Don’t be a dick.”

  “I’m not. It’s just been a while since we’ve had a night to ourselves. I actually can’t even remember the last one.” This is a lie. The memory of the last night we spent alone feels like it was burned into my fucking brain with a soldering iron. Alyna’s parents were in town staying in a hotel and they wanted to spend the night with the kids so we left them in the hotel. It was the last time Alyna and I fucked – at least two months ago.

  She says, “Well, I want to take you out to dinner and then we’ll have all night together.”

  We drive from Woodland Hills over the hill into L.A. proper and pull up in front of Jar. I fucking hate Jar. Alyna loves it. We’ve eaten here a dozen or so times, always at her request. I told Alyna that I liked one of the imported beers they have once. To Alyna, this means I like the restaurant. She says, “You excited for some St. Peter’s Cream Stout?”

  I say, “Yeah.”

  Although she’s gotten better about it, Alyna dominates 90 percent of the conversation by asking how I think the kids are doing with her friend Isabelle. She brings up things like the fact that they’ve never stayed with her before, things like it’s a weekend so Andy, at least, will be used to staying up a little later, things like wondering if she remembered to put Jane’s Pocahontas doll in the bag of shit we left with Isabelle. She misses the kids already.

  Strangely I do, too, but only a little. Not enough to keep me from almost jerking off under the table at the promise of the fucking that’s going to follow the shitty meal I choke down at Jar. I drink five St. Peter’s Cream Stouts during the dinner, which is enough to get me pretty drunk, already planning to attempt anal sex knowing that I can use my inebriation as an excuse for the attempt if my birthday isn’t enough to make Alyna receptive to the idea from the start.

  Alyna pays the bill with our joint credit card and says, “So, how’d you like your birthday dinner?”

  I say, “It was great. Thank you. Now let’s get out of here.”

  “Aren’t we an eager beaver? You know there’s a second part to your birthday present tonight.”

  “What’s the second part?”

  “You’ll have to wait until we get home.”

  Once we’re home, I take off
my clothes and get in bed. She tells me to wait. She tells me that she has to get the second part of my present and I’m already guessing that it’s some lingerie I could care less about. She comes into the bedroom and I’m right. She’s wearing a black lace bra and panties that I’m sure she bought with the joint credit card, too. She says, “You like?”

  I don’t give a shit. I say, “Yeah. You’re hot. Now take it off and get over here.”

  She says, “Not yet, just watch, I worked on this.”

  She proceeds to do an uncoordinated strip routine around the room. It’s a bizarro version of some of the worst strippers I can remember having seen in places like Reseda and Torrance. I can almost appreciate the effort, but it’s completely unnecessary and wasting what might be the only time we’ll have without the kids for the foreseeable future. I get up out of bed and cut the strip routine short. I pull her panties off and undo her bra so she’s completely naked. I drag her back down onto the bed and kiss her. It’s been so long since anyone but me has touched my cock that when I feel her hand start to go down my stomach I instantaneously get a hard-on that could drill a hole in concrete.

  She starts sucking my dick. I try to remember the last blowjob I got from her and I can’t. I reach down and grab one of her legs, pulling on it, giving her the hint that I want to 69. She says, “Just let me do you.”

  I say, “It’s my birthday and I want your pussy in my face.”

  “Okay, okay, calm down.”

  With the birthday obligation initiated she has no choice but to straddle my face while she sucks my dick. As she brings one of her legs across my face and settles her cunt back towards my mouth I overlook the patch of leg hair on her ankle that she missed the last time she shaved to notice two more important things that I’ve been completely unaware of for the entirety of the past year because we haven’t 69ed or fucked in any position that would yield this specific view. One: the back of her legs are covered in cellulite. Her ass has gotten much larger since we got married. There’s no denying that. I find that I don’t really mind it. I even kind of like it. Even though it’s big, it has a nice shape. But the shape looks like it’s been sitting on hot gravel for a few hours. The cellulite is not easy to ignore. But since I have no fucking choice, I do my best to ignore it by moving my eyes to her pussy and that’s when I notice number Two: The inch or so of skin between Alyna’s pussy and asshole that used to be smooth and perfect is mangled by what looks like a scarred over hacksaw wound.

  There’s only a split second in which I am completely confused by it, completely in the dark as to what could have caused it and how I never noticed it before. Then I remember she had to have an episiotomy with our youngest kid, Jane. As I lick at her clitoris I think about the fact that we haven’t done the 69 since Jane was born a little over a year ago. I think about the fact that Alyna used to have a perfect pussy and a perfect asshole and a perfect inch-long piece of cute pink skin in between them. These things, as superficial as they may seem, attracted me to her originally. I think about the fact that she’ll never be the same. She’ll never be the girl that I saw for the first time on that airplane. The view of her asshole and her pussy in the 69 will never be as good as it was. I wonder if she knows about the scar. I don’t know what my taint looks like. She probably doesn’t either.

  I lick at the scar a little bit just to see what it feels like on my tongue. I try to remember what her pussy felt like in my mouth before the scar. I can’t.

  After a few minutes of 69ing Alyna says, “I bet you want some reverse cowgirl don’t you,” knowing that it’s my favorite position.

  I can’t handle looking at the episiotomy scar anymore, which is unfortunate because all of my favorite sexual positions would give me a direct view of it and my preplanned attempt at anal sex now just conjures irrational images in mind of my dick splitting the scar open. So on the one night that I’m granted sexual carte blanche, I realize I’ll have to settle for something far more mundane than I would have normally. Even more depressing to me is the fact that I haven’t fucked in so long, fucking missionary or having Alyna ride my dick will probably make me blow my load just as quickly as any other position would have even if her pussy wasn’t hideously disfigured.

  I say, “No, just get on top.”

  She reaches over to the nightstand and gets out a rubber, which she claims to hate using in our increasingly infrequent sexual encounters but also makes no effort to remedy by going back on the pill. She says she wants to try to lose weight now that we’re done having kids and the pill makes it difficult.

  She does me the courtesy of ripping the wrapper open but hands me the rubber to put on myself. This exact interaction before fucking has become too routine for her to even think about putting the rubber on my dick herself, even on my birthday.

  Once I put the rubber on and she checks to make sure it’s rolled down my cock far enough and securely fitted, she rides me for what I estimate to be about ten minutes before saying, “Just finish.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t know if I can tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t think I can. I’m thinking about the kids.”

  “Do you want me to go down on you or something? What can I do? I want you to cum, too.”

  “It’s just one of those nights. I don’t think I can. You should just finish.”

  I can’t remember the last time I made Alyna cum. Since we had our first kid, Andy, the frequency of our sexual encounters fell off the charts, but so did her interest in them and so did her ability to achieve orgasm as easily as she used to. I was hoping that on my birthday she could muster enough enthusiasm to enjoy herself while we fucked and even if she couldn’t cum, maybe she would at least fake it well enough that I would be able to delude myself into thinking she was having a decent time. The more I think about it as I fuck her the more I realize the thing that bothers me the most about her not cumming has nothing to do with me feeling inadequate or feeling like less of a man or even a basic desire to give my wife pleasure. What’s actually disappointing me is that she doesn’t seem to care at all about the fact that she can’t cum. The act of achieving an orgasm has somehow become so uninteresting to her that she’s not even willing to attempt it. I wonder why she fucks me at all and I can only come to the conclusion that it’s just to placate me. This would explain the extremely low frequency with which we engage in any kind of sexual activity.

  She says, “Come on. Cum for me.”

  I’m tempted to just stop fucking her, watch some TV while she falls asleep and then sneak into the office to jerk off to some Riley Steele porn. But, not knowing when the next time I’ll get to fuck might be, I grab her by the hips, squeeze into the fat around the upper part of her ass and fuck her as hard as I can from underneath.

  There isn’t a glimmer of pleasure or ecstasy or anything even approaching sexual arousal in her eyes as she looks down at me, not even caring enough about any of it to hope it will be over soon. It’s like she’s waiting for the parking pay machine at the Beverly Center to spit her ticket back out after she’s paid her two dollars. She says, “Yeah, fuck me until you cum,” but doesn’t mean a word of it. I’ve never fucked a Real Doll, but I imagine it’s something like this – except a Real Doll would have a better body, a tighter pussy and no episiotomy scar.

  After a minute or so I close my eyes, try to remember one of the first times we fucked, and reach up and grab one of her tits, which have both begun to sag significantly, probably as a result of her insistence on breast feeding both of our kids. I squeeze it hard enough to make her say, “Ouch,” and then I blow my load.

  She gets off of me before my dick is even finished spitting out the last pump of cum, kisses me on the cheek, says, “Happy birthday,” then rolls over and turns on the TV. I get up and go to the bathroom. I peel off the rubber and wrap it in a wad of toilet paper then mash it down as far as I can in the trash so my kids won’t accidentally find it,then wonder how in the
fuck this became my life.

  Some Chapter

  He Smiles

  I get off work at 6. I get home at 6:45. I eat dinner with Alyna and the kids at 7. Alyna gives the kids their baths at 7:30. So the thirty minutes from 7:30 to 8pm on every weeknight are mine. I can usually get in at least two games of Modern Warfare, sometimes three. I’m in the middle of my second game of Team Deathmatch on the Paris map and somebody on the opposite team just got juggernaut when my son, Andy, comes out of the bathroom naked. I just catch him out of my peripheral vision, trying not to turn my full attention away from the game when he says, “Look, Daddy, he smiles.” He’s 4. He says fucked up things that make no sense all the time. I stopped trying to figure out of most of the shit he says a long time ago, but the phrase, “Look, Daddy, he smiles,” implies that my son wants me to look at something and it makes me curious to find out who this “he” is. So I look away from the game and see my son standing by the hallway that leads back to the bathroom. He’s completely naked, hair still wet from his bath and he’s holding his cock, looking down at it and laughing. But he’s not just holding his cock. He has the head kind of turned sideways so the hole in his dick is horizontal instead of vertical and he’s pinching the head with the index finger and thumb on each of his hands, stretching the hole and twisting it up on the ends so it does, in fact, look like a tiny smile. I look away from his cock and back to my game as quickly as I can wondering if I did shit like that when I was his age.

  He says it again, “Look, Daddy, he smiles.”

  I say, “Yeah, I saw it.”

  He says, “No! Look longer.”

  I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do. I’m sure there is some way to respond to him, some proper, child psychologist-approved manner in which I am supposed to interact with him at this point in his psychological development that will not leave any lasting negative effect but all I can imagine is me saying the wrong thing and Andy ending up with a limp dick for the rest of his life or feeling like a woman trapped in a man’s body or becoming a pedophile. I try to ignore him and hope he’ll wander back into the bathroom or something where I assume Alyna will know how to handle it. But he says it again, this time with more urgency, “Daddy, look! He smiles!” He really wants me to look at the little show he’s putting on with his fucking cock, really give it the attention he feels it deserves. So I do it.