Men, Women & Children: A Novel

by Chad Kultgen

  Jim said, “I bet.” Not knowing how to ease into the conversation, Jim said, “You get a little action after the game or what?”

  Danny said, “What?”

  Jim said, “I don’t know. I just . . . I was joking, I guess.”

  Jim was relieved to arrive at GameStop, which brought an end to the conversation. As Danny browsed various games, Jim took the time to attempt to formulate another plan of attack. It involved lunch at Danny’s favorite place to eat in the mall: Chick-fil-A.

  After purchasing the latest edition of Madden for Danny, Jim and his son walked toward the food court in silence. As they approached the expanse of tables and fast food restaurants, they became aware of a large crowd of parents and children in the middle of the food court, forming a large line that ended at a table where people seemed to be turning in applications of some sort and then having their photos taken. Danny had no interest in whatever it was. Neither did his father. They ignored the line of people and proceeded on to Chick-fil-A, where Danny ordered a Number 5 twelve-piece meal with large fries. Jim got a chicken sandwich and they sat down to eat.

  Jim said, “So, you and Brooke, are you guys, you know . . .”

  Danny said, “Are we what?”

  Jim said, “You know it seems like you’re getting kind of serious. You see each other a lot, you know . . .”

  Danny said, “Yeah, I guess we’re serious.”

  Jim thought about when his father had this exact conversation with him. His father was far blunter about it than Jim found himself capable of being. One morning, when Jim was fifteen years old, his father had walked into his bedroom and said, “If you feel the need to have sex with some girl at your school, make sure you use a rubber. I don’t care if you do it in our house, but make sure you use a rubber, that’s the most important thing. Having sex with a girl is fun, and I know you’re going to do it at some point, if you haven’t already, but having a kid is not fun. I mean, you’re an okay kid and everything, and so is your sister, but you should use a rubber every time. We good?”

  Jim took a bite of his chicken sandwich and sat across from his son in silence wondering why he found it so difficult to engage in what should be a normal conversation that all fathers have with their sons at some point.

  Across the food court, Hannah and her mother entered the mall and saw the line of people leading up to the table and photographer. They were both immediately curious. As they approached the table, they found out that a new reality show called Undiscovered was in the process of a nationwide talent search in malls across America. The show was going to focus on twelve kids aged six to sixteen who were in various parts of the country but who all wanted to eventually get to Hollywood to pursue careers in the performing arts. Hannah and Dawn were both more than excited. Dawn took an application and sat down with her daughter to fill it out.

  The two-page application included standard profile information like height and weight as well as a résumé section that Dawn filled with Hannah’s numerous local theater roles. A line on the application indicated that a website could be included if the applicant had one. Dawn thought about including Hannah’s website, but ultimately chose to omit it.

  The application also contained an essay section in which the applicant was asked to write about where he or she saw him or herself ten years in the future. Hannah enjoyed filling out this section of the application. She thought very often about what her life would be like in the future. She knew it would include living in a large house with a swimming pool in Los Angeles, and she knew she would have an attractive boyfriend who would probably also be famous, but maybe not quite as famous as she was. She knew, also, that she would have a nice car and get to go to parties with famous people every night if she chose. She rarely thought about what she would do, specifically, to get these things, but she was sure she would have them. She mentioned all of this in her essay.

  After turning in the application, Hannah posed for a photographer who took a few pictures of her, which were filed along with her application. They were told by one of the people collecting applications that they would hear something within a few weeks if Hannah was selected to move to the next step of the casting process.

  As Dawn and Hannah made their way back out into the mall, Hannah said, “How cool would that be, to, like, actually be on a show?”

  Dawn said, “Pretty cool.” She thought about how difficult things had been for her in her attempts to be an actress in Los Angeles. For her, the path to getting on television included years of acting classes, bad auditions, and drinks and dinners with various denizens of the town who claimed to be able to offer her help on her path but in reality only wanted to have sex with her. And, worse than all these things, her path included endless rejection from producers, agents, managers, and so on. Now, it seemed, things had changed. Her daughter might never have to endure any of the things she did in her attempts to become an actress. For her daughter it might all be as simple as filling out a two-page application. She envied her daughter and wondered how different things would have been in her own life if she had been born twenty-eight years after she actually was.

  On the ride home from the mall, Jim felt some anxiety. His wife had specifically told him to have the conversation about sex with their son before they returned. In preparation for this conversation, Jim had stopped at Walgreen’s on the way home from work two days before. He was more than familiar with aisle 12 of the Walgreen’s near his office. He had been purchasing condoms from the family planning section in that exact aisle ever since Danny was born and his wife, Tracey, decided not to return to her regiment of using oral birth control. But he found that walking into the family planning section of aisle 12 in Walgreen’s was difficult for him when his intent was to buy condoms for anyone other than himself, especially for his son. Far more difficult, however, was bringing a box of twelve Trojan latex condoms with spermicidal lubricant to the front register and thinking the entire time about the possibility of his son actually using them. He had such a high level of anxiety about the entire incident that he offered certain unsolicited information to the seventy-four-year old woman who checked him out. He said, “These aren’t for me.” When she said nothing in return, Jim said, “They’re for my son.” He knew the memory of the event would probably stay with him until he died.

  In the car with Danny, Jim said, “Why don’t you open the glove box?”

  Danny said, “What? Why?”

  Jim said, “Just open it.”

  Danny did as he was instructed. Inside the glove box, amid the clutter of receipts for oil changes, pens, napkins, Taco Bell mild sauce packets, and the owner’s manual for the car they were riding in, was a Walgreen’s bag.

  Danny said, “Okay?”

  Jim said, “Well, open the bag.”

  Danny opened the Walgreen’s bag to find a box of twelve Trojan latex condoms with spermicidal lubricant. He said, “Uh . . .”

  Jim said, “I’m sure you already know all about sex and how to do it and how to use condoms, so I’m just telling you to use those if, you know, if you and Brooke, you know . . .”

  He looked at his son, who stared at him with what Jim interpreted to be a half-horrified, half-insulted expression.

  Jim said, “I know this is weird and I’m probably the last person on the planet you want to have talking to you about this shit, but that’s the way it has to be. Would you rather be talking to your mom about this right now?”

  Danny said, “No.”

  Jim said, “Exactly, so just know that your mom and I don’t care if you and Brooke start, you know . . . I mean, we care. You should definitely not be doing it anytime soon or anything, and you should wait until you’re ready and all of the other crap I’m supposed to say here, but I know how it goes. I was young once. I had urges, too.”

  Danny said, “Dad. C’mon. Do we really have to do this?”

  Jim said, “Just let me finish, then it’s over. Now, like I said, your mom and I aren’t trying to convince yo
u start having sex or anything. We’re not doing that at all. But if you do get to a point where you think you’re going to do it, we’d rather have you doing it in our house, where it’s safe, than in some parking lot or something. And please just use those every time if you start doing it, okay?”

  Danny said, “Okay.” Then he took out his phone and sent Brooke a text message that read, “My dad just gave me condoms,” to which she sent a text message that read, “Gross,” to which Danny sent a text message that read, “I know.” Despite their text messages, both Danny and Brooke began to think about actually having sex with one another in a more concrete way than they had previously. Brooke had certainly thought about it more than she would have admitted to anyone, but the act of performing fellatio on Danny had made her more than apprehensive about attempting anything sexual again. She felt like she had taken an important first step and had attained what she felt was the highest echelon of sexual experience of any of her peers, and she was comfortable with remaining at that level of progression for the immediate future. But with Danny’s father essentially giving them his blessing, she began to think about the exact scenario in which she might lose her virginity to Danny—about the fact that, if she were to have sexual intercourse, she would be on an even higher echelon of sexual experience, one that she alone occupied, sharing nothing with Hannah Clint, being above Hannah Clint, better than Hannah Clint.

  Danny, too, was comfortable with their level of sexual activity—even slightly uncomfortable with it—after having received oral sex from Brooke. He was almost certain that he didn’t actually want to have sex at this point in his life. He enjoyed the oral sex that Brooke had performed on him, but he was made uncomfortable by it at the same time. He wasn’t fully ready for it when she did it, and he wasn’t certain that he would be ready for it a second time. But now, with his father essentially giving him a free pass to have sex in his own home with a free supply of condoms, he began to imagine having sex with Brooke in his bed or in his shower.

  Danny sent another text to Brooke that read, “What shud I do w/them?” to which she sent a text message that read, “Idk keep them I guess, in case.”

  chapter

  seven

  After dropping her son, Chris, off at school, Rachel Truby continued on to work. She found Monday mornings to be soothing. Her weekends at home with her family had become increasingly uncomfortable for her. The excuse she used most in order to avoid having any kind of sexual contact with her husband, Don, was that her activities during a standard day of work left her too exhausted to entertain the idea of anything outside of a warm bath and sleep when she got home. But this excuse never carried her through the course of an entire weekend.

  As the curiosity about why she had come to feel this way began to drift away, her mind began to focus on the various tasks she knew would be awaiting her at the collections agency, and the Howard Stern radio show, which her husband had installed a Sirius satellite radio in the car specifically to listen to, went to commercial.

  The commercial was for AshleyMadison.com, a website designed to help people who were in monogamous relationships, including marriage, find partners with whom they could engage in affairs. Despite Rachel’s waning desire to engage in any kind of sexual activity with her husband, she had never entertained the idea of seeking a sexual relationship outside of her marriage. Somehow, knowing that it could potentially be as simple as filling out a profile on a website changed that. She began to think of the logistics involved in engaging in an extramarital affair.

  She thought there would be some complication with getting a night away from her husband and son. She wondered if she could do it on a lunch break, or if she could possibly take an afternoon off work by telling her employers that she had a doctor’s appointment. Maybe she could even use a visit with her sister, who lived a few hours away, as an excuse. It seemed to her that it wouldn’t be prohibitively difficult to find the time. But actually meeting the man she would have an affair with seemed strange to her. Even though she knew she was being paranoid, she had some reservation that such a man might turn out to be a serial killer or a rapist. Obviously no one would know what she was really doing, or where she was really going, when she met the person. She would be helpless if indeed this theoretical person arrived at their chosen meeting spot with nefarious intent.

  When she got to work, she powered up her computer, sent a few work-related e-mails, got a cup of coffee and bagel, printed out a memo detailing the delinquent accounts she was responsible for overseeing, put that memo on her manager’s desk. Then she pulled out her personal laptop, so as to avoid being caught using her work computer for non-work-related activities, and logged on to AshleyMadison.com.

  She was able to create a free profile within a few minutes. She wrote a brief paragraph describing what she was hoping to find on the site: a man to make her remember what it was like to enjoy sex. She opted to omit her picture from the profile, thinking that perhaps someone she knew might also be a member of the site. But then it occurred to her that, even if that were the case, this person would also want to keep their involvement with the site discreet, so they would have no reason ever to reveal their discovery of her account. To quell whatever anxiety she had about the issue, she took a picture of herself with the digital camera mounted in the top of her MacBook’s screen, cropped it so that her head was not visible, and posted it.

  Seeing herself without a face, Rachel became painfully aware of the fact that she had gained weight. She knew that this was the case, but seeing herself like this made her question why her husband still wanted to have sex with her as frequently as he did. She thought about retaking the picture, but didn’t. She felt it was better for her potential affair partner to know exactly what to expect, were they actually to meet, and in some way she also hoped it would deter anyone from actually soliciting her. Cheating on her husband was not something she took lightly. She convinced herself that she was signing up on AshleyMadison.com more out of curiosity than anything. Even if she was to get an interested party, she would more than likely ignore him.

  With that in mind, she published her profile, logged out, and told herself that she would check her account after lunch to see if anyone had sent her any indication of interest.

  Don Truby sat at his desk on that same Monday morning wondering if he would have enough time to go home and masturbate at lunch. He doubted he would, but after a weekend in which his wife verbally agreed to a sexual encounter when she was half-asleep, but never delivered, Don needed to masturbate.

  He knew his supervisor wasn’t going to be in for at least another forty-five minutes to an hour, as was the case on Monday mornings, and his supervisor was the only person who might be looking for him. Don closed his office door with the intent of looking at enough vaguely erotic Internet images—images that would not be blocked by his company’s firewall or filters—to arouse him to the point that he could go into the men’s bathroom on the first floor, where there were no Northwestern Mutual employees, and masturbate quickly into the toilet.

  He started at ModelMayhem.com, a website where amateur and aspiring models would post their pictures, allowing aspiring or established photographers, commercial directors, and so on, to be able to search for specific types of models for various projects. Don searched for brunettes with pale skin, something to mimic the adult film actress Stoya with whom he developed a mild obsession. He found several models fitting the description; a few had pinup-style images in their portfolios. Don found these images to be satisfying and arousing. He refined his search to display only models that had pinup-style images in their portfolios. After looking at these images for ten minutes or so, and attempting to give himself an erection by rubbing his penis through his pants, Don realized that in order to become aroused enough to be able to masturbate to completion at work, he was going to need to view legitimate hardcore pornography, which, despite his almost mind-numbing level of libidinous urge, he was unwilling to do, fearing the loss of his job.
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  He noticed an ad in the sidebar of ModelMayhem.com for a website called TheEroticReview.com. It was a database of reviews, compiled by the website’s users, of their encounters with prostitutes. The idea of having sex with a prostitute had been one he revisited with more and more frequency over the past six months or so, ever since his wife had begun flatly denying his requests for sexual activity. He had concerns about having sex with a prostitute, though. His first was how to even go about finding one that wasn’t an undercover police officer. TheEroticReview.com seemed to take care of this first concern.

  Finding the time to get away from his wife and child for long enough to have a sexual encounter with a prostitute also seemed problematic to him, but he reasoned that he could potentially do it on a lunch break instead of going home to masturbate. He was also apprehensive about being able to find a prostitute he considered attractive enough to warrant paying for sex. If he could see pictures of the prostitutes on the website, then this problem seemed solved to him as well. He clicked on the ad and was redirected to TheEroticReview.com.

  Don was surprised to find how intricate the site was. Not only was he able to read a seemingly limitless number of reviews by men who had already procured the services of the prostitutes on the site, and given honest accounts of their interactions, he was also able to search for virtually any physical type of prostitute imaginable. There were fifteen categories, each with a drop-down menu that Don was able to use to find specifically what he was looking for. For build, Don chose thin. For height, Don chose five-foot-four to five-foot-six. For age, Don chose eighteen to twenty-four. For hair color, Don chose black. For hair type, Don chose straight. For hair length, Don chose chin length. For breast size, Don chose thirty to thirty-one. For breast cup, Don chose B. For breast implants, Don chose no. For breast appearance, Don chose perky. For piercings, Don chose nipple. For tattoos, Don chose none. For pussy, Don chose shaved. For ethnicity, Don chose white. For transsexual, Don chose no. This was as close to the physical description of Stoya as Don was able to come.