The Average American Marriage by Chad Kultgen

Author:Chad Kultgen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

chapter twenty-four

First Night

My room is shitty and small. I have no idea how long I’ll be staying here, but I refuse to take my clothes out of my duffel bag and put them in drawers or in the closet or anything like that. I lay down on the bed and turn on the TV so there’s some noise, something to take my mind off what just happened, off what’s still happening. I watch TV for a few minutes. It doesn’t work. I’m stuck in some weird kind of emotional shell-shock that doesn’t seem to be going away or resolving into any real emotion.

I take my phone out and look at all of the text messages Holly sent me over the course of the day. There are two pictures, one of her ass and one of her tits, and several sexually suggestive text messages. Alyna read them all. She read them all and I know she probably read every other text message that’s ever been in my phone. Holly’s are the only ones that matter, the only ones that aren’t meaningless conversations between me and Todd or me and Alyna. If I had just remembered my phone none of this shit would be happening. I’d be back at home watching the American Idol results show and wondering when I’d be able to fuck Holly next.

It dawns on me that now I can fuck Holly anytime I want. This line of thought gives me something other than numbness. I go with it. I text her the following message: “Want to hang out tonight?” I spend the next few minutes looking back over all of the naked pictures she’s sent me until she replies with a text that reads, “Can’t tonight. Plans.” I wonder what her plans are. What plans could a twenty-one-year-old girl have? I’m sure they involve alcohol and drugs and not wondering if her husband is going to divorce her and not wondering how her children will react to her not sleeping under the same roof as them for the first time in their lives.

Realizing I will be alone in this room without being bothered by anyone, I unzip my pants and start jerking off. It doesn’t work. I don’t even get hard because I can’t stop thinking about my kids and about Alyna crying and about what she must be telling them about me and about how this is all going to end.

I go to the bar downstairs and drink by myself for a few hours. American Idol is on the TV. One of the closeted gay guys gets kicked off. I pay my tab and head back upstairs, where I take a long shower and get into bed.

It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve slept in a bed alone. I miss the noises of my house. The ticking of the refrigerator, the low hum of the air conditioner, the slight crackle of the baby monitor that we still keep in the kids’ room. I close my eyes and I miss all of the shit that annoyed me about sleeping with Alyna.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.