Average American Male (10 page)

“Yeah.” No.

Later that night, after I’ve gone home, I lie awake staring at the ceiling and jerking off to thoughts of fucking the Asian girls we played Be the King with, which somehow reminds me of the first time I fucked my high school girlfriend, Katy. I remember the first time I shot a load down her throat when I shoot a load all over my own hand and the postejaculatory calm washes over me. For the first time in a while, Casey and my life’s ruin is the furthest thing from my mind.

I wipe the semen off my hand and my dick with a towel that was lying on my floor and stay awake for a few more minutes wondering if I should have asked the Asian bitches to have anal sex with me, if somehow that would have offended them less. I also wonder if some of them were willing to suck my dick and Danni or one of the other bitches convinced them to leave. I wish Casey was Asian. I wish I hadn’t thought about Casey.

Little Kids

I’m eating a cheeseburger at Topz on Melrose. This semi-old-looking bitch is sitting a few tables away from me with a little girl who’s probably about two or three years old. Across the room there’s another bitch with a little boy who’s probably about the same age.

The little boy keeps staring at the little girl and touching his cock.

I wonder if he’s actually thinking about fucking her or if he’s getting a boner and doesn’t know what it is or if he’s just pawing at his dick because that’s what little kids do. I myself don’t think I ever thought about fucking when I was two, but I don’t really remember.

As I keep looking at these little kids and wondering if they’re thinking about fucking each other, I can’t help thinking that at some point in each of these two-year-old kids’ lives, they’re going to be fucking somebody. That two-year-old girl whose mom dressed her up in a little pink dress to take her to Topz after Sunday church is going to suck cock, take it up the ass, have load after load of semen shot in her face, and eventually have another little girl who’s eventually going to do all the same shit. And that little two-year-old boy whose mom dressed him in his Spider-Man T-shirt to take him to eat lunch after his favorite morning cartoons is going to fuck a girl, eat pussy, get twat hairs stuck in his throat, get his dick sucked, and someday have kids who will do all the same shit.

I wonder if either of the kids’ parents have thought about any of this. I wonder if I’ll have kids. If I do have kids I wonder if I’ll look at them and think about them eventually fucking. I wonder if my parents ever thought about me fucking. I wonder if my parents are still fucking.

Hi, Mom

I spend the night at Casey’s apartment because we have to meet her mom at the airport the following morning and Casey wants me to drive. I assume that we’ll fuck because this is the last night we have before her mom is in town and possibly in Casey’s house for an indefinite amount of time. At 11:43 p.m. Casey’s snoring makes me realize I shouldn’t have assumed anything.

I’m unable to sleep, and my restless libido starts turning into rage.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling listening to the sound of Casey’s nose whistling in between her snorting gasps for air. I have to fuck. I nudge her a couple of times.

“Casey, Casey.”

She wakes up. “What? I was asleep.”

“Let’s make love.”

“My mom’s coming tomorrow morning. We have to get to sleep.”

“But don’t you want to make love one more time before your mom gets here?”

“Why?”

She doesn’t understand, or maybe she just doesn’t care that once her mom is in town the frequency with which we have sex will be cut in half, or probably even worse. I say, “Because I love you.”

“I love you, too. But I’m tired and I don’t want to be even more tired when my mom gets here.”

She kisses me on the cheek and rolls over, turning her fat ass toward me. She says, “Good night.”

I can’t take it. I get out of her bed.

She says, “Where are you going?”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

She goes back to sleep never knowing that I walk into the bathroom and jerk off into a bottle of special color treatment shampoo that she bought because it was featured on an Oprah show as one of Oprah’s favorite things. As I jerk off, I think about kissing Alyna and fantasize about fucking her. For a split second, just before I cum, I entertain the thought of leaving Casey’s apartment and driving to Alyna’s to see if she’d be up for going to get coffee, but then I blow my load and I calm down enough to wipe off the top of the bottle, screw the lid back on, put it back in Casey’s shower, and crawl back into bed with her.

I dream about nothing.

I wake up the next morning to an already awake and chipper Casey saying, “Come on, sleepyhead, it’s time to take a shower and get ready to go pick up my mom.”

We take a shower together. She uses her special color treatment shampoo. I use the Pert that’s been in her shower as long as I’ve known her—probably left there by a previous boyfriend. Seeing her massage nine parts shampoo and one part semen into a thick lather on her head is more satisfying than any sex the night before could have been.

In the car on the way to the airport Casey turns off the volume on my stereo, which was playing “Xxplosive” from Dr. Dre’s Chronic 2001. She says, “You know you can’t listen to that when my mom gets in the car. She’d be completely offended. I mean, I’m actually kind of offended, too. But I guess because I’m younger and like I’ve grown up the average american male with rap music, I can at least deal with the way they talk about women.

But my mom would not be okay with it.”

I let her turn off my music without any rebuttal.

Then she says, “I’m sorry about last night, you know, not wanting to make love, but I think that other things are just a little more important right now. I mean we’re about to start planning our wedding.

That’s like a day that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.”

She keeps talking about things as I stare down the road trying to imagine what the couple in the car in front of us is talking about. I can see the silhouette of the woman in the passenger’s seat. She’s kind of flailing her arms around and every once in a while pointing at the guy driving, who’s completely motionless, staring straight ahead and probably looking at the car in front of him wondering what the woman in that car’s passenger seat is saying to the guy driving.

As I pull into a parking space in structure #4 at LAX I realize Casey is still talking about something. I hear, “. . . take us to breakfast at the Griddle, which I know you don’t like, but can you just eat something and pretend to like it for me? I mean, she is going to be your mother-in-law in a few months. It would be nice if you could just pretend that you can eat breakfast with her at her favorite place in L.A. and not make a big deal about it.”

I want her to shut up. I say, “Okay.” It doesn’t work.

“And don’t be rude and order something that’s not on the menu.

The last time we went there, you asked the guy if they could make you a plate of scrambled eggs with nothing else in it. How embarrassing. If you want scrambled eggs, just get an omelet or something and cut it up.”

When we get in the terminal we find out her mom’s flight is fifteen minutes late, which Casey insists is a perfect amount of time to go look in the gift shop. I flip through an issue of Hustler that someone has already taken out of the plastic and left on the rack. Casey flips through Oprah’s latest issue until she sees me staring at a pair of huge tits and a shaved pussy.

In a forced whisper she says, “Put that down.”

I pretend not to hear her and flip the page to see another bitch spreading her friend’s cunt open in preparation to lick it.

Casey walks over to me and closes the magazine while I’m still holding it. A naked bitch on the cover grabbing her own tits is still plainly visible to anyone walking by. Casey says, “How could you be looking at that right now?”

“It was the most interesting thing on the stand.”

“My mother’s going to be here in”—she checks her watch—“ten minutes. You can’t be looking at that.”

“You were the one who wanted to come look in the gift shop.”

“Just put it back.”

Even though I decide it’s not worth getting into a fight over and put the Hustler back, the angry dissatisfaction I felt last night hits me tenfold and the thought of spending another second with Casey without fucking her makes me want to kill somebody.

She puts her magazine back and I walk with her to the baggage claim area, where we’re supposed to meet her mom. I see at least a dozen other guys standing with girls. I wonder how many of them fucked their girlfriends last night.

Ten more minutes or so pass and Casey tries to explain to me how important it is to choose just the right kind of wedding invitation. She says that even though I won’t be involved in the process of choosing the invitations, it’s important for me to understand why she and her mother end up choosing whichever invitations they choose. She further explains that she wants something new and hip, but still tradi-tional enough that her grandparents won’t think she’s moved to Hollywood and gone crazy. Then she laughs.

I try to imagine what she’d look like thirty pounds lighter. I can’t.

Her mom finally comes down an escalator and out to meet us.

She says, “Give me a hug, Casey. Long time no see.” Then she laughs.

Casey says, “So did you get a hotel or did you decide to stay at my place?”

“I thought I’d stay at your apartment tonight so we can talk about a game plan.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“So are you guys ready to go get some breakfast?”

We wait for her bags and drive to the Griddle, one of my least favorite places to eat.

The Griddle

I figure Casey won’t be fucking me for at least a few days anyway, so I order the plate of scrambled eggs with nothing else in it that Casey has forbidden me to get. Casey and her mom both pretend not to hear me when I ask the guy if they can make it for me. Even though I’ve already ordered it, before the guy leaves our table I throw in the following knife twist for good measure, “Now you’re sure there’ll be nothing else in the eggs?”

He says, “No. It’ll just be eggs. I mean, it’s not on the menu, but we can make it for you.”

“Thanks.”

Then he leaves. Casey’s mom can’t stand that I ordered a plate of scrambled eggs with nothing else in it. She doesn’t even look at me as she says, “Do you always order things that aren’t on the menu?”

I say, “Sometimes. Not always.”

She still can’t deal with it. She says, “It’s just kind of strange. They have a whole variety of items that contain scrambled eggs. I just don’t know why any one of those dishes isn’t good enough.”

And it’s right then that I know I never want to see this woman again. I never want to hear her voice and I never want to placate her just to make Casey happy and I never want to deal with her in any way.

The waiter comes back with our drinks just as Casey’s mom is getting fired up about my eggs. She calms down. As he leaves, she changes the topic of conversation entirely with, “Casey, your father wanted me to tell you that he’s really sorry he couldn’t come out and he wishes he was here, but he has to work.”

Casey says, “Yeah, I know. He already told me.”

Their voices trail off into nothing as I stare at this guy and girl sitting a few tables away from us. The girl isn’t amazingly hot, but she’s pretty good-looking and has what looks to be a nice set of tits. They’re all over each other. The guy is rubbing her stomach and she’s running her hands through his hair. Every now and then they kiss like they’re going to fuck each other right there at the table.

I guess I watch them for a while because I’m still watching them when our food comes to the table probably ten minutes later.

As he gives me my eggs, the waiter says, “Here’s your special plate of scrambled eggs with nothing else in them.”

I say, “Thanks.”

Casey and her mom both cringe again.

He leaves after asking if we need anything else and the following conversation begins:

Casey’s mom takes a bite of her blueberry pancakes and says, “So after we eat I thought just you and I could go back to your place, Casey, so we can get started on everything.”

Casey says, “Yeah, that sounds good. You won’t mind just dropping us off, right?”

I say, “No.”

Casey’s mom says, “You wouldn’t want to be involved in this anyway. It’s really very boring . . . unless you’re a woman.” Then she laughs. So does Casey.

It’s right then that I realize I never want to be Casey’s chauffeur again.

I chew my eggs while I stare at the guy and girl who are definitely about to go somewhere and fuck after they finish their waffles. I try to remember a time when Casey was like that, and even though the memory doesn’t come easily, there definitely was a time. I decide that all bitches eventually cool down and lose interest.

Then Casey says, “I’ll just give you a call tomorrow morning and maybe we can all go out and eat breakfast again or something.”

Her mom says, “Well, maybe we should just play it by ear.”

Casey says, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

It’s right at that moment that I realize I never want to be dismissed or taken for granted by Casey or her mother again. I never want to play the role they expect of me. For a split second I feel bad for the guy who I’m sure is going to be in this situation a few years from now, but at that moment it becomes crystal clear to me that when I walk out of the Griddle, I will not be engaged to this woman’s daughter.

In the following minute that passes, nobody says anything, but the blood pounding in my head and my teeth grinding down on pieces of scrambled eggs and Casey licking the jelly off her lips and the fake smile that’s been on her mom’s face since we walked in and the general rage that’s built up in me over the course of our relationship all boils down to the following seven words: I say, “I don’t think we should get married.” As the words come, I feel no immediate liberation. I feel no significant change. But something, some dark, twisted knot in the pit of my stomach that I never really even knew existed, seems to loosen up a bit—just a little bit.