Average American Male (20 page)

Casey doesn’t waste any time with pleasantries. She says, “Who’s this?”

I’m too stunned to speak. I wonder what the odds are of a terrorist attack on the Beverly Center occurring right now.

Alyna takes over. She says, “I’m Alyna, his girlfriend. I think we met once before. I think it was actually in the Beverly Center, too.”

Casey says, “His girlfriend, huh?” She shoots me a look. “Yeah, I remember that. That was like back when we were engaged. So what are you up to?”

I think she’s talking to me so I respond, “Nothing.”

Casey looks at Alyna and says, “So what do you do, Alyna the girlfriend?”

Alyna says, “Oh, I’m a senior at UCLA.”

Casey says, “Wow, you must be all of eighteen years old.”

I say, “She’s twenty-one.”

Casey says, “That’s just great. So what are you going to do when you graduate?”

Alyna says, “I don’t know yet. I haven’t really given it much thought.”

Casey says, “Well, good luck with that.”

We all stare at one another for a few awkward seconds, then Alyna says, “Look, I’m going to go try on a few suits. You guys should catch up.”

Casey says, “Yeah, we should catch up . . . because we haven’t talked to each other in such a long, long time.”

Alyna says, “Nice meeting you again,” then heads off to the back of the store, out of earshot.

Casey looks like she wants to kill me. She says, “A girlfriend? I’m guessing she doesn’t know that you’re going to be a dad, right?”

I shake my head.

Casey says, “A fucking girlfriend?!? And she’s twenty-one. We’re going to have a baby. How could you get a twenty-one-year-old girlfriend?”

“I like her.”

“Do you love her?”

The only thing I want to do less than have Alyna find out about my unborn child is have a conversation about my feelings for Alyna with Casey. I shrug my shoulders.

Casey says, “That means you don’t. Look, I don’t want to make like a big scene, so here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to break up with that little slut. Then next Sunday, my mom’s going to be in town. You’re going to go out to dinner with us and apologize to her for the last time she was out here and you’re going to tell her that everything is fine between us and that we’re going to get married just like we planned.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then your new little girlfriend is going to find out that you’re about to be a daddy.”

I’m too scared to think it through rationally. I’m too horrified by the entire situation to realize that I could lie to Casey now, not break up with Alyna, and figure out something else later. I’m too terrified of letting Casey get her way and too filled with rage to think straight.

I say, “Fuck you.”

Casey says, “Have it your way.”

As if on cue, Alyna walks up from the back of the store with a bathing suit in her hand. Casey looks at me and musters up all of her Groundlings training as she says, “You bastard. I can’t believe you didn’t tell her that I’m pregnant with your child.” Then she slaps me and walks off into the mall, leaving me to stare into Alyna’s eyes, which tell me she’s already questioning every minute of our relationship.

Alyna says, “Is that true? Did you knock her up?”

I want to lie, but not to Alyna. I say, “Yeah.”

Alyna says, “That fucking sucks.”

“I know.”

“Will she get an abortion?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Fuck. That really fucking sucks.”

She stands there and repeats, “That fucking sucks,” a few more times, not in reaction to my life being ruined but in reaction to a relationship that could have been something really amazing getting flushed down the shitter right in front of her.

In the car on the way back to her apartment, she says that she really has fallen in love with me, but she can’t deal with a kid being thrown into the picture. She breaks up with me. Luckily she’s too distraught at the thought of our relationship ending to realize the logistics of Casey’s pregnancy and my knowledge of it mean that I have been in contact with her beyond anything I’ve ever admitted.

When we get to her apartment, she hugs me and kisses me and says good-bye. I think about telling Alyna that I don’t love Casey and I don’t want anything to do with the baby in her gut. But the entire situation seems too far beyond repair. There’s no point.

As she gets out of the car, she cries a few tears and says, “This really fucking sucks,” one more time.

As I watch her go up the stairs to her building, my sadness at the loss of Alyna turns quickly to unbridled rage for the cunt who took her away from me.

Carlos’s Gay Party

I walk into a party with Carlos that he invited me to when I told him that Alyna broke up with me because I got Casey pregnant. The first thing I notice is that there are no women at this party.

I say, “Is this a gay thing?”

Carlos says, “Of course. What kind of parties do you think I go to?”

“Why’d you invite me to a gay party?”

“It’s better than staying home by yourself.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Well, maybe you’ll meet a cute boy who’ll give you a blow job and make you realize how stupid you were to ever stick your dick in a pair of meat curtains in the first place.”

Then Carlos says, “I’m going to go mingle,” and abandons me in the middle of an apartment full of fags.

As I go to the fridge to get a drink I run into a guy who says, “So you’re here with Carlos, huh? I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“Excuse me?”

“To get somebody as hot as you.”

“We’re just friends.”

“Oh, I know. I’m just friends with every guy I’ve ever let fuck me in the ass, too.”

“I’m straight.”

“What?”

“I’m straight.”

The gay guy says, “Then why’d you come to this party?”

“Carlos invited me.”

“Yeah, but he told you we all suck each other off at the end of the night, right?”

I’m thrown into a catatonic state by the impact of the guy’s state-ment. Then he squeezes my arm and says, “Just kidding,” followed by a gay laugh.

He says, “We fuck each other in the ass . . . just kidding again. But he did tell you this was like an all-gay party, right?”

“No.”

“That little shit.”

Carlos comes back from wherever he was. He says, “Tedward, you better not be trying to suck my friend’s dick. He’s straight.”

Tedward says, “I know, that’s what he said. Why’d you bring him here?”

Carlos says, “He told me he didn’t have anything to do tonight. His girlfriend dumped him because he got his ex-girlfriend pregnant.”

Tedward says, “I’m so glad I’m a fag. I couldn’t handle some whore telling me she was pregnant and not really knowing the truth.”

It has never really occurred to me that Casey could be lying. I say,

“What do you mean not knowing the truth?”

Tedward says, “Women lie constantly to get their way. They can be seriously bitter cunts. At least with a guy you always know they want to fuck and you always know they’re not pregnant.”

Carlos says, “He’s right. I fucking hate deceitful bitches. You know you should find out if Casey really is pregnant before you go throwing your life away and marry her or some stupid shit.”

I say, “How do I do that?”

Carlos says, “Get one of those home pregnancy kits and make her pee in it.”

I say, “She’s not going to agree to take a home pregnancy test.”

Carlos says, “You’ll figure out some way to do it if you really think she might be lying.”

Tedward says, “As enthralling as this conversation about cunts is, I must conclude my participation in it. It was nice to meet you”—he shakes my hand—“but I’m off to find a cock to suck.” Then he moves off into the crowd.

Carlos says, “He’s an even bigger slut than I am, and that’s saying something.”

I say, “Do you really think she could be lying?”

Carlos says, “Does a cunt smell like rotten fish?”

There is something comforting about the possible hope this suspicion has created in me. I don’t want to talk about it anymore for fear I might change my mind and accept her declaration of pregnancy as fact when I now know some doubt exists. I want the doubt.

I say, “So why didn’t you tell me this was an all-gay party?”

“If I did, would you have come?”

“No.”

“Exactly. But now that you are here, drink your drink and be my wingman.”

“You want me to help you pick up gay guys?”

“Of course. Why do you think I invited you? Fags are attracted to straight guys like moths to flame. All you have to do is just stand here and get hit on, then when you tell them you’re straight they’ll have to talk to me.”

“Jesus Christ.” I’m gay bait.

“Just shut up and do it, here comes our first victim.”

A gay guy comes up to me and says, “I’m Jim. You’ve got a great ass.”

I can’t even begin small talk. I just say, “I’m straight.”

Jim says, “Hey, man, I wasn’t hitting on you, I was just saying you’ve got a great ass.”

Carlos jumps in, “How is that not hitting on somebody? And what about my ass?”

Jim says, “Are you straight, too?”

Carlos says, “Nope.”

Jim looks at Carlos’s ass and says, “Eh, your straight friend’s ass is better.”

Carlos says, “Fuck you. How dare you.”

Jim ignores Carlos and says to me, “So you’re straight, huh?”

I say, “Yeah.”

Jim says, “You ever wonder what it’d be like to have your cock sucked by a guy?”

I say, “Nope, sorry.”

Carlos jumps back in, “Oh, and you’re a fucking bottom?”

Jim says, “Yeah, so?”

Carlos says, “So get the fuck out of here.”

Jim says, “Fine,” and walks off back into the party.

The same scenario plays itself out at least a dozen times, with Carlos getting a couple of phone numbers and ultimately blowing some guy in a back bedroom while I deflect gay advances for twenty minutes. When he comes out of the bedroom with the guy he just blew, he says, “I told you it would work.”

After the party I go back to my apartment with a new sense of the possible future—one in which Casey does not have my seed growing in her womb, one in which Alyna and I are together, one in which I still have no idea how to secretly administer a home pregnancy test to Casey.

As I close my eyes and reflexively start going through a mental list of things that I hate about Casey, I stop on one item—she never flushes the toilet after she takes a piss.

Finger in the Two-Hole

Todd and I are at Barney’s Beanery after work. He’s been staring at the same bitch for the past thirty minutes, assuring me that as soon as she notices him looking at her, she’ll come over and talk to him. She’s looked directly at him multiple times and has made no movement in this direction.

I say, “It might help if you weren’t leering at her.”

He says, “Dude, you gotta let ’em know what you want. I don’t want her coming over here asking me for my phone number. I want her coming over here asking me to suck my dick. And P.S., dude, I don’t really need advice on picking up women from the guy who fucking locked himself into eighteen years of prison with a bitch he doesn’t even like.”

“It’s not my choice at this point.”

He says, “Whatever, dude. Okay, fuck this shit.”

He walks over to the girl and her two friends and somehow gets them to come over and sit at our table.

I don’t remember any of their names even as they say them, and nothing any of them says holds even the most remote amount of interest for me, until one of the girls who is moderately attractive and not too fat launches into the following story:

“I work for this catering company that does big events for famous people and movie openings and things like that. And this one time we were doing a private party at Joel Silver’s house. And I was walking around serving drinks and everything. And Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson and all of these crazy famous people were there. And it was completely surreal. And so I’m handing a drink to Keanu when I hear this weird voice behind me go, ‘Come here, I want to show you something.’ And I turn around and it’s this huge ’80s movie star. And he’s going, ‘Come back here, I want to show you something amazing.’ And he takes me by the arm and kind of starts pulling me back toward the pool house. And so I go, ‘I have to work. I can’t really leave.’ And he goes, ‘It’s okay, you’re with me.’ And his wife is completely watching the whole thing go down, but he’s still pulling on my arm, going, ‘Just come with me for a few seconds.’ And so I finally just go, ‘I really can’t, I’ll lose my job.’ And he goes, ‘Okay, then just go into the bathroom, stick your finger up your asshole, and then come out here and let me smell it.’ And I couldn’t believe it.”

She keeps talking, but I think I got the only important information in what turns out to be a story that lasts for ten more minutes about how many crab cakes Chris Rock ate. I wonder if her story is true.

I wonder what the storyteller’s asshole smells like. I wonder if it smells as good as Alyna’s.

The Test

I have done more preparation for this night than possibly any other in my life. I have purchased a home pregnancy kit. I have agreed to meet Casey and her mother for dinner but insisted on picking them up at her apartment before we leave, knowing that I’ll be invited in for a few minutes and Casey will piss before we leave, as is her habit, and that she will not flush the toilet, as is also her habit. I have invited Alyna to meet me at the bar of the restaurant in which I will be din-ing with Casey and her mother. She doesn’t know that Casey and her mother will be there and assumes that I just wanted to have dinner with her to talk about how things ended. I am hoping to surprise her by publicly unveiling the possible truth about my pending fatherhood.

I have rehearsed the “I know you’re not pregnant and here’s the proof”

speech, making slight dramatic alterations to increase the amount of emotional duress I can cause both Casey and her mother without making Alyna think I’m a psychotic monster. I have done all of this as I pull up to Casey’s apartment with the home pregnancy kit tucked away inside my jacket.