44 Chapters About 4 Men

44 Chapters About 4 Men

BB Easton

Copyright

This is a work of creative nonfiction. While the events are true, they may not be entirely factual, and names and some identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Copyright © 2015 by BB Easton

Excerpt from Skin copyright © 2016 by BB Easton

Artwork, Photography, and Cover Design by BB Easton

Cover Consultation provided by Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae, www.murphyrae.net

Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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First Forever Edition: November 2019

Originally published as 44 Chapters About 4 Men by BB Easton in 2015

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Lyrics to “You Never Even Call Me by My Name” used with permission from Al Bunetta d/b/a Jurisdad Music o/b/o itself and Turnpike Tom Music.

ISBN: 978-1-5387-1832-2

E3-20191105-PDJ-PC-REV

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Introduction

Glossary

1: The Husbot

2: Skeletor

3: Frenemies

4: Props

5: Condiments Are for Hot Dogs, Not Wieners

6: Enter the Evil Professor

7: The Notorious K.E.N.

8: Call Me Crazy

9: Lady and the Tramp

10: Ken, Meet Fantasy Harley

11: Inception-Style, Muthafucka!

12: More Like, Billy I-Don't

13: Knock, Knock. Who's There? Ding-Dong.

14: My Tail Fell Off Again

15: Hocus Poke-us

16: Oh No, I Incest

17: Hoodie and the Blowjob

18: Hard Work (Pun Intended)

19: BB Suffers

20: The Worst

21: Somebody Call Oprah

22: Hansel and Metal

23: I Was in a Basement, Surrounded by Phantom Limbs

24: Bass Players Do It With Rhythm

25: Bonerversary

26: Guard Your Thighs

27: Skynet Has Become Self-Aware! Skynet Has Become Self-Aware!

28: When the SUV's A-Rockin'

29: Mark McKen

30: Mission(ary) Accomplished!

31: Stupid Safe Word

32: Leprechauns Love Anal

33: We Both Have Gmail Accounts. It's Like We Want to Get Fired.

34: 867-5309

35: Hasta La Vista, Knight

36: Roses are Red, Violets are Assholes

37: What a Difference a Year Makes

38: Sex on the Beach

39: Adieu

40: Haiku of Shame

41: What's Your Beef with Breakfast, Ken?

42: Take a Picture. It'll Last Longer.

43: You Can't Always Get What You Want

44: Blue Balls

Epilogue

Skin: Chapter 1

Acknowledgments

Discover More

About the Author

Books by BB Easton

I was going to dedicate this book to my husband, but seeing as how he doesn't know and must never, ever find out that it exists, I decided to dedicate it to you, my dear sweet reader, instead.

44 Chapters About 4 Men is based on true events that have been embellished, approximated, and exaggerated for the sake of humor and/or due to the author's tendency to write while drunk and deprived of sleep. All names, places, and identifying characteristics have been altered to protect the identities of everyone involved. Should you decipher the true identity of Ms. Easton or any other character in this book, the author asks that you kindly allow her to fulfill a short list of demands in exchange for your silence.

Due to excessive profanity, vulgarity, and graphic sexual content, this book is not intended for—and should probably be completely hidden from—anyone under the age of eighteen.

That's right, folks. If you get nothing else out of this experience at least you can tell all your friends that somebody dedicated a book to you.

And a whole novel, at that. Not just some bullshit novella. No, sir.

It's the least I could do. After all, you are the only reason I decided to publish this embarrassingly personal pile of journal entries, emails, and smut in the first place. It's a terrible decision (in a long line of terrible decisions that you will soon read all about), but I'm doing it for you.

You see, I'm a school psychologist, so behavior modification is kind of my thing. Want to get your kid to stop acting like an asshole? I'm your girl. Want to figure out if little Johnny has an autism spectrum disorder or is just really, really into Minecraft? Let me at him. But want to know how to get your cold, distant, communication-averse partner to show you more affection? Um…

Fuck if I knew. In 2013 my marriage felt more like ottoman and owner than man and wife, and it was only getting worse. Until the day that changed everything—the day Kenneth Easton started reading my journal.

From there I stumbled upon a breakthrough psychological technique so simple, so stupid, so perfect, that it transformed my introverted, number-crunching husband into a smoldering sex-panther over the course of a few months. I was so excited that I gathered up all my notes and lashed them together under the cover of night. I wanted to rain copies of this Frankenbook down, from sea to shining sea, on every poor sap slogging it out in a monotonous, long-term relationship. "There is hope!" I would cackle into the darkness as I flung copies from my stolen crop duster. "You don't have to settle for boring bullshit!"

But, rather than learn to pilot a single engine aircraft to share my little discovery, I'm going to do the next best thing. I'm going to PUBLISH IT.

Sure, I could get fired, served with divorce papers, and/or assigned to mandatory parenting classes by the Department of Family and Child Services (which will be pretty hard to attend once my car gets repossessed) if anyone I know reads this thing, but my motto has always been, "Consequences shmonsequences." (Which explains most of the events in this book.)

Hopefully something you read here will help you breathe a little life into your own comatose partner. Hopefully you'll get a much needed break from your own life to laugh at mine for a while. But all that failing, at least you can tell your friends that BB Easton dedicated her memoir to you…which will be cool for approximately one-point-five seconds until your friends ask, "BB who?"

(Webster's, give me a call if you see anything you like.)

Abraised (adjective)—a word that should exist but doesn't; the raw, painful quality of skin after an abrasion.

Badassery (noun)—the behavior of one who is a badass—intimidating, rebellious, defiant.

Bonerversary (noun)—the yearly recurrence of the date that one's male partner, who usually lies motionless for the duration of all sexual activities like a disinterested invertebrate, made love to him or her. Commemoration might or might not involve a moment of silence.

Cush (adj.)—abbreviated form of cushy; easy and profitable.

Deceaston (adj.)—combination of the words deceased and in. Example: "BB Easton is gonna make you deceaston about thirty seconds if you don't get the fuck up off her boyfriend."

Dungeony (adj.)—being, resembling, or suggestive of a dungeon but not in a sexy BDSM way.

Emorection (noun)—a penis that has become erect due to an emotional rather than a physical or visual stimulus.

Fanfuckingtastic (adj.)—the way the words fucking fantastic sound when uttered by someone who's had an over-poured glass of pinot grigio.

Favoritest (adj.)—a dumb way to say most favorite.

Floaty (adj.)—1. buoyant, elevated, airy. 2. carefree, content, relaxed.

Frankenbook (noun)—a random pile of journal entries, emails, photos, dirty poems, and pornographic short stories that some asshole threw together and tried to pass off as a book.

Frenemies (noun)—Friends? Enemies? Depends on the day and the amount of liquor involved.

Gargamelian (adj.)—of or pertaining to Gargamel, villain and nemesis of the Smurfs.

Husboner (noun)—a married man who should be sick and tired of his wife's stretched out, floppy old vagina but instead behaves like an insatiable sex machine who just snorted an eight ball of coke.

Husbot (noun)—a married man who behaves more like a robot than a human being. This cyborg is typically obedient, task-oriented, introverted, rigid in his adherence to rules and routines, sexually inhibited, and averse to fun.

Judgy (adj.)—1. tending to make moral judgments based on one's own personal beliefs and experiences. 2. most females native to the southeastern United States.

Ladyfriend (noun)—a female friend whom you do not wish to refer to as your girlfriend because you are culturally sensitive enough to know that African American women hate it when Caucasian women call them girlfriend.

Lickable/Flickable (adj.)—self-explanatory.

Manfriend (noun)—a male lover who is both of adult age and considerably older than his beau, causing the term boyfriend to seem silly and inappropriate, much like the relationship itself.

Meanius (noun)—1. a monster-genius hybrid. 2. a mean genius. 3. Insert picture of Dr. Sara Snow here.

Sausagefest (noun)—a social gathering consisting primarily of people with penises.

Shivved (verb)—to stab or be stabbed with a makeshift blade, referred to in prison as a shiv.

Skeezy (adj.)—a sleazy person with less than honorable intentions.

Snarf (verb and proper noun)—1. to swallow or gobble up ravenously and with zero respect for table manners. 2. the name of Lion-O's slightly annoying catlike pet on ThunderCats.

Stabby (adj.)—1. full of sharp points or stabbing sensations. 2. a word coined by and stolen from comedic goddess Jenny Lawson.

Stalkee (noun)—the person with whom a stalker is obsessed. Duh.

Tuberculosed (adj.)—the state of being afflicted with tuberculosis.

Underworldly (adj.)—of or pertaining to hell.

Unshitty (adj.)—not shitty; not necessarily nice but not shitty either.

Vagrantism (noun)—1. the state or condition of being a vagrant. 2. one who wanders about idly without a permanent home or employment yet manages to afford leather pants and partially completed tattoos.

Vandalous (adj.)—of or pertaining to vandalism; basically, just a way better, sexier version of the word vandalic.

Vulneraboner (noun)—see Emorection.

The Husbot

BB's Secret Journal

August 16

Dear Journal,

This motherfucker is killing me.

Fresh out of the shower. He's so close I can smell the Irish Spring on his skin. His hair's all damp and sexy, and his beard scruff is at that perfect length—just long enough to be soft to the touch, but not so long that it hides his perfect chiseled features. And the way his undershirt clings to his biceps and stretches across the hard planes of his chest…I could look at him all night. Actually, I have been—through the corner of my eye. But that's not enough.

I want to touch him.

In the half hour since he plopped down next to me and flipped on the Braves game I've thought of a thousand and one ways to reach over and caress this man. I could lace my fingers through his, or run my knuckles along his rough, square jaw. Maybe I could be playful and walk my mint-green nails up his sculpted abs, then, once I have his attention, I could straddle his damp, clean, hard body and thrust those same fingertips into his wet hair.

But I don't do shit, because I know all it will get me is a sideways glance and a shift in the opposite direction.

My husband is a rock. Not as in, He's so strong and supportive. I don't know what I'd do without him. But more like, He's so fucking cold I wonder if he still has a pulse. Ken has never even held my hand, Journal. Not on purpose, anyway. He has had his hand held by me, while unconscious, but whenever I've tried that move during waking hours, Ken has politely endured the discomfort of human contact for…oh, say, five and a half seconds before smoothly removing his soft, limp flesh from my grasp.

Sex is pretty much the same story. Ever the gentleman, Ken will lie on his back and allow me to have my way with him while he quietly engages in minimal and obligatory petting. (Even when I tried to be fun and reenact the ice cream scene from Fifty Shades Darker. In his defense, I do have to play the part of Christian because Ken obviously doesn't know his lines. And I admit, the white noise of a baby monitor isn't exactly Al Green. And for some reason we never seem to have vanilla ice cream, like in the book. We only have Cherry Garcia, which is pretty awkward to lick off, what with all the chewing required. But still. A little participation would be appreciated.)

Regardless of the level of theatrics involved, afterward I always kiss and cuddle Ken's lean, beautiful, body, trying to squeeze a single degree of warmth from the man-shaped boulder that is my husband. All the while, I can almost hear him counting to himself—one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand—before he taps me on the ass. My cue to get the fuck off of him.

At least, that's how it seems.

Ken's problem isn't his coldness—his complete lack of need, want, or capacity for intimacy. Those attributes actually keep our marriage quite stable and drama-free. That, and the fact that the man never does anything wrong.

Kenneth Easton is a lawn-mowing, bill-paying, law-abiding, defensive-driving, trash-toting husbot—a cyborg built specifically to withstand seventy to eighty years of gale-force matrimony. I've never caught him looking at another woman. Hell, I've never even caught him in a lie.

No, the problem with Ken is that he's married to me.

Before meeting Ken, Journal, I'd been contorted into at least seventy-three percent of the positions in the Kama Sutra. I'd shaved most of my head and had all my lady bits pierced before I was old enough to see an R-rated movie. I spent my free time being handcuffed to things by boys with more combined tattoos than a Guns N' Roses reunion concert. Ken simply can't compete.

So, why, you might be wondering, did a slutty little punk like me go and marry someone so straight-laced?

It was because of them. Because of the way my adrenaline spikes and my pupils dilate in a fight-or-flight-or-fuck response every time I smell the sickly sweet musk of Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men. Because of the way a pierced bottom lip makes me want to take up smoking again. Because of the way a full sleeve of tattoos makes me want to hitch a ride on a tour bus and leave everything I worked so hard to achieve in a gutter at the side of the road. Because my nerves were fucking shot by the time I met Ken, my heart was riding in on fumes, and the stability and security and sanity he offered was a soothing balm to my spent scorched soul.

Those inked-up men-children from my past might have been ferocious lovers, but they couldn't keep their dicks in their pants, their asses out of jail, or a positive balance in their bank accounts to save their lives. Ken, on the other hand, was just so…safe and responsible, so easy. He wore Nikes and Gap T-shirts. He owned his own home. He jogged. His criminal record was as ink-free as his freckled skin. And, to top it all off, he had a degree in…wait for it…accounting.

I might have overcorrected a bit.

Don't get me wrong. I love the shit out of Kenneth Easton. He is my best friend, the father of my children, and we are actually ridiculously happy together. Or, at least, I'm happy. I am. Really. You can be bored to tears and happy at the same time, right? They call those happy tears. Happy, bored, oh-so bored, tears. Ken is pretty anhedonic and deadpan, so it's hard to tell how he's feeling. I choose to think of him as happy, too. But let's be honest. Ken may not really have feelings.

What he does have is a Captain America–style square jaw with a subtle cleft and a permanent five o'clock shadow. And enviably high cheekbones. And aqua eyes hooded with espresso-colored lashes, and sandy-brown hair that is just long enough on top to do this cute little flip thing in front. His physique is lean and muscular. His sense of humor is dry. He is brilliant, self-deprecating, and tolerant of my bullshit.

The man is at least ninety percent perfect for me, but lately, all I can think about is the less-than-or-equal-to ten percent that's missing: passion and body art. Two things I need to mourn and move on from in order to protect my lovely, monotonous marriage.

But I can't.

Tattooed bad boys are like a drug I can't quit. I devour antihero romance novels like they're an essential food group. My iPhone runneth over with the songs of a thousand breathy, angsty, tattooed alt-rockers, ready to fill my head at the press of a button whenever I need to escape. My DVR is brimming with mysterious vampires, renegade bikers, hedonistic rock stars, and zombie apocalypse survivors—alpha males into whose ink-covered arms I can run whenever things around here get a little too…domestic.

And do you know what I realized during my escapes to these imaginary dystopian societies and fictional underground fight rings? I know these men. I dated these men—the super intense skinhead turned US Marine turned motorcycle club outlaw, the ex-convict/underground hot-rod racer with the devil-may-care attitude, the sensitive guy liner–sporting heavy metal bassist…

I had them all, Journal. How did I not see the parallels between my fantasy men and my ex-boyfriends before? And I call myself a psychologist!

In fact, Knight, my high school boyfriend, is probably the reason I became a psychologist in the first place. Fucking psycho. I'll tell you about him tomorrow. Ken's going to bed, which means I only have about a five-minute window to get in there and pounce on him before The History Channel lulls him to sleep. Wish me luck!

Skeletor

BB's Secret Journal

August 17

Knight, Knight, Knight. Where do I even begin, Journal? Being Knight's girlfriend was a lot like being a kidnapping victim with Stockholm syndrome. I had no say in the matter—Knight decided I was his, and nobody said no to Knight. But over time, my fear of him morphed into friendship, and I actually grew to love my captor, psychopathic tendencies and all.

Knight was a skinhead. Correction: Knight was the skinhead—the only one in our sprawling suburban Atlanta tri-county area, to be exact. He was so incredibly angry that none of the other angry-white-male subculture groups at Peach State High School would do. The jocks were a little too gregarious. The punks, although sufficiently violent and vandalous, had a bit too much fun. The goth kids were just pussies. No, Knight's rage was so consuming that he had to choose the one subgroup whose image screamed, I will fucking curb-stomp you and then rip off your arm and beat you with it if you so much as breathe the same air as me. Knight was so successful in his mission to intimidate that he remained a subgroup of one throughout high school.