The Mother Road (18 page)

In order, Paul answers cactus, my dad answers porcupine, claiming his beard would cushion the blow, and Porter answers cactus as he rubs his armpit.

“I’m impressed, boys. Give me the bag, Paul. My nails are dry.” Normally, the person who asks the question blesses the people who answered with a Funyun; it’s my favorite part because I try to shove the Funyun in Paul’s mouth as hard as possible.

He suspiciously hands over the bag. “Be nice.”

I will at first, I think, as I gently place a Funyun in his mouth and my dad’s. When I get to Porter, I nervously grab a ring and put it on his out-stretched tongue, trying not to drool from the ways his eyes smolder up at me.

“My turn.” Paul rips the bag from me. “Would you Funyun have a head the size of a tennis ball or a head the size of an exercise ball?”

From the front of Tacy, we can hear my dad chuckling to himself. “Tennis ball, at least I would be in good company with Beetlejuice with the shrunken head.”

“Tennis ball,” Porter answers next with a laugh.

“Tennis ball,” I agree with my dad and Porter. “I think my neck would get tired from having a big head.”

“So does that mean your neck is tired now?” Paul asks with a smirk.

“You’re stupid,” I respond. Not my best comeback, but it does the job.

The Funyuns are passed around.

My dad clears his throat and picks me to be his Funyun tosser as he drives. “Would you Funyun crap your pants in public once a year for the rest of your life or crap yourself in private every day for the rest of your life.”

I roll my eyes. “Always with the shitting questions, come on, Dad.”

“They’re my go to. So, who’s shitting in public?” We all groan and answer, Paul wanting to shit in private, Porter and I opting for a one time public occurrence, not wanting to clean our shit pants every day.

“Porter, my boy, you’re up,” my dad calls out.

Nervously, Porter adjusts his cap on his head and grabs the bag of Funyuns. He looks around and asks, “Would you Funyun have sex with Carrot Top or Weird Al?”

“Ugh, gross,” I complain, while Porter waves the bag in front of my face.

Before I can answer, Paul says, “Weird Al for sure.”

Could he have answered faster? Porter lifts his eyebrow at his friend and then shakes his head and chuckles. His laugh vibrates through my body, warming me from the inside out and practically driving my hips toward his leg so I can hump the hell out of him. Thankfully, I have some self-control.

Unfortunately, I answer Weird Al as well, and so does my dad. For some reason, he seems like the lesser of the two curly headed evils. My dad claims a fire crotch would distract him too much to get things done quickly, the whole picture he paints in my head is too offensive to repeat, so I will spare you.

Porter gives my dad a Funyun first, then Paul, and then stops at me. He kneels down so he’s at my eye level and winks at me before saying in a seductively sexy voice, “Open up, Marbles.”

I swear to you, my tongue quivers as it sneaks out of my mouth, waiting for the Funyun to be placed on it. I’m not sure if it’s my onion addiction or the anticipation of Porter’s hand being so close to my mouth. Weird thought, I know, hands in the mouth are not my kinky fixation or anything like that…it’s just that being so close to him makes my body want to rev up like the Tasmanian Devil and spiral out of control all over Tacy, preferably accidently hitting Paul in the balls in the process.

Gently, he places the Funyun in my mouth and then quickly gets up just so he can wave the bag of Funyuns in my face.

Grabbing the bag and completely shocked out of the intimate moment, I ask, “Would you Funyun have your fingers be knives or your penis be a knife?”

In unison, the boys all say fingers without even giving it a second thought. It’s a can of corn kind of question, way too easy, because honestly, I’m still thinking about the way Porter’s body felt so close to mine and the way he winked at me while his finger ever so slightly caressed my tongue…

“Marley! Funyun!” Paul shouts, pointing at his wide open pie hole and startling the me out of my Porter induced thoughts.

Reluctantly, I place one on Paul’s tongue, hand one to my dad, and then turn to Porter, who is relaxed in his chair, his sleeves rolled up, his leg spread a bit and his hands resting in his lap. He looks casual, provocative but also…cuddly. I want to bury my nose in his chest and rub my face along his clavicle, reveling in the feel of the bone that connects his beefy arms to his body. I want to worship that bone in all kinds of freaky ways.

“You going to give me a Funyun or are you just going to stare at me and drool?” The smirk on his face erases all the sexual thoughts I was just having of him, replacing them with the urge to pinch his nut sac with a pair of tweezers.

I shove the Funyun in his mouth while he laughs. I sit back down in my seat, irritated with being called out—I was not drooling.

We play a few more rounds, the bag of Funyuns dwindling quickly and finding things out about each other that no one should ever know, like my dad wanting to give a lap dance rather than receiving one from Adolf Hitler. Or how Paul would rather lick Justin Bieber’s balls for an hour than take a finger in the ass. Or how Porter would rather have sex with Megan Fox, despite the fact that we gave her a penis and a set of hairy balls, than have sex with Betsy Garble from middle school—she had a mustache, a nose mole, and a scary set of braces, all at the ripe age of twelve, poor girl.

We pull up to Midpoint Café in Adrian, Texas, the halfway mark on Route 66, and my dad parks Tacy. We turn to Porter, who has the last question to ask. He has a huge grin on his face, as if he’s going to stump us all. I have no doubt in my mind he won’t. There is nothing I won’t answer, and clearly, Paul has no shame after claiming to the world that he could picture the Biebs having a nice sac to lick.

“For all the money,” Porter tosses the bag back and forth in his hands, a bit of an arrogant swagger radiating off of him. “Would you Funyun…” he pauses for dramatic effect. If I wasn’t so hyped up on artificial flavoring, I would yell at him to get the hell on with it, but the anticipation adds to the intensity of the game. I can feel my mouth watering, waiting to be rewarded with a tasty treat for answering a question. I’ve never channeled a dog so much in my life as I am right now. If I could, I would start cleaning my crotch with my tongue, making everyone uncomfortable with my loud slurping noises, you know that dog junk juice slurp I’m talking about, every dog makes the sound.

“Get on with it!” Paul says impatiently, bouncing his leg up and down.

Porter repeats himself, “Would you Funyun have sex with your sibling, but no one knows about it, or let people believe you had sex with your sibling when you really didn’t?”

The RV falls silent, bile raises up my throat as I look over at Paul; the taste of onion is no longer appetizing to me. I’m about to tell Porter he’s disgusting when Paul interrupts me. “I want people to know.” He then opens his mouth, pointing to it, showing zero remorse or humiliation for answering the question.

My dad taps out, leaving the car, while I sit there and stare at the Funyun bag, then I consider the question.

Nope, bile rises again. I’m out.

“You win,” I say, throwing my hands up in the air and heading out to the midpoint mark in the road with my Polaroid. Porter dumps the rest of the bag in his mouth in victory. Normally, such a loss would be devastating to me, but the thought of getting even close enough to Paul for that question to be true causes my nipples to split in half and disintegrate on the spot. I would take a loss over answering that question any day.

Sidling up next to my dad, I put my arm around him and say, “Half way point. Take a selfie with me?”

“You sure you want your old man in the photo? You don’t want one of yourself laying down on the halfway point?”

“No, I want one with you laying down with me.”

“It will take me about a day to get up and down from the ground.”

“Stop complaining and get down here.” I pull on my dad’s arm and get him settled, just as Porter walks up to us.

“Want me to take the picture for you?”

“That would be great.”

I hand him the camera, ignoring the chill that runs up my arm when his hand grazes mine. He watches us get settled into position and I can see a look of contentment on his face as he takes the picture.

“Say cheese!” my dad calls out, like always.

**PORTER**

After we had lunch at the Midpoint Café and took some pictures in the iconic restaurant with the old Route 66 souvenirs, we got back on the road. Paul was feeling nauseous from all the Funyuns and then lunch on top of that, so he decided to take a nap in the back on their dad’s bed. Bernie turned on the Beatles and started rocking out, using his fingers as drumsticks and the steering wheel as his drums while performing the perfect white man’s overbite. His Paul McCartney-like singing brought the whole performance full circle. My favorite is when he sings in a British accent, hitting the high notes like a man trying to get his balls to recede from his intestines. The Bernie Man makes good music, that’s for damn sure.

Then there’s Marley. She finished up her nails, applying the decals that she kept announcing to herself how easy they were to use. I’m not going to lie, the last half hour I’ve watched her little tongue stick out of her mouth, being an act of concentration for her. It was charmingly delightful.      I’m not stupid; I see the way she looks at me, the way her body reacts to mine. It’s obvious there is a sexual tension between us that neither of us can deny, but will I act on it? No. She’s Paul’s sister, she’s Marley, the girl who will always be out of my reach. She’s too good for me, she’s going places and I know if I give into temptation, I will just hold her back. I would never want to hold her back. She’s worked incredibly hard to get her blog recognized by beauty retailers and companies to the point where they pay for advertising on her website and send her things to test and write about. She’s doing very well for herself; I don’t want to disturb that. Being her friend will do; at least as a friend, she will still be in my life.

Being on this road trip with the McMann Clan has been a blessing. I’ve felt lost lately, not sure where my life is going to lead me with the new venture I’m embarking on, one that only Bernie and Paul know of, and being on this trip just reminds me that if I fail, I at least have a family to rely on to pick me back up.

Casually, I look at my phone to see if I received any emails from the investors I met up with in California.

Have you ever waited to hear from someone about news that could make or break your future plans? You know that piercing feeling that rumbles through your gut, twisting and turning your intestines until you’re crapping out a brown fortress of shit for a small gaggle of toilet dwellers? Yeah, I’ve been living with that feeling ever since I left California. The only ease I’ve had from the constant ache has been when Marley glances at me, lightly touches me by accident, or looks at me with those soulful blue eyes of hers.

I would like to say Paul has the same effect on me, but our bro-mance doesn’t dive that deep, despite how Paul might feel.

I haven’t strived for much in my life, I’ve settled for what’s been handed to me not because I wanted to but because it was the right thing to do, so this is the first time I’ve put my soul on the line. The anticipation of hearing what my future holds is unnerving, sickening at times and straight up scary. I would never say that to anyone, especially Marley because she’s the bravest person I know, taking a chance on her future and grabbing it by the horns, owning her decisions and making something of herself. Compared to Marley, I’m a coward, a lonesome farm boy with one chance to make something of himself. I just pray I can pull it off.

Our next stop is the Cadillac Ranch, my most anticipated Route 66 attraction. Paul gave us the run down earlier about the ranch, which technically isn’t what it sounds like. It’s an open art space in Amarillo, Texas, in the middle of a “ranch,” where two architects back in the day took variations of the Cadillac and submerged them underground, leaving their tail ends sticking up in the air. Tourists are allowed to spray paint the cars, adding their own graffiti touch to the art piece. Every once in a while the people who watch over the attraction apply a fresh coat of paint to the cars for tourists to start new again. Bernie bought some spray paint for all of us to use. I’m ready to make my mark on an old tradition.

“Help” by the Beatles echoes through the speakers and I watch as Bernie drums away with his fingers, wondering how in the hell he can drum that hard and not break a bone. His voice rises with the song and he finishes with a high note just as he pulls into a parking space at the Cadillac Ranch.

The space looks like a pasture with metal fencing, the only thing tipping you off to the fact that you won’t find cattle on this ranch are the ten vibrantly colored cars sticking straight up in the air. Without waiting for anyone else, I step out of the RV and stretch my long body. The sky is crystal blue, not a cloud in sight. The sun is beating down on us, but in the September air, it’s not as hot as you think it would be. We are the only ones at the ranch, giving us free range to be idiots and no one will see.

“What a beautiful day,” Marley says, stepping up next to me.

“It is,” I smile down at her gorgeous face. “Are you done with your nails?”

“Yup, all set.” She holds her fingers up for me to see. On the ring finger of each hand is a little hot dog decal on top of white polish. The rest of her nails are red. I’ve never understood the whole different color nail polish on the ring finger, but I’m not going to lie, it’s hot for some reason. Marley was right, those are memorable hands.

“Hey,” Bernie calls out, grabbing our attention. “I’m going to wait in the RV for Paul until he feels a little better; go have some fun.” Bernie tosses both of us cans of spray paint. Mine is blue and Marley’s is pink.