Port Manteau
Nathaniel was the one who said I should go to Port Manteau.
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking of the quiet comfort of my apartment, a backlog of podcasts, and a stack of DVDs so faithful and familiar that I considered them friends. “I think I’d rather use my time off for a staycation.”
“The last time you did that, you ended up checking emails every day,” he said. “Don’t be a workaholic. Get out of the city, unplug, and really chillax.”
In the end, I listened to him.
The rest of the workday stretched on as Mr. Felixander led a webinar on “synergistic glocalization in corporate advertising.” I tried to pay a modicum of attention while perusing my phone for whatever internet listicles the algorithm deemed fit for my consumption.
As I had done many times since Nathaniel’s suggestion, I tried to find Port Manteau on my geolocation app. Once more, the widget failed me. During a short break, I asked about this.
“Just up the coast. You’ll know when you see it,” he said with a wink, ignoring my pleas for a guesstimate of distance or time. Despite my annoyance with his enigmatic posturing, my excitement grew with each passing moment. I grew more distracted musing on the mystery of my impending adventure.
Finally, I could wait no longer. Excusing myself from Mr. Felixander’s interminable webinar, I ducked into a restroom stall to change into an athleisure getup more suitable for a seaside drive.
I hurried out of the office, passing the mechatronics firm that neighbored my place of work. Glancing through their smudged, floor-to-ceiling glass doors, I saw two engineers working on what looked to be the arm of a cyborg. I could swear it waved to me as I walked by.
Reaching the parking garage, I leapt into my pudgy hybrid and fired up its feeble engine. Free from the post-work commuter traffic that clung to the roads like permafrost, I was out of the city in record time.
I zipped along the coastal road, carving a path along the edge of moss-laden sandstone and shale. Turning up the radio, I sang along (poorly) to Disco-Pop fusion as the alphanumeric signs stationed every quarter mile or so whipped by. My heart leapt as I ventured into the unknown—I was Lieutenant Dunbar, riding onward to the edge of the known world astride my faithful steed. Though my ride couldn’t compare to Cisco.
A gleaming blurple convertible rumbled past, in which sat an eminently pleased Labradoodle, her curls waggling in the wind. Maybe she was headed to Port Manteau, too.
Once I finally cleared the metropolitan smog, I stopped for a frappé at a roadside café and watched the trimarans cut white lines across the surf. I resisted the temptations of the café’s cronuts and banoffee pie, intending to save my appetite for when I reached Port Manteau. I received a text from Nathaniel, asking how I was enjoying my trip so far. Sending back the requisite emoticons, I continued my journey.
I passed strip malls and cineplexes, sports bars and exercycle shops. As I ventured on, advertisements screamed for my attention in a blur of sight and sound:
“MOW LIKE A MAN. Get the ALL-NEW One-Hundred Fifty Horsepower Briggins & Splatt All-in-One Zero-Turn Turfeater!”
“Quench your thirst with an ice-cold Mangorita!”
“This movie’s a force of nature…actually, it’s two—HURRIQUAKE, in theaters and streaming now!”
The miles dragged on. Still, no Port Manteau. I cursed Nathaniel for his ill-defined directions but endeavored to persevere. Lone Watie would’ve been proud, I thought.
Hoping to curb my hangriness, I sought out a cheeseburger but settled for a so-so quesarito and a mangorita at a provincial Cal-Mex dive. I sighed as the sun fell below the glistening seascape—Port Manteau would have to wait another day.
I checked into a place called the Mellow Mariner Motel, which had a surfboard-riding cartoon dolphin on its sign. Impossibly, one of the dolphin’s fins approximated a human hand, with thumb and pinky extended. “Have a fantabulous evening,” said the sandy-haired office attendant. “Please rate us five shakas!”
Turning on my room’s TV, I flipped through infomercials, docudramas, biopics, mockumentaries, an edutainment channel, and even a field hockey telecast in search of a decent Western.
When I fell asleep, I dreamed of the wonders of Port Manteau: seawater swirled and foamed on a glittering shoreline. Stretching spires of igneous rock huggled a radiant town full of white stone walls and terracotta tops. The sounds of surfadelic rock-pop sauntered, ever-present, through the cobblebrick streets.
I woke with my hopes renewed. But after another fruitless day on the winding, sunbaked road, I was dumbfounded. Had I missed Port Manteau? I had nearly driven the length of the coast, so where was my bastion of chillaxation?
At night, I checked into another crummy motel in another waterfront town. This one had a porpoise with a Panama hat on its sign. The sweaty, balding man who gave me my keycard told me to “have a funtastic night.” I had to stop myself from leaping over the desk and strangling him.
You don’t have a funtastic night at some beat up motor inn with hollow doors and flickering lights plastered in yellow cellophane. Funtastic (and fantabulous, for that matter) should be reserved for the blissful beaches of Port Manteau, where jegging-clad men and women cosplay as sea sprites, twirling in the light of a sand-set bonfire, their armlets and anklets jangling to the rhythm of ocean drums.
I slept poorly and woke up late.
I acquiesced to brunch, stabbing at my scromlette with the stunted tines of a cheap, plastic spork. Someone left a newspaper (they still print those?) on my table, so I read the contentious advertorials to distract myself from the growing fear telling me that I would never reach my destination. Two musclebound men sat nearby, wearing backwards ballcaps and once-sleeved shirts, their bromantic conversation running the gamut from professional baseball to existential metaphysics.
My head started to hurt. The fear of missing Port Manteau escalated into an electric panic that not even the best avocado-lemon froyo I have ever tasted could quell. I began to worry that, somehow, I had entered a Mephistophelian metaverse ruled by a black-hearted systems administrator—with zeros and ones, he stretched the distance between me and my goal, cluttering my path with endless distractions. In my mind’s eye, the sysadmin has Nathaniel’s face. He screenshots my torment and sets it as his new wallpaper.
Perhaps I should abandon my quest. Turn my back on Port Manteau—to never set foot on its enchanted shores, save in my dreams.
No! I will not be bested. “Rome remained great as long as she had frenemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism!” I shouted, casting aside an aluminum patio table which clattered along the paving stones.
Patrons and passersby alike stared at me, sheeple willingly shepherded. The sleeveless foolosophers, now silenced, fixed me with sidelong glances. They don’t know my resolve. I would travel to the ends of the earth if that were what it would take to reach Port Manteau. My Valysium.
“Hello there,” said another man, barrel-chested, sporting a crimson motorcycle jacket and angular sunglasses that squeezed his head. He approached me slowly. “Are you alright, friend?”
An agent of the ignorati. An assemblage of programming standing in for its malevolent webmasters. Twenty paces separated us. The sun hung high in the sky. We were two quick draw cowboys. Texas Red and the Arizona Ranger.
I shot first. “This reality is nothing more than an infotainment newscast for zero-turn riding lawnmowers!”
“Uh-huh,” the motorcyclist said, returning fire with blasé precision.
“An autobiografictional fanzine concocted by anthropomorphized cetaceans!”
“I see.”
“The proverbial broast banoffee pie with a cronut on the side!”
“Sure. Why not?”
As the man drew near, I coiled like a rattlesnake, ready to strike. If he would not be wounded by my words, I would have to resort to other means.
That’s when I saw my wild, bedraggled reflection in his tangerust lenses. Eyes bloodshot. Chin scraggly. Clothes crumpled and stained. More Will Munny than Josey Wales.
The curtain was drawn, and the scales fell from my eyes. My fervor wilted.
“How can I help you, friend?” the man said to me, spreading hands swaddled in fingerless gloves.
“Nathaniel was the one who said I should go,” I said, noble fury vanquished by my own wretched visage. “I’m just trying to get to Port Manteau.”
“Portmanteau, huh?” The motorcyclist pondered my words for a moment. Then, he chortled. “I’d say you’re already there.”
Copyright © 2023 by Alan Eckelberry. All rights reserved.