Chapter 1

It was an ordinary overcast day in Pahrump. I arrived in the summer and didn’t think it would ever get cool in Nevada, but it does.

The school bus had just dropped me off on East Street. I was walking with a girl named Katie that I’ve been talking to for the last six weeks. My mom believes in absolute honesty, but I tend to keep things to myself until I can trust people. I trusted Katie.

When she asked about my family, I was reluctant to tell her. She giggled and told me that her mom works at the Chicken ranch and nothing I could say would shock her.

My answer to her was “Wanna bet?”

There are about 40,000 people living in Pahrump, and probably one in six work in the adult entertainment industry. We’ve got three casinos, a gun super store, about a half a dozen legal brothels and twice that many illegal ones, we’ve got liquor stores, pawn stores, bail bonds by the dozens but only one Carl’s Jr. Even Heidi Fleiss (world famous madam to celebrities) has a Macaw sanctuary in Pahrump.

Pahrump’s big claim to fame is Chicken Ranch 24 hour brothel. We’ve got tons more of them. Pahrump sits just on the California and Nevada state lines about 60 miles from Vegas.

“Hey Lilith, I dare you to let me punch you in the butt?” my annoying little brother Allan ran up behind us and blurted it out with a big dopey grin on his face.

I am 17 and the oldest of four kids in my family. I currently dye my hair sea-green with blue highlights, love to wear black and dress Goth. I almost always wear a faux-leather dog collar I’ve worn since before I was Allan’s age. Allan’s tall for 14 but he has a few inches to go before he catches up to me, and sometimes when I look in the mirror, I even scare myself.

Eight months ago I would have decked him for daring to talk to me that way. Scratch that, I don’t think Allan would have had the balls to talk to me like that, so it is a moot point.

“On the LEFT cheek only,” I sighed. I stopped walking and pulled my tight black spandex leggings down far enough that I was mooning my entire ass in broad daylight to my trailer park. There are only about thirty trailers in my park and most people there have probably already seen my lily-white ass once or twice anyway.

It can still be pretty embarrassing to stand right out in front of the Bounty Hunter Saloon with my leggings pulled down as I waited for my brother to punch me. Katie stood there in shock as she watched my little brother wind up and plant a bare-knuckle punch right on my kisser.

“Ow!! You still don’t punch like a girl!” I laughed off his punch (I say that because as a girl I punch WAY harder). He’s actually gotten much better at it since he started. I used to not even be able to feel it. This one was going to leave a raised welt. The punch smarted but it wouldn’t bruise. I pulled my leggings up and said “Now, let me do you next,” and made an angry fist.

“Ha-hah, no way! You punch like a girl!!” Allan laughed playfully. He means that as a compliment because my sister and I punch much harder than our brothers.

My sister Megan was walking with my other brother Paul about twenty yards behind us. Megan looks a lot like my mom probably did when she was 16 years old. She’s got the same mischievous blue-green eyes, blonde hair, and sweet face. She likes to look on the bright side of things but don’t let that fool you. Megan has a dark side that comes out every now and then too.

I didn’t know that before we came to Nevada. We used to live in a fancy house in the San Francisco hills up until a little over six months ago. Back then my sister and I were like vinegar and oil. We were constantly bickering and backstabbing each other. That’s all changed.

Hell, everything has changed.

My brother Paul is 15. He and Allan were like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to me. “Wherever Paul goes, Allan is his constant shadow. Wherever Paul goes Allan is sure to follow...” my sister and I used to sing because they were always together.

My brothers (and sister if I am being honest) were constantly annoying, invading my privacy, getting on my nerves, and only the fact that I had pretty much checked out of what was going on around the house saved them when we lived in San Francisco.

Honestly, I couldn’t see my life without them in it now. I am so thankful to be so close to my family now. We get along, we support each other, we help each other, we laugh a lot, and we try to understand each other. That doesn’t mean we don’t have our disagreements but now we actively work to resolve them, and we don’t hold grudges.

It took losing everything in San Francisco to find that out in the sandy deserts of Nevada.

“Wow, you let your little brother punch you in the butt?” Katie laughed.

“I told you that our family is a little bit different than most. It’s not too late to call you an Uber if you’ve had a change of heart.”

“No way, after what you told me about your family, I had to see it for myself to believe it. My brothers are always playing practical jokes or daring me to do dumb stuff too. It’s no big deal. I am just shocked that you’d whip out your ass right in front of a biker bar!”

“The Bounty Hunter Saloon? Trust me, those guys have seen us do way worse. They are a bunch of softies anyway. The wildest thing that happens here is Karaoke,” we continued walking towards my trailer.

It’s a simple yellow trailer, very plain on the outside. We have a fence, but it’s so rusted that it doesn’t keep anything out. The yard has more rocks, scorpions, sand, and bits of broken glass than it ever had grass. We’ve got a picnic table and a barbecue grill that we use quite a bit. There’s an old broken down shed in the back that still has most of the stuff dad let us take when mom left him.

We packed up everything we could in a cargo van. Dad gave her a few hundred bucks and promised to ship the rest of our stuff when we got settled. He told her to go to Pahrump. I guess because he thought she was a whore, and they had an open marriage for as long as I can remember.

I guess by open, I mean she had permission to take as many lovers as she wanted, and my dad went along with it as long as she fucked his friends. He’s a high-powered attorney and a total asshole but let’s not waste too much time talking about him.

My mom is definitely cut from a different cloth than most moms. She believes in absolute honesty, and she hates to offend anyone -even people who desperately deserve to be offended. She was always running around the house naked when I was growing up. She didn’t have any taboos about talking about the body, and she had an open question policy – we could ask her anything.

She promised us that we may not like the answer that she gives – because the truth is sometimes much harder than an easy lie. My mom wasn’t all lectures and truths though. She was also a lot of fun, and she loves life. She sees life as a grand adventure, and she loves laughter.

I don’t know how it began, but one day we started daring my mom to do silly stuff. She’d giggle and dance around like a chicken, shaking her big fake tits for us or perform some naked jumping jacks. She knew her tits and ass were bouncing up and down. That’s what made it so funny.

Dad always tolerated my mom performing naughty little dares we gave her around the house. Just like he tolerated my mother taking dozens of lovers over the years. He also had no problem bringing his friends over to bang my mom. My parents made no secret what was going on, but they never fucked anyone in FRONT of us.

I got to know a lot of the regular guys. It was mostly guys but some couples. It’s San Francisco, so there are a lot of broad-minded people with a different way of looking at things.

As I grew into a teenager many of them hit on me. I was full of piss and vinegar, and I enjoyed shooting them down and laughing at them for hitting on a high school girl.

I stopped giving my mom silly dares and kind of checked out of things around the house. I was going through an existential goth loner phase. I hated myself, and I wanted to hate everything, and I questioned everything but cared about nothing. You know – typical 15 year old Panic at the Disco scene kid angst.

My brothers and little sister Megan still gave her dares. Megan was always the nice and sweet one. Her dares for my mom were almost always things that would involve dancing or hanging out in the yard or at the beach.

My little brother’s dares were the kind that you might expect from two horny teenage boys just entering puberty. They would dare her to pick her nose or do the splits in the nude. My mom is incredibly limber. Those evolved into sticking her finger in her butt or pulling on her nipples until they got hard.

I know that probably sounds shocking, but if you knew my mom you would understand. She exudes a kind of sexual energy that makes her incredibly hard nipples seem funnier than it did sexual -at least to us. She would say “It’s perfectly natural for nipples to get hard. If you pull on your own, they will get hard too. It’s totally normal to be curious about how women’s bodies work.”

My brothers loved daring my mom to do silly things more than my sister, and I ever did. She got a kick out of doing it for them. She used to say that performing a dare is like an opportunity to grant someone else’s wish. She loved to perform dares, and she had all these rules about not repeating the same dare twice, but she seldom if ever gave us dares.

She loved to give, and receiving made her feel guilty. Mom said she was a selfish giver – because she found it difficult to enjoy a gift when she could be made to feel so much happier by giving, and most of all she loved to give herself.

I know that sounds mushy, and at the time I used to dread it when she told me things like that. I was constantly rolling my eyes and looking at her like she was a walking Hallmark card with big fake tits.

I grew more and more insulated and dark. One day a boy called me “Lily Munster” because I was going to school in full vampire regalia. I think I was trying to scare people away from trying to get close to me.

I still seem dark, but once you get to know me, I open up a lot more.

“So, after this are you going to invite me to your house?” I asked Katie as we entered my front gate.

“Your family sounds fun. I don’t think you’d think my family is fun. My dad is in prison for gouging a guys eyes out. His brother is living with my mom now, and the two of them are usually high or drunk. I guess in a way, my brothers and I are a little like you. My mom lets us do whatever we want to!”

“I am sorry to hear that Katie,” I genuinely was.

I didn’t think we had all that much drama and bickering when we lived in San Francisco. I assumed all families had arguments, dysfunctions, and disagreements, and held vindictive grudges for six months because that was just how it was at my home (maybe it was just me with the long grudges).

My mom hates confrontation and misunderstandings, but she tolerated us and always tried to keep the peace around the house. She didn’t yell or punish us though. My dad didn’t care all that much as long as the chaos was relatively controlled, and he could maintain a certain image to his friends and clients.

“I do want to clarify that while my mom would ALLOW us to make the choice to do anything we want, she expects we’ll make the right one. We can’t just go off on a three-day whisky bender at Vince Neil’s Tatuado and start stealing cars.”

My mom made a bargain with us about three weeks before she left my father. It’s evolved a little since then, but basically, it was an agreement between all four of us and my mother. We had to support and seek to understand each other, get along and try to help each other grow. I know it sounds corny, but that was rule number one and always has been. When I first agreed to it, I thought it would fall apart after 15 minutes, and it might have if it wasn’t for all the other things that were included in that bargain.

My mom included a common-sense rule. She trusted us on the honor system to eat when we were hungry, clean up after ourselves, sleep when we are tired, be on time and do what we needed to do in school. She even let my sister and I take her car without asking as long as we made sure it was available for groceries and scheduled appointments. My brothers couldn’t drive, but the plan was all four of us would share it.

My mom had a brand new Lexus back then. Dad took everything in the divorce. My mom didn’t contest any of it. We have managed to pick up a rusty old car, but it runs and gets groceries, and that’s all that matters.

I could have driven it to school, but I chose to leave it at home in case my mom needed it today. I used to be incredibly selfish, and the worst part was that I didn’t even realize it because I assumed everyone else was. My mom was the exception and I thought she was a dumb ass because she trusted too easily, and she forgave without a second thought.

I still remember when it first dawned on me that I was the one who was wet behind the ears, and my mom might be on to something.

It was one of the first days of summer vacation about six months ago. My mom took us to the beach. My dad was working, and he generally avoided going to the beach anyway. My brothers dared her to wear an incredibly skimpy microkini. My mom has a great body, but she still gets embarrassed in public.

She doesn’t mind perverts looking at her at all. In fact, I’d say she secretly loves that. Her greatest embarrassment comes when she offends or disrupt someone’s day that was not expecting to see her nipples sliding out, or doing something naughty in public.

She wanted to go to a more private part of the beach, but just to frustrate and annoy her, I asked to go to the main part of Baker beach where most people were. She accommodated me because that is kind of her thing. She likes to make people happy.

I hadn’t given my mom any dares in years. That day I felt like doing it on a lark. I think my mom thought of it as an opportunity to engage me and she was totally up for it. She almost never refuses a dare.

We buried my mom in the sand butt-up, tickled her, teased her, and I even planted an ice cream cone on her head. It was a lot of fun and mom really didn’t mind. I know it sounds mean, but she prefers we tease her instead of each other.

I still remember when we first arrived. My little brother Allan left his sandals at home and his feet were burning on the asphalt. It was really hot that day. I was laughing at his dumb ass and thought that would teach him a lesson. Just to give you some idea of how cool my mom is, she let him dare her to give him her sandals and burned her own feet.