Miss Ashley told her plain Jane poe-dunk friends that I was the man of her dreams, the kind of man she'd marry in a heartbeat if she were the marrying type. A dance with Ashley a the local saloon quickly developed into a striptease, out of the shirt, into the heavy hip gyration and out of the corduroy pants. I caught the pants in midair. That, too, was a first for me. Down to the bikini. I just stood back and grinned, not like a guy whose girlfriend was stripping in front of a whole bar, but like a guy being stripped himself, stripped and sucked off by the prom queen for the whole student body to see. It was fucking heaven. Watching that girl do her thing and knowing she had the hots for me. No matter that I knew damn well nothing would ever go down between us. A kiss. Maybe a little bit more. But the real sex was happening right there on the dance floor. Call me a voyeur. I guess I am.

Me, dancing with a pro stripper with a pro stripper, a girl who can pull down $1000 in a good night and this night is buying me drinks, and her breaking off into a strip with the whole bar howling. To think, we almost left Hulett before the show had even begun.

Stop for a cool-off at some rest stop south of Billings. Duke's been running at 260 degrees F. Scary. Turns out he was dead out of coolant. Tex gives me a shake of the head and that "can't let that happen" thing and I'm like, "Hey! I just checked it this morning!" Hate that.

But heh. That's just Duke doing his thing. He just wants attention like the rest of us. Ha.

Then we're not five miles up the road and there's white smoke billowing out from under the car like Mount St. Helens and we all freak and I jump out and I can hear a fatale tone in my voice as I assess the situation. I've been here before, I think. Mexico, summer of 1991. On my way to the tip of Baja to see the solar eclipse and the Zauber Bus is blowing coolant through the piston chambers and out the tailpipe and it's bye-bye Zauber Bus. I'm thinking the same thing about Duke, like how your life flashes before you when you think you're gonna croak. But in this case it's not about leaving Duke, but about spending some quality time in Billings, MT while I raise the cash to have the engine traded out. Yuck.

But it's nothing like that of course. You see, back at the rest stop when we were adding fluids and Tex says the tranny needs fluid and sets about to fashioning a funnel, I of course do it the sloppy gonzo way and just aim and pour but of course the hole I'm pouring into is about half as wide as the oil can hole it's coming out of and I'm missing like crazy and of course the shit's dripping all over the exhaust manifold. Voila. White smoke.

Ghost Town

Now it's Billings, some dirt and weed filled riverside "park" called Calhoun Park or something like that. Right in the crook of whatever river that is off to my right and Rt. 90 through Billings. We exited, got beer and chocolate milk at the Texaco/Subway and the local kids told us how to get here. You can see it from the highway. The river, framed by some beautiful cliffs, lit up orange at night by the lights of some refinery and Montana Power down the road. A dirt road in. A trashy, forgotten place. The sign coming in says Day Use Only, closed after 10 p.m. But as I'm finding out, after a certain amount of time on the road you just don't give a shit. The road is your home and any place semi-discreet or off the beaten path that looks good to sleep, why, you just do it. No longer do I live in fear of retribution from the law for parking and sleeping where signs prohibit. This is my country, my dirt lot by some undoubtedly polluted river beneath a lovely white August Moon.

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Last update April 1, 2004