I am Anna Nicole Smith's babydaddy*

*In another couple weeks, this post will probably be irrelevant. Whatever.

We met last summer at the Monster Truck Expo held at the Barron County Fairgrounds. I was waiting in line to get a Busch Light and a deep-fried pickle when I got a whiff of bubblegum and cigarettes. I turned, and there in stuporific splendor, backlit from the vendor’s neon and haloed by exhaust fumes was Anna Nicole Smith! Holy shit! She was a vision, shat from the very bowels of heaven itself! I immediately changed my order to two Busch Lights, waited for the beers, and introduced myself.

“Hi, baby, I’m T-Bone.” I offered her a cigarette from behind my ear.

“Thanks.” A little unsteady, but not tooooo bad…

“You come to these things often?” Of course.

“Yeah, sometimes…they sure are loud ain’t they?”

“Yeah, it helps to drown out the crying of the babies. Hey, you thirsty?”

“Sure, what are we drinking?”

“Love potion number nine.” Or as some call it, roofies and beer.

“Thanks.” Takes a very large gulp. “Hey, this tastes like roofies; you got any more?”

Bingo.

Now let me tell you people, I have been to the top of redneck Mount Everest, and the flags of a thousand nations are planted there. Words fail me, though something along the lines of “throwing a hammer down a hallway” is pretty close to the mark. We spent that night in the back of my pickup truck, in our Nest of Love, and when I regained consciousness the next morning, she was gone. The spare tire she’d used as a pillow was pushed off to one side, but there was nothing left to remind me of her except a pile of cigarette butts, the smell of bubblegum, and a puddle of vomit, with a roofie, perched like a delicate maraschino cherry, next to my truck. Ah, summer love!

So enter me in that baby lottery down in the Bahamas, T-Bone’s got a dog in this fight!