Thermopolis, Wyoming, sits a little north and west of the state's center, near a stream of seismically heated water that leaks out of the Owl Creek Mountains and flows into the Bighorn River. The water coming from the mountain smells like rotten egg, and it often casts the valley in a dense fog. The scent isn't bad; if anything, it makes you lament the boring non-smell of other towns. But the steam can be disorienting. On a night like tonight, at negative ten degrees Fahrenheit, the steam floats over the snow-covered ground like lengths of unfurled gauze, and pedestrians appear and disappear out the windshield like ghosts.
I'm driving to Mac's, a bar on the outer edge of town. I started drinking there when I moved to Thermopolis a couple of months ago, back when I still found the steam romantic and pleasant. Now I recognize the steam as an obstacle. It hides things, and that only adds to the growing paranoia I've developed in this town full of cowboys and roughnecks. On a Friday night, their pickups come down from the ranches and oil fields, which sit on the high bluffs above the valley. When the trucks hit Main Street, headlights enter the steam and take on a spooky, haloed quality that makes me wonder how far behind me they actually are.
My paranoia stems from what I've got sitting next to me. It's not a stack of cash or a block of crystal meth or the choicest cuts off a rustled steer. As tempting as those things would be to my fellow Thermopolis citizens, what I've got next to me is far more coveted here in central Wyoming, and induces much greater jealousy: I've got a total babe riding shotgun.
The babe is my girlfriend, Diana, and I watch her first predator of the night approach the second we step into Mac's. It's Josh Brown, a local cowboy with a reputation for fucking everything that moves, including wives. Josh is in his mid-twenties and works on a nearby ranch when he's not competing on the rodeo circuit. Tonight he's drinking with a baby-faced kid named Auggie, whom Josh introduces as his rodeo partner from the town of Ten Sleep.
Josh points to me and tells Auggie, "Steve's the only guy in Thermopolis that I can have an intellectual conversation with." I flush with pride, though I can't remember us having any intellectual conversations, except the time we discussed Josh's curiosity about why black people don't go to rodeos.
Josh buys Diana
I lean against the wall, all alone. It's too bad all the women in Thermopolis are home being pregnant.
a round, as is his custom, then gives her an ample grope on the ass, also his custom. In any other town, Josh would be setting himself up to get smacked. But Diana's more tolerant since we moved to Thermopolis. After all, we came here to get the flavor of Wyoming, and apparently this is what it tastes like.
Even though Josh does enjoy having a good conversation with me, I can barely hide my jealousy about this little display. Did she actually like that? I wonder. I look around to see if I can get even. The only girl who even sort of remotely interests me, or at least piques my morbid curiosity, is Crystal the Karaoke Queen. I know her dad, a speed-freak plumber who came to our house on our first day in town and fixed the pipes that apparently burst during a cold snap — the same cold snap that must have frozen the waterbed.
Right now, Crystal's jamming out to "I Will Survive" on the karaoke machine. She's wearing a pair of jeans so tight on her storming, powerful hips that they're about to start leaking at the seams. Her wraparound shades are propped on the bill of her baseball cap; she's evidently prepared to stay out until the sun comes up. Her T-shirt has a picture of a horse on it and says "KISS ME, PET ME, WHIP ME, RIDE ME." I'd think the shirt was tacky if I didn't know she meant it.
Crystal takes a break from her song to throw back a shot with a couple of her admirers, guys sporting packs of smokes in their T-shirt pockets. This cavorting and flirting between verses is all part of her karaoke style, which is one of affected nonchalance. As the karaoke monitor's neon indicator starts sliding along another verse, Crystal acts like a little kid is pulling her away by the shirt hem and reluctantly reunites her lips with the microphone. It took all the strength I had not to fall apart—
An old fellow with a limp stalks up behind her. His leg seems ready to come unhooked from his hip socket, and the spur on his right boot jangles like dropped change. He slides a hand literally up into Crystal's ass crack, then works it down for a muff grab by cramming his fingers into the tight wedge of denim. She kicks back like a mule, missing him but managing to catch the beat. — kept trying hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart.
I have a theory about the shameless, barbed-wire sexuality of Mac's. It has to do with ranching and oil drilling, basically the only two occupations available in Thermopolis. If the bulls don't fuck the cows, your ranch goes bust. If the oil rig stops pumping its shaft in and out of the earth, your oil well goes dry. Both occupations generate enormous sexual energy.
I'm interrupted from my thoughts by Don, who strolls toward me, smiling and nodding. Don drives a truck for an oil-drilling outfit. He looks about seventy-five but claims to be fifty-eight. As usual, he's way too drunk to talk. I can tolerate nodding and smiling with Don because we have a special connection: Miraculously, we each independently came up with the idea of chopping cowboy boots down to low-cut loafers, which I call cowboy shoes. Don's sort of grabbing at his chest. I fear he's having a heart attack. He smiles some more, and I realize he's using his hands to make big tit shapes. He struggles to find a little trace of sobriety, just enough to form the words, "I'd like to get my hands on those." He nods to my girlfriend, who's trying on the cowboy hat of every guy at the bar. The bartender, Nora, is threatening to twist a sheepherder's dick off if he comes in here again acting tough.
"That's cool, Don," I say. "Maybe you'll get lucky with her some night." He smiles and nods.
The pool table is my only chance to get Diana away from the guys at the bar. This is a risky move, because tonight the table is ringed with the roughnecks from the oil fields, guys who grew up together and matured into the toughest-looking fuckers on the planet. They're all flush from payday, half-wasted, potentially dangerous and very horny. I'm drawn to the table, though. While I can't out-bad-ass them, I can easily whip every one of them in pool.
In no time, Diana and I have the first pair of them against the ropes; we're down to the eight ball and they still have five balls left. As Diana bends over to take the shot, the hem of her shirt rises and the waist of her skirt opens slightly, revealing the expanse of skin where her lower back begins its subtle transformation into upper ass. I can't help but notice that four guys are standing with their crotches about a foot away from her.
Before moving to Thermopolis I never noticed that as a pair of men's Wranglers gets weathered, a strange little testicle pouch forms in the crotch, fading to a lighter color than the surrounding denim. The four stuffed-and-discolored packages slowly close in on Diana's ass as she lines up her shot. She makes it, but my happiness about our victory is tainted by the elaborate displays of congratulations the oil drillers heap on her. They're all shouting questions at her and offering her their Stetsons to try on. They form a little mob that blocks my view of the action.
I lean against the wall, all alone. It's too bad all the women in Thermopolis are home being pregnant. Of course, there's a dirty little part of me that enjoys the thought of other men wanting to bone my girlfriend, but what's usually enjoyable
For Dave, coveting your neighbor's wife isn't a sin; it's just planning ahead.
about it is that they know they can't, and I like to watch them suffer the disappointment and frustration. In Thermopolis, I'm robbed of this pleasure. It doesn't occur to these guys that they can't bone my girlfriend. In fact, they appear to believe they most certainly can.
Thermopolis has a slight Marxist quality to it, because everyone makes basically the same amount of money — just enough for monthly payments on a small, single-story house and a diesel pickup. There is no bad part of town, no good part. The handful of bars and restaurants are everybody's bars and restaurants; it's not like in a city, where rich people frequent rich-people establishments and poor people frequent poor-people establishments. The social effect of this socioeconomic equality is a collective belief that no one is entitled to any more or any less than anyone else. Thus, if I'm leaning on a bar with my hand in the back pocket of a hot girl's jeans, the guys in Thermopolis don't see any reason why they can't have a hand in that back pocket as well.
As the dance floor heats up, it's getting too crowded to shoot stick at Mac's. My one friend in town, Dave Mann, shows up to dance. He's a fifty-two-year-old hay farmer and gravel-pit operator whose dating strategy is to wait for young women around town to file for divorce. For Dave, coveting your neighbor's wife isn't a sin; it's just planning ahead. There's nothing on his radar tonight, so he's swinging Diana around the dance floor. His size-thirteen shitkickers have a surprisingly graceful slide, and his nicked, scarred fingers are resting gently on the small of her back. A bartender from the other bar in town, Lusty Larry, has already made the gentlemanly gesture of asking me if it's okay for him to dance with Diana. Though I said yes, I do wonder what might have happened if I refused.
It's nearly closing time. I move to a stool at the bar, where a couple of guys start speculating about what's going to happen when my girlfriend and I get home. Personally, when I watch a girl leave a bar with her boyfriend, I don't automatically assume that she'll be getting fucked in the ass in a few minutes. But I do appreciate their vivid imaginations. Nora gives the last call and threatens another guy with sexual disfigurement. She rolls her shirt sleeve up to demonstrate that she's got the necessary brawn.
When I finally get Diana into the parking lot, I instinctively check beneath my vehicle, worried that a cowboy is waiting there to ambush me and take my woman. The coast is clear, and I feel relieved to be back in the car. I can see stars overhead. But down the road, we hit a low spot in the valley where the steam collects, thicker than ever, and that familiar uneasiness creeps up my spine as I strain to see what lies ahead in the road. n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Steven Rinella's writing has been collected in the Best American Travel Writing and The World's Best Sex Writing. His first book, The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, will be released by Miramax Books on March 15th.
