The One ... the Only ... Circus Redickuless

"I just got my first clown porn video," said David. "It's really bad. The only thing it's got going for it is that it's clowns."

"Do you have it with you?" Ducky asked.
"No. I'll get it to you when we get back."
"Yeah," Ducky said. "It's important."

"When I was in L.A., we did this big clown sex thing for HBO," said Ducky. "Most of the things they wouldn't show -- too lewd. I'm going to do a two-clown erotic porn [photo] shoot when I go back. A lesbo thing with Chuckles."

"Make sure I get a copy of that," David said. "'Cause I like porns. And I like clowns."

"Once you've had a clown, you never go back," said Ducky.
"Yeah, I'm telling you, clown porn is going to be the next wave of smut."
"On the Sally Jessy Raphael show I made the claim that I was the one who invented the term 'Clown Sex,' " said Ducky. She also told Sally that she couldn't orgasm unless her partner was in grease paint. Someone from the audience asked her if she only had sex with clowns. "No, I have sex with clumsy people too," she said. "It was all over Talk Soup. I sent the host a pair of my patented joy-buzzer panties."

"Welcome to Nevada," the sign on the side of the highway read.
"I can no longer be arrested for driving," announced Chicken to all of us and to no one in particular.

As we headed east to-ward a town called Lovelock, Chicken said, "I feel like a shady character the more I get older."

"Yeah, you are shady," said Ducky.
"Am I shady?" Chicken asked.
"Yes," said David.
"You got this fly-by-night circus," said Ducky.
"That's not shady," said Chicken. "That's art."
"Circuses are, by definition, shady," said David.

"But I'm not bad," said Chicken. "I wouldn't press a button to kill a person in China for a million dollars."

"I'd press it for free," said David.
"They'd take the button away from me," said Ducky.

Man, I stopped right there on a bus one time," said David, pointing at the Winners Hotel Casino in Winnemucca, Nevada. "Where was I going?"

"Remember the last time we were here, David?" Chicken asked. "Driving around this town trying to disconnect the odometer of the truck. These digital odometers -- you've got to crack open the dash to just get at them."

Chicken rolled into a Flying J complex. "All these truck stops is what I hate about touring," said Ducky. "We don't have gas stations in New York. Or maybe they do, but I don't have to see them."

"We're on the last stretch," Chicken said.
"Really?" said Ducky.
"Four-and-a-half hours."
"Ugh."
"Just remember," said Chicken. "If we bomb in Boise, it doesn't matter."

Dr. Ducky DooLittle, who is 27, keeps a press kit in a small box covered with vinyl stickers. Among the news clips in the box -- including stories from magazines like Bikini and Leg Show that say she sells her underwear for $50 a pair -- was a xerox of a neatly printed postcard from France.

Thanks for the packet of Ducky items ... Tres interesant, as they say over here ... Plus you're quite cute, but is that you or some other girl in the photo you enclosed of a big-leg girl with a vacuum cleaner? Is that you?? My god, those legs!! If it's you, send more leg shots!! I want to come over sometime and have a piggy back ride!! I'll do a drawing of you in exchange for a ride!!

How tall are you? I suspect you are quite short ... Not that it makes any difference to me, if indeed those legs in the photo are yours!! Yes, I am big-leg fixated .... So whataya want from me ... ?? It's not illegal ....

Send more photos of you!!
-- R. Crumb
....France
"He's harmless," said Ducky.

David said that if you look at North America at night from space, you can make out the state line of Nevada. Connect the dots of low-rent casinos along the border, up California to Oregon, east under Idaho to Utah, then down to Arizona, and there's a constellation called Nevada. McDermit is a tiny town, a light bulb along the Oregon-Nevada border. There are two blocks in McDermit, home to a gas station, an ice cream stand where you can buy corn dogs, a small motel, a post office, and a dilapidated flagstone jail from another era. The owners of the tawdry casino there had obviously botched the pun and called it Say When.

Chicken eased the Duster under a tree in front of the motel. He needed another half-hour nap. David set out for the Say When. Ducky and I took the dog for a walk. We turned left at the casino, and walked half a block on a street that dead-ended into all of southeastern Oregon. The old asphalt crumbled. Half-inch plywood boarded the windows of a ramshackle bar on the right. On the left, two young girls -- they couldn't have been older than 8 -- bounced on a trampoline. One of them wore an oversized white T-shirt printed with a picture of a large house cat. She quit the trampoline and her giggling at the same time. She stared at Ducky, her pixie face, her 4-foot-10-inch frame, her double-D breasts.