Young men and boys, like the fourteen-year-olds Skip, the hitchhiker, and Donnie, the bored nowhere town junior high schooler, gather from all over the badlands region on the Cheyenne-to-Sioux Falls big rig truck run to enjoy and scheme and network to be in the right place at the right time to petition to get the servicing of their lives from Ralph, the semitrailer truck driving Road Romeo.
To keep his mother, Tala, and himself going, fourteen-year-old Filipino-American boy Angelo takes up with American sailors near the 1973 Subic Bay, Philippines, naval complex when his B-girl mother is too ill to turn tricks. They have had a hardscrabble existence in the Olongapo City slums since Angelo's sailor father shipped out thirteen years earlier. Angelo is ready to service sailors, but being handed around proves to be a rough, loveless life.
Fourteen-year-old Turkish Cypriot boy, Safet, half Turkish and half something northern European, is living on the edge with his mother near the ancient ruins of the city of Salamis on the eastern, Turkish-controlled, coast of Cyprus. He, like his mother, is augmenting their living working part time at a beach hotel by selling his body to hotel guests. They are short on living through the next week, and Safet goes to an eccentric painter for help.
A Country Boy, City Girl Story Michael is a rather special consultant. People contact him when they need special messages sent, in a very personal way.