It was a silvery autumn day, with the birch just hinting at yellow and termination dust gracing the tips of the Chugach Mountains, when Team Landmine pulled into the Valley of the Moon parking lot to meet the “I Eat Ass” truck guy.

For those who don’t know, the “I Eat Ass” truck is everywhere. All over Anchorage roads, in a literal sense. But also over Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, NextDoor, and the radio too. Spotting the truck in traffic has become something of a nonstop community-wide scavenger hunt, a rite of passage for certain Anchorage residents: you don’t really live here until you’ve had popcorn at Darwin’s, run from a moose on the Coastal Trail, and taken a photo of the “I Eat Ass” truck.

But though the truck, with its giant “I Eat Ass” rear window sticker, has become something of a local icon, the man behind it is less well known. He occasionally sprinkles a few comments into social media threads, and he poses for photos that regularly go local-viral on Facebook groups like the Great Alaska Tea Spill and the Alaska Life. But the Landmine Team felt that important questions about the truck situation were going unanswered, and we were determined to get to the bottom of it.

The “I Eat Ass” truck guy’s name is Timothy. In person, Timothy sports a quick, boyish grin and is unwaveringly good-natured. He is also unexpectedly polite, appending answers to every question with “sir.” He’s from Alaska, he tells us, but he was raised to be respectful.

Timothy tells us that the “I Eat Ass” truck hails from a Texas oilfield, and that he bought it for about $22,500. The odometer reads 302,706 miles. He had the “I Eat Ass” sticker made after he and a friend bet on who could change the tires on a vehicle more quickly. The loser, he told us, would have to advertise their kink on their vehicle. Timothy lost, and had the sticker made by J&S, in the Dimond Center, for about $120. He put the sticker on his window a little crooked in order to “mess with people’s OCD tendencies.”

The terms of the bet had been unclear, he says, and had not specified how long the sticker would have to remain on the vehicle. He put it up, and then he left it. Later, he added a smaller sticker that reads “Do MILFS, not drugs.” At some point, an unknown party added a QR code to the “I Eat Ass” sicker, forming a sort of period after the declaration. He doesn’t know what it links to, he says.

The “I Eat Ass” sticker was not his first consequence of a lost bet, Timothy tells us. Earlier, after losing a bet he had “USDA CHOICE” tattooed on himself. When asked about the circumstances of the bet, Timothy says he doesn’t remember. Alcohol may have been a factor, he explains.

Back to the truck. To answer the most obvious question: the answer is yes, he does. Or rather, he would. It’s 2023, he says, and eating ass in a healthy adult relationship is “just common courtesy.”

That said, he explains, his girlfriend (yes, ladies, he is taken) isn’t interested. But she appreciates the frequent reports about where her boyfriend is in Anchorage. Timothy says that he is occasionally propositioned when spotted in traffic, but he quickly tells those who approach him that he is in a relationship and is unable to oblige. Despite his proclivity for goofiness, he is unwaveringly sincere and respectful when talking about his girlfriend. He says that on their first date, she stole the Jenga pieces at Chilkoot Charlie’s and ran around the bar with them. He was smitten. There is talk of marriage.

Sometimes, he says, he forgets about the sticker on his truck. This seems difficult to believe. As we are speaking in the parking lot, a white Dodge Charger drives by and a woman leans out the window, yelling “I eat ass!” Minutes later, another woman rides by on a bicycle and yells “Or do MILFs and drugs and eat ass all at the same time!”

Timothy claims that the vast majority of people who see the truck find the sticker amusing. Groups of older female tourists seem to find the sticker particularly funny, he says, and often take photos with it. Only a few people have ever reacted negatively to it, he tell us. Once, he says, an enraged man threatened him, but nothing came of it. Another time, a policeman pulled him over and called the sticker “disgusting,” but shook his head and let him go.

This would not be the first time an “I Eat Ass” message has aroused the ire of law enforcement. In 2019, a Florida man Dillon Shane Webb was briefly jailed for refusing to cover an “I Eat Ass” bumper sticker on his vehicle. He was released without charges, but the policeman who arrested him was determined to have qualified immunity and could not face repercussions for the frivolous stop, according to a Florida judge. It may be impossible to know what the founding fathers would have made of an “I Eat Ass” vehicle sticker, but contemporary American jurisprudence seems to have resigned itself to the idea that such messaging is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

To see the reaction for ourselves, we hop in the “I Eat Ass” truck and head downtown, driving in slow circles up and down Fourth and Fifth avenues. It’s a blustery fall day, and most folks on the street seem to be bundled up and just trying to get from point A to point B. But those who see the truck almost invariably crack a smile. Bicyclists grin and raise their eyebrows. Pedestrians tap their friends and point at us. Drivers who stop behind us at red lights pull out their phones and take photos. A few people seem perplexed, but nobody seems upset.

And that may be the subtle genius of the “I Eat Ass” message: it’s something that everyone thinks everyone else must find offensive, but almost nobody really does. It feels transgressive without substantially transgressing.

Timothy was not born into privilege, he tells us as we drive through South Addition. He was the child of a teenage mother and a father who as a heroin addict. His father, he was told, died after he nodded off while driving and hit a vehicle in an oncoming lane. Fisher attempted to start a GoFundMe fundraiser to support members of the family who were injured in the accident, he says, but the fundraiser “didn’t work out.”

Despite challenges, he says he had a good upbringing and holds down steady work on the North Slope. He recognizes that the sticker might ruffle some feathers, but so far it hasn’t interfered with his professional advancement. Slopers are expected to be a little rough around the edges, he explains. Previously, he worked at the Port of Anchorage. After he installed the “I Eat Ass” sticker, he recounts, a group of visiting executives saw it and asked him for dining recommendations. They even invited him to join them.

Timothy tells us that he is a member of the Moose Lodge, but his favorite bar in the Anchorage area is the LGBTQ+ nightclub Mad Myrna’s. Timothy is straight, he says, but he just likes the vibe there. People there don’t worry about what society expects of them. They do what they want. They are who they want to be.

“If you give too many fucks it just stresses you out, in my opinion.” he says.

We ask Timothy if he sees the truck in an artistic context, perhaps as a sort of roving public performance art piece. He seems thrown off by the question, which is probably fair. But while the Rasmuson Foundation probably won’t be banging down his door with an individual artist grant any time soon, there’s little doubt that the truck performs some of the same roles we expect of successful public art: it demands attention, it provokes, and it elicits a range of engaged and interesting responses.

Part of this is due to the message, of course. But the medium–large lettering on a vehicle, rather than on a t-shirt, poster, or bumper sticker–is key to explaining the truck’s notoriety, too.

In the United States, we’ve largely replaced the public square–the physical one a least–with the public road. And the way we communicate with one another in this space is through our vehicles. We Americans spend staggering amounts of money on luxury cars and tank-sized trucks that send messages to total strangers: I’m rich. I’m cool. I’m powerful. I’m in control.

Using a big pickup truck, that ultimate symbol of red-blooded American machismo, to convey not that the driver is on top but that he’s, one might say, happy to be on the bottom is counterintuitive, and this self-effacing switcharoo is probably at the root of why so many people find the whole thing funny. True, “I Eat Ass” ain’t exactly poetry. But it’s no more trite than the unwritten messages telegraphed by other vehicles, really. And it’s kind of original, and even a bit subversive.

At the end of the day, the “I Eat Ass” truck isn’t really about advertising the sexual predilections of one man. It’s about good-naturedly jolting Alaskans out of complacency, and encouraging everyone to lighten up, laugh, and be unashamed to be themselves. If the “I Eat Ass” truck guy can tell the world what he wants, then, hey, maybe in your own way you can too.

And that, we think, is something that just about everyone should be able to get behind.