 Simon and Dede are best friends: two aimless drunks who spend their days getting sloshed and any other available time getting laid. Simon is living on unemployment benefits in a trailer parked near his sister s apartment. Dede works at a fish-packing plant on the night shift. Neither man is sensitive, young, or good looking. However, their sang-froid (literally, "cold blood," referring to a quality of imperturbability) stands them in good stead as they go about their seedy lives, picking up one woman and having sex with her on the beach, or when Simon calmly has sex with a prostitute in front of the woman s brother. In the past, a bizarre necrophiliac situation led to Simon experiencing his only sense of what it might be to truly love someone.