Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (15 page)

But that only seems to enrage Adam and encourage him and his mom to get violent. “Get him, Bonkers!” I hear Adam yell, quoting the name of the dog that commits suicide in
Polyester
. But
this
Bonkers ain’t depressed; he’s insane like the rest of his household. He comes tearing out the front door, teeth bared, charging right toward me. Despite my injuries I run for my life, and that
really
hurts. “We will outfilth the asshole or assholes who sent this and then
they must die
!” screams Mom, sounding somehow even more formidable than Divine did in
Pink Flamingos
. “You have exactly fifteen seconds to get off my property, motherfucker, before I break your neck,” wails the son in a desperate bid for faux Dreamland Studios stardom. I painfully climb up the chain-link fence of another house, dive over to safety just in time to escape the dog, which is nipping and snarling at my heels, and feel my BlackBerry fall out of my back pocket and land in enemy territory. The dog barks in a rage and suddenly squats down and takes a shit on my phone. Adam and his fucking mom shout their approval.

BAD RIDE NUMBER THREE

FAYE

Hey, what’s this? A car stopping for me and I haven’t even stuck out my thumb? Could my hitchhike luck suddenly be changing? “Need a lift?” says the hard-as-nails-looking lady behind the wheel. “Sure,” I yelp as I leap in and give the finger to Adam and his asshole mother as they watch in the distance, hopefully pissed that I got a ride so quickly.

“I’m Faye,” my new ride announces with an assertiveness that somehow is a little off-putting. “I’m John and I’m going all the way to San Francisco,” I say, trying to be as friendly as possible without staring at the huge legs she is showing off in a miniskirt. The top of her body seems like another person’s: flat chest, normal hips, and a hint of turkey neck. But those legs! God, R. Crumb would love her to wrap these gams around his neck in sexual dominance. “Why’re you going there?” she asks in horror. “I have an apartment in San Francisco,” I volunteer. “So then why are you hitchhiking, stupid? Why didn’t you fly?!” I ignore the word
stupid
and pretend I’m having a conversation with a normal person. “I just wanted to see what America looked like on the ground,” I converse in the friendliest tone I can. “I hate San Francisco,” she mutters, ignoring my response, “all those stupid hills! No, siree, I’m not going there! I got everything I need in Kentucky!” Sensing another argument, I don’t quiz her about what those exact needs are.

“Ever fuck a junkie?” she suddenly asks in the most nonchalant way possible. “What?” I say, giving myself time to comprehend her intrusive question. “You heard me. Did you ever fuck a junkie?” “Well … not knowingly,” I answer, trying to be truthful. “Why not? I love junkies,” she says with sexual militancy. “Aren’t you worried about hep C?” I stammer. “THAT PISSES ME OFF!” she yells. “Well, I’m just talking about how hepatitis is often spread through unclean needles,” I mumble. “You just judged an entire cross section of a sexual minority,” she challenges me with new hostility. “But I thought junkies couldn’t get it up,” I weakly argue. “Some people,” she boasts, jabbing her thumb to her chest, “LIKE a limp dick!” “And you have the right to your desires,” I timidly agree, praying she’ll change the subject, but oh no, she’s on a tear.

“Are you a fag?” she suddenly demands. “Well … yes…,” I admit. “That’s what I thought!” she spits out with a condescending sneer. “It pisses me off,” she continues ranting. “Fags can ‘come out’ but others can’t be ‘strung out’? Is that it? Something wrong with ‘smack in the sack’? You people can bitch but we can’t itch?” “Of course you can,” I stutter before she cuts me off with “You homos should understand there’s such a thing as a ‘scag hag.’” “A scag hag!?” I repeat out loud, thankful, as always, to hear of a new sexual minority. “You heard me!” she rages. “Don’t needle tracks make you whack?” she continues with sloganeering confrontation. “Not really,” I admit in an understanding liberal voice. “Why not?” she challenges back. “Doesn’t a stiff rod on the nod make you shoot your wad?” “No,” I argue; “besides, junkies don’t even
like
sex.” “There you go,” she screams, “penile profiling just like the rest of you bum bandits!” “Hey, wait a minute,” I protest, finally hearing enough and deciding to give Faye a little of her own medicine. “I just was unaware there was ‘hot muff for hard stuff,’” I say, hoping my new pro-scag-hag motto will lighten her mood. “That’s a good one!” she laughs. I’m relieved. For a moment.

“Wanna see the pussy that’s driven a thousand junkies crazy?” she suddenly asks with a newfound hostility. “Well, no, I don’t,” I answer truthfully. “It’s nothing personal. You’re a lovely woman,” I lie, “and I’m very thankful you stopped to give me a lift, but it’s a little late in my life for me to ‘come in.’” I hope my little joke will take away the sting of my rejection, but it backfires. “You’re prejudiced against me because junkies don’t have the hots for
you
!” she challenges, inching up her skirt with an antagonistic exhibitionism and hitting play on her CD player. “Please cover up,” I beg as I actually hear a cut from one of the world’s worst gospel albums,
The Addicts Sing
, and see the freshly shaved V of her crotch. “I love women, it’s just that I’m not sexually attracted to them,” I explain over the tortured, clean-and-sober vocals of “You Are the Finger of God.” “Oh, it’s good enough for every junkie in the best recovery houses up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but it’s not good enough for you?” she seethes. “Get it or get out!” I look out the window and see the sun is going down. It’s night and there’s not even a house in sight. I look back at her bald mons pubis. Sophie’s choice. “I’ll get out,” I say with newfound clarity.
“Fine!”
she snarls, not even bothering to cover herself. “Faye’s way or the highway!” she declares, screeching over to the side of the road and slamming on the brakes. “Beat it, Mary,” she yells, and I do, happily. She peels out, spraying my already cut and bleeding body with gravel. I can still hear the Addicts’ awful music blaring as her taillights fade in the distance.

It’s suddenly dark. Cars fly by and the drivers don’t even look over to consider picking me up. I’m not even back on Interstate 70 yet and I’m completely exhausted. Some of the scabs from my earlier injuries have now stuck painfully to the fabric of my jeans, and every movement prevents their fragile healing. The moon’s not even out! It’s already come to my worst nightmare; I have to sleep out in the open. With no clean clothes for tomorrow. No phone. Like a bum.

I climb down a slope into a sorry little cluster of trees. Scenic it’s not. I’m lucky enough to discover a discarded take-out bag filled with the spoiled leftovers from a Chinese dinner. I realize I’m starving! I haven’t eaten all day. I dig into the carton of soggy white rice and rip open the only plastic packet of soy sauce left and mix them together. Someone’s picked a few red-hot Szechuan peppers out of their kung pao chicken and I gobble them down and try to ignore the burning in my throat. I blot my tongue with a stale fortune cookie and pretend I’m full.

It’s suddenly freezing but I try to make do. I curl up in a ball and crumple up the carryout trash and use it as a pillow. Just as I’m about to doze off, I realize I have to take a shit. God, how I hate the human body. I so resent that I have to defecate daily. I didn’t even get to think up this disgusting little act and now I have no choice. Just do it, I tell myself, praying there’s enough foliage around to use as toilet paper. It’s hard to shit outside. You have to remove both your jeans
and
your underpants. I begin. Suddenly I hear a rustling nearby and then an ungodly animal noise. I grope to find leaves but I can’t, so in a panic I use a flattened rice container as toilet paper. Before I can be sure I’m clean, something lunges at me and I can feel sharp teeth biting into my ass. I scream, but of course there’s no one around to hear me. I grab at the creature and still with no pants on roll around, battling for my life. For a split second, I see the face of a raccoon, and it’s got some kind of hideous yellowish foam around its mouth. Adrenaline pumps through my system. I grab the wild animal and with both hands begin to strangle it. The raccoon struggles back, biting my hands, spewing rabid saliva all over my face, but once I get it by the throat and start squeezing, I can feel that victory could be mine. I choke even harder and finally the diseased creature lets out a terrible-sounding death rattle before going limp in my bloody hands. I struggle to put on my pants and run up to the highway and begin waving my hands to oncoming traffic much as Marilyn Burns did at the end of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

BAD RIDE NUMBER FOUR

PAULA

Finally my luck must be changing, because though it’s the middle of the night, a car stops. I limp to the passenger side and look in, praying for a friendly face. I don’t get one. I see a harsh-looking woman behind the wheel, wearing an expression of great hostility. “Get in,” she says in a flat, emotionless tone. I look in the backseat and see one of the most frightening drag queens on earth—one that couldn’t “pass” as a woman even to Stevie Wonder or the late Ray Charles. She has a large bouffant hairdo, stenciled eyebrows, and a face full of wrinkles. Her looks could stop a train. “I’m her mother,” she says in a man’s voice, not even trying to assume any kind of femininity. I shudder. “We’re going to Indianapolis,” the woman in the front barks in an impatient tone. I hesitate. “And we’re in a hurry,” adds the horror in back, looking as mean as can be. I look out at the road in the darkness and don’t see a headlight anywhere in the distance in either direction. What the hell? I’m street-smart; I can talk my way out of anything.

I get in and put on my seat belt. For the first time I see the woman in front smile, but it’s the smile of a snake. “I’m Paula,” she says with a new glare of malice, “and
that
is my mother.” “Nice to meet you,” says the obvious man, holding out a long, veiny hand with chipped nails painted an especially hideous shade of purple to match the lipstick that has been applied with great care. “I see you got a cut there,” Paula announces with little sympathy. “Yes, I had a very bad ride and then I was attacked by a wild animal,” I try to explain. Both Paula and her “mother” break into hysterical laughter. Oh, great, a new set of loonies. I look straight ahead and we drive. Every once in a while Mom starts cackling and Paula loses it and joins in. “What’s so funny?” I ask, unable to hide my discomfort.

“I guess I’m the one that should be asking that, aren’t I?” Paula suddenly snaps with a new combativeness. “Hallelujah!” adds Mom. “What do you mean?” I stammer. “We know who you are, asshole,” Paula snarls. “Yeah, Mr.
Shock Value
,” snarls her supposed mother, mentioning the name of my first book. “How did you know I’d be here?” I wonder out loud. “One of your shithead fans has been tweeting his butt off about you hitchhiking and how he spent quality time with you.” “Facebook, too,” pipes in the hag in the back. “You think other people’s nightmares are funny, don’t you?!” Paula growls accusingly. “Huh?” I ask, completely confused, but then add nervously, “No, I don’t. I think I’ve tried to have compassion for both the crime victim
and
the criminal,” I sputter, wondering which of the cases I’ve written about has so offended them. “It wasn’t my fault,” growls the cross-dressing man in the back, whose hostile face is made even more grotesque by the elaborate and out-of-fashion hairdo he’s wearing. “I was addicted to speed,” adds this monstrous mother, “and my children were just trying to help!” “Yet you think it’s fucking funny,” spits out Paula with a vengeance. “I went to jail and you had a party!” “A party? What party?” I panic, thinking how this deadly duo must have me mixed up with somebody else. “That little bitch thought she was better than us!” hisses Paula. “When her own parents ran off with the carnival and dumped her with me!” adds the skinny battle-ax. “It was for her own goddamn good!” hisses Paula with a sadistic smile. “That’s right,” adds the gaunt drag monstrosity no politically correct pronoun would ever adequately describe, “to teach her a lesson!”

Suddenly these words hit me like a ton of bricks and I turn around in my seat. “Gertrude Baniszewski?” I scream in terror. The Indianapolis single mother who, with the help of her children and their neighborhood friends, tortured and finally murdered Sylvia Likens, a foster child they had taken in? “That’s her,” snaps Paula, “and I’m her daughter!” Oh God, Gertie’s child, all grown up but still scary—the one that escaped from prison twice but still only served two years for her part in the grisly torture slaying. “But Gertie is dead,” I cry, knowing the infamous Indianapolis killer died from lung cancer in 1990, having being paroled after serving fourteen years of a life sentence and then living quietly in Iowa under the name Nadine Van Fossan. “Do I look dead?” Gertie Jr. yells with a vengeance, and I see her coming at me with some sort of wire she wraps around my neck. Paula starts chanting evilly, “To teach her a lesson. To teach her a lesson,” in obvious tribute to her mother’s pitiful legal defense against the charges of this terrible crime, and as I fight, I feel a rag go over my nose with some sort of awful chemical smell. The last thing I remember hearing is both of these freaks chanting a new, terrifying premeditated cry of revenge: “To teach
him
a lesson! To teach
him
a lesson!”

I awake in a basement room. Oh God,
the basement!
The name of that amazing book by Kate Millett that was subtitled
Meditations on a Human Sacrifice
. The same room in the house where Gertie, her kids, and the neighborhood delinquents did their dirty deed in 1965. I’m tied to a table. As my field of vision comes into focus, I see Paula coming at me, holding a chipped dinner plate. “Want some crackers?” she growls, offering me some crushed-up Ritz crumbs. When I shake my head no, she goes into a mini-tirade. “See,” she grunts, “that’s what we offered Sylvia but she wouldn’t eat either, and
we
were the children who were hungry!” “Taking in other people’s ironing,” I hear the faux Gertie mumble before seeing her out of the corner of my eye. “That’s what I had to do to get money to feed that brat!” she seethes. “I had asthma, too!” Before I can answer, she burns me with a lit cigarette. I howl in pain. “Think it’s funny now?” spits out Paula. “No,” I yell, fearful of what’s next. “Maybe I’ll get a portrait painted of
you
!” Gertie snarls with an overwrought vengeance as she burns me again right where I’m already scraped. “I didn’t mean it,” I argue, knowing what she is referring to—the hideous oil painting I had done of Gertie’s mug shot and later published in
Shock Value
. “Yes, you meant it!” seethes Paula as she approaches and pours scalding water on me just as they did to Sylvia. “Maybe we should bake a cake?” Paula sniggers as I scream in agony and remember the smart-ass refreshment I served at a book party I threw to privately celebrate Millett’s shocking volume. The cake I had made by a bakery in Provincetown with the terrible words in frosting on top that Gertie and gang carved into their victim’s chest:
I A-M A P-R-O-S-T-I-T-U-T-E A-N-D P-R-O-U-D O-F I-T.
On the page, a sentence. On a chest, the most terrible novel ever written. “Let’s put on
your
birthday message,” growls the Gertie clone as she comes toward me with some sort of homemade tattoo gun made from a video gaming console with a large-size paper-clip needle attached. Paula rips open my shirt. “Please,” I beg, “I was young. I didn’t realize your circumstances. You were poor. You’ve served your time. It’s all over now.” “It’s not over until Gertie has been avenged,” this Halloween drag version of Indianapolis’s scariest killer mother wails in my face as she brings the tattoo needle down on my skin. “I A-M…,” Paula begins spelling out their new terrible hate message, and I feel the agonizing pain of the unsafe ink pounding into my skin with a vengeance. “A-N A-S-S-H-O-L-E,” Gertie cackles with glee at her updated skin carving. Should I be thankful that the word
asshole
has fewer letters than
prostitute
? Through my screams at my punishment it’s hard to feel grateful for anything. “… A-N-D P-R-O-U-D…,” whispers Paula on cue as Gertie inks away with practiced sadism before completing the message they both are dying to see and say out loud: “O-F I-T.” Gertie hesitates, straightens her wig, and goes a step further than the original. “To teach him a lesson,” she mutters victoriously as she adds an exclamation point on my chest to this horrifying, infamous true-crime declaration. Paula lets out some kind of war cry.