Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (21 page)

“Just repeat after me,” I plead. “It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie,” but this old catch line from an exploitation ad campaign doesn’t do the trick. “And that birth scene in
Female Trouble
,” he charges like an obscenity prosecutor, “was absolutely
disgusting
!” Before I can even plead my defense, he shoots me in the other leg. I howl in agony. Randy’s dick seems to be leaking some kind of fluid as it grows, and it’s definitely not sperm. I scream for my life.

We pull into the Las Vegas city limits. Time flies when you’re being tortured. I see the ridiculous skyline of the town—a place filled with tourists I have spent my lifetime trying to avoid. “Look, Randy,” I groan through spasms of pain, “just let me out here. I promise I won’t make any trash films again—I’ll go make mainstream movies, I swear!” “It’s too late for a career change,” Randy snarls with murderous rage as he pulls his truck off the road into an abandoned drive-in movie theater. It’s been a long time since any movies were shown here. There’s not even a screen anymore and the concession stand has been burned to the ground. The few remaining poles for the speakers have been stripped clean of working parts. Randy slams on his brakes with a sickening finality.

“Get in the back!” Randy orders. “No, Randy, please,” I argue. “Let’s go see
The Avengers.
Let’s go see Hollywood tent-pole blockbusters!” His answer? A bullet into my right foot. I almost pass out when he grabs me and throws me into the opening he has carved between the truck and the trailer he’s pulling. Inside is a cult-movie-director torture chamber. Josie Cotton’s cover version of the theme song from
Who Killed Teddy Bear
is playing on some sort of sound system. Beneath movie posters for
El Topo
is the decaying body of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who I
thought
was still alive until Randy tells me differently and takes credit. I see George Romero’s amputated head hanging in a basket surrounded by posters for
Night of the Living Dead
and all its sequels. “Enough” is all Randy offers in explanation. Before I can scream, I trip over what appears to be a corpse clawed apart by wild animals. Randy kicks it and I realize that this poor human is still alive. I try to look away, but Randy grabs my head in a choke hold and forces me to gaze upon this nauseating face. Oh my God, it’s Herschell Gordon Lewis and he chuckles when he sees me! He’s
still
got a sense of humor even as he approaches death.

As Randy pushes me forward into the bloody pit of horror, I realize this is not the barrel of his gun poking me in the back but his erect penis, crusted and disfigured from a new venereal disease that I doubt has been diagnosed by even the most advanced contagious-disease specialists. I can usually talk my way out of anything, but now I’m not so sure. I keep flashing back to the Grim Reaper character in that Ingmar Bergman film, but realize sharing this film-buff memory with Randy Packard would be extremely ill-advised.

Suddenly I am hoisted in the air by a strategically placed bear trap. The clawlike grip of the catch slices into my one ankle and I sway in agonizing helplessness, my head crotch-level to Randy Packard’s disgusting unit. He takes an Odorama card out of a drawer and rudely rubs it with his penis, the sores scratching the smell labels, and then pulls out a giant saber from a velvet bag and strokes his blistered hard-on with his callused fingers one last time. “No, Randy,” I plead, just as the pimples on his penis pop at the exact moment he shoots a full load of infected, unsafe semen into my eyes. Thank God I barely see the blade slashing forward. It doesn’t even hurt when he cuts off my head.

Oh no, I see the long white tunnel. You’ve
got
to be kidding me! This cliché couldn’t be true, but it is! I feel myself elevating up, through the clouds, up, up, up to what? Oh my God—heaven?! It’s fucking true? I see God but he gives me the thumbs-down. Over his shoulder I see awful people from my past—mean nuns from Sunday school, ignorant Christian Brothers who discouraged my interests in high school. I see Cardinal Shehan! Mary Avara, the Maryland film censor! Is that Art Linkletter? Good God—Anita Bryant. All in heaven. God looks at me blankly and then whispers, “Catholics were right.”

I scream in horror and feel myself plunging downward, past limbo, where despite updated dogma to the contrary, unbaptized babies
do
cry in frustration over never getting to see God. I plunge into hell and see all my deceased friends, but they can’t see me or each other. It’s hotter than Baltimore in August.
It’s a Wonderful Life
plays on an extended loop on movie screens in every direction. I watch it for eternity.

THE REAL THING

NONFICTION

REAL RIDE NUMBER ONE

DAY CARE

Okay, here’s what really happened. Real life. May 14, 2012. No more fiction, just the truth.

I notice Susan and Trish have stopped discussing my hitching plans at the office. I can see their shared fear for my safety on their faces. Even my young art assistant, Jill, has caught the “worry” bug, sheepishly suggesting someone follow me on the road “to be sure you’re safe,” which I, of course, reject immediately. I could tell friends my own age were also concerned. Even my criminal buddies were appalled! “Carry a gun,” one warned. “Take Mace,” another ordered, and even the closest of my Baltimore convict friends sent me a handwritten graffiti drawing from jail that read
B-More Careful.

As the day of my departure approaches, everybody’s anxiety starts getting on my nerves. I have just written my fictitious death a few days ago, but nobody knows that yet. “Come on, be positive,” I argue in exasperation. But truth be known, I am starting to get nervous myself.

On Mother’s Day, twenty-four hours before I leave, I try not to show my fear, kissing my mom goodbye after dinner. She has no idea why I’m vanishing, just something vague about “research for a book.” I figure she’d be horrified and worried if she knew I was hitchhiking, so I tell only my sisters the truth in case they need to reach me in an emergency. Will I ever see my mother again? I wonder as I walk out her door.

Sunday night at my house it’s all quiet. My medium-size fake-crocodile-skin plastic tote bag is packed—five old pairs of boxer shorts, one of which I plan to discard each day after wearing; a pair of black 501 Levi’s jeans; five Gap T-shirts; a
Scum of the Earth
movie-logo baseball cap; a label-free dark blue wool scarf some guest left behind at my Christmas party and never reclaimed; a Brooks Brothers dark blue wool turtleneck in case it gets chilly; a Patagonia orange nylon hooded rain jacket; and a pair of blue Japanese-brand Sunny Sports slip-on tennis shoes illustrated with pirate ships. Supplies include a Redline tactical flashlight, a fold-up umbrella, BlackBerry wall and car chargers, an Olympus digital tape recorder and batteries, a large felt-tip marker for making hitchhiking signs, a backup pair of reading and distance glasses, sunblock, and travel-size toiletries (including sample-size jars of La Mer Moisture Cream and Eye Concentrate). Susan has made me purchase a SPOT satellite GPS device, which supposedly tracks me anywhere, even in remote areas where cell phone coverage is nonexistent. How I am supposed to get this out of my pocket and push the emergency button if someone pulls a gun on me or the car is upside down in a ditch remains unanswered. I also take a bag of raw almonds, some trail mix, and two little bottles of Evian water for nourishment, a “fame kit” to prove to cops that I’m not just homeless, a stack of autographed, embossed
PS: THANKS FOR THE LIFT
business cards that a fan had sent me years ago that I recently discovered in my studio, and, of course, my TripTik booklet, prepared by AAA, whose employees thought I was
driving
across the country, not begging rides.

I wake up without the alarm five minutes before it’s supposed to go off at 6:00 a.m. Oh God, it looks as if it’s going to rain, but mercifully it hasn’t started yet. I take a hot bath, drink some Tazo Awake tea (the most delicious brand, which I fear will be unavailable on the road), and get dressed, putting on my new REI hiking boots (that I’ll never wear
after
this trip), waterproof gray socks (
so
unlike the Paul Smith ones I usually wear), maroon jeans from MAC (the best clothing store in San Francisco), a striped Agnes B. long-sleeved T-shirt, and a faux-bleached-out-black cotton Issey Miyake sports jacket. I’m not totally Comme des Garçons–deprived; my black belt was definitely designed by Rei Kawakubo. I slip my heavily edited wallet (in case I’m robbed), containing just a couple hundred dollars of cash, two credit cards, only one bank card, and my photo ID, into my inside coat pocket. I grab my key ring with the Saint Christopher medal an old friend has given me for this trip and the compass attached, which Susan forced on me, and realize in my new life on the road I only need one of my keys—the one to my San Francisco apartment, my final destination. I turn on my SPOT tracking device, throw caution to the wind, and walk out the front door carrying my bag and one other, smaller canvas tote (from Maggs Bros Ltd, a U.K. bookshop I love), containing my different hitchhiking signs.

It’s completely still out. Thankfully, no neighbors are out for a morning jog. I walk up the street feeling like a troubled teenage runaway. I flash on Divine as Dawn Davenport hitching in her baby-doll pajamas in my film
Female Trouble
and identify with her today. I get to the corner of my road where it intersects Charles Street and begin to hitchhike north toward the Beltway, which will hopefully take me to I-70 West all the way past Denver to Route 6 North to 80 West in Salt Lake City and then straight into the Bay Area. But there’s a problem. No cars. It’s 6:30 a.m. and commuters are coming
into
Baltimore, not leaving the city. Finally, a few motorists—maybe three in twenty minutes—pass by. I realize Jill has made my
I-70 WEST / SAN FRANCISCO
hitchhiking sign so you have to turn it over and around to read it correctly, not just flip it, which makes it harder to flash to oncoming possible rides. The drivers seem to refuse to even look at me. I feel like a complete fool.

I decide to walk up to the traffic light a couple of blocks away; at least here, where St. Paul Street connects, maybe there will be more cars on this well-traveled route. But no. I stand here in silence, alone. Then I feel a fucking raindrop. Then another. I am three blocks from my Baltimore house on the first day of my book expedition and it’s raining; something I had imagined for fiction, but in real life it’s suddenly impossible to believe. I take out my hooded rain jacket and put it on as my bags begin to get wet. I probably look scarier with my hoodie pulled up, I realize. It’s also harder to recognize me and I’m embarrassed to admit I am already hoping this will happen.

Still no rides. I’ve been here for what? An hour? It continues to pour rain. I take out my umbrella but I soon realize it is impossible to hold a sign you have to flip and turn while it’s getting wetter by the second
and
an umbrella in the other hand at the same time. Plus I’m sure I now look like a sopping-wet junkie Mary Poppins. More cars pass me. They probably think I’m one of those homeless men who sometimes stand at this intersection holding cardboard signs begging for money.

Just when I’m seriously considering going home and starting again the next day, when maybe the weather will be better, a car pulls up at the light and I hear an unfamiliar voice yell, “John Waters!” It’s my first ride! A young African-American big-and-beautiful Tracy Turnblad–type woman who excitedly cries as I get in, “I loved
Hairspray
!” Strapped in a baby seat in the back is her gorgeous little daughter, who at first gives me a wary look but then breaks into a big smile.

I am so happy to meet such a brave fan. A woman. With a baby. Amazing. “
Where
are you going?” she stammers in nervous excitement and confusion. When I explain I am hitchhiking to San Francisco, she starts laughing and screaming and waving her hands, apologizing she is “only going to Northern Parkway and turning west” to take her daughter to day care, and “then I have to go to work.” I don’t care. At least I am in a car headed in the right direction, out of the rain, if only for a few more blocks. I wish I remembered her name, but I was in the car for such a short time and so wet and excited to get picked up that I forgot to tell myself what it was on my tape recorder when I got out of her car. I did remember to give her my first
THANKS FOR THE LIFT
autographed card. Boy, did she deserve it! The first kind driver who took a risk on me. I salute her!

REAL RIDE NUMBER TWO

MINISTER’S WIFE

Reality check. It’s still raining and I’m only about five minutes (at the most) away from my house. But at least I’ve begun. I stand there for maybe fifteen minutes, wondering if I should throw my original route plan to the wind and walk to the other side of the traffic light, going west to Jones Falls Expressway, and not take a ride from anyone unless they are continuing to I-70 West. But then I see a car do a U-turn going south on Charles Street and pull into a church parking lot just ahead of where I am hitchhiking. “Are you John Waters?” the female driver asks after pulling to a stop beside me and rolling down the passenger window. “Yes, I am,” I answer in gratitude. “What do you need?” she asks, maybe thinking I wanted a tow truck or a mental-health practitioner. “Just a ride to I-70 West,” I tell her truthfully. “Hop in,” she says.