Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (26 page)

I am thrilled, no, exhilarated to be in a van with such a hip group. “It only takes one ride” was becoming truer and truer each day. They explain that they passed me once as they entered the freeway but didn’t stop. Arguing back and forth if it “really was John Waters,” some were sure, others were not, so they decided to come back and see. “He’d never wear that hat!” Peter had argued. I guess he never saw the
Scum of the Earth
movie.

I struggle to fasten my seat belt and quickly bond with Jen, who has full-tilt bad-girl beauty and style to burn. Mike and Avtar, seated in front of us, quickly join in on comparing sexual slang words:
blouse
(a gay man who is a feminine top),
trendsexual
(gay for political reasons), and
heteroflexible
(mostly straight but known to occasionally fall off that wagon). Luke just listens silently from the last row, softly strumming his guitar, as Peter and Matt shout out other rude-vocabulary lessons from the front of the van. We talk about endless touring (they have been on the road for almost two years straight), drugs, Patty Hearst, Divine, and their own hitchhiking adventures from their pasts. This is complete heaven for me—great new showbiz comrades who drive safely
and we are covering a lot of miles!

We stop for lunch at Giacomo’s in Zanesville, Ohio, and I treat. It is the least I could do—a sugar-daddy road warrior! Ha! It is fun to be part of a youth gang again. Not wanting to lose time—they have a show to make that night, after all—we head back onto Route 70 and eat as we travel. I think I surprise them by pulling out my hitchhiking-music compilation CD I had prepared when writing the “best” and “worst” chapters of my book. I mean, what other hitchhiker brings his personal soundtrack with him? They laugh and seem to love all my vintage novelty and country songs about being lonely on the road, and in turn they give me their new CD,
A Different Ship
, which totally coincidentally just came out this week. I can’t wait to listen to it in private. Mike asks if he can tweet that they have picked me up, and I say, “Sure.” My rule had always been I would never start the publicity or confirm I was hitchhiking until after I was done, but whoever picked me up could do as they liked. Mike tweets on the Here We Go Magic official site, “Just picked up John Waters hitchhiking in the middle of Ohio. No joke. Waters in the car.” Jen follows up with her own announcement, “We really picked up John Waters hitchhiking.” Both include a snapshot of me with Jen happily riding along in the van and Luke relaxing in the backseat. Proof.

The story goes viral almost immediately. Twitter. Facebook. “Pinkie swear?” was one of the first reactions to Mike. “It is 100% pinkie swear true,” he answers happily.
Spin
magazine immediately calls the band’s manager and the rest of the music press quickly follows. I can see by Mike’s shocked face as he checks his e-mails on his computer that the shit is hitting the publicity fan in a completely unplanned, lovely, and insane way.

I have been with Here We Go Magic for about six hours now, and as we enter the suburbs of Indianapolis, where the band has to go south, they try to find a good drop-off spot for me—one with hotels and restaurants. I can tell that as much as they want to help me find the perfect hitchhiking spot, they will be late for their show if they dawdle. We leave I-70W and I say, “This exit will be fine,” even though I can see it isn’t. A high-speed, heavily traveled main highway with an entrance ramp to I-70 West would be impossible to pull over on. But the band members have been so wonderful to me that I don’t want to hold them up. It’s time to say goodbye. We stop at a convenience store parking lot and get out. I ask a stranger to take a photo of all of us together, with me in the middle holding my
END OF I-70 WEST
cardboard sign. Here We Go Magic drives off into their show-business life and I go back to being a bum.

REAL RIDE NUMBER TEN

SHAUTA

La Quinta Inn has a room. Already stewing about the impossible morning hitchhiking spot I am facing, I confide in the lady who is checking me in. She doesn’t raise an eyebrow when I tell her I’m thumbing my way across the country and points out back behind the hotel, where Route 70 West itself runs quite near the property. “You could climb over the fence,” she suggests.

The room’s okay—not as nice as Days Inn, though, and the lighting is piss-poor for reading. Suddenly I realize I’ve lost my reading glasses. Oh God, I bet I left them in the Here We Go Magic van. I e-mail Jen immediately. Luckily, I have my backup pair for exactly this occasion; otherwise I’d be unable to read a thing, a torture worse than death. I check my e-mails and see the Here We Go Magic story has crossed over even more. First a site called DCist, then Gawker, quickly followed by Jill Rosen of the
Baltimore Sun.
Gulp. My office’s official response to all inquiries has been “We neither confirm nor deny the story,” which I realize sounds a little grand. Jen has been especially sweet in her more recent tweets, not revealing where they had dropped me off, “maybe the wild blue yonder.” She even has sent me a farewell message: “JW, be safe out there.” The band e-mails me back, yes, they have my glasses, and a friend who is at their show, who is based in Indianapolis, from Joyful Noise Recordings, will bring them back to my hotel tonight after their gig and drop them off at the desk. Talk about a ride that keeps on giving!

I look out the window of my room, and indeed I have a perfect, hellish view of Route 70W rush-hour traffic. The whizzing sounds of cars and trucks are starting to feel like the soundtrack of my new life. Climbing over the fence would be a ridiculously extreme act, plus I’d be right on I-70, where no one would stop. I go outside and walk through this suburban shopping-type area and know I’m too near the city. I try walking up to where the nearest ramp is but see this would be a terrible place—nowhere to stand, endless traffic, mostly all local. I panic. What the hell am I going to do?

Yesterday Susan had suggested I call Shauta Marsh, who once booked my
This Filthy World
spoken-word show for the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art. Maybe she could give me a lift to a better hitch spot. At first I dismissed this idea with bluster. “No! That would be cheating,” I raved, still the fake-ride reactionary. But once I got back in my room, I was suddenly a little more open to “cheating.” After all, wasn’t I going to offer a stranger money to get me to a better spot in Ohio? Is it
that
different to call a friend? Actually, yes. It would be sort of cheating, but what the hell, hadn’t I mentioned in the prologue that I would “call a limousine” if I had to? It’s not
that
bad.

Shauta is surprised to hear from me out of the blue, and I imagine even more startled to hear that I am in her town, hitchhiking, and needing a ride in the morning. She doesn’t balk when I mention, “I like to start early.” Not having the nerve to give her my usual starting time of 6:30 a.m., I sheepishly mention 7:00 a.m. She seems fine with that but adds she has to take her two kids to school, so they’ll be in the car. “Great!” I say. “Children need to know about hitchhiking.” I tell Shauta I’ll be out in front of the motel waiting eagerly for her arrival. What an absolute sweetheart!

I e-mail my office that Shauta is good to go, and they are relieved. Trish stays late after work hours, though, and comes up with some good possible locations to be dropped off in the morning. She e-mails directions and descriptions of the areas to both me and Shauta. One has a McDonald’s and a “truck center” and is about fifteen miles west, and the other is a rest area ten miles farther that has no restaurants but vending machines and bathrooms and separate parking lots for cars and trucks. I feel better. I e-mail both my sisters that the hitch story has gone public and they should be ready to explain to our mom and calm her down if she should hear. I tell them I am in Indianapolis and am fine.

I guess I’m hungry. By now I have eliminated successfully and feel relieved to be able to do so on the road. Let’s see—where shall I fine-dine tonight? I see the usual chain outlets to ignore. Hmmmm … the Outback Steakhouse? Looks less corporate than the others, plus I’ve never heard of it. I’m doing new stuff every day! I enter and sit at the bar and a nice waiter takes my order. I choose a steak. The filet is kind of gristly, certainly nothing to write home about. Nobody looks at me or talks to me despite the fact that two men are on either side of me, also eating alone. They stare at the overhead TVs as if they have never
not
eaten a meal in their lives in front of the tube. I tip more than 20 percent, remembering Nora Ephron’s great line that “overtipping only costs a few dollars more.” Here, less than a dollar.

Back at the hotel room, online, I see the Here We Go Magic story is continuing to get an unbelievably high number of hits. I’m secretly pleased, even though I can’t for the life of me think how this could possibly make it any easier for me to get rides. I forward the
Spin
website on Here We Go Magic picking me up to The Corvette Kid and tell him where I am. He e-mails me back, “Okay. Sounds good. I plan to head west in a few days. I hope you don’t go too far now.” Does this mean there’s really a possibility he’ll be back? As I curl up to go to sleep, I realize Day Three started off terribly but ended on the upswing. Could my newfound hitchhiking luck last into the next day? How could I possibly get a cooler ride than with Here We Go Magic?

I wake up and am still shocked I am doing this trip. When I hear a message on my voice mail from an old friend who has read online about me hitchhiking, I’m touched but have to chuckle that he’s seriously concerned that I have dementia and am wandering around the highways lost and out of my skull. He offers to come pick me up no matter where I may be even though he lives in Los Angeles. I text him back I’m okay. I check my e-mail and see even Baltimore local TV and radio stations are now reporting my hitchhiking. I e-mail my sisters and tell them they’d better tell our mom now—she will definitely hear today. I’m still too frightened over the possible length of this trip to throw away underwear, but at least I put on a fresh pair. Plus a clean Gap T-shirt. Pink. What was I thinking when I packed? I’m getting a little sick of wearing the same Issey Miyake sports coat every day. Usually I’d be more like the Donna Dasher character in
Female Trouble
sniffing, “I really should be changing my outfit anyway, I’ve had it on nearly five hours,” but refrain from acting like her when I, by habit, go down to the free-breakfast room.

The food selection is just as awful as always: white bread, frozen bagels a starving-to-death New Yorker would still turn down, and sugarcoated high-calorie cereal. Same trucker types. Same uncuteness. Same gloomy lack of social interaction. God, I miss newspapers! Luckily I swiped a
Wall Street Journal
from that lunch place yesterday in Ohio, so I have something to read while I fight the awful fear that Shauta won’t show up. Actually, I know she
will
be here, but I’m a worrywart and always need a backup plan. Like crying.

I check out at the front desk and am thrilled to see that the friend of Here We Go Magic did actually drop off my reading glasses. Another kind soul! Shauta’s early and so am I. Her two kids, Vivian and Max, in the backseat are adorable and stare at me with friendly but quizzical expressions as I climb in the front. I can’t imagine how their mom has prepped them for this preschool adventure, but she’s done a good job. Shauta’s game to take me to either of Trish’s recommended hitchhiking spots but imagines the second one will be better. Always taking the word of the local, I’m sure she’s right and relieved she has the time to take me the extra miles. I offer her gas money but she laughs and turns me down kindly. The first exit, on South Holt Road, looks so ominous I tell her not to even bother pulling off to scout. Still inner-city and industrial—the exact opposite of a place a cross-country traveler would stop for services.

We continue on to the farther rest area and I see we are finally out of Indianapolis. She exits and I’m unsure because there are so few cars, but it’s a pretty setting. Woods. Nice bathrooms. A separate truck parking lot I can see in the distance. Few travelers compared with an entrance ramp, but I get the feeling everybody who stops here is going a long way. I get out at the end of the rest area right where all the trucks and cars would have to reenter I-70 West. It is a beautiful, even slightly chilly morning. Holding my hitchhiking sign, I pose with Shauta’s two great kids, and we all give her the thumbs-up for the picture. I hug her and thank her so much for disrupting her life on such quick notice. Boy, does she deserve the hitchhiking thanks card I hand over with gratitude. They jump back in the car, and right as they pull up beside me to leave, Shauta takes, through the passenger-side window, a final photo of me hitchhiking. Bye, Shauta! Bye, kids! Once again, I’m on my own.

REAL RIDE NUMBER ELEVEN

VIETNAM VET

I stand there. It’s quiet for once. Actually cold. I put on my wool scarf for the first time. The sun’s coming up causes a big glare, and when the first one or two vehicles exit the lot, I see the drivers have to squint and lower their visors to see at all. Not even sure they can actually see
me
hitchhiking, so I move back into the shade closer inside the rest area. It’s odd having vehicles drive by at such a slow speed. There are few cars. I realize this is the kind of rest area where late at night it would be scary. No security. No services. Except maybe blow jobs inside as I had imagined in an earlier “bad” chapter, but this time it would be robbers, not cops, shaking down the frisky perverts.

Here in the day it feels safe, though. Couples stop to walk their dogs. Even the few truck drivers pulling out throw up their hands to signal they would pick me up if they could. I stand there feeling both foolish and brave. Silence except for the birds. I’m alive, I think, and so many of my friends are not. I may be nuts to be doing this, but I’m kind of proud of myself. I
am
having an adventure. I like my life. Even if I have to stand here for the rest of it.