Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (27 page)

But I don’t. The next ride is yet another nice guy. Nondescript vehicle. He’s sixty-six years old, just like me, but hetero, I’m sure. A Republican, he tells me, who is happy Obama came out for gay marriage because “before, when he said he was ‘evolving on the issue,’ that was bullshit.” He’s also a Vietnam vet with a Kentucky-type accent, and I never once feel uncomfortable with him.

Here is yet another straight guy who can’t stop praising his wife, bragging proudly how she loves to read and how smart she is. I tell him what I do for a living and he shows no real surprise, just says how happy his daughter would be to hear he picked me up, because she loved
Hairspray
. He starts telling me about his career—providing feed for farm animals and how the business has come a long way on healthy nutrition for cattle and pigs. I learn that baby pigs love M&M’s as a treat, and if you feed one in a litter that snack, the baby pig will follow you around every time you appear. Chickens, however, are a whole different story. “They’re the worst—all their feed’s laced with growth hormones. That’s why eight-year-old girls get their period now,” he explains, “from eating these chickens that are more science projects than animals.” Now there is a sobering thought. I eat chicken. I hope I don’t get man tits!

He takes me deep into Indiana and I feel so safe and happy. After about two hours I realize he’s going to be turning off Route 70W, so I ask him if he knows a good rest area similar to the one he picked me up at this morning. We start scouting and immediately see a sign for one coming up soon. I know he is actually driving farther west than this, but who knows what the entrance ramp will be like when he has to merge south onto his new route. I ask him if he’ll pull off now to inspect hitchhiking spots.

This rest stop looks good. A pretty park. Enough cars stop. Even a few truckers mixed in, presumably taking naps. Bingo! I’ll take it. I give him my
THANKS FOR THE LIFT
card and he chuckles and bids me farewell. I’m on a roll. Next!!

REAL RIDE NUMBER TWELVE

TRUCKER

I stand there for a while. I check more Google Alerts and see the Here We Go Magic story is going absolutely batshit, yet I have never felt more anonymous. Drivers leaving in cars politely nod or make hand signals that they aren’t going far. I try to remain positive. I see a Hispanic woman with a bunch of kids in the park, taking a break from driving. She keeps looking at me, and I think, wonderful, she’s going to give me a ride! But when she walks over to me at the beginning of the exit ramp, I see she is holding out something in her hand for me. “Please take this,” she says with an accent, and I am stunned to see what I think is a $10 bill. “No, really, thank you so much,” I plead. “I don’t need it. I’m writing a book.” Yeah, sure, I can see her thinking, here’s a homeless person off his meds. I even take out my trusty fame kit to try to prove who I am, but she refuses to look … or leave. “Please, sir, take this!” she again orders with a militant kindness that breaks my heart. I realize she is not going to return to her family until I accept. Giving up, I take the bill and realize it’s a twenty, not a ten. I am amazed how generous she is. And how privileged and lucky I am. I feel guilty. Not worthy. Suppose I
were
homeless and off my meds? Hearing voices. Demons. No cash or credit cards. I vow to myself as she walks back to her kids that I will pass along her $20 bill like a good-luck talisman to the next needy traveler. I’m still trying to compute the generous act in my mind. You cheapskate, I berate myself, why don’t you go over there and give
her
$500?

But I don’t even have time to consider this because her gesture has already brought me incredible luck. A trucker who had been parked by the side of the rest stop the whole time I was there pulls out and hollers from inside the cab, “Come on, I’ll take you!” I’ve never felt gayer as I climb up those three steps on the passenger side of the eighty-thousand-pound Kenworth and jump inside. Eureka! A trucker has actually picked me up hitchhiking! “The book needed this!” I explain right away to the handsome fifty-year-old driver, who seems to take it all in stride despite, I could tell, having never heard of me when I introduced myself. I blurt out how grateful I am, how I make movies, and how “I promise I won’t print your or the truck company’s name because I know you aren’t allowed to pick up hitchhikers.” He agrees with that, telling me that while his company doesn’t demand two drivers, they do have a chip in the truck to always tell where he is, and his schedule is highly regulated—he’s only allowed to drive a total of seventy hours a week and never more than twelve in one day.

It’s so modern up here in the front seat of a truck! High-tech. Computers. So massive a vehicle. So high up. So much more glamorous than a limo or a town car. This is fun! He’s even a good driver, yet I’m almost afraid to look over at him for fear he’ll think I’m cruising, but then I realize not everybody thinks like a queer man. He’s just a good guy.

Yet I can’t help thinking, isn’t this trucker what every gay “bear” is trying to emulate? Tough but gentle? Sporting a belly but somehow still in shape? Unjudgmental but courageous? Smart but also down-to-earth? A supposed “real” man? I ask him about trucker horror stories, and this gets him going—how he once was in an accident when his whole truck flipped over and there were no air bags and he had to climb out the passenger-side window to safety. Or how he saw a collision recently where a school bus hit a truck but somehow the kids were all right. I could listen forever.

He has no patience for whiners. Sure, he hates the ever-present traffic near cities in Ohio and Texas the worst, but he never listens to “filthy” CB radios anymore. “Filthy?” I ask, perking up over a word so near and dear to my livelihood. “You know,” he explains, “complaining, bitching about the rules of trucking. I can’t stand hearing that stuff.” He has only good things to say about life on the road, especially Petro truck stops. “They’ve got everything,” he enthusiastically tells me, “lounges, you can watch TV, good food.” “In other words, the Tiffany’s of truck stops?” I ask, prodding him to possibly be their spokesperson in a TV commercial. “You bet,” he agrees with a grin.

And yep, here’s yet one more heterosexual man who loves his wife. I’m telling you, it’s a trend! Women I know who are always complaining they can never meet a good straight man—maybe you’re living in the wrong part of the country. Maybe you need to hitchhike. Route 70 West could be the path to a great marriage. Go ahead, stick out your thumb for romance.

Okay, trucker heaven can’t last forever. He’s going to be turning south to go home soon, so once again I flip back to full unease about where I can be dropped off. I explain my “good rest area” karma and we start looking. Pretty soon one pops up and he pulls off the interstate. I give him my pre-autographed hitchhiking card and wonder if he’ll tell his family about me. Probably. But it will be no big deal. He’s got a nice life—why should he give a rat’s ass about anybody’s celebrity?

REAL RIDE NUMBER THIRTEEN

RENEGADE BUILDERS

I scope out the rest area. Very similar to the last one. Except I see some kind of staff servicing the vending machines inside. Uh-oh. Oh well, I’ve had no trouble so far, why would I now? I buy non-Evian water and then go outside and take up my usual place at the beginning of the exit ramp from the rest area. It’s still a beautiful day. I see many drivers come and go, some taking a walk on the parklike grounds, stretching their backs and just being glad to be out of their vehicle for a moment. I notice a couple who look kind of like druggies walking their huge dog. I hold up my sign to the girl, but she shrugs as if she can’t—she’s not driving and it’s beyond her control.

Then one of the staff of the rest area walks out of the building and heads toward me. “You can’t hitchhike,” she says flatly. “The cops told me it was okay, and I’ve been hitchhiking in rest areas all across this state with no problem,” I lie, almost with an attitude. I notice this lady has few teeth—maybe the staff is work-release from prison, I think, instantly dentally profiling her. Suddenly her whole face changes in surprise. “Are you John Waters?!” she shouts with sudden friendliness. “Yes,” I say, completely shocked that she recognizes me. “Okay, you can stay,” she says with a complete law-and-order turnaround. I know I should be mad she was shitty when she didn’t know who I am and now practically kisses my ass when she does, but when you’re hitchhiking your usual value system collapses.

I see her go over and start talking to the druggie couple, who are piling into a van. That nosy little busybody, I think, as I keep my thumb out for rides. The van pulls out of the parking space and the back door slides open. I see a packed interior—almost like a hoarder’s. The two druggie types sit on a mattress on the floor with the giant dog. There’s even some kind of bird in a cage. “We’ll take you to Kansas City if you don’t mind sitting up here,” offers a white guy, about forty years old, in the front passenger seat, who seems to be running the show. He points to a space between himself and his wife, the driver. Not a seat at all, just the center console, but who cares!? I climb in and balance between Ritchie and Aiyana, as they introduce themselves. Kansas City? That’s far! I am beyond thrilled.

But should I be worried? The van takes off and everybody starts smoking joints. Ritchie tells me that the toothless rest-stop worker had said to them, “Can you get John Waters out of here?” I could tell she had mentioned something about who I was, but I could also feel they hadn’t heard of me. I look in the back and marvel at all the personal belongings packed inside the van. Shirley and Jasper, as they shyly announce their names, introduce Billyburr, the dog. They remind me of Karen and John, the famous “Needle Park” junkie couple
Life
magazine profiled in 1965 that so obsessed me at the time. Jasper, also about forty, is handsome in an ex-con way, and Shirley’s a little younger, pretty, but you can tell she’s been through the wringer. I wonder if they’re meth-heads.

Ritchie explains that they are on their way to the fracking boom in North Dakota to build temporary housing for the workers. I know little about fracking except it’s supposed to be bad and all my liberal friends are against it, but I’m open-minded. Besides, Ritchie isn’t a fracker himself; his specialty is building temporary housing in suddenly overpopulated areas. Like war zones. He has done the same thing in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Iraq. He only has good things to say about the Iraqis he had to deal with: “Great people. Just don’t ask them about religion or sex and you’re fine. They like Americans; they just don’t like our government or press. They see what is reported in the U.S. and it
is
false!” Most recently he has been in northern Pennsylvania and, I gather, is fleeing some sort of illegal-alien-trafficking problem he casually mentions. Ritchie says, “I love Mexican workers” because “they show up and do a better job than the legal ones I can find in this country.” Like every man who has picked me up hitchhiking so far, he hates freeloaders. Ritchie picked up Jasper, his old friend he hasn’t seen in years, on the way west to help out on the job, and Jasper asked if Shirley could join them. Shirley and Jasper seem to be freshly in love.

I instantly like Ritchie. He’s a renegade. A pothead wheeler-dealer who, I could tell, also loves to drink. A pirate. A grifter when he has to be and maybe a bit of a fugitive. Ritchie lost his house to the bank in the last recession. He’s broken but not down and still looking for his pot of gold.

Aiyana is a great driver, so I am never nervous perched up here in the middle of the front seats without a seat belt, even though we pass many
CLICK IT OR TICKET
warning signs. She says they have bad luck—the cops are always stopping them. Ritchie is paranoid whenever she goes even five miles faster than the speed limit. I quickly grow comfortable with all the pot smoke around me but refuse a toke, telling them, “I just can’t imagine standing on the side of the road with my thumb out, stoned on weed.” Maybe I have a contact high. I hope so. When in Rome …

I can tell they are racking their brains trying to figure out what I’m famous for, especially after I give them my thank-you card. But when I list all the movies I have directed, they come up mostly blank. Aiyana had vaguely heard of
Hairspray
, but that was it. “I don’t know much about celebrity,” Ritchie offers weakly, but keeps tweeting his friends that I’m in the car. They don’t know who I am either. Ritchie is extremely proud of his two daughters from another marriage and shows me their pictures, but when he calls them to tell them the news of whom he has picked up, they are tongue-tied, too. Nobody knows what I do until I mention the
Chucky
movie I was in. That does the trick! “Why didn’t you say you were in a
Chucky
movie?” I could practically hear them all thinking. Everybody knows
Chucky
.

We pass the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and all marvel at how beautiful it is. It’s my favorite public monument in this country. Ritchie delights in telling me that he and Aiyana just celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary, and when they were younger, they once rode up in one of the little private elevators to the top of the arch and had sex inside. I
knew
I liked these people. I think of the time I had sex in the Bleecker Street Cinema in the mid-sixties with my beatnik boyfriend, Tony, as we watched Marlene Dietrich in
The Blue Angel
, but balk at sharing this story with new friends I have only known for a few hours.

We joke a lot. I keep telling Ritchie I think he’s bullshitting me and really he’s an arms dealer. The giant dog in the back is incredibly well behaved. He just sits there and never once barks or demands to hang his head out the window. The bird is a blue-and-gold macaw and its name is Biscuit. It’s likewise silent, although they assure me the parrot can talk and squawk. I give Aiyana the $20 bill that the nice Mexican lady had given me, and she understands how I want her to pass it along with the proper Native American magic.