Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (2 page)

I drove all five cross-country interstate routes in the United States when I was a young man and loved it. We used to get “drive-away” cars, where the owner gave you the keys and you paid the gas and delivered the car to an address on the opposite coast. I even remember singing “America the Beautiful” stoned on hashish with my fellow travelers (David Lochary, Steve Butow, and David Hartman) as we drove toward a beautiful sunset in Minneapolis. Looking back, I’m amazed anyone trusted any of us considering how we looked at the time, but even though we violated the rules by taking other passengers (and drugs), we always did deliver the car in one piece. But come to think about it, we didn’t ever pick up a hitchhiker
then
, and that was in the heyday of the hippie years. And in 2012, I expect someone to stop?

I still hitchhike in Provincetown to Longnook, the most beautiful beach in Truro (about ten miles away). I usually ask someone to go on a thumbing date with me. Author Philip Hoare, artist and singer Kembra Pfahler, the late and great art dealer Colin de Land, have all joined me alongside the highway. And we’ve never had any real trouble either. Once I was hitching with photographer Henny Garfunkel, whose extreme hairdo and stunning fashions can make children cry, and a man did a U-turn and picked us up—never a good sign. As usual, I got in the front and the woman hitchhiker got in the back. It smelled inside, like he was living in his car or something. I had a sudden flashback to the scene I wrote in
Pink Flamingos
where Mink Stole’s character says to her husband, played by David Lochary, that she’s tired of “just driving around … driving around” looking for female hitchhikers to pick up, kidnap, and then have raped and impregnated so the babies could be sold on the black market.

“See that safety sticker?” our vaguely creepy driver asked. “Yeah,” I said hesitatingly, looking at the Massachusetts official emissions-test sticker on the inside of the windshield. “I drew that myself,” he chuckled with a leer. I turned around to see Henny’s wide-eyed look of panic but it was all a false alarm; he dropped us off at the beach without incident.

But sometimes I go alone and I’m never sure if the drivers who pick me up recognize me. “Who is this man in the car?” a confused child who had never heard of hitchhiking once asked his mom and dad after I got in. “Why is he in
this
car?” he continued as I squirmed in embarrassment under the kid’s hostile glare and tried to explain what hitchhiking was.

Another time, a handsome long-haired pirate type stopped to give me a ride in his pickup, and just as I was about to jump in the front, he smiled and said, “No, you’ll have to ride in the back, my dog’s up here in the front.” Ha! Suddenly put in my proper place around such rugged hippie good looks, I laughed and happily climbed up into the open truck bed. I was thrilled to get a ride with such a sexy devil even if I could only see his beautiful long hair from the rear as he pulled off toward Provincetown.

Even weirder was the time the A&E
Biography
TV show was doing a segment on me and asked if they could shoot me hitchhiking in Provincetown and I reluctantly said yes. The crew hid in the bushes, and when I got a ride, they jumped in their van and followed. The nice local fisherman who picked me up not only didn’t recognize me, he didn’t see the crew either. Nervously eyeing the cameramen hanging out their windows, shooting us as they tracked our car, I casually mentioned to my ride, “Don’t look over now on your side of the car, but there is a film crew shooting this whole thing.” “Okay,” he said with a shrug, completely unimpressed, and then drove for ten more minutes before dropping me off at the beach. Even when the crew jumped from their vehicle to film my exit, he never ruined their final shot by looking into the camera lens. What a pro.

One time my hitchhiking date was Patricia Hearst. As we walked toward Route 6 from Provincetown, we quickly got a ride, but I don’t think the driver recognized us until we got in, me in the front, her in the back. He kept doing double takes looking over at me and finally said, “Are you John Waters?” and I said yes, and at the same time he looked in the rearview mirror I said, “And that is Patty Hearst.” He looked totally shocked but I could tell he realized it
was
her. “He made me do it,” Patty deadpanned, and I was so proud of her improvisational skills. We were now a hitchhiking comedy duo.

Coming back to Provincetown that day with Patty was harder because we had to hitchhike right on Route 6, a highway with cars whizzing by, which made it seem more like real hitchhiking. It took some time for us to get a ride and I could tell Patty was starting to get nervous, especially when we were finally picked up but asked to “switch cars” by the driver, who hooked us up with another ride from a friend in North Truro, the next town before Provincetown. Later, her husband, Bernie, whom I love but realize is the head of security for Hearst Corporation, was a little perturbed when she told him of our day’s adventure. “Oh, come on, John,” he said with impatience, “hasn’t she had
enough
trouble?!” I guess he was right. But have I?

Is there such a thing as “unfamous”? If so, that is what I want to be on this trip, yet go right back to “famous” if need be. I’m recognized in public about 80 percent of the time across this country, but during the other 20 percent when I’m not, I get pissed when I realize how shabbily other people must be treated every day. When store clerks or airline reps
do
suddenly recognize me and get nice after being grumpy when they didn’t know who I was, I get testy right back.

How will my so-called fame, or sudden lack of it, affect my life as a bicoastal tramp? Can slumming on the road or begging rides on interstate entrance ramps live up to my fantasy of being a David-Niven-from-the-gutter glamorous vagabond? Who could recognize me driving by at 70 mph, anyway? And even if they did, who would think, “Oh, that’s John Waters, the filmmaker, alongside the road in the middle of Utah”? Once I climb in, will they believe it’s me even if they know who I am, or think I’m just a John Waters impersonator? Which I am in a way every day … only older.

I will definitely carry a cardboard sign. That Depression-era gimmick has worked well for me in the past. Not
SAN FRANCISCO OR BUST
but just
I-70 WEST
with
SAN FRANCISCO
on the other side, a double feature of hitchhiking pleas. Plus a backup sign that a friend actually saw a hitchhiker carrying in one of those pot-harvesting Northern California towns—
I’M NOT PSYCHO
. Now there’s a psychological profile that can stand alone. Of course, a scary driver might see that visual, chuckle to himself, and think, well, I am! and pull over, but I will maintain my belief in the basic goodness of people.

I’m not going to set up ridiculous rules for myself in the hitchhiking adventure. I mean, I’ll have money, carry credit cards and a cell phone, and plan to stay in motels if no one is kind enough to invite me to their family’s home for a sleepover. No tourist sites, though, or visiting friends. This is an irrational vacation, not a tour. Some friends tell me that off the interstate on the secondary roads I’ll have a better chance of being picked up because those drivers are “hiding something,” but am I anxious to get a ride with a drug dealer or a mule who is carrying kilos of heroin hidden in the chassis of the car? If I get stuck in the middle of the night, I’ll do anything I have to do to survive—even call a limousine, if necessary. One thing I know, I won’t take a ride on a motorcycle.

I imagine hitchhiker manners are a gray area. What if they’re bad drivers? Do I offer to take over if they are falling asleep at the wheel and refuse to pull over for a nap? Suppose they won’t let me? “Hey, wake up!” will get old quickly, and how many times can you grab the steering wheel in the nick of time after they nod off and begin to drift into the breakdown lane at full speed toward a family gathered around their vehicle while changing a flat? Oh God, suppose I have to help change a flat?! I have no clue how to do that. If I had to change a flat tire or die, I’d be dead.

And what about sleeping myself while someone else drives? That somehow seems rude to me. Don’t people pick up hitchhikers to have someone to talk to? Letch after? Vent to? Besides, if I fell asleep, they could easily turn off the main road, go to a secret satanic location, and cut off my head and put it on a stick.

How do you say no if a car stops to pick you up on a lonely highway, you run a quarter of a mile to get in, and you see a gang of six tough black guys inside? See? I’m already racially profiling and I feel guilty. They could be normal college students, couldn’t they, or 1960s freedom fighters lost in some mysterious
Twilight Zone
time warp? One of my favorite hip-hop groups? Even fans who recognize me from my old Court TV show, ’
Til Death Do Us Part
? But if they’re not and I smell trouble, what do I say? “I’m doing a reality show and there’s a satellite camera filming us right now”? Maybe they’d believe it! I guess what I’d really do is just chirp, “Hey, homey, thanks for stopping,” before yelling “SHOTGUN” and pushing the front-seat passenger over to the middle without showing fear.

Suppose it all goes wrong? Nobody picks me up. I’m robbed. Beaten. I will already have half the book advance, so I can’t quit. Should I put my hitchhiking dough in a special CD account I can’t touch before I leave, just in case I chicken out? Would I have the nerve to call my editor, Jonathan Galassi, and tell him of my cowardice, my literary spinelessness? Just imagining the humiliation of my Pope of Trash crown being so besmirched is enough to give me shingles, whatever they are.

Or could I just make up the whole book and say it was true? How would anybody know? It took years for scholars to figure out that John Steinbeck’s supposedly nonfiction
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
, a well-reviewed bestseller published in 1962 (and still in print), was in fact total bullshit. Instead of driving cross-country in a pickup, staying in campgrounds, and chatting up the locals, as the author claimed, he actually had company with him, stayed in motels and luxury hotels, and made up the conversations. According to writer Bill Barich, quoted in a recent
New York Times
article, Steinbeck was “discouraged by everyone from making the trip.” He was too old, “trying to recapture his youth, the spirit of knight-errant.” Uh-oh. Could that be me?

Nah. I don’t think I could lie. I’m not sure I’d want to be JT LeRoy at this stage of my life, and besides, being the centerpiece of a literary hoax is one of the few ways to be “bad” that is never funny. But why not take a chance and, before I go, think up the very best that could happen on this trip? Imagine the worst, too. Both as novellas. And then, after fantasizing on paper, go out in the world, do the real thing, and hopefully live to report the results. Fiction. Nonfiction. Then the truth. All scary. Go ahead, John, jump off the cliff.

THE BEST THAT COULD HAPPEN

A NOVELLA

GOOD RIDE NUMBER ONE

HARRIS

It’s a beautiful Baltimore spring day—the perfect 68
o
morning. I decide to leave twenty-four hours earlier than everyone in my office thinks I will, so I can avoid all their nervous goodbyes. Susan, my longtime assistant who runs my filth empire with an iron fist, has always thought this adventure a ludicrous idea but knows I am just as stubborn as she can be, so she long ago gave up on talking me out of it. Trish, my other full-time assistant, who will actually be transcribing this book (I write by hand on legal pads before she puts it on the computer), is a little friendlier to the idea since she was briefly a teenage runaway. Jill, my art helper, seems all for the idea. My bookkeeper, Doralee, has given up being surprised by anything that goes on in our office but knows I will continue to get a receipt for every single penny I spend while hitching, since no one could argue this is not a business trip. Margarett, my housekeeper, laughed the hardest I’ve ever heard her (practically in my face) when I confessed my cross-country plans.

Just before I walk out the front door to leave, I look out back and see the fox that lives on my property happily roaming my wooded grounds and take this as a good-luck sign. I turn on the burglar alarm and leave feeling … well, adventurous. I walk up my small residential street and am relieved that none of my neighbors see me carrying a hitchhiking sign or question why I am on foot carrying an obvious travel bag. I get to the corner of Charles Street and stick out my thumb and hold up my
I-70 WEST
cardboard sign that Jill designed for me. “Make the letters not
too
arty and certainly not
STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN
scary,” I had mentioned, and she has followed instructions well. I don’t feel ridiculous, I feel kind of brave.

I can’t believe it. The very first car that goes by stops, and I run to hop in. An art-school type dressed in brown jeans and an old Charles Theater T-shirt is behind the wheel of a car so nondescript that I have to ask him what kind it is. “A very used 1999 VW Passat sedan,” he answers in the kindest voice imaginable. I feel safe immediately. He doesn’t even bat an eye that I’m hitchhiking, even though he recognizes me. “Wow, John Waters. I’m a fan,” he announces, low-key. He so respects my privacy he doesn’t even ask where I’m headed but offers, “I’m going as far as West Virginia if that’s a help.” “It sure is,” I say, relieved I can avoid the tricky cloverleaf where I-70 West meets the Baltimore Beltway and there’s nowhere to stand to bum a ride.