Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (25 page)

Then it happens—as always, when you least expect it. A ride. I bet a cheer goes up in my office when they see by the SPOT tracking device that I finally get a lift. Any driver who picks up a hitchhiker wants to talk, and today I’m especially willing to listen. He’s a lovely guy in his thirties, working-class, with a girlfriend at home. He immediately tells me his “life-changing” tale of how his grandmother, after a long illness, had to have her legs amputated, and how he was so greatly impressed by the care she got in the hospital that he wanted to take up nursing for a living. Good. He can nurse me.

He had been divorced and said he got a lot of tattoos to punish himself but was “now better.” He has a kid of his own and more children with his new girlfriend, of whom he speaks kindly. He isn’t going far, he explains, he has just gotten carryout, at the same McDonald’s where I had lunch, to take home for dinner to his family. I ask him about that truck stop down the road I had heard about, and he explains that it has recently gone out of business. All that is open there now is a trucker gas station. My heart sinks; I guess the cop didn’t know that. I tell the kindly and not-unbutch nurse what I do for a living, but in a nice way he doesn’t seem much interested. I explain my fear of being dropped off so late in the day at an exit without a motel. He says, “After I eat dinner I’ll drive back down to this freeway exit and check on you to see if you got a ride.” Wow! What a great offer! But what exactly is the offer? If I’m still standing there, do I get to go to his house, meet the little woman, and sleep on the couch? Do I get to nibble on his family’s leftover McDonald’s dinner? I guess I’m a little less worried when my male nurse pulls off the interstate to let me off. Of course I give him my thank-you card. Maybe he
will
come back if I’m stuck. Grasping at straws is beginning to feel normal.

REAL RIDE NUMBER EIGHT

COAL MINER

Just as I feared, there is no lodging at this exit. Up the street from where I’m standing, partially hidden by tree branches, is a gas station, and from the sign I can see, I gather some sort of convenience store is inside. But how late this place stays open I have no idea. To the right (past a bridge I could sleep under if I had to) I glimpse in the distance giant trucks pulling away after refueling. Visible farther up on the other side of the freeway is the sign for the now-defunct “trucker plaza,” the one place I could have spent the night
if
it had been open. But it isn’t, John, it isn’t.

The only cars that seem to be on the road here are rush-hour types, and they pass with the usual indifference. I sadly realize I’m at an even worse place to thumb a ride than I was when I was last picked up, but at least it’s a
different
worse place. I stand there with my thumb out forever. I’m dying here. I call my office and vent my fears. Susan and Trish don’t know what to do or how to help because I can’t even give them my location. I don’t know where the hell I am myself! My BlackBerry and SPOT tracker can tell them a fairly close geographical position, but not exact. I beg them to find a local car-company phone number just in case I’m stuck here in the dark. Susan and Trish can hear the panic in my voice when I realize the workday is ending and they’ll soon be leaving the office. They promise me they’ll try.

We hang up, and I can see the sun is quickly going down. Terror. I realize I need a new sign that is way more direct—one that
could
work for local riders and at least get me to an exit with a motel. But I am afraid to leave my hitchhiking spot to search for cardboard, because suppose the male nurse comes back? What time
was
he eating dinner, anyway? He must be finished by now! Was he lying about returning? Did he look up my name on his home computer and suddenly get cold feet? No, megalomaniac, he probably threw away your card, you self-important shithead.
I want him to come back right now!

But he doesn’t. I realize I must act or it will be total nightfall. I walk over to the gas-station convenience store and ask the woman behind the counter if I could have some cardboard to make a sign. “You know it’s illegal to hitchhike on the freeway,” she sniffs. Bitch. “Yes, I know, but I’m on the entrance ramp and the Ohio police have already told me that was okay,” I answer with suppressed haughtiness. “In that shed outside to the left of the store is where all the empty boxes are kept,” she offers with a hint of class condescension. “You’ll have to break them down.” I begrudgingly thank her and wonder if she’ll call the cops when I leave.

Inside the hot shed I grab a few boxes—all too large—and rip them apart with my hands in my usual clumsy-at-physical-labor kind of way. Ow! I scrape my hand on a staple and now I’m bleeding. Once again, I wonder why I can’t do the simple physical things most other men can do easily. Am I
that
gay? So queer I can’t flatten a cardboard box properly without ripping it in the middle and making it impossible to be used as a potential sign?

Finally I find a smaller box, and miracle of miracles, the seams flatten properly and I tear off two sides that are the perfect size. I take out my trusty marker and start to scrawl my new plea,
NEXT MOTEL
, but hesitate, wondering if that message will somehow sound sexual. Instead I write
NEXT HOTEL
, which is ridiculous—certainly there are no real
hotels
anywhere near these freeway exits, but what the hell? I’d rather sound highfalutin than cheap.

Guess what? The sign works. A coal miner picks me up. A real one. Midthirties. Covered in coal dust like in a comic strip. Coming home from work. And yes, he’ll take me to an exit in Cambridge, Ohio, where there are motels. It’s only ten minutes away from where he picked me up (Old Wilmington, Ohio, he tells me), but at least I don’t have to sleep outside. Yay!

I don’t even bother telling him what I do for a living and he doesn’t ask. Not the nosy type, I guess. Just a good guy helping out a fellow man down on his luck. I ask him about that Chilean coal-mining disaster and how it was for him to watch that harrowing-rescue news footage and he says he “purposely never looked at it because I have three little girls and have to go to work in the coal mines here anyway, so why upset myself?” He’s had a past, just like most of the men who’ve picked me up hitchhiking so far. He had gone north from this part of Ohio “because it was dull,” but became a meth addict before turning his life around and coming back home. Just like the male nurse and the biker before him, the coal miner speaks lovingly about his wife. Usually at home I meet straight guys who bitch about their spouses and complain about the lack of blow jobs they get, but here is another heterosexual man who
does
love women and gives his wife great credit for steering him in the right direction. He seems happy. Heterosexuals can feel good about themselves, too.

Even though Cambridge, Ohio, is past his exit, he takes me there anyway and even checks out the entrance ramp for my tomorrow morning’s hitching. It looks good. He asks me which of the several motels we could see I’d like to stay in. I am already a Days Inn man, so I choose what I know. I give him my
THANKS FOR THE LIFT
card and he takes it politely. He bids me farewell with a smile and pulls off toward home after an honest day’s work.

REAL RIDE NUMBER NINE

HERE WE GO MAGIC

I check in, and lo and behold, the clerk recognizes me. I tell him I’m hitching cross-country and writing a book and how hard it is to get a ride. I see him Googling me at the same time he’s taking my credit card info. A fat man waiting to check in behind me overhears and says, “I used to be a trucker and there’s a lot of truckers who stay at this exit, so you ought to have luck.” I tell him truckers can never pick up hitchhikers these days because of all the restrictive new rules, but he says without missing a beat, “Well, believe me, they’d pick you up if you had a vagina.”

I go to my room, and as soon as I enter, the phone is ringing. It’s the clerk. “Can you come down and do an autograph?” he asks. “Sure,” I respond, “as long as you try and hustle me a ride west tomorrow morning.” As I sign at the desk, he assures me he’ll ask around and leave me a note in the morning if he’s had any luck before his shift ends. I have hope.

I go back upstairs and text Susan and Trish at their homes that “a nice coal miner—in the outfit” gave me an eight-mile ride to a Days Inn. I explain about the clerk in the lobby, how he might find me a ride, etc. Susan e-mails me back, “Tomorrow will be better.”

I see by checking the day’s e-mails that my office tried earlier, without any luck, to find me a taxi or car service when I was whining and panicking. I read the e-mail incorrectly in my usual impatient way and assume when they write that they even “called a local VFW bar” and tried to “talk to a sober enough person to act as a hack” that they were setting up a “fake” ride to pick me up. I write them a blowhard e-mail back saying, “This makes me insane. Please do not do this!” But then I realize they weren’t trying to manipulate my story, just doing what I had asked—find me a paid ride to a hotel if I got stuck. I write back with my tail between my legs, “I see this was preventative planning. Thanks.”

I continue scrolling down on my phone and read that The Corvette Kid e-mailed me at Atomic Books the very night he left me off. The owner, Benn Ray, doesn’t know about my hitchhiking trip so is baffled. He forwards The Kid’s day-old initial e-mail to my office, which explains how he picked me up in Frederick County, Maryland, and drove me to Ohio, what a great time we had, and then asks Atomic Books for my e-mail address so he could offer to give me a lift again on his upcoming trip to Missouri.

Not having any idea what The Kid was referring to, Benn sent back the standard line to fans who e-mail there, “I’m sorry, we only accept mail for John Waters,” and gave him the address. But The Kid wasn’t having any of that and answered, “Okay, he did say to reach him by e-mailing him there … If this isn’t true and he lied to me, so be it. But I spent 4 hours driving him to Ohio today. All I’m asking is for you to forward the e-mail to him so I can touch base.” Susan had seen this forwarded e-mail at work and answered, politely explaining to The Kid the situation with Atomic Books and adding, “Thank you for driving John yesterday. He told us it was a great ride and he really appreciated it. He’s checking in with us very infrequently, but we’ll be sure he sees your e-mail and thank you for extending such a nice offer. I think he’ll be beyond Missouri in a few days but it sure is generous to offer a backup plan.” The Kid answered quickly, thanking her, and joking about my having told him one of my assistants was also a Republican, “Glad to hear of a fellow ‘R’ … hopefully John doesn’t give you too much grief for that.” He doesn’t seem put off by Susan’s pooh-poohing the possibility of his coming back to get me. “What a great adventure,” The Kid writes her back. I immediately e-mail him my cell phone number. You never know.

I feel a little more upbeat. And for the first time on the trip, I am starved. I walk outside into the hub of motels, fast-food restaurants, even a giant tractor-supply warehouse. Truckers are everywhere, and yes, a few of them are incredibly cute, but in real, unporn life most of them are, well, ugly. Just like film directors, I guess. Here is a world I have never been in, in my life. I feel excited! I go in a Starfire convenience store and buy more water, then I head over to Ruby Tuesday for dinner. Another first for me. I sit at the counter and try to appear friendly to the other trucker types who are also eating, but nobody takes the bait. I order tilapia and it’s actually delicious. I like Ruby Tuesday, I decide, feeling that I’m almost passing for a normal person. Maybe regular people don’t talk to strangers. Maybe that’s why I’ve made no friends here.

I walk back to the motel and make sure the clerk sees me again. He waves. I’m disappointed he doesn’t mention anything about a ride tomorrow, but I decide I can’t be a nag. Maybe he’s still working on it.

Up in my room I look at my AAA TripTik and get depressed. I hitchhiked about ten hours today but only was in cars for a total of about fifty minutes. Day Two has been awful. I have a long, long way to go. Escape to sleep.

I wake up at 6:00 a.m., as usual. Thank God, Days Inn has bathtubs. Showers are too violent for me unless it’s really hot outside. I debate throwing away my second pair of underpants. Nope. This trip’s definitely going to take longer than five days. I wear my second day’s boxers again. I realize I have forgotten one of the main tools of my mustache maintenance—the cuticle scissors I use to trim unruly long or gray hairs. Oh well, for now it’s not that scraggly; it will pass for the day.

I go to “work.” It’s not a far walk to the entrance ramp and it looks like an okay spot. Lots of traffic. But Susan was wrong, it
isn’t
“better tomorrow.” I stand there with my thumb out. The cop from yesterday would be proud—I shake my sign and make eye contact with drivers but still no luck. Cop cars pass me several times and I know they see me, but none of them gives me any grief. Four hours pass. I try different signs—
END OF 70 WEST
; the one Susan suggested:
WRITING HITCHHIKING BOOK
; even just
SAN FRANCISCO
—but still strike out. Ohio will be the death of me yet. Death by tedium.

Again when a ride stops there is a split second of unreality. Fear they’ll take off without me. It’s a van pulling a small trailer. The door slides open and I see a whole gang of hipsters. “It’s the Manson Family!” I humorously greet them. Each is staring at me in amazement. “Where are you coming from?” a handsome guy asks from the second row of seats. “Baltimore,” I answer. “Get in, sir,” he says, and I see the friendliest group of smiles I have ever seen break out on all their faces. They are an indie band called Here We Go Magic, which I stupidly and unhiply have not heard of. So much for thinking I’m up-to-date on new music. Driving is the sound guy, Matt Littlejohn. Next to him is drummer Peter Hale. Next row, Mike Bloch, the guitar player who first greeted me, and Avtar Khalsa, the on-the-road tour manager. Next to me in the second row of seats is the sexy and cool Jen Turner, bass player, and behind, in the last row, lead singer and guitar player Luke Temple. All their musical equipment is in the trailer being pulled behind us. They are headed to a gig in Bloomington, Indiana, and offer to drive me to Indianapolis.
Yay! A long ride!