Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (29 page)

I go back to the exact same hitchhiking spot. I lean back on the highway sign but stand right back up in embarrassment because it’s so loose by now that I’m half reclining. More cops drive by. They ignore me. Everybody does. In desperation I think of The Corvette Kid again. Suddenly he’s my knight in shining armor. “Stuck in Bonner Springs, Missouri—last exit before Kansas toll highway,” I e-mail him. “I’m still looking for your ride Part 2.” A man can hope, can’t he? “Leaving tomorrow!” he Kid responds. “Hang in there and don’t go too much further. LOL.” Yeah, sure. And don’t worry, Corvette Kid, I’m not laughing out loud! I’m fucking stuck!

But. Still. Yet. Chant again. “It only takes one car to equal a ride,” I tell myself. I almost feel as if it were a hallucination when one finally does. I would get in any vehicle, even if it were Ted Bundy driving a Volkswagen with his arm in a sling. See you later, Bonner Springs! I’m outta here.

The agony of waiting for a ride turns into a sheer exuberance once you’re inside a new, strange vehicle. My driver is a middle-aged man who at first I think might be gay. But I’m wrong, I guess. He’s another politician—the mayor of a small town in the Southwest and married. I don’t ask him if he’s a Republican. He’s an odd one. When I quiz him on how far he’s going, he says, “Wichita.” I ask him where he’ll be turning off Route 70 and he just points to his GPS and says, “When that tells me to turn,” which isn’t much help to me, but right now I don’t even care. I’m out of Bonner Springs and I pray I never go back.

We enter the Kansas Turnpike and make small talk; he, about being the mayor of a little town, and I … well, I try to tell him I’m a film director, but I can see that he totally thinks I’m delusional. He ignores every line I try to work in the conversation about my life and then returns the chitchat to his. When I drop the names of my films, he reacts as if I just told him I am Napoleon. After about ten minutes or so of his blank stares to any detail of my career, I give up. So what if he thinks I’m a homeless lunatic. He is still giving me a ride and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Suddenly the voice of the GPS orders him to turn off Route 70 toward Wichita and I panic. I got Wichita, which is south, mixed up with Topeka, which is west and where I am headed. I explain how I need to find an exit where there’s a good entrance ramp back on where I can stand and how his turnoff ramp to Route 335 South will be high-speed and impossible. He offers nicely to take me past his exit to find a place. We see a sign promising services that are about twenty miles away, and he agrees to take me that far, which is really beyond the call of duty. But as we drive, I see he’s getting impatient and he suggests the exit before “would be just as good.” I can’t really argue, so I say, “I guess so, let’s see.” He pulls off at the next exit and yes, there’s a gas station and some strip malls up the road, but my heart sinks when I realize Topeka isn’t far into Kansas at all, and worse yet, I’m in a shabby suburban neighborhood right
before
this city—the worst place possible to get a long-distance ride. But at least it’s not Bonner Springs! I thank him and fumble in my pocket to give him my
THANKS FOR THE LIFT
hitchhiking card. He takes it. I wonder if he will later throw it away. I can’t really blame him for not taking me as far as he had promised. I guess.

REAL RIDE NUMBER FIFTEEN

KITTY AND JUPITER

I stand there hitchhiking for a long time. I don’t know where I am, but the mayor didn’t take me that far—maybe sixty miles. It’s already 3:00 p.m. and I’ve been hitching since almost 7:30 a.m. I’ve only been in a car for an hour total all day. It’s windy. Really windy. I have to hold my hitching sign with both hands or it will be torn apart by the elements. That’s when I notice my sunburned knuckles, the only part of my exposed body I didn’t coat with sunblock. My stupid hat blows off and I chase it with terror.

For the first time, I notice, most of the drivers entering the freeway are black. They don’t stop either. I hastily add on
I’M SAFE
to my sign, but that doesn’t help. I e-mail my office I got a short ride with the mayor, but they already know because of my SPOT tracker and see I haven’t made much progress. Trish e-mails back saying, “Your good rides always come in the afternoon.” It’s true, I never get picked up in the morning. Are early-bird time-manager travelers less willing to take a risk? Make friends with crackpot strangers?

I hitchhike forever. The wind is whipping my face. For the first time ever, I fantasize that I will get a facial and a massage when I get to San Francisco—something I would
never
do in real life. I plunge back into despair again and call my office and beg Susan and Trish to find a taxi, but how can they, they ask, when I can’t pinpoint where I am? I grumble and hang up. Stand here longer. Sheer torture! Rush hour is starting. Every driver looks local; they’re just coming home from work. I’m gonna have to sleep here! I look over and see some bushes that I try to imagine curling up under. I drink my last drop of Evian water. I’m so discouraged I litter. Throw the empty Evian bottle right on the ground. Take that, nature.

I look back from my selfish deed and there’s a van stopped right beside me. The passenger window comes down and a twentysomething Charlie Manson look-alike is grinning at me. Behind him at the wheel is a sexy woman his age thrusting a $10 bill at me. They’re not picking me up, they’re just trying to help out a poor old guy down on his luck. “Take this, sir,” she offers with charitable aggression.

Suddenly she recognizes me and screams at the top of her lungs, “Oh my God, it’s John Waters!” I ask if they can give me a ride, and she’s waving her hands, practically hyperventilating: “Yes! Yes!” I climb in the back. She pulls off, driving erratically, looking at me in the rearview mirror in shock and excitement, only made worse by her trying to text her friends that she has picked me up. “Charlie Jr.” just smiles. They both are incredibly cute. I finally get her to calm down and she admits they are only going two exits, they live nearby. I offer to give them money to take me farther west past Topeka to a rest area. She agrees but says she doesn’t want any money. I call Trish in my office and tell her I have a great ride. Since she’s my travel-planning expert, I ask her to go online and try to find a good upcoming exit with services, and she agrees to the challenge. My driver struggles to drive and take pictures of me at the same time. I attempt to get her to focus on safe driving by assuring her we can take all the photos she wants when we stop.

Her name is Kitty and his is Jupiter (such a perfect Manson name) and they’ve been shopping in Wichita. She drives with one hand and starts rooting through her new purchases in the shopping bags with her other. The girl needs a fashion change if there’s going to be a photo shoot, I can see that! Jupiter’s dressed in hip denim shorts cut off below his knees (almost clamdiggers) and a black T-shirt. He doesn’t need a change of clothes; he’s devil ready. They both look cool as shit.

She’s a disabled vet who, along with many others in the marines, was given a “bad anti-anthrax vaccine” that almost killed her. Kitty claims that the serum “was not kept in a climate-controlled environment. It happened to others, too,” she explains. “We were in comas … couldn’t go to the bathroom … had all these steroids [given to her] … I couldn’t walk … I couldn’t see peripherally. I wrote President Clinton a letter, and someone from Bethesda wrote back and said the medicine was ‘absolutely safe.’” The medical company “had a huge contract [with the armed forces], so I’m pretty sure it was money-related. All bullshit! I got in a class-action lawsuit.” “But what happened?” I ask, on the edge of my seat. “We lost,” she says with a moan. “It’s hard to sue the government.”

Jupiter’s a roofer. Naturally! Why are roofers always cute? I tell him that he’s a dead ringer for a young Manson, and he asks if I’d like some “recreational drugs.” They both smoke some pot and offer me a place to stay for the night at either of their pads. I decline with thanks and just tell them how great they both look together. “We’re not really together,” Kitty admits with what I gather is a tinge of sadness. I try to convince Jupiter that he should try hitchhiking. “Sure”—he laughs—“who’s gonna pick up ‘Charlie Manson Jr.,’ as you call me? You know what they say about Kansas, don’t you?” “What?” I bite. “Come on vacation, leave on probation!” I could fall in lust.

We’re past Topeka now and suddenly there’s nothing—the real Kansas! Trish has e-mailed me back a possible good exit but it’s about fifty miles from where they picked me up. I tell Kitty and Jupiter that I am giving them gas money no matter what they say and they keep driving.
Way
past where they live. We finally pull off where Trish has suggested and I’m kind of shocked. It’s a rest area in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t even have vending machines, just bathrooms and a parking lot. It’s some kind of military museum monument. Trish must have misunderstood. Since it was late in the day, I wanted an exit with motels, but she must have thought because I had some good luck in rest areas with parking rather than fast-food joints, this is what I was looking for. Gulp. Too late now. Only one truck and two cars are in the whole rest area parking lot. Across Route 70 in the distance is a long, long freight train with endless plains stretching behind it. I feel like William Holden in
Picnic
, on his way to the fictitious Kansas town of Inge’s play, only in this version I never get there.

We get out and Kitty does a hasty costume change, and we ask the only couple we see if they will snap our picture together. Like all people over twenty years old, the nice lady has trouble taking a cell phone picture but eventually, with instruction from Kitty, figures it out. Our new photographer does the same with my BlackBerry. I give Kitty my business card and ask her to write down her contact information, just in case I’m trapped here tonight and do need to take them up on their sleepover offer. She does so and adds,
Sgt. USMC Retired.
I want to ask Jupiter for his number, too, but it’s clear Kitty’s in charge. I give her my
THANKS FOR THE LIFT
card and she seems thrilled. I also make her take cash. It’s the least I could do. I wish I could elope with these two. It feels like they saved my life.

REAL RIDE NUMBER SIXTEEN

WALMART GUY

But as soon as they leave, I get nervous quickly. The couple that took our picture pulls off. There’s now not one other car in the whole rest area. It’s getting late; I can feel the sun going down. I stand there and look around in the silence. I scope out a place where I guess I could sleep if I had to. My
NEXT HOTEL
sign couldn’t be more appropriate right now. Time goes by too quickly. A car comes into the lot; an elderly retired-looking couple uses the facility, exits, and passes me by. I have to get pushy. I see a youngish guy drive in and go to the restroom area. I grab my bag and sign and run back over to the building and go inside. No services here but I wait outside the men’s room door, hoping he’ll respond to my desperate plea when he exits.

I wait. And wait. And wait. He must have diarrhea, I think—another reason he won’t pick me up. A whole family of Muslim women enter, eye me suspiciously, and nervously go into the ladies’ room on the other side. He’s
still
in there! I feel like such a pervert waiting for someone who’s obviously taking a massive dump. The Muslim ladies come out and I flash them my sign—why, I don’t know, they’ll never pick me up! They avert their eyes and beat a hasty retreat. The shitter finally exits and looks horrified to see me waiting; not that he recognizes me, he clearly doesn’t, but he’s pissed a beggar is confronting him. He doesn’t even stop, just shakes his head and rushes past me.

I go back to my solitary hitchhiking spot, sure somebody will call the vice squad to report a lurking man in the rest area: me. No cars come by. Finally I see the trucker, who must have been sleeping, climb out of his cab, stretch, and scratch his balls. He’s a skinny, late-thirties Appalachia type, wearing Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. He sees me standing there with my sign and waves. Could I?

I’m thinking this is the night that I have to sleep in the woods for real. I call my office in my usual panic and ask Susan and Trish to try to find me a cab service that can come take me to the next hotel if I’m stuck. They text me back that Junction City is the only town “near” with a cab company, and it would “take an hour and a half” for the driver to come get me, and the same time to go back. Fuck. I really am going to be curling up in the bushes. Maybe there are some poison berries I can nibble.

I realize that Susan and Trish will soon be leaving the office for the day and it’s
Friday
! They have plans for the weekend and, of course, are off work. I’m on my own! I freak and call back and ask Susan to see if she can go online and find the name of a gay bar in Junction City—
if
there even is one, maybe a fan inside could be talked into or hired to come and get me, I suggest. I almost never go to gay bars, so I’m not sure why I thought this plan would work or who would believe me. Susan doesn’t balk and texts back, “Xcalibur,” and the address and phone number. “Help me, gay brothers,” I try to imagine myself pleading to the startled bartender who would answer the phone, but luckily I don’t have to make that call quite yet. I see a youngish semi-boho type pull into the lot and go inside to the men’s room. Maybe I’ll wait outside the building this time and try to talk him into giving me a ride to Junction City. I see the trucker is hanging out in the parking lot—maybe I can pitch them both at the same time.

Luckily, he’s only a pisser so he’s back outside quickly. I approach him with my sign and tell him who I am and that I’m writing a book and hitchhiking across the country and I’m stuck and need a ride to the next exit with a motel. He looks at me skeptically. He’s “not going that far,” he says, “only to Manhattan, Kansas.” I go online and show him on my BlackBerry all the blogs about my hitchhiking trip. He doesn’t know my movies, I can tell, but he’s beginning to see the humor of the whole situation. The trucker comes over and joins in our conversation and I tell him my story. He laughs and says he’d give me a ride but he’s been sleeping here, waiting for his trucking company to give him the go-ahead to proceed, and now they’ve changed his plans and he has to wait twelve more hours, then turn around and go back to another city in the same direction he just came from. I tell the Kansas hipster that if he doesn’t believe me, he can talk to my assistant in my office. Before he can think up another excuse I have Susan on the line and hand him my phone. She explains everything I’ve told him is all true. He’s coming around, I can tell. I say, “If you don’t take me, I’m going to have to sleep in the woods here.” The skinny trucker butts in and says, “I’ll make up a bunk in the back of the truck for you if it comes to that.” Hmmm. Is this the first possibility of sex on this real-life trip? Could I? For the book? I mean, he’s hardly a Tom of Finland type, but at my age I’m not exactly the big-basket, strong-jawed muscle-stud hitchhiker myself. Maybe he’s offering me a bed in complete innocence? From his friendly idiot grin it’s hard to tell. Will I miss tarnished magic? I’ll never know because Chris, as he finally introduces himself, agrees to give me a ride.