Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (17 page)

“Want one?” he asks, holding out his pack with the Parliaments arranged temptingly like in the old magazine ads. “No, thank you, I quit,” I politely declare. “Why would
anybody
quit smoking?” he rudely responds. “Because I don’t want cancer,” I answer smugly. “Don’t you miss it?” he taunts, French-inhaling even more militantly than I did in those mock “No Smoking in This Theatre” announcements filmed for the Landmark Theatre chain.

Good God, I hate this guy, but at least we’re covering some ground. We’re already in Kansas when he tells me he hasn’t been to sleep for thirty-eight hours. “Let me drive, then,” I offer, trying not to sound too alarmed. But no, he wants to talk about my least favorite subject, sports. “You know about the baseball curse of the billy goat?” he quizzes me with a newfound urge to chatter. “No, I hate sports,” I explain, but he acts as if he doesn’t hear me. “It’s true!” he shouts, blowing a big mouthful of Parliament smoke in my face, as if I’d argued his point. “In 1945, a Chicago Cubs fan—and I am
not
one of those twats,” he rages, “wanted to bring some fucking billy goat to the World Series game.” I feel like screaming. I am already so bored with this guy’s dumb sports rap, but he doesn’t pick up on my disinterest. “Now, why did this cunt-licker bring a billy goat? I ask you,” he demands. “I have no idea of what you’re talking about,” I try to explain. “Exactly!” he hollers. Exactly
what
, you fool? I shriek in my mind, looking out the window into the vast nothingness of Kansas wheat fields and debating which would be worse, being reincarnated as livestock or having to listen to this colossal blowhard?

“But rightfully so,” he continues ranting, “the Wrigley stadium security squad wouldn’t let him bring this stupid billy goat on the playing field, so what does this fucker do?” I refuse to participate in this meaningless conversation and instead concentrate on his burning cigarette in the ashtray. Would it hurt if I had just one? As long as it’s not menthol? For old times’ sake? I think of my now-gone file card in my jacket pocket—the one where I daily list my chores plus the number of days it’s been since I last had a cigarette—3,426, if I remember correctly. Do I want to blow my near-ten-year nicotine sobriety and have to start over by quitting again and writing the number 1?

But who can think straight when asshole Woody is still raging? “This dickwad with the goat puts a curse on the Cubs!” he flares up. I grab a Parliament out of the box and light it in a desperate attempt to escape this maddeningly boring conversation. One drag and my head spins. I feel faint, like a teenage girl who has just lit up for the first time. NOOOOOO, I can feel my body yelling back at the first inhalation of cigarette smoke, but Woody’s too self-absorbed to even notice. “This ballsack actually curses Wrigley Field,” he continues, flying off the handle, “and you know what?” “What?” I finally stammer, between reckless drags of nicotine pulsating into my bloodstream and instantly turning me into a chain-smoker. “What? WHAT!!?” I yell again, grabbing the whole pack of Parliaments out of his hands and actually eating one right out of the box. Unlit. “That motherfucker’s curse works!” Woody yells back, not at all troubled by my sobriety slippage. “And there’s never been a World Series game played there again,” Woody spews before suddenly swerving off the highway to a rest stop. “I gotta take a shit,” he announces.

This is one of those unmanned rest stops. No food, no gas. Just a place to go to the bathroom. I notice there seem to be a lot of cars. Maybe too many. Woody charges inside but I linger, chain-smoking and stretching my aching limbs. I notice a man who appears to be jerking off in his parked car. I look away. I figure I might as well take a leak, since my food poisoning seems to have subsided. I go inside and immediately notice there is “activity.” A full-scale “tearoom.” I don’t see Woody but I can hear him
still
talking to himself about sports in a stall between his repellent grunts of defecation. Every urinal has a man standing in front of it, so I wait nervously. I see other guys, some obviously gay, going in and out of the stalls zipping up or down, on the hunt. A guy turns away from the urinal and I see his erect penis is still out. He gives me a lecherous grin but I try to ignore him and take my place at one of the other urinals. The guy next to me—and he’s not bad-looking, either—is shaking his semihard dick to finish up his last drops. I try not to look. I’m never piss shy, but suddenly I am.

I break away and burst into one of the stalls, and my legs hurt so much, I sit down on the toilet to piss. I don’t care. I’m an injured homosexual. Suddenly I look up and see a big uncircumcised dick poking through a glory hole. I am shocked! It is broad daylight and we’re in the middle of Kansas! Just as I jump up to flee, the door to my stall is kicked in and an undercover cop (one of the guys I saw cruising) breaks in and flashes his badge. “Vice Squad,” he announces as he grabs my arm. Another cop stands on the toilet in the next booth and leans over. “You’re under arrest,” he warns me as he struggles to put his stiff dick back in his pants on the other side of the glory hole. “For what?” I plead to deaf ears as another cop (the cute one I saw shaking his dick at the urinal) rushes in from the front and, with the help of the first vice cop, handcuffs me. “Entrapment!” I yell as the other gay guys inside run from the restroom like roaches when the lights come on in a slum kitchen.

I see Woody outside, still motormouthing about sports to the driver of an undercover-cop vehicle who seems to be hanging on to his every word over the lyrics of “I’m a Lone Wolf” by Leon Payne blaring from the cop’s radio. I used to love this song until I hear both Woody and the vice hog singing along mockingly to the lyrics “I’m footloose and I’m fancy-free, and strictly on the prowl.” Woody looks over at me as if I were a stranger. “Them fruit-loops hate sports,” Woody blithely informs his latest conversational victim; “serves them right!” The other undercover cop dragging me out agrees: “If they were just home watching the sports channels instead of sucking cock, they wouldn’t be in all this trouble.” The first outside cop shoves me down in the police-car cage just as in the arrests I’ve seen on the news. I debate telling the cop Woody’s been driving without sleep for days but don’t because, well … I’m from Baltimore. I’m no snitch.

We peel out and I don’t believe my ears. We’re in the middle of nowhere and this pig has the siren on. “Is that really necessary?” I ask, trying to be reasonable. “As necessary as protecting families who are trying to take a dump but can’t because you Hoover-mouths have turned a clean rest area into a sex pit,” he answers with a total lack of sympathy. “I didn’t do one thing,” I protest like Dawn Davenport. “It was you guys who had your dicks out!” “Everything you say,” he recites from memory, “can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Fuck. I’m going to jail. “Can I have a cigarette?” I plead, already jonesing in nicotine withdrawal. “Didn’t you read the surgeon general’s report?” the cop asks unsympathetically. “Smoking’s bad for you. So think of the letter
M
and then think of the next two letters in the alphabet and apply them.
N-O
spells
no
! Does that answer your question?”

BAD RIDE NUMBER SEVEN

BUSTED IN KANSAS

“Sodomy is illegal in Kansas,” the booking officer blithely tells me as he snaps the most unflattering mug shot of me possible on their outdated police camera inside the tiny Bunker Hill County Jail. “I wasn’t committing sodomy,” I shout. “I just stopped to use the bathroom!” “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he responds. “Look, we don’t go for ‘greedy bottoms’ here in the Midwest.” “Greedy bottoms!?” I yell in full horror. “I don’t do that! I’m all about safe sex.” “Safe sex is illegal sex here in the Midwest,” my jailer announces with final authority.

I try to change tack: “Look, I’m famous, I made that movie
Hairspray
.” “With John Travolta?” he smirks. “No, the first one,” I try to explain, “with Divine.” “Never heard of it, but that don’t matter. I hate fag musicals, anyway.” “Look, can I call a lawyer?” I ask, knowing I’m allowed one phone call. “No phone service at this little ol’ jail. It’s a historic place—mostly open for tourists.” Before I can challenge the blatant disregard of my legal rights, he orders me to “strip down.” “You’re kidding,” I sputter. “You heard me!” he barks. “Lose your laundry.” As I slowly remove my clothes, he notices my cuts and bruises and, after seeing my hideous new tattoo, gives me a wolf whistle. I am completely mortified. I hear some hick announcer on the radio crackling in the background mention my name and I strain to listen. “… Mr. Waters, the sixty-six-year-old director of such Hollywood films as
Cry-Baby
and
Hairspray
, was arrested for public lewdness in a public men’s room beside the highway in rural Kansas. His attorney had ‘no comment’ except that he was ‘trying to confirm the truth of this breaking story.’” “Lift your nuts. Spread your ass cheeks,” orders “Ilsa the He Wolf” of Kansas as I close my eyes, think of my PEN membership, and do as told. “Bend over,” he growls. He takes
way
too long to look. I hear “Riot in Cell Block #9” by the Robins start to play on that same radio station, but the only riot “goin’ on” here is inside my head. I stand back up in embarrassment and he jerks me around to face him. His breath smells like licorice plaque. “Next time,” he snarls, “maybe you won’t take the Hershey Highway when you visit our great state.” Before I can answer, he buzzes open a gate and shoves me inside a cell. The only cell in the tiny little rural jail.

I’ve got a cell buddy. His name is Veneer and he’s black and he’s here for a sodomy charge, too, but unlike mine, he was home with his boyfriend and somebody reported “suspicion of fellatio,” and these rotten cops spied through his window and busted him when he and his boyfriend were giving each other head in the privacy of their own home. “‘Knob-Gobbler,’” the jailer introduces us, “this is ‘Mattress Muncher.’” We look at each other with a shared hatred for this jerk.

“I’m just a normal queer,” confides Veneer when we’re alone. “Me, too,” I say, sort of telling the truth. “Wait till you taste the food in this shithole,” he warns. “Chipped beef. Rancid bologna. Mystery meat.” We can hear the clinking of the jailer’s keys, and this same hog comes back in with our dinner on plastic trays. “Here you go, ladies,” he snorts, “time to put on the feed bag!” He plops down the most disgusting meal I’ve ever seen in my life. “Nutraloaf,” explains Veneer; “don’t eat it!” “But I’m starving,” I admit, yet he’s still adamant. “That crap is made from rotten tomatoes, week-old moldy Wonder bread, and the skin of tortured poultry! The opposite of free-range! They keep these pitiful chickens out back in tiny little cages and torture the poor birds with electrical cattle prods until they kill themselves by hurling their skinny carcasses against the cage bars and bleed to death.” Yummy, I think as I look down at my plate. I’m so starved, I eat it anyway, retching and choking from the gristle-filled texture of food hell itself. “Oh, yeah,” adds Veneer, “they put saltpeter in it, too.” Damn! Just when Veneer was starting to look cute.

We try to have sex during the night but Veneer had warned me. I can’t get it up and feel so frustrated when he tries to suck my dick. We try several times, and even though I’m always willing, nothing happens. That saltpeter sure is strong! Eventually, we give up and pass out unsatisfied in separate hard metal bunks. The rotting nutraloaf is never removed from our cell, and once the lights are turned off, I can hear some kind of vermin creeping around and chewing it up. I actually hear a rat puke.

We are awakened by the flash of cell phone cameras. The jailer is leading a pack of sightseers on a “historic tour” of this “renovated and restored” onetime-abandoned single-cell jailhouse. “Here are two obvious homosexuals, ‘fudge packers,’ if you will, who invade our state every year, having illegal ‘prick-nics’ in our rest areas in flagrant violation of Kansas Statute 21-3505—criminal sodomy.” “I only gave a blow job!” yells Veneer in defiance as the tourists cover their ears in aural disgust. “Call the Maryland Film Commission,” I beg. “I was doing research for my book!” “Skull Pussy and Pillow Biter,” the jailer barks, still referring to us, “the two-headed transplants of rear entry.”

Later in the day, we are dragged into the only other room in this tiny jailhouse, a miniature courtroom with a judge’s bench and three seats for the public. I see the lowest-rent entertainment reporter I vaguely remember from some long-ago movie-press junket. One of those hacks that kept stopping the taping and demanding you call him by his first name in your responses to his extremely unoriginal questions. God, I marvel, if he’s a reporter from Smoky Hills Public Television as he claims, his career must be in real trouble. His station is located in this almost abandoned town, Bunker Hill, Kansas. Population: 95.

The judge enters and he looks exactly like the cross-eyed actor who plays the biggest fascist sadist in Pasolini’s movie masterpiece
Salò
. Veneer gasps. I gulp. “Court is now in session,” our elected official announces in a flat Midwestern accent. The other two reporters, one from the faraway
Wichita Times
and the other from a local flea-market classified giveaway sheet, are allowed to take photos while our TV guy videotapes. “You two ass-bandits are accused of sodomy,” the judge announces without looking at us. “Semen demons will not be tolerated anywhere in Kansas, plain and simple. How do you plead?” “Your Honor,” Veneer tries to argue as his own attorney, “I am constitutionally guaranteed the right to give oral sex—” “Overruled,” the judge yells before turning to me. “And you, homo-hack?” he rudely addresses my humble self. “Judge, I have not been allowed to contact my attorney, which is a flagrant violation of my rights.” “You’ve seen too many bad movies, cream puff,” he rules with a hint of hidden nellyism. I suddenly realize this fucker has a little “sugar” in him himself.

But he’s not a “brother,” believe me. He gives us both two weeks of community service with the understanding that we must be out of Kansas by sunset the day our sentences end. Veneer seems relieved. But I’m not! Two weeks? That’s an eternity. I have a flight to catch from San Francisco to Provincetown for the start of the season in eight days. Two weeks in Bunker Hill, Kansas, seems like a life sentence. Our jailer drags us out of the courtroom and we are paraded in a perp walk before the pitiful little press corps. I ignore all their rude questions except two. “Yes, I have seen
Black Mama, White Mama,
and no, I do not identify with this movie in my current situation.”