Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (22 page)

At first, Sarah Finlayson, my fifty-nine-year-old fit and pretty blond driver routinely returning home from her morning workout,
had
thought I was a homeless beggar, just as I feared. But suddenly, as she chatted on the car speakerphone with her twin sister, Mary, who lives in New Jersey, she told me she had blurted out, “I think I see John Waters,” and decided to investigate. When I explain I am hoping to get a lift beyond the intersection of Baltimore Beltway and I-70 West, she offers to take me there “because it is raining.” I know with rush-hour traffic this could take at least an hour but I just keep my mouth shut and thank her.

Mary stays on speakerphone at first, I’m sure, to be certain I’m not a John Waters impostor, or worse yet, a hacker (the murdering kind). “Be careful with my sister,” she timidly orders, and I assure her I will, even though any serial killers would have agreed to the same thing. “Isn’t my sister’s car cute?” Mary continues, nervous at first, probably just trying to keep the chatter going in a positive direction while she assures herself her sister isn’t going to end up a cadaver to be tossed into Baltimore’s notorious body-dumping ground, Leakin Park. “It is,” I agree, having no real idea if a Lexus is expensive or not. I may have been able to easily fantasize the vehicles driven by my “best” and “worst” drivers, but in real life I’m completely unobservant about cars. Who cares what they’re driving as long as they stop and pick me up? “Isn’t this exciting?” Sarah enthuses with a smile Mary can’t see; “I’m gonna brag tonight at the conference.” “My sister is very nice,” I hear on the speakerphone; “her husband is a minister.” It’s a godsend, I realize. Literally.

“Are you married?” Sarah asks with sudden good-natured aggression. “No,” I answer quickly before she smiles and continues, “Now, are you gay?” “Sure,” I respond, and I get her immediate approval: “Okay, good!” I’m slightly surprised. “Good” because this means I’m not heterosexual and therefore probably not a potential rapist, or “good” because, well … she’s a cool lady?

“You should have called me first, I’d take you the whole way,” Sarah then kindly volunteers as we hit the rush-hour Beltway traffic and I thank her again for going off-route. “I’m very excited to help you out,” she graciously responds. We’re silent for a moment, but soon the sister gets nervous. “Still there?” Mary asks with a tinge of mild worry. “Sure are,” I respond, “and your sister’s a good driver, too!”

As we pass a sign for upcoming I-70W, Sarah shows no sign of fatigue or looking for a place to drop me off even though we have gone much farther than I ever imagined she’d take me. We drive by a highway sign reading
DENVER—1700 MILES
and I gulp as it starts pouring rain again. “How did you meet Divine?” Sarah asks, and I just keep talking like a phone-sex worker desperate to keep a caller on the line. The longer I can keep them entertained, the farther Sarah might take me. I realize I am actually responding to both Sarah’s and Mary’s questions with real lines from my stand-up act. “You’re better than
Imus in the Morning
,” the sister cracks. Singing for my supper, once again.

“It’s raining, John,” Sarah sheepishly points out, and I know she feels bad for me, so I whip out my
THANKS FOR THE LIFT
card and hand it over. She seems happy. Here’s a souvenir that proves this whole morning actually happened. Meanwhile, Mary feels a lull in the conversation and says, “I should wake up my daughter.” “Don’t!” I beg when I hear that the teenage girl just worked the night shift. Why would she need to talk to me? Mary tries anyway. I hear the daughter’s protests mumbled into her pillow over the speakerphone, and finally, much to my relief, Mary gives up. “Okay, I’ll let her sleep,” she sighs in celebrity-introduction defeat; “I guess she doesn’t want to get up.”

Sarah is beginning to realize we are pretty far away from her home and finally admits, “I have to use the bathroom.” I suggest we stop at a McDonald’s I see advertised ahead. “You’ve given me a really good start,” I assure Sarah as she turns off and I rubberneck back and see there is a return entrance ramp to I-70 with enough room for a car to pull over to pick me up hitchhiking. “We’re here,” Sarah announces to her sister as we pull into the fast-food parking lot and I say goodbye to Mary over the speakerphone. I take my luggage inside with me, just to be safe. I know Sarah won’t take off with my bag, but after all, I used to break into cars myself in the sixties—maybe I’ve got bad karma that way. You can never be too sure.

Inside the Woodbine, Maryland, McDonald’s I think of my late dad—he always liked McDonald’s coffee and was a fan of their senior-refill policy, even though as far as I remember he
never
had a second cup. As Sarah heads for the ladies’ room, I buy her a cup. Usually I’d be having a java at this time of day myself, but one thing a hitchhiker learns early—being regular can be a tricky thing on the road. So I’m nervous about starting a natural process that is obviously hindered by the randomness of thumbing a ride. I am scared to even eat.

“That’s very nice of you,” Sarah says as she returns to her cup of coffee and we sit down in a booth. I have my hitch sign out hoping someone will notice and offer me a ride, but nobody does. Sarah even casually asks other customers if they’re “headed his way,” but they politely make excuses. I can tell she’s disappointed I’m not recognized.

The downpour continues, so I slip into my rain gear while I’m still under cover inside, remembering that the umbrella is a real hindrance on the highway. Sarah is hesitant to leave McDonald’s, worried about letting me off in such inclement weather, but I know it’s time to part. I’m a big boy, I won’t melt.

We get in her car and I direct her down the hill to where I want to be dropped—the Exit 73 entrance ramp onto I-70 West. I get out and Sarah reluctantly says goodbye. I know how hard it is for her to pull away and leave me in the torrential rain. I thank her kindly. Before I left, everybody had said, “A woman alone will never pick up a hitchhiker.” How wrong they were. Here’s a minister’s wife who practices what she preaches; not only is she smart and sassy, she’s a lovely, funny lady who gives religion a good name. Thank you, Sarah.

REAL RIDE NUMBER THREE

GLEN THE FARMER

I stand on the entrance ramp with the hood of my rain jacket pulled up. I have hope. For the first time I am hitchhiking in a place where I have no idea where I am. It feels authentic. I’m really doing this! Few cars come by, much less turn to go on the interstate. It starts raining harder than ever. There’s no cover and I am getting drenched. Even my faux-crocodile bag is gradually becoming soaked by the rain. I’m too afraid to open it to see if my few clothes inside are also getting wet. My cardboard sign starts sagging and I can’t hold it up anymore. I despair for the first time. It continues to pour. I wish I were on a movie set and this deluge were coming from a rain machine. But it’s not. Nobody yells, “Cut.” I try my
MIDLIFE CRISIS
sign but
still
no one stops. I cannot believe I am standing alone in the middle of nowhere, like a drowned rat, unable to get a ride.

I look down and see the waterline stain rising on my bag, and when I look up, hurray! a pickup has stopped to give me a ride. I jump in and feel so happy. Glen, an eighty-one-year-old farmer, explains he’s going to Frederick, which is about forty miles away. I am 100 percent sure he doesn’t recognize me, and it only takes me a second to realize he thinks I’m just an old guy down on my luck.

Glen talks about how much he still likes to work. His farm has been in the family for years, but one of his sons, who always wanted to learn to fly as a child, grew up, got his pilot license, and was killed “doing what he loved most” in a plane accident. Glen is not sure if the rest of his children will want to continue to deliver hay—what this kind farmer loves to do best. I tell Glen (another safe driver) that I’m a film director and agree with him on how important it is to love your work. “We both will probably die doing what we love best,” I say cheerily. He doesn’t say it, being too gentlemanly and polite, but I can tell he doesn’t believe for one second that I’m a film director. He tells me if hay gets wet and you don’t dry it out before storing it in bales, spontaneous combustion can happen and fire will break out and burn down the barn. I start to talk more about movies again, hoping to convince him I really am a director, but then realize, what’s the point? He’s got his own dramatic real-life scenes, why should he need cinema? Especially mine.

Glen even knows a good place to drop me off—an I-70 entrance ramp beside a strip mall in Frederick, Maryland. He pulls into a parking lot out front of the Fractured Prune, a donut shop, so he can let me out safely in the rain. I thank him profusely and am dumbfounded to see him suddenly take out his wallet and try to hand me a $10 bill. I stammer my gratitude further but try to explain, “I really don’t need it. I have money and credit cards. I’m hitchhiking so I can write a book about it, but that is so kind and thoughtful of you!” I can see by his merciful but indulgent smile that he doesn’t buy a word of this either, but he reluctantly puts the money back in his pocket. I am shocked and incredibly moved by this man’s generosity. It’s still pouring rain, but as I exit his truck, I’m filled with goodwill. I look back at this real-life gracious hay farmer and he waves goodbye with a warm, grandfatherly smile. “Old MacDonald had a farm, EE-I-EE-I-O.”

REAL RIDE NUMBER FOUR

BIKER

This rain is getting on my nerves. It can’t continue forever. I go into the Fractured Prune and get a hot cup of tea. Nobody is inside except the girl behind the counter, who may have glimpsed my hitchhiking sign but shows no reaction. At least there’s a bathroom I can use. After all, I
am
a paying customer. The men’s room is perfectly clean, but I can’t help feeling like the Crackers character in
Pink Flamingos
when at the end he says to Divine, “Let’s sleep in gas station lavatories this time, Mama. Fuck permanent residences. It’ll strengthen our filthiness.”

The rain still hasn’t let up. I finish my tea and don’t want to be accused of loitering, so I walk back outside. It’s a great ramp for hitchhiking. Lots of cars. Lots of rain. Nobody stops but I’m still a little upbeat because I realize I can always go back inside the donut shop if I need to use the bathroom again after that morning tea. My sign is getting drenched now. Water is dripping off my rain-jacket hood down onto my face. I try to make eye contact with drivers but realize many are local and my sign saying
SAN FRANCISCO
is too far for them to even consider.

Just when I don’t think it could possibly rain any harder, it does. I can’t believe it. My sign is so waterlogged it is becoming useless. Please, God, make a car stop, I catch myself praying, feeling like a complete hypocrite. But no, another forty-five minutes and
still
no one stops. I go back into the Fractured Prune with my tail between my legs. The manager is now out front doing chores with the same girl behind the counter, ending the breakfast shift and getting ready for the lunch crowd. I ask him if he has any cardboard I can use to make a new hitchhiking sign. He’s pleasant and without commenting begins to break down a cardboard box and sadly warns me, “It’s supposed to rain all day, you know.” I just nod and take out my industrial-size felt-tip marker and start making a new sign that is a little more reasonable:
END OF I-70W
with the same
S.F.
on the reverse, this time flippable
without
having to turn around the whole sign horizontally. Sheepishly, I use the bathroom again. I piss when I know I can.

Okay, coward, I tell myself, get back out there and get a ride! Rolling up my waterlogged pant cuffs, I trudge back out to the exact same hitchhiking spot and hold up my sign. One thing I can say, these waterproof boots I bought sure do work. But the sign’s message doesn’t. No one stops. I change tactics—ad campaigns really—and see if humor in advertising has any effect. I try my backup
I’M NOT PSYCHO
sign to see if that gets any results. I see a couple of male drivers laugh as they read it, but none put on their brakes. Maybe hitchhiking is
not
the time to be a comedian, I suddenly realize. I go back to my more generic version, but that doesn’t work either. Big puddles are forming where I’m standing. Passing cars start to splash me and my poor bag. Thank God it’s
not
real crocodile. Police cars go right past me. At least they don’t stop and give me any trouble. At least that.

It’s always a shock when someone actually stops for you. It takes a second to sink in, and then you panic, grabbing your stuff, afraid people will change their mind and pull off. I jump in the van and see a blue-collar guy, maybe forty years old, who looks friendly enough. He’s “not goin’ that far,” he apologizes, but promises to drop me off at an I-70 West exit that has “services.” I like him. He reminds me of all the real bikers I know and love from the Holiday House, a bar in Baltimore I’ve been hanging out in for decades, where I filmed a big scene for my concussion–sex addict comedy,
A Dirty Shame
. Turns out he
is
a biker. So was his father. So was his grandfather. A long line of bikers! Almost like the flip side of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Generation after generation. Debutante types and bikers. Aren’t they both kind of the same? Rarefied? A secret club that few are eligible to join? Their own never-changing fashions? Their coded language? Even severe body types?

I notice the biker who picked me up is missing a couple of front teeth, but he’s
still
kind of cute. He tells me he’s married to a lady surgeon and speaks highly of her. She keeps him in line. He seems to like that. We talk about how the biker identity is fading fast today with young people, and how a bad white boy is more apt to copy the black gangster style if he wants to be a rebel. I can tell this rubs him the wrong way. “Why would they do this?” he wonders, and before he can answer himself in a way I feel could be racist, he stops himself and smiles. He knows it’s a losing argument. I bet his great wife has taught him that racism is not only wrong—he
likes
being wrong—but stupid. He’s too sweet and nice to be stupid anymore. Maybe a strong woman with a taste for bad boys has tamed him to a point where he feels relief at not having to be a troublemaker, at least for part of the time. I bet they have a great sex life and a nice relationship. He pulls off at an exit to scout the return entrance ramp for me and, seeing it’s a good one, lets me off. I feel happy again. I want to kiss him goodbye on the cheek, but it’s only Day One, so I’m still a little sheepish. I think he might have laughed. In a nice way.