Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (7 page)

A male customer I didn’t even see come in approaches the old-fashioned, taped-together register with a half-broken toenail clipper that seems to have been rusted from some kind of flood. “They still work?” he asks Edith as he takes out a tattered plastic change purse. “We don’t promise nothin’ here at Yetta’s,” Edith announces, ringing up his 15¢ purchase, “that’s why we’re cheap.” “I’ll take these,” I say, plopping down on her counter a few items I’ve picked out. “Okay, John,” says Edith … I mean Yetta … as she jots down all of my purchases on one of those little receipt books with the carbon paper between each page. “Two eyeliner pencils, ten cents; Halo shampoo—bottle
almost
full, ninety cents; recalled Excedrin, one dollar—it don’t have nothing wrong with it, John, I tried it!” She adds it all up, “carrying the one” out loud, and announces the total. “Two dollars, but you can have it all for a dollar ninety,” she bargains. “No, Yetta,” I protest, “two dollars is fine.”

I look around the store and see all the customers are gone. “Edith, I love you!” I whisper. “I love you, too, John,” she says as she takes my hand to lead me to the front door. Before I can leave, a twig-headed white boy with tweaker eyes enters and asks urgently, “Got any bottled water?” “Just Delta water,” Edith proudly volunteers, “over there on the left. That’s a collector’s item. Delta Air Lines don’t make their own water anymore.” “Thanks,” says the raver type, anticipating the strengthened high the water will make on the already-digested Ecstasy in his system, “I’ll take four bottles!” As Edith rings up his sale, he sees my hitchhiking sign and says, “I’m going to just outside Topeka. Want a lift?” “Sure thing!” I yell as I kiss Edith goodbye. She looks into my eyes and coos, “Babs, where do eggs come from?” I don’t miss a beat, go right into the dialogue from one of the most famous
Pink Flamingos
scenes and answer quietly with full intimacy in Divine’s voice, “From little chickens, Mama. They lay them and we eat them. There will always be chickens…” “Eggs! Eggs, eggs,” she whispers back so only I can hear before going out of character and mouthing silently, “Don’t be strangers,” her signature sign-off line I remember so well from our shared past.

GOOD RIDE NUMBER SIX

CRAWFORD

My luck never seems to run out on this trip. I don’t even have to stick out my thumb and already I’ve got a good ride with a Pierre Clémenti look-alike with dreadlocks. I wonder if black people are mean to this guy, thinking all white boys with this hairdo are rich “trustafarians” who are stealing their culture? I can’t help but imagine what
my
hair would look like in dreadlocks! Ha! His name is Crawford and he definitely has a bohemian charm despite the dark circles under his eyes that usually come along with most freegan-type anarchists who love MDMA-type drugs but are too cool for “cuddle puddles,” glow sticks, outdated happy-face tattoos, or baby pacifiers and now drift from one illegal dance party to another being cooler than Coolio. Everybody makes fun of hipsters these days but I still love them.

“You do molly?” he asks as he guzzles that Delta water down to bump up his drug high, like an alcoholic with a fresh pint of hooch. “No, I think my drug days are pretty much behind me,” I confess, trying not to be so square that he throws me out. “I mean, I can’t think of a new drug that sounds appealing. Roofies?” I joke. “I’m afraid I’d stay home and date-rape myself all night long.” “Salvia?” he offers, and I’m proud I know what it is—the still-legal plant that Miley Cyrus got high on in that video that went viral. “No,” I back off, “I hear it causes hysterical laughter in some people, which sounds great—if I still made movies.” (Hey, you do! Remember that $5 million is waiting for you in Baltimore.) “I’d put it in popcorn, though, whenever the studio forced me to have test screenings,” I add. “Cool, man,” Crawford vaguely answers before chugging down another bottle of Delta water. “But then I read that salvia can also cause ‘extreme bouts of mysticism,’” I continue. “No thanks! Everybody has their limits.” “Ever try helium?” he blurts as he grabs a partially deflated
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY
Mylar balloon from the backseat, unties it, and takes a big huff. “Yowee!” he yells in a gas-induced high-pitched squeaky voice. “How about meow meow?” he quizzes me in the exact Alvin-the-Chipmunk tone that always makes me horny even though both Alvin and this guy are probably straight. “I read some kid took meow meow and ripped his balls off,” I say, laughing nervously. “Yeah?” answers Crawford, not realizing how much he was paying tribute to David Seville’s little creatures with that accelerated voice. “Then what? Don’t tease me with narrative, bro.”

I can’t believe my ears but I think I hear in low volume on the radio the Chipmunks themselves singing their first great hit, “Witch Doctor,” and turn up the volume full blast. “Ooh eeh ooh ah ah,” I sing along before taking a big hit of helium just to be friendly. “Ting tang walla walla bing bang,” sings back Crawford, cranking the volume even higher before grabbing back the balloon and inhaling. “Hold it in as long as you can,” he orders me in a vibrating voice, and we both do so, exhale, and scream out the chorus in a frantic, sped-up Chipmunk voice that salutes our alarming cross-generational musical tastes.

Time flies when you’re doing helium and I’ve almost forgotten I’m hitchhiking. Crawford is a great driver when he’s this light-headed, or maybe I’m just so dizzy that I don’t notice his speeding. I finally feel “bad” in my old age, suddenly one with youth. A real filth elder at last.

The sun is going down as we pull up to a junkyard outside Topeka, Kansas. A graffiti-like announcement,
CONTAMINATION GENERATION
, is scrawled over the old
JUGHEAD’S AUTO PARTS
sign, and lots of kids seem to be pouring inside. Crawford gets out and is instantly mobbed by punkish girls with pinned eyes, all of whom seem to be happily hallucinating. He’s some sort of star and I didn’t even realize it. Nobody recognizes me except one overweight girl, who says, “You look like John Waters. Bet everybody tells you that.” I answer, “They do,” and she leaves it at that.

We walk by “security,” although the need for a guard when the event is free is beyond me. This guy seems to be the last of the auto-part
Dawn of the Dead
gearhead scavengers who were left behind after the junkyard closed down. There’s nothing left of value to secure. Every working car part has long been picked clean. The air bags are defused, the trunks emptied, tires stripped. The carcasses of these damaged vehicles are piled three and four stories high.

But there’s life, all right. A freakazoid fashion show is taking place atop a three-tier pile of Vandura 2500s. Fat Bettie Page–type squatter girls proudly model
Road Warrior
–meets–
One Million Years B.C.
couture as radical crusties cheer them on. Different bands are playing on stages made from wrecked Ram 3500 vans or crumpled school buses that look as if they were hit by a train. Yobjob, a British trance band, grinds out the static sound of repeated beats, while tripped-out pirate kids whirl in otherworldly abandonment. A noise band called the Fire Starters plays their greatest hits—each one sounds exactly the same and none lasts longer than five seconds, while young, tattooed, branded freaks, some with artificial limbs due to motorcycle accidents, pogo dance in mock nostalgia.

Crawford hurries through the adoring crowd as fans hand him all sorts of new drugs I’ve never even heard of. Suddenly there is a loud roar in the distance that sounds as if a million chain saws have been turned on. A huge forklift carrying a smashed Cadillac with Crawford’s band’s name,
THE VON BRUSSELS,
tagged across the windshield rumbles through the parting crowd. Marshmellow, a fiercely sexy slum goddess with more piercings than I’ve ever seen (including Ubangi lip plates and hanging earlobes) and a neck tattooed with terrorist-group logos, plays a guitar made of animal umbilical cords, strengthened with, I bet, freshly sniffed glue. Otis, a cute, nonracist skinhead-type guy I would really go for (if he wasn’t once a woman and
had
had bottom surgery), is blasting a boom box playing a synthetic symphony of terrifying animal mating calls that sound like human cries of distress. The forklift drops their Cadillac stage atop a larger, burned-out bread truck that is roasting on a huge bonfire in the middle of the junkyard. Crawford is hoisted up by a crane to the stage and embraces the two others in a hotbed of sexual unity. I realize that not only are they a band, they are a revolutionary threesome, and it is a lovely sight to behold.

Crawford is the lead “singer,” if you can even begin to call his tortured screams mixed in with mock opera arias “singing.” Suddenly the entire junkyard is his stage. The other bands give up, knowing they can’t compete. Women and men begin taking off their clothes and dancing tribally with a fury that would make any adult nervous. It’s like Mortville-à-go-go.

As the bonfire begins to rage below them, Crawford gives the signal, and both Marshmellow and Otis stage-dive off the forklifts and land on separate OverBuilt Model 10 car crushers. The crowd is going wild, watching the fire lick its way up, knowing Crawford is timing the musical finale to the tweak of the audience’s drug trips. I watch the hypnotic orgy of deafening sounds reach its
Boléro
-type finale as Crawford’s vocal cords are pushed to such a limit of howling, screeching volume that both his eardrums pop and blood shoots from his throat just as he jumps off his bread-truck-roof stage as it bursts into flames and lands in Marshmellow’s car-flattening platform. Taking his plasmatic cue, Otis ignites the ferocious engine of his machinery and begins crushing automobile cadavers as Marshmellow does the same, and Crawford breaks into spasmodic Saint Vitus’ dance moves and joins them in shrieking a warlike, speaking-in-tongues gibberish that only the Devil himself could ever translate. I get the vapors and collapse.

The next morning I awaken, neatly tucked in a bed made out of an old ambulance stretcher nestled inside a onetime-fancy Pace Arrow movie-star trailer, the kind Melanie Griffith and Stephen Dorff both had on
Cecil B. DeMented
’s set. Like every vehicle at Jughead’s Auto Parts, there’s been a tragedy inside, but enough time has passed to mute the original horror of the event. Only three walls are left standing, and one is crumpled. Obviously there has been a hideous accident. Maybe a 10K light crashed down from a crane on set? Or on the way to a location a Teamster driving the honeywagon truck fell asleep at the wheel and rear-ended the movie-star trailers? There’s been a fire, too. You can see multiple flame marks near the kitchen area. Maybe freebasing? I see a burned-out tiny piece of a movie call-sheet clinging to the springs under where a couch once was and pick it off carefully. “Day 8.
Drive Angry
,” it reads. God, I saw that movie.

I look out the front window and all is silent. It’s like a happy Jonestown. All the tripper kids are sleeping, passed out next to each other, smiles on the zonked-out faces, some holding hands, all lying in rows. I half crawl back to the bedroom area and see Crawford, Marshmellow, and Otis asleep, all their limbs tangled around each other in love and support. I have such faith in young people. I don’t wake them. I let them dream in peace.

GOOD RIDE NUMBER SEVEN

READY WHIP

It’s another beautiful fucking morning in America. For once I have to walk a bit but I don’t mind, it gives me time to reflect on what a good idea this whole hitchhiking thing has been. Still reveling in my newfound bliss, I hear a car screech around the corner and come speeding up the little street toward me. Whoa! Somebody’s in a hurry! Usually I am uptight about anybody driving too fast when I’m in the car, but my rides have been so lovely, I throw caution to the wind and stick out my
I’M NOT PSYCHO
sign to see how it works. The car’s driver hits the brakes, does a donut wheel, and flips open the passenger’s-side door from his side. “Where you going?” I ask, a little put off to see an Italian-looking guy about forty years old with long hair and some kind of orange jumpsuit hugging his wiry body. His arms are covered in rudely altered religious tattoos (Little Lulu and Richie Rich replace Jesus’ disciples at the Last Supper) and he has a dollar sign inked on each hand. “Hell,” he answers with a winning snarl, “get in!” I do.

As he floors it, I hear a police siren in the distance and panic a little when my driver accelerates even faster and goes right past the I-70 entrance ramp even though I tell him that’s the way I’m headed. “We’re goin’ the back roads,” he announces, leaving no room for debate. The hair on my neck stands up when I suddenly realize his orange jumpsuit is actually a Kansas Federal Prison uniform. Even I have heard of Leavenworth, whose name is stitched across the front. “I’m Ready Whip,” he says, “and I’ll take you as far as Hays, Kansas,
if
we get that far!” I hear more sirens in the distance, and Ready Whip turns off on another little country road and takes an even more out-of-the-way detour. “Are you in trouble, Mr. Ready Whip?” I ask, trying to be nonchalant, as some poor squirrel, used to slower traffic, unsuccessfully tries to cross the road and is flattened by our late-seventies Ford Galaxie. “Cut the ‘Mr.,’” he orders with a sexy command, “just call me Ready Whip, ’cause my dick’s ready and I’m always ready to whip it out.” “I see,” I say with open-minded astonishment. “But first I need some new clothes,” he announces as he pulls into a tiny little town that doesn’t
have
a name. Before I can begin to imagine shopping with my new host, he slams on the brakes when he sees a pitiful Laundromat that doesn’t look as if it’s been remodeled since the fifties. “Go in there and steal me some underpants.” “WHAT?!” I say in alarm. “You heard me, Mr. John Waters, I know who you are. I seen you on TV in the joint—on
Danielle Steele’s Family Album
. What a piece of shit.” Before I can defend one of my most obscure acting credits, he barks, “Hurry up—I need jeans, too, thirty-four-inch waist, medium T-shirts, and socks for an eleven-and-a-half-inch foot.” Shocked and feeling like Caril Ann Fugate taking orders from Charles Starkweather in that real-life fifties crime spree, I do what I’m told. The police sirens in the distance seem to have quieted, so why not?