by John Waters
“Thank you, Harris,” I say sincerely outside as we get back into his totally unremarkable car. “Don’t thank me,” he modestly responds as he pulls out into traffic, always careful to obey the posted speed limit, “thank the pot smokers all over the Delmarva area. They’re the real ones backing your new movie.” With that, he pulls over to an entrance ramp to I-70W and bids me adios. “Here’s my contact info,” he says, handing me a business card printed on the old kind of “flash paper” that bookies and numbers-racket hoods used to use. I read the PO box number in Triadelphia, West Virginia, and Harris tells me to “read it again and don’t forget it.” I do. Suddenly with a flash of light the business card ignites, turns to ash, and disappears. “Happy trails,” Harris says as I open the door to get out (suddenly a working film director again) and stick out my thumb. Harris accelerates and, looking at me in his rearview mirror, waves one last time just as he sees me getting immediately picked up by my next ride. And it’s only 2:30 p.m.
GOOD RIDE NUMBER TWO
KAY-KAY
Imagine my surprise opening the passenger-side front door and seeing a steering wheel above the shotgun seat. Are we in London? I momentarily wonder in confusion. “I don’t know how far I’m going, but get in,” begs a nice middle-aged lady in the driver’s seat, who wears a modest gray bouffant hairdo that must need weekly maintenance in a beauty parlor. Dressed in pastel suburban-style separates, she could be anybody’s mom. I notice the small logo of the AOG DRIVING SCHOOL on the exterior of the front door and figure, what better hands in which to be driven?
I jump in and see the TOTAL FLEET SERVICES brand name displayed on the dashboard of this older (almost vintage) vehicle and realize a second brake is between my feet. “My name’s Kay-Kay,” she says nervously as I fasten my seat belt and feel immediate unease as she pulls out too fast and without warning into the slow lane and almost cuts off another car merging from the entrance ramp. This woman teaches people to drive?! I panic as I hear the blare of other drivers’ horns. “I’m John,” I say politely, and before I can even be glad she has no idea who I am, I involuntarily slam on my brake, as she obviously doesn’t see the other car ahead of us slowing down, despite the thoughtful motorist’s pumping of the brake light to alert us. “Sorry, I guess I’m just a backseat driver,” I mumble with some concern. “That’s okay,” she assures me as she swerves around another car in the slow lane without even putting on her turn signal, “I need all the help I can get.”
As the harrowing ride continues, I take more and more control over the wheel and she seems to be relieved. “I’m not really a driving instructor,” she finally volunteers after another close call when I could mercifully swerve from my side without having to reach across and grab her wheel. “But why do you have this car?” I ask in bewilderment. “It’s a long story but there’s nothing else I could do,” she gasps, looking suddenly as if she is going to cry.
Before I can quiz her further I hear a muffled banging coming from the rear of the car, which gives me newfound concern. “It’s the brake pads,” she volunteers without conviction. “We’ll be okay.” Hearing a thumping noise that causes further concern, I tell her, “We need to pull over. Something must be hanging off the car.” “Don’t stop!” she snaps with sudden seriousness as she instead turns on the radio at high volume. “Transfusion,” a longtime favorite of mine by Nervous Norvus, comes on, and this fifties novelty song with the lyrics “I’m never, never, never gonna speed again,” followed by the sound of a horrible car crash, gives me the courage to defy her. “Why not!?” I cry over the music as I start to steer us toward the exit for the upcoming family rest area, and she, for the first time, steers her wheel in the opposite direction. I put on the brakes to slow down for a construction site ahead, but she floors the accelerator, hits the cones, and sends the panicked construction workers scattering for safety.
“Please, mister,” she suddenly pleads, changing her tack, “don’t pull over. I have to get to my sister’s and she lives near Columbus, Ohio.” “We’ll get you there,” I assure her, trying to distract her by hastily assuming the role of instructor and reaching over to turn on the windshield wipers and defroster to show her how they work. But Kay-Kay won’t give up the battle. Our car is swerving dangerously back and forth on the highway, driven by different wills. The noise from the rear end of the car seems to be getting worse, too. Is it just my ears playing a trick on me or did I just hear someone yell “Help!”?
Finally giving up, she turns down the radio, takes her hands completely off the wheel, and lets me steer the car to a parking space in the next roadside travel plaza. “It’s not my fault,” she says to me with a newfound sorrow. “What’s not your fault?” I demand about the same time I hear a man’s voice yell, “You dumb bitch! Let me out!” “Fuck you, asshole!” she suddenly snarls, turning toward the back of the car with a ferocious anger that seems completely out of character. “Women drivers!” a gruff voice yells back, and I realize, good Lord, somebody’s in the trunk! Drama! Just what I’d been hoping for—how perfect for my book!
“I’m a single lady,” she suddenly sobs to me, back in character, as I turn off the ignition to listen, not sure what else I can do. “All I wanted was to learn to drive,” she continues in agitation, “but no, this … this chauvinist pig starts quizzing me about my opinion on abortion … in the first lesson!” “Abortion makes you the mother of a dead baby!” the voice in the trunk butts in. “I asked God and she’s pro-choice!” yells back my apparently militant feminist driving partner with an anger I would never have expected. “Look, I agree with you,” I try to explain to Kay-Kay, hoping to calm her down. “I like kids,” I continue, “but my abortion politics are simple. If you can’t love your child, don’t have it, because it will grow up and kill me.” She nods her head in relieved agreement. “But still, you can’t keep this guy in the trunk,” I try to reason. “Who’s that faggot?!” yells our hostage with a rudeness that instantly pushes me over the edge. “You filthy impregnator!” I shout back, suddenly as combative as Kay-Kay. “How dare you tell a woman what to do with her body?” “That’s right, you fallopian-tube fascist!” Kay-Kay joins in with such rage that the veins in her forehead pop out and her hairdo partially collapses.
“Cocksucker! Whore!” yells our fanatical pro-lifer, banging on the inside of the trunk lid so loudly that a family exiting their car nearby looks over in suspicion. “I wish I was a girl so I could get an abortion!” I yell in ridiculous reactionary rhetoric as the mom, dad, and kids quickly hightail it to the food area, convinced I’m just a crazy person with Tourette’s syndrome.
“All I wanted to do was to learn to parallel park,” Kay-Kay begins wailing to me, “but no! He has to start in on my sexual politics. I’ve never even had an abortion, but even if I had, it’s private! I shouldn’t have to discuss my reproductive organs with a driving instructor, should I?” Before I can answer, she spins in her seat like Linda Blair’s head in The Exorcist and begins addressing her captive. “Should I, you asshole horndog?” she screams with a venomous hatred of all things sexually unfair, before adding the final insult: “With humans, it’s abortion, but with chickens, it’s an omelet! What do you have to say about that, you yellow-bellied coward?” Kay-Kay’s radical sloganizing does the trick. “Coward? Coward?” he bellows back. “You call someone who bombed Planned Parenthood a coward?! I’m an Army of God warrior! I am the sperm guardian of the universe!”
Suddenly he’s quiet. He knows this time his big mouth has done him in. Kay-Kay blinks in sudden recognition and whispers victoriously to me, “AOG Driving School? Oh my God, it’s a front for Army of God, the Christian terrorist group.” Then she adds, loud enough for him to hear, “He ain’t calling the police on anyone.” I see a Trailways bus with a posted destination of Dayton, Ohio, pull up and let out some passengers for a pit stop and I think fast. “Okay, Kay-Kay, we’re going to get you out of this car and I’m going to get you on that bus. Dayton’s past Columbus—you’ll get to y
our sister’s. Give me the keys.” She hands them over without a peep, and I’m relieved to see there’s a trunk-release button. Kay-Kay breathes a little bit easier now that her driving lesson from hell has finally ended.
We both get out and slam the car doors shut. Suddenly we hear a less militant voice from the trunk. “Okay, look, I didn’t mean that,” he snivels. “Let’s just try to end this misunderstanding without problems. Let me out and we’ll all go our separate ways. Let’s agree to disagree. I could be wrong … I apologize … you’re not that bad behind the wheel, Miss Kay-Kay. With a few more lessons, you’re going to be a legally licensed driver!”
Kay-Kay laughs out loud for the first time, and I see that she really is a moderate person who was baited into a political fervor she never knew lurked inside her. She now seems proud of herself; strong, ready to move on and let her abortion-rights road rage simmer down. I take her hand and lead her toward the bus. The driver, surely against company policy, is not guarding the front door but has instead joined some of his more out-of-shape passengers in a cigarette break while others remain in their seats dozing and the rest line up for artery-clogging Cinnabon treats inside the pavilion. Since he has to pass through Dayton, I have no trouble distracting the driver with phony questions about the best route there, and Kay-Kay sneaks aboard his bus with ease.
I aim the trunk release at the driving instructor’s car and the trunk opens, almost as if it were surprising the other cars parked nearby. Slowly the pro-lifer sits up inside and peers out wearily. Realizing the authorities are not there to grab him, he immediately reverts to his fanaticism, grabs a handful of “Equal Rights for Unborn Women” flyers, jumps out, and begins aggressively approaching unsuspecting families who have stopped to stretch their limbs or take a whiz inside. “Get away,” snaps a woman with two howling children and a lughead husband who makes no move to help her. Undeterred, our driving instructor approaches another harried family who look the worse for wear as they return to their car after visiting the snack bar. “Why is Mommy crying?” the young boy asks his dad, all sugared up and bewildered with concern. “Because you’re an asshole,” barks back the father with exasperated logic. Suddenly our clueless agitator butts in, chanting, “Birth control is for wimps!” before thrusting a flyer into the humiliated kid’s hands with a complete lack of human understanding. “Eat me!” yells the son with a sudden untapped rage before kicking the pro-lifer as hard as he can in the balls.
The whole family, suddenly united in the face of unwanted intrusion, screams in derisive laughter as Mr. Big Mouth limps away holding his sperm-filled, baby-making family jewels. I look over at Kay-Kay. She has seen what I just saw. I could never make this shit up, and I think for the first time she realizes that she has somehow helped me. I smile at her in mutual creative respect and she waves goodbye, happy to have been a positive inspiration to someone. Her bus pulls off toward Columbus and real life with her sister, where our little adventure will never be mentioned.
I walk out to the exit ramp and decide to try a second version of my hitchhike sign: MIDLIFE CRISIS. I stick out my thumb, confident that roadside reality will bring me more perfect material.
GOOD RIDE NUMBER THREE
LUCAS
I’m thrilled the first few cars don’t pick me up so I have time to gather my thoughts. The passing drivers are nice, making hand gestures explaining they are only going a short way or more elaborate ones that I can only assume mean they’re turning off in a direction other than west. My luck not only continues, it does a backflip and lands perfectly beside me like a hitchhiking guardian angel. A beat-up beige 1965 Ford F-500 flatbed truck screeches to a halt right in the middle of the ramp without the slightest concern for the impatient drivers behind, who must be pissed at having to stop. But they don’t have the courage to honk their horns. Because on the flatbed truck is a Ford Vic 1970s station wagon that has been customized for a demolition derby. WHIPLASH is spray-painted by hand in huge, scary letters on both sides with the car’s local sponsor, THUMPER BUMPER, which I guess may be an auto repair shop, and ASSCAR (God only knows what that means) is scrawled on the hood. TETANUS TATTOO PARLOR completes the advertising on the tailgate. Painted in black on the driver’s side is his entry number, 422. Good God, April 22, that’s my birthday!
I peer inside the truck just to scope out the driver. I’m thrilled to be getting another ride so quickly, but still, first impressions count and I want to be as safe as I can be on this intrinsically unsafe trip. “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am,” shouts the driver. “I’m Lucas. Hop in!” “Thanks,” I say, climbing inside, thrilled to hear that roughneck highway song “Looking at the World Through a Windshield,” by Del Reeves, playing on the radio. “Jesus Christ, you were on The Simpsons!” he yells over the unmuffled sound of his truck’s engine, pulling off and entering I-70 West. “Yes, that’s me, John Waters,” I admit modestly. “‘Homer’s Phobia’!” he correctly yells out my episode’s title with a roar of laughter. I notice his two gold front teeth, so rare yet appealing in a white guy. His tight blue denim jeans splattered with grease, scruffy white(!) motorcycle boots, and a raggedy thrift-shop fifties sport shirt patterned with cartoon car-crash graphics only add to his renegade debonair charm.
Feeling comfortable with my new ride, I break my rule and mention I’m also a film director, and he asks, “Which ones?” as he guns ahead down the highway, passing cars right and left but driving safely. “Hairspray,” I mention, but he gives me a blank shrug. “Pink Flamingos,” I try, and get the same vacant expression … “Cry-Baby? Serial Mom?” I offer, but no luck. “Nah,” he answers without embarrassment, “I only like cartoons.”
I switch the subject to Lucas’s life and tell him what a fan of demolition derbies I am. How I long ago covered one on-air as a pundit for that radio show All Things Considered and how I had recently attended another derby outside Baltimore and how surprised I had been at one of the side events before the race began. A used car in good condition sat in a fenced-in area as customers lined up and paid admission to enter (mostly dads and their younger male children). Each was handed a sledgehammer and the clock would start ticking and the father-son team had three minutes to beat the car and cause as much damage as possible. “Great work, son!” a dad would congratulate Junior after he managed to smash the windshield. “Rip it up, Pop,” a kid would yelp as his father knocked off a rearview mirror with one easy swipe. There were no prizes, only quality wrecking time with your family, and this seemed to be reward enough. By the time the derby had begun, the crumpled, ruined auto lay there, abandoned and dead. I wondered whose responsibility it was to haul away the carcass. Is there such a thing as “postproduction” at a demolition derby?
“It’s fucking Maniac Night,” Lucas explains, “and tonight I’m gonna win! We’re gonna tear ’em up!” he hollers humorously, meaning him and his car. I want to go, too. Almost magically, as if he could read my mind like Kreskin, he smiles that sexy gold-toothed smile and leers in a friendly growl with a faint Southern accent, “Wanna ride in the car with me?!” “Sure,” I stammer, wishing I were wearing those slip-on “fronts” I had made for my teeth in Baltimore with JW in fake jewels. “But are you allowed to have passengers?” I ask. “Hell, no,” he replies, “but since when have I done what is allowed?” “But it will be late night if I stay for the race and then I’ll have to hitchhike in the dark and I’ll be nervous,” I admit with shame. “Stay with me, Snake,” he hisses with a male friendliness that is confusing in its undefined sexual connotations. “I’m custom-fit, hammered, and bent just like your boy Homer!” I gulp. “You’re gonna be my good-luck charm,” he announces with a flirtatious grin.
I am swooning with excitement when we finally get to Marengo, Indiana, having so much fun riding with Lucas that I barely notice it’s already night. We’ve come a long way as we pull up at the Crawford County 4-H Fairgrounds. “Maniac Night” sounds even better when you read it off a weatherworn wooden marquee. Especially with $1,200 PRIZE adde
d below. Lucas knows everybody! There’s Anteater and Doo-Doo, two scary grease monkeys who obviously idolize my new best friend, and they help him get Whiplash off the flatbed truck and up near to the pit gate. I see a lot of other junker cars with souped-up names such as Ratrod, Gunthunt, Hatchet-Head, and Head-On Hard-On (which, it was explained, will be disqualified because of its un-family-friendly name). There’s even one named Whitney Houston. I don’t know about Lucas, but I’ve got a winning feeling building inside me.
As our heat approaches, Lucas sneaks me in under a fence and I climb in through our car’s front passenger-side window because the doors are now welded shut. He hands me goggles, a helmet with WHIPLASH hand-stenciled on the front just like his, and a crumpled jumpsuit to put on over my usual low-key Comme des Garçons outfit that I have chosen to wear for the trip. “Material’s fireproof,” he explains, and since the family business my dad started is fire protection, I feel relieved as I struggle to suit up. As he slips into his own matching outfit, he catches me peeking at his naturally toned chest and winks. “Watch,” he says as he pours lighter fluid all over his jumpsuit. “Go ahead,” he orders me as he hands me a box of kitchen matches from under his seat, “set me on fire.” I hesitate, then strike one and toss it on him. His outfit immediately goes up in flames, but he just laughs, feeling no pain. He waits a full fifteen seconds before he smothers out the blaze. Lucas is my action hero.
There is no glass in Whiplash. The windshield and the rear and side windows have been removed. Most of the interior has been dismantled, and the gas tank is now in the back where the seats once were. As I reach for the safety belt, Lucas snarls from behind the wheel, “Seat belts optional,” and looks down to his crotch and points to the seat-belt buckle that once was on his driver’s side but has now been redesigned into his belt for fashion. Being the wimp I evidently am, I slip on both the helmet and the seat belt that is, thank God, still attached on the passenger side.