Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America

by John Waters

  After several hours of traveling (highlighted by hearing the catchy country-bumpkin tune “Travelin’ Boogie” by Zeb Turner twice on the radio), giving “patch” money to local cops on the way (including the stupid fuzz taking away Ready Whip’s body), we stop outside of Last Chance, Colorado, at the parking lot of an abandoned small strip mall. A video shop’s smashed windows have been boarded up and defaced with graffiti paying respect to forgotten horror sexploitation films, Olga’s House of Shame, I Dismember Mama, even the porno parody I Spit on Your Snatch. A Pic-N-Pay discount store has obviously had a fire—it’s in such bad shape even homeless people would shun it. A Beverage Barn liquor store seems deserted and long ago looted. Colorado noxious weeds have taken over the parking lot, giving us the perfect setting in a low-life natural landscape.

  I’m shown into my new trailer, which I’ll be sharing with Pimple Face, a nice enough guy who obviously doesn’t let his oozing zits, boils, and abscesses bother him. He seems to be in a great mood as he describes how he quit school and devoted his life to eating potato chips. I also meet Borehead the Clown, but it’s hard to have a real conversation with him because he’s had that “trephination” operation where a hole is drilled in your head and you are then high forever and can never come down. He talks complete nonsense but everybody here pretends to understand.

  Polk-A-Dotty checks in on me and confides she already made out with Buster “and that motherfucker can kiss!” I’m so happy she’s graduated to a man who wants to be touched. Maybe my good influence has been a help in the next chapter of her neurotic happiness. I curl up in an out-of-commission old Tilt-A-Whirl car seat that someone has thoughtfully made up for me as a bed inside a trailer and slowly drift off.

  I wake up the next morning to the sound of hammering, buzz saws, and generator noise and peek out. Good Lord, the Hipster Carnival is almost completely set up. I step outside in the sparkling-clear day and see a small crowd of cool people who obviously know about the secret carnival and have followed online where it will open up next. I see Pimple Face unchaining the ramshackle front gate and letting customers inside. I’m amazed that he’s not in the freak show, he’s just a roustabout.

  I start to mosey through the crowd but Polk-A-Dotty rushes out, dressed in a sexy little magician’s assistant outfit, and turns me right around and shoves me back in the trailer. “Oh, no, you don’t, Mr. John Waters, you’re a sideshow attraction now, nobody gets to see you for free.” Before I can even argue that nobody in Last Chance, Colorado, will know who I am, she whips out a white ski mask with a caricature of my face and my mustache drawn in black and pulls it down over my head. “There you go. Nobody will think it’s the real you!” I look out through the eyeholes and feel exactly the way Michael Jackson’s son Blanket must have felt when he was young.

  “I go on in fifteen minutes! I’m so excited!” she gushes as she grabs my hand and starts dragging me through the oh-so-groovy crowd, many of whom seem to be getting high. “Even as a screwed-up little girl, I wanted to be a human target,” she confesses as we pass the “joints,” different games of chance. I see the Meat Wheel, where you spin and, if you’re lucky, win a pork butt or some veal cutlets. At the Mystic Coin Toss, happy customers are rewarded with vintage no-longer-available cigarettes, unfiltered Kools, L&Ms, even Montclairs.

  “Shirleen, this is John Waters,” Polk-A-Dotty introduces me to a blowsy but tough-looking middle-aged white lady who only has one arm but seems to be able to serve the black cotton candy at her booth and make change easily with the added help of her mouth. “She’s in the sideshow, too,” Polk-A-Dotty proudly announces before whispering so Shirleen can’t hear, “Look at her eyes.” “Nice to meet you,” Shirleen says, giggling, ignoring my mask and offering me some of her goth spun-sugar treat. As I decline politely, I notice some movement in her eyelashes. “Crabs,” whispers Polk-A-Dotty. I try not to let my pupils bulge in surprise, but Polk-A-Dotty’s right, Shirleen has crab lice in her eyelashes and eyebrows! Every once in a while she’ll absentmindedly pick one of the little parasites off, examine it briefly, then crush it with her fingers. “Also known as Lady Vermin,” she announces, sticking out her hand to shake. “Proud to be working with you!”

  PUKE-A-WORLD, reads the giant banner hanging over the midway rides. “Come on, let’s go on one,” Polk-A-Dotty begs with childish excitement as I see three dented Drunk Driver Dodgem cars giving sparks off the tin ceiling as they circulate around a pile of old rubber tires. Big cans of Colt 45 are being given out to the boisterous, already inebriated drivers waiting in the line. “Eight, four, two, seven,” they count backward incorrectly, while others purposely walk wobbly-legged in a supposed straight line. “I’ve got the whirlies!” yells a new ticket buyer as he jumps in the Dodgem car and promptly passes out at the wheel.

  “I can’t go on rides that go around in circles, I get sick,” I beg off to Polk-A-Dotty. “But that’s just the point, you’re supposed to puke on these rides!” she argues, pointing to an old, rusted Round Up, the caged ride where you don’t even get strapped in the spinning wheel as it raises its axis because the centrifugal force keeps you in. I look up and see an entire metalhead family puke at the exact same time and scream in delight when the vomit flies back in their faces.

  “Buster tells me his rides are the best because they really are scary,” Polk-A-Dotty confides, impressed. “Most are either defective or have had maintenance issues. Many have never been serviced because he gets them for free from third-world countries. Isn’t that fantabulous?” Before I can answer we’re in front of the Caterpillar, a favorite ride in my youth that you never see anymore. “Awww,” sighs Polk-A-Dotty in hard-boiled nostalgia as she watches, with me, the continuous string of cars revolving and undulating in a wavelike circular track at a growing speed. At maximum velocity, a green canopy rises and encloses the riders with a caterpillar-like covering, hiding them from the nosy crowd. “Watch!” Polk-A-Dotty waves, with a look in her eyes I’m beginning to know means there’s a shock about to happen. As the canopy retreats we see that all the riders have begun to have sex undercover and with erotic lateral force. Some are masturbating, others are in threesomes, one couple even manages to do it doggie-style without being thrown from the car. I’m having so much fun I debate just staying here forever.

  “I’ll go in here!” I shout, seeing the Liberal Horror House, one of those rides that takes place completely inside a bunch of connected trailers. Little cars go through on tracks, and various scary objects pop out to give the rider a fright. “The best one in the country,” I confide, “is the Haunted House located in Ocean City, Maryland. It’s worth a visit to this town just to go on it. I’ve also loved forever a 1962 Diane Arbus photograph called House of Horrors, Coney Island, which shows the inside of the ride with some of the lights turned on and the ominous track for the car visible. Can anything be as scary as these two things?” I ask Polk-A-Dotty with giddy excitement.

  “We’ll see,” she says as we spot Chilidog, a ride jockey whose specialty Polk-A-Dotty has already heard used to be picking up wallets that fell out of riders’ pockets when they went upside down on rides and then denying he had found any such things. But that was before he worked at the Hipster Carnival, and now he couldn’t be more helpful as he buckles us in the vintage little car and sends us on our way, zipping off and banging through a door with a photo of Richard Nixon on it. Inside it is pitch-black, and even Polk-A-Dotty screams when a Barbara Bush skeleton drops down in front of us and shakes like a goblin. Jerking along around sharp corners, suddenly the car breaks down and we hear a witchlike voice scream, “You’re out of gas, just like the rest of the world!” We pull away with a sudden jerk just before the car behind almost crashes into us. It’s hot as hell in here, I think before we see a globe of the world drop down and burst into flame to tell us in a leftist way that global warming is still an issue—even here, when everybody is high, drunk, and happy.

  As we ride around another corner and into the next sect
ion of the Horror House, a naked man wearing an oversize strap-on penis is lit up. Without warning a huge load of fake sperm is shot right at us while the words S-A-F-E S-E-X blink on and off in scary Halloween-style letters. Suddenly hipster interns jump out in disguise as minimum-wage, uneducated workers and steal our wallets at gunpoint, emphasizing how many small circuses and carnivals are not unionized.

  As we screech out in our car and exit into the blinding daylight, trying to wipe away the fake semen that must have stained our outfits, we are relieved to see the frightening load was created in disappearing white ink. Chilidog returns our wallets, in newfound honesty, as Polk-A-Dotty excitedly tells me Buster pays a good salary to his workers, not in filthy lucre but with high-grade herb.

  “Time for work,” announces Polk-A-Dotty, and I see the Freak Show tent in the distance and gulp. I’m at ease playing myself, but appearing onstage as a performer without writing my own script is terrifying to me. “But, Polk-A-Dotty,” I beg as she drags me over to the back of the tent to enter, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!” “Just take off your shirt and pants and show the audience you don’t have tattoos!” “What!?” I cry. “I’m not getting naked in front of a crowd!” “Why not?” she pooh-poohs. “The audience won’t be criticizing your body—they will just be amazed to see you don’t have tattoos in this day and age. You’ll be a triumph.”

  “Five-minute warning,” Buster whispers to me with professional stage management the instant we enter through the tent’s back flap. I take off my “disguise” mask as Polk-A-Dotty gives Buster the deepest soul kiss I have ever seen in my life, sucking his entire mouth into hers. Gasping for air, Buster returns the favor, twisting his long tongue around hers like a lasso and then deep-throating it down to her tonsils with expert sword-swallowing, gagless oscillation.

  Onstage is Clementine, “The Girl with the World’s Largest Feet.” This boast seems to not be exaggeration. “Bigger than Clarabell’s,” she brags to the crowd, who stare back in awe. She must wear a size twenty! Her toes are longer than my hands. Her ankle’s the size of my waist. She wears a bracelet on her big toe. “Huger than Mr. Natural’s,” she roars. These hipsters get the R. Crumb reference and applaud wildly. “Sexier than Olive Oyl’s,” she shouts, trimming her toenails with a pair of regular-size scissors. Surprising even me, Clementine flops back in a chair and holds her enormous monster-size dogs in the air for the world to see. “Even bigger than Shaquille O’Neal’s,” she screams, and I seem to be the only one in the tent who doesn’t get it. “He’s a famous basketball player,” Polk-A-Dotty whispers in explanation. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, “I don’t follow sports.”

  Buster, dressed dashingly in his black leather knife-wielding costume, goes onstage as Clementine grabs up the large-size bills, some still stained with cocaine traces, that the crowd has thrown to her for tips. “And now, ladies and gentlemen…,” Buster begins as I am grabbed backstage by Hal and Clara, the freak-show performers who have been on earlier, wowing the audience with their “Human Pretzel” contortion act that ends with both auto-fellatio and auto-cunnilingus. “No,” I protest as Hal gently unbuttons my shirt and then Clara, with the help of Polk-A-Dotty, yanks off my pants. “I can’t be naked! I’m in my mid-sixties!” I argue violently as they make me step out of my shoes and socks. All I have on is my boxer shorts. “You have to at least flash,” Polk-A-Dotty argues. “Just let them see your cock and ass are tattoo free for a second!” “You look great,” Hal says with encouragement. “Fashion free at last,” Clara says, beaming with respect.

  “All the way from Baltimore, Maryland,” I hear Buster announce, “making his first appearance with the Hipster Carnival, not as a film director, not as a smart-ass talk show guest or an overexposed documentary talking head but as the freak he really is! More shocking than Octopus Man, more horrifying than the World’s Biggest Rat! Here he is! You won’t believe your eyes! John Waters! The Man with No Tattoos!!”

  Polk-A-Dotty whispers, “Break a leg,” and shoves me onstage. I’ve gone on so many times that I almost start doing my stand-up routine, but I get a bigger reaction from this audience than I’ve ever received at a college. They gasp! They shriek! They look down at their overinked limbs and recoil. They look back at my skin, not judging me physically, just filled with admiration at my nonconformist courage of never getting a tattoo. Filled with the excited liberation of nudity, I drop trou and reveal the truth. I really am tattoo free. The house goes crazy. I am showered in money, poppers, joints, even blocks of gold hash.

  I pull my boxer shorts back up and Buster rushes onstage and holds one of my arms in the air as if I were Rocky Balboa, and I forget I even am John Waters. I bow deeply, then run backstage and get dressed back up like myself to the congratulations and embraces of all my fellow freak-show brothers and sisters. But now it’s Polk-A-Dotty’s big moment and I want to be here for her just the way she was for me. Buster, still onstage, pulls back a red silk curtain to reveal a large circular wooden board with leather restraints for arms and legs. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce my newest assistant,” he announces proudly, “and let’s hope her career turns out better than the last girl’s. Her name is Polk-A-Dotty, and I am her knife master!”

  Polk-A-Dotty slinks onstage to cheers, dressed in a one-piece gold bathing suit, throws off her cape, and is courageously strapped to the wheel by Hal and Clara. Buster takes aim. I hold my breath along with the crowd, and he spin-throws the sharp blade, which whacks in between Polk-A-Dotty’s legs with precision. She moans in newfound pleasure. Without hesitation, Buster quickly throws two more knives, hitting perfectly under her arms, and then even quicker three more that outline her head, just missing by fractions of an inch, producing the perfect soundtrack for the finale of this exciting, dangerous act. I am so happy for Polk-A-Dotty, she is such a star, and she has finally found a danger-top who can make her feel even more glamorous than an exhibitionist bank robber could. Buster unleashes Polk-A-Dotty from the wheel and together they take their well-deserved bows. Macaroni hugs me backstage with her skinny little arms and I hug her back but accidentally crack two of her vertebrae. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, “that happens all the time.”

  After many curtain calls, Buster calms the crowd down. “I have one last surprise,” he announces, and Polk-A-Dotty looks offstage at me and gives me a wink. “John Waters will now take the place on the wheel for the most dangerous stunt of all.” The spectators scream their approval as I stand there, paralyzed, not believing my ears. Polk-A-Dotty rushes to me, grabs my hand, and drags me back onstage. “Do you trust me, John?” Buster asks, and all the freaks in the Hipster Carnival wait for my answer with loving patience. Polk-A-Dotty gives me a lunatic grin of sisterhood as I melt, swallow hard, and then answer, “I trust you, Buster.” The relieved and loyal cries of acceptance from my new family of fucked-up Cirque du Soleil rejects give me a strange courage I’ve never had the nerve to imagine.

  Polk-A-Dotty herself straps me on the wooden wheel, and Hal and Clara give me a spin and I try to pretend I’m a ballet dancer, focusing on one spot so I don’t get dizzy. Then the crowd shouts out new excitement, but I can’t see why they are cheering. As I spin faster and faster, I concentrate on Buster’s image each time I’m right side up. Holy mother of God! Buster’s now got a large hatchet in each hand. HATCHET THROWING?! Is this the Rapture or is it not? Suddenly I feel and hear the loudest whack right by the right side of my head and then in a split second another one to the left. I am momentarily deafened, but as the spinning begins to slow down just a bit and my vision and hearing gradually return, I hear the audience cheering anew and then see Buster putting on a blindfold. Good God, did I want THIS much of an adventure? He throws the hatchet between my legs with such force that the wheel splits in two but my strapped-on body holds it together. The crowd goes absolutely bananas. I feel like the Chicken Lady character in the pit at the end of Freaks, but this time I’ve given the Tod Browning–directed movie classic a tri
bute happy ending it so well deserves. At last I am one with show business.

  GOOD RIDE NUMBER NINE

  BERNICE

  Last Chance, Colorado, may have been the first chance I’ve had to be happy naked in public, but the carnival must move on and so must I. Before the whole troupe wakes up I sneak a note inside Polk-A-Dotty and Buster’s trailer thanking them for introducing me to a new kind of living theater, the closest I’ll ever get to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty … only nice. You can never have too many careers, I’ve always said, and now I write them, “If the book doesn’t turn out or Fruitcake underperforms, I’ll be back to ‘spin for my supper.’”

  The sun is coming up and there’s no such thing as rush-hour traffic in this part of the country but, yet again (!), the very first car that approaches pulls over. The problem is, how do I get in? The entire vehicle, a beat-up yellow eighties Chevy Citation, is completely filled with books—every kind imaginable—hardcovers, trade paperbacks, but especially mass-market editions, some missing their covers. The passenger seat is piled so high I can’t even see who’s behind the wheel. Slowly, like a jigsaw puzzle being assembled in reverse, I see a face as she throws the books in the back, under the seats, even in her lap. “Sorry,” the rather haggard-looking woman in her late sixties, with the weakest chin I’ve ever seen in my life, mutters, “I like to read.”

  “I can see that,” I answer good-naturedly as I jump in, pick books off my seat, and then pile them back in my lap. “I like to read, too,” I say, taking a gander at the eye-popping cover art of the vintage sex paperback Teen Girls Who Are Assaulted by Animals. “This one is amazing,” I say, wondering what the editorial meeting at the publisher’s could have been like to green-light this title. Here’s a niche audience I hadn’t imagined. “All books are amazing,” she corrects me with a passion. “Are you a librarian?” I ask cheerfully, knowing, after being the keynote speaker for several of their conferences, how wild librarians can be. “Not officially…,” she answers with practiced bravery. “I was…,” she confides, “and then something happened and I wasn’t.” Oh. “I’m John,” I introduce myself, trying to change the subject away from her obviously painful past. “They call me Bernice,” she answers without fanfare, “and I read your last book. I loved the chapter ‘Bookworm,’ but you’re too ‘literarily correct’ for my tastes.”