by John Waters
He is listening to the ridiculously childish novelty tune “Tofurky Song” by Joanie Leeds, but I can tell he sees no humor in the chorus: “Wobble wobble wobble, not gobble gobble gobble.” What do I care? At least the recording covers up the sudden rumbling in my stomach. We continue to drive, and much to my humiliation I fart. Eugene looks over at me and says with a straight face, “Reject that suet!” “What is suet?” I ask, anything to divert my embarrassment. “The solid fat prepared from the kidneys of cattle,” he deadpans. Suddenly a blast of shit fires in my pants without warning. The stench is overpowering. Oh God, I think, he’s going to expect me to eat this!?
“That’s what you get from eating meat!” he scolds with a savage new fanaticism. “I have food poisoning,” I wail. “Why didn’t you cook that tofu?” “Cooking is a violation of the natural order of food, you fool!” he lectures with an obnoxiously patronizing tone. “Please pull over,” I plead. “Absolutely not,” he answers. “You have to learn a lesson about excrement. Your bowels are sending you a vegan message.” “No, they’re not,” I scream in mortification, “I have diarrhea! Please let me stop at a restroom.” “I bet you have wiping issues,” Eugene suddenly accuses me. “What are you talking about?” I argue in building delirium as another mudslide of shit blasts out and trickles down my pant leg. “You’re nuts!” I yell. “I’m sick, pull over.” “I’m nuts?” he barks. “Me? The healthiest man you’ve ever met? Do you know what I’m going to die from?” he rants like the fascist he is. “Nothing. That’s what I’m going to die from. Nothing!”
With that, he veers off Route 70 and pulls into a family rest stop. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, the whole nightmare of fast food right before my eyes. He slams on the brakes and the scabs on my knees break apart, the seat belt cuts into my infected tattoo, and a final logjam of liquid turds detonates out back. “You were born under the astrological sign of Feces, meat pig, and you will die under that sign,” Eugene spits out in final judgment. “Now excrete from my car!”
I do. I walk through the parking lot, and the whole world can see I have shit my pants. “Hey, shithead,” some brat of a kid yells as both his parents hold their nose and laugh. I don’t make eye contact, but just make a beeline for the men’s room.
I walk through the packed food court, gagging and farting every time I see or smell food. Wouldn’t you know it, the bathroom is crowded. All the stalls are filled. “Oh my God,” some man mutters in disgust when he sees my sorry state of affairs. Out of the corners of my eyes, I notice men stopping in their tracks and then scattering in horror. Finally, a stall opens and a college-student type exiting makes direct eye contact with me. “John Waters?!” he cries in surprised happiness. “Yes…,” I stupidly answer, pushing past him and slamming the door shut behind me. “Oh my God!” I hear him yell to just about everybody. “Did you see that?! That was John Waters. I’m almost certain he has shit his pants!!” I hear grown men laugh in constipated smugness and digestive superiority.
I hang my jacket on the inside hook and plop my chafed ass down on the toilet, but there is nothing left to come out. I attempt to clean myself up. It was hard outside to take off both my underpants and pants, but here in a rest-area men’s room it’s downright scary. I’m sure bathroom users can see me bottomless through the cracks in the stall door. I roll up my disgusting boxer shorts to ditch upon leaving. I flush a couple of times and use the clean toilet water to wash out my pants. I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing the cloth with all my might. It’s a good thing I wasn’t wearing white jeans as I usually do in the summer. I flush over and over until someone yells, “You okay in there, buddy?” I freeze. “Yes, I’m fine,” I lie, rinsing out my Levi’s one last time and hoping they will dry quickly once I’m out in the sun.
Just as I turn around to face the daunting task of slipping into wet pants, I see a hand come over the top of the stall, quick as lightning, and grab my jacket. “Hey, fucker,” I yell as I trip over my boots struggling to get one leg into my sopping jeans. “Stop! Thief!” I shout, but all I hear back is the footsteps of the running jacket-snatcher. “Someone just stole my coat!” I scream, but for once, the bathroom seems empty. I run out of the booth in my stocking feet, still zipping up my fly, but all I see is a father and son walking in, eyeing me with alarm. “Did you see somebody run out with my jacket?” I ask, completely beside myself. “How would I know what your jacket looks like?” the father asks with rude sarcasm. “Yeah, moron,” spits out the kid to me as I stuff my feet into my unlaced hiking boots and race past them, depositing my diarrhea underpants in the trash can right in front of their suddenly scared-shitless eyes.
I run through the rest area with my laces flapping, tripping over them every few steps. “Thief!” I yell, but people look away and I don’t see a security guard in sight. Once outside in the parking lot, I realize whoever swiped my jacket is long gone. No jacket. No bag. No phone. I’m really alone. In St. Louis, for shit’s sake.
BAD RIDE NUMBER SIX
WOODY
At least there’s an entrance ramp back onto I-70 West, my supposed lifeline for this misadventure. Maybe a freshly fed fat family from the food court will have mercy and pick me up. I stand with my thumb out for over two hours but I don’t mind because I’m praying the wind is acting as a deodorizer of my fecal accident. Suddenly I spot a discarded can of Off! insect repellent in the weeds near where I’m standing. I leap over and grab it and spray it all over me. Off! is not a real deodorant but I’ve always loved the exclamation point included in the brand name, and besides, I don’t have any toiletries left, this will have to do. Even the Maybelline eye pencil I keep in my sports-jacket pocket is now gone. I pick up a cigarette butt from the roadside gravel and without a mirror, from memory, try to shade in my graying signature facial hair. Who knows if I colored within the lines? For once, I do want to be recognized. I can use all the help my “look” can muster.
Naturally, the next ride’s driver has no idea who I am but I learn way too much about him immediately, straining to hear his braggart opinions over the most obnoxious, screaming talk-radio shows that he violently changes back and forth by pushing the channel buttons so hard I’m amazed they don’t break.
His name is Woody, and oh yeah, he smokes. Parliament filters. Four packs a day. “Filter, flavor, pack or box,” he sings loudly, reminding me of the vintage ad campaign. The car stinks so bad of cigarette smoke that I’m at least sure he can’t get a whiff of my rectal troubles. I used to be a heavy smoker, too—five packs of King Kools a day before I quit, so I can’t be too judgmental. But still. He hot-boxes each cigarette right down to the recessed filter and then lights the next one straight from the butt before he flicks it out the window, possibly starting a forest fire. Thank God I gave up this filthy habit or I’d be dead by now.
“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 u
p 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 sta
te.” 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.