by John Waters
I look back from my selfish deed and there’s a van stopped right beside me. The passenger window comes down and a twentysomething Charlie Manson look-alike is grinning at me. Behind him at the wheel is a sexy woman his age thrusting a $10 bill at me. They’re not picking me up, they’re just trying to help out a poor old guy down on his luck. “Take this, sir,” she offers with charitable aggression.
Suddenly she recognizes me and screams at the top of her lungs, “Oh my God, it’s John Waters!” I ask if they can give me a ride, and she’s waving her hands, practically hyperventilating: “Yes! Yes!” I climb in the back. She pulls off, driving erratically, looking at me in the rearview mirror in shock and excitement, only made worse by her trying to text her friends that she has picked me up. “Charlie Jr.” just smiles. They both are incredibly cute. I finally get her to calm down and she admits they are only going two exits, they live nearby. I offer to give them money to take me farther west past Topeka to a rest area. She agrees but says she doesn’t want any money. I call Trish in my office and tell her I have a great ride. Since she’s my travel-planning expert, I ask her to go online and try to find a good upcoming exit with services, and she agrees to the challenge. My driver struggles to drive and take pictures of me at the same time. I attempt to get her to focus on safe driving by assuring her we can take all the photos she wants when we stop.
Her name is Kitty and his is Jupiter (such a perfect Manson name) and they’ve been shopping in Wichita. She drives with one hand and starts rooting through her new purchases in the shopping bags with her other. The girl needs a fashion change if there’s going to be a photo shoot, I can see that! Jupiter’s dressed in hip denim shorts cut off below his knees (almost clamdiggers) and a black T-shirt. He doesn’t need a change of clothes; he’s devil ready. They both look cool as shit.
She’s a disabled vet who, along with many others in the marines, was given a “bad anti-anthrax vaccine” that almost killed her. Kitty claims that the serum “was not kept in a climate-controlled environment. It happened to others, too,” she explains. “We were in comas … couldn’t go to the bathroom … had all these steroids [given to her] … I couldn’t walk … I couldn’t see peripherally. I wrote President Clinton a letter, and someone from Bethesda wrote back and said the medicine was ‘absolutely safe.’” The medical company “had a huge contract [with the armed forces], so I’m pretty sure it was money-related. All bullshit! I got in a class-action lawsuit.” “But what happened?” I ask, on the edge of my seat. “We lost,” she says with a moan. “It’s hard to sue the government.”
Jupiter’s a roofer. Naturally! Why are roofers always cute? I tell him that he’s a dead ringer for a young Manson, and he asks if I’d like some “recreational drugs.” They both smoke some pot and offer me a place to stay for the night at either of their pads. I decline with thanks and just tell them how great they both look together. “We’re not really together,” Kitty admits with what I gather is a tinge of sadness. I try to convince Jupiter that he should try hitchhiking. “Sure”—he laughs—“who’s gonna pick up ‘Charlie Manson Jr.,’ as you call me? You know what they say about Kansas, don’t you?” “What?” I bite. “Come on vacation, leave on probation!” I could fall in lust.
We’re past Topeka now and suddenly there’s nothing—the real Kansas! Trish has e-mailed me back a possible good exit but it’s about fifty miles from where they picked me up. I tell Kitty and Jupiter that I am giving them gas money no matter what they say and they keep driving. Way past where they live. We finally pull off where Trish has suggested and I’m kind of shocked. It’s a rest area in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t even have vending machines, just bathrooms and a parking lot. It’s some kind of military museum monument. Trish must have misunderstood. Since it was late in the day, I wanted an exit with motels, but she must have thought because I had some good luck in rest areas with parking rather than fast-food joints, this is what I was looking for. Gulp. Too late now. Only one truck and two cars are in the whole rest area parking lot. Across Route 70 in the distance is a long, long freight train with endless plains stretching behind it. I feel like William Holden in Picnic, on his way to the fictitious Kansas town of Inge’s play, only in this version I never get there.
We get out and Kitty does a hasty costume change, and we ask the only couple we see if they will snap our picture together. Like all people over twenty years old, the nice lady has trouble taking a cell phone picture but eventually, with instruction from Kitty, figures it out. Our new photographer does the same with my BlackBerry. I give Kitty my business card and ask her to write down her contact information, just in case I’m trapped here tonight and do need to take them up on their sleepover offer. She does so and adds, Sgt. USMC Retired. I want to ask Jupiter for his number, too, but it’s clear Kitty’s in charge. I give her my THANKS FOR THE LIFT card and she seems thrilled. I also make her take cash. It’s the least I could do. I wish I could elope with these two. It feels like they saved my life.
REAL RIDE NUMBER SIXTEEN
WALMART GUY
But as soon as they leave, I get nervous quickly. The couple that took our picture pulls off. There’s now not one other car in the whole rest area. It’s getting late; I can feel the sun going down. I stand there and look around in the silence. I scope out a place where I guess I could sleep if I had to. My NEXT HOTEL sign couldn’t be more appropriate right now. Time goes by too quickly. A car comes into the lot; an elderly retired-looking couple uses the facility, exits, and passes me by. I have to get pushy. I see a youngish guy drive in and go to the restroom area. I grab my bag and sign and run back over to the building and go inside. No services here but I wait outside the men’s room door, hoping he’ll respond to my desperate plea when he exits.
I wait. And wait. And wait. He must have diarrhea, I think—another reason he won’t pick me up. A whole family of Muslim women enter, eye me suspiciously, and nervously go into the ladies’ room on the other side. He’s still in there! I feel like such a pervert waiting for someone who’s obviously taking a massive dump. The Muslim ladies come out and I flash them my sign—why, I don’t know, they’ll never pick me up! They avert their eyes and beat a hasty retreat. The shitter finally exits and looks horrified to see me waiting; not that he recognizes me, he clearly doesn’t, but he’s pissed a beggar is confronting him. He doesn’t even stop, just shakes his head and rushes past me.
I go back to my solitary hitchhiking spot, sure somebody will call the vice squad to report a lurking man in the rest area: me. No cars come by. Finally I see the trucker, who must have been sleeping, climb out of his cab, stretch, and scratch his balls. He’s a skinny, late-thirties Appalachia type, wearing Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. He sees me standing there with my sign and waves. Could I?
I’m thinking this is the night that I have to sleep in the woods for real. I call my office in my usual panic and ask Susan and Trish to try to find me a cab service that can come take me to the next hotel if I’m stuck. They text me back that Junction City is the only town “near” with a cab company, and it would “take an hour and a half” for the driver to come get me, and the same time to go back. Fuck. I really am going to be curling up in the bushes. Maybe there are some poison berries I can nibble.
I realize that Susan and Trish will soon be leaving the office for the day and it’s Friday! They have plans for the weekend and, of course, are off work. I’m on my own! I freak and call back and ask Susan to see if she can go online and find the name of a gay bar in Junction City—if there even is one, maybe a fan inside could be talked into or hired to come and get me, I suggest. I almost never go to gay bars, so I’m not sure why I thought this plan would work or who would believe me. Susan doesn’t balk and texts back, “Xcalibur,” and the address and phone number. “Help me, gay brothers,” I try to imagine myself pleading to the startled bartender who would answer the phone, but luckily I don’t have to make that call quite yet. I see a youngish semi-boho type pull into the lo
t and go inside to the men’s room. Maybe I’ll wait outside the building this time and try to talk him into giving me a ride to Junction City. I see the trucker is hanging out in the parking lot—maybe I can pitch them both at the same time.
Luckily, he’s only a pisser so he’s back outside quickly. I approach him with my sign and tell him who I am and that I’m writing a book and hitchhiking across the country and I’m stuck and need a ride to the next exit with a motel. He looks at me skeptically. He’s “not going that far,” he says, “only to Manhattan, Kansas.” I go online and show him on my BlackBerry all the blogs about my hitchhiking trip. He doesn’t know my movies, I can tell, but he’s beginning to see the humor of the whole situation. The trucker comes over and joins in our conversation and I tell him my story. He laughs and says he’d give me a ride but he’s been sleeping here, waiting for his trucking company to give him the go-ahead to proceed, and now they’ve changed his plans and he has to wait twelve more hours, then turn around and go back to another city in the same direction he just came from. I tell the Kansas hipster that if he doesn’t believe me, he can talk to my assistant in my office. Before he can think up another excuse I have Susan on the line and hand him my phone. She explains everything I’ve told him is all true. He’s coming around, I can tell. I say, “If you don’t take me, I’m going to have to sleep in the woods here.” The skinny trucker butts in and says, “I’ll make up a bunk in the back of the truck for you if it comes to that.” Hmmm. Is this the first possibility of sex on this real-life trip? Could I? For the book? I mean, he’s hardly a Tom of Finland type, but at my age I’m not exactly the big-basket, strong-jawed muscle-stud hitchhiker myself. Maybe he’s offering me a bed in complete innocence? From his friendly idiot grin it’s hard to tell. Will I miss tarnished magic? I’ll never know because Chris, as he finally introduces himself, agrees to give me a ride.
He not only gives me a ride, he offers to take me all the way to Junction City, twenty miles past Manhattan, where he’s going to attend his brother’s wedding, because he knows I’ll have better luck hitchhiking there. Chris is a sweetheart. A student from Lawrence, Kansas, who is also a manager in the local Walmart. I tell him I’ve never been in a Walmart in my entire life, but that doesn’t seem to surprise him. Suddenly he says, “Oh my God, you were in The Creep!” “Yes, I was,” I tell him proudly, referring to the hip-hop Lonely Island video starring Nicki Minaj, which has 72 million (!) hits on YouTube. Ah, the power of the Internet. To hell with movies. Only old people see them.
Chris tells me that Junction City is a huge military base, and as we pull near, I see the gigantic Fort Riley. Amazing, I think, I bet this is where Bobby Garcia, the marine-porn guy I wrote about in Role Models, must be hiding out now! Chris is a cool guy, but I don’t share this thought with him. He tells me “it’s a rough town” and people he knows have been in fights a lot here.
We pull into Junction City Travel Plaza, and the nearest motel to the entrance ramp back on I-70W is the damned Holiday Inn. I go for it. I’d check in anywhere after this day! I fill up Chris’s gas tank even though, like all nice guys, he at first protests. Since this is the second driver today who, I feel, saved my life, I insist. Another kind guy. Another happy fella. And I stupidly forget to give him my hitchhiking thank-you card. The only ride so far where I’ve forgotten. What a fool I am! I will feel guilty forever. Chris, if you ever read these words, contact me through Atomic Books in Baltimore and I promise I will send you yours!
REAL RIDE NUMBER SEVENTEEN
KANSAS COUPLE
In the dark Holiday Inn room I collapse. Was this maybe the worst day yet? It’s Friday night—no usual guzzling, no usual fun in the works for me. The Corvette Kid calls and says he wants to come get me. I don’t know what to think. I see online he has given an interview to his hometown paper where he tells our hitchhiking story but claims he was on his way to Joplin, Missouri, to help tornado victims when he took me to Ohio, which wasn’t exactly true. He was planning on doing that the next week. He doesn’t mention this article now and neither do I. He did say his mother had admonished him to “never pick up another hitchhiker,” yet here he is telling me he wants to come get me again. When I’m standing on the side of the road with no one picking me up, I want him to come, but when I get a ride and I’m in somebody else’s car, I’m not so sure—will that be cheating again? Would it make for a better or a worse book? He could be sitting in his Maryland bedroom just egging me along when he has no real plans to leave. He could be grounded by his parents, for all I know.
I go through my e-mails and see Susan has written earlier, “I spoke to your mom and told her ‘all is well in Kansas.’ She said she’s gotten so many calls and she just keeps saying ‘no comment.’” My mother also mentioned to Susan how my uncle’s son had just bicycled across the United States from Chevy Chase. See? I think my mom still doesn’t think hitchhiking is so bad.
How will it feel to reenter my real life when this is over? I wonder. Walk out the front door in the morning and not have to start scoping out entrance ramps? It’s hard to imagine that here in Junction City, Kansas. Susan and Trish e-mail me from their homes, relieved I have arrived safely at a motel for the night. “You have about 300 miles to get out of Kansas and into Colorado,” they inform me. “Inch by mother fucking inch,” I respond, quoting Oliver Stone’s great line about what moviemaking is like.
I’m going out—to Walmart! It’s a long walk through the giant travel plaza, but besides snacks and water, I definitely need those cuticle scissors—my mustache is starting to look bushy like that of Bob Turk, Baltimore’s longest-running TV weatherman. Good God, everybody is a soldier in this town! It’s Bobby Garcia heaven! Ten thousand cute military men in uniforms! I keep trying to think of the porno title for the movie I’m suddenly an extra in—Function in My Junction? Imagine me here under the influence of two martinis! I could get in real trouble.
Inside Walmart I feel like a complete trespasser. Is this how normal people shop? It’s too fucking big. Where are the salespeople? God, it’s got a supermarket, too? I wander around trying not to stare at the soldiers, who all look handsome. None know who I am. I even try to be recognized by standing in one place for a while pretending to study signs about special sales, but no dice.
Yay! They do have cuticle scissors. Candy and newspapers, too! What’s this? Oh God, John Travolta’s masseur scandal is on the cover of People magazine?! I guiltily buy it even though I know the copy I get by subscription is awaiting me in Baltimore. Maybe soldiers’ wives have at least seen the Hollywood remake of Hairspray with him in it. When they see me clutching the mag in the checkout line, maybe they’ll put two and two together. But they don’t.
Back in the dingy Holiday Inn, I eat peanuts, gobble Jujyfruits, and guzzle Evian water, catching up on the media and having my own pathetic version of a Friday night. I think of all those soldiers out there. I try to imagine that gay bar Susan had found me, Xcalibur. Could I have pulled off being a Bobby Jr. there? Or would it have been filled with twinks? I try to fantasize about that hillbilly trucker who offered me a place to sleep in the back of the cab of his truck. Would I have gotten the upper or the lower bunk? Is sex at my age even remotely possible on the road? I fall asleep. Alone. And probably a lot safer.
I wake up way late for me, 7:00 a.m., take a bath, then bravely throw away another pair of underpants. Bravado or stupidity? Today will answer that. I make a new sign on the back of the WRITING HITCHHIKE BOOK one. I set a modest goal: 70 WEST THROUGH KANSAS—and once again add I’M SAFE. I guess I mean sexually, too. I look in the mirror at my freshly groomed and trimmed mustache and hope it does its job for me today—getting me a ride! As always, I leave a tip for the maid.
I should know better but I go down and check out the free-breakfast room. Per usual, no one makes eye contact. I approach a guy who looks like a possible ride and show him my sign, but he looks appalled I’d even ask. I never thought it could be possible, but the food is even worse than a
t the last hotel. The chipped-beef dish looks like liquefied mucus mixed with Dinty Moore canned stew. I sit at a table and drink tea and text The Corvette Kid that I made it to Junction City, Kansas.
I go outside and walk the short distance to the I-70W entrance ramp, which seems like the most central one in this hub of traveler facilities. There’s plenty of room for cars to pull over here, too. It’s a nice day. I’m starting a little later but obviously not late enough. Still no rides. Oh well, I’ve got all day, I think. It only takes one car—blah, blah, blah. Damn, it’s windy! My sign keeps ripping. Some goddamned tumbleweed might come out of nowhere and blindside me!
It’s still always a shock, but a car stops and I grab my bag. Inside is a laborer-type father with his young son, and I can tell by Dad’s expression he thinks I’m homeless. The kid doesn’t look scared, like maybe they’ve picked up hitchhikers before, maybe even taken a bum home for a good hot meal. “I’m only going to the next exit,” Dad says, shrugging with apology. I thank him politely but reply, “This is such a good spot to hitchhike, I’m going to stay here.” He understands. The son looks at me with actual kindness. Some people just are decent. They pull off and already all three of us are better people.
But I’m still here. I see cops go by. They don’t stop to harass me. Good. I see military tanks go by, too. I wish I could get a ride in one of them, but I look like a don’t-ask-but-I’m-telling insane military deserter who’s lost his mind and is running away to meet his meth-head AWOL boyfriend. I stick out my thumb at every approaching army vehicle anyway and during traffic lulls look at my BlackBerry. I am totally shocked to see that The Corvette Kid has texted again: “I’m almost in Missouri. Should I come get you or go to Joplin?”