Role Models

by John Waters

  Resisting the urge to leap up and scream a honky hallelujah, I just sit there listening, a one-man congregation in the Church of Little Richard. I half expect Mark to pass a collection plate, but he’s still glued to the TV; maybe he’s heard it all before. On the other hand, when Richard’s on a roll, he’s not easily interrupted. “I look back on my life, comin’ out of Macon, Georgia, I never thought I’d be a superstar, a living legend. I never heard of no rock and roll in my life. Black people lived right by the railroad tracks and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy and I thought, I’m gonna make a song that sounds like that. In the studio, we got low-down and they said, ‘We ain’t never heard anything like this.’ I would sing and scream and make those high notes and low notes. Oh, I was a wild child! I sent a tape to Specialty Records and they didn’t get back in touch with me. I was in this hotel and I had a Chrysler my mother had mortgaged her home to get me. I went into the studio anyway, and they had me singing like Ray Charles, B. B. King. They wanted me to sing the blues and that was not me. I got on the piano and started singing, ‘Woooooo!’ They said, ‘Oh, boy, where did you get that voice?’ ‘A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom!’ and they said, ‘That’s a hit,’ and the rest is history.”

  The fame came, all right, like burning lava, and today, Little Richard seems a happy prisoner of it, resting on his laurels, fretting and planning, unable to go out—even for a walk. “I’m afraid to. I might meet somebody who will try to take me away. My chauffeur picks me up in the limo and we pass the girls and they start screaming. I’m talkin’ fourteen or fifteen years old. They scream, ‘Aaaaaghh! Aaaaaghh!’ and I say, ‘Oh, thank you, Lord.’ It’s such a good feelin’. It’s a blessing sometimes and a lesson. It makes you feel good you’re a living legend and not a dead one. People expect so much from you, you got to live so much down. The burden of all this falls on you. It’s hard to have a friend when your name’s a household word.”

  He’s quite well aware of his place in history, thank you. When I quizzed him on the best reviews he ever received, his voice shot up like a tape recorder on fast forward. “‘There’s only one originator, there’s only one architect, Little Richard’—I love that. I saw that in so many write-ups. And when the people say my music inspired them—the Beatles, when James Brown was my vocalist, when Jimi Hendrix was my guitarist, when Joe Tex was singing with me, Otis Redding, when Billy Preston was my organist at thirteen—it makes me feel good!”

  Little Richard will admit to being hurt by bad press, especially by a caricature that once offended his vanity. “They called me big-headed with a little body. I didn’t like that. In New York, they had this great big heeeeeaaad in the paper and a little bitty piano and a little body like Humpty Dumpty on a wall.” But he’s not complaining. “I believe a star is living a lie if he doesn’t want his picture taken. Be a dishwasher. Take my old job at the bus station! It’s a joy when people holler. Mark will tell you, I go down to the slums. I go to poor people’s houses; they don’t even know I’m coming. I buy food and go around and hug them. I get out of the car and hug the winos. This is a joy to me, because I came from the slums; you can’t forget!”

  As I ponder the mental picture of a welfare family of six eating their last food-stamp dinner as a hyper Little Richard followed by squealing fans bursts through the door, uninvited, thrusting bags of groceries at the hungry, I bring up the book—The Life and Times of Little Richard, perhaps the best and most shocking celebrity tell-all book ever written. Penned by Charles White with Little Richard’s full cooperation and published in 1984, it is copyrighted in the names of the author, the star, and his longtime, now-deceased manager, Robert “Bumps” Blackwell. It’s a real lulu. Detailing his early life, in which he traveled with a minstrel show, sold snake oil in Doctor Hudson’s Medicine Show, and performed in drag as Princess Lavonne, it touchingly included early childhood anecdotes, such as the time Richard gave an old lady neighbor a bowel movement in a box for her birthday. (What a coincidence! Divine was on the receiving end of this exact same gift in Pink Flamingos.) Halfway through the book, you realize that you are in a stratosphere of lunacy. The bizarre lifestyle you’d fantasized for Little Richard is small potatoes compared with the truth. His onetime drug addictions and alcoholism, his hilarious threesome with Buddy Holly and his longtime stripper friend Lee Angel (with a “fifty-inch bust”), his obsessions with voyeurism (“Richard the Watcher”) and masturbation (“six or seven times a day”), are all topped off with truly staggering photographs of his many fashion statements. Just when you start thinking Nobel Prize, you get to the final chapter, a compilation of Richard’s religious testimony that seems to sour the entire volume and turn off the very audience for whom the book was written. He seems to want it both ways.

  “Some things that is said in the book are not really accurate in certain ways.” He falters when I bring up some of his quotes about religion, rock and roll, the Devil, homosexuality, and his then-current view on sex in general. Does he regret telling all? “No, I think it’s time for people to be truthful. I got so much publicity, the book is bigger overseas than here. It’s a great book, the best I’ve ever written; it’s the truth about my life and thinking. I don’t know how you put this, ’cause I don’t want to hurt Dr. Rock [Charles White]. Some of the things accredited to me, I didn’t say. I never fought it. I appreciate it…This man left his business [to do the book]; he’s a foot doctor. Traveled all over the world.”

  Richard tries to set the record straight. “I love gay people. I believe I was the founder of gay. I’m the one who started to be so bold tellin’ the world! You got to remember my dad put me out of the house because of that. I used to take my mother’s curtains and put them on my shoulders. And I used to call myself at the time the Magnificent One. I was wearing makeup and eyelashes when no men were wearing that. I was very beautiful; I had hair hanging everywhere. If you let anybody know you was gay, you was in trouble; so when I came out I didn’t care what nobody thought. A lot of people were scared to be with me.”

  Politically relieved, I wonder aloud, “Is the ‘good’ Little Richard battling it out spiritually with the ‘bad’ Little Richard? Has he turned umpteen times from rock and roll to God only to be lured back by Devil fame and worship?” “No, I don’t think that way,” he states emphatically, admitting that he’s “amazed most people don’t believe me. My God, I haven’t grouped in so long. It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve been out to have a good time. Life has changed for me now, I’m older, that’s not my interest anymore; but at the time, it was. I was young, never had enough of nothing. When I was first started in the business, I used to look for that in every city so we could have a ball, do it all, in the hall, even on the wall! When I was in Baltimore [at the Royal Theater] the girls would take off their—people didn’t call them panties then, they called them drawers—and throw them on the stage. It was terrible, but at the time, we didn’t know better. All the girls would want to come in the room and you’d let them in and they’d never leave! I was shocked! Girl groupies, boy groupies, dog groupies, cat groupies! She would say, ‘Give me a pillow,’ and I’d say ‘My God, ain’t she going home?’ And they’d stay for a week!”

  Maybe I’ll stay, too. As much as I believe that Richard’s wild days are over, I can’t help thinking that his onetime lunatic libido can’t lie low forever. “Is sex out completely?” I finally ask point-blank. “Well…uh…uh…,” he stammers, “at this age, you don’t have a lot of choice. I’ll say this much. We still see a lot of cake in the showcase, but we closed the bakery.” Sex? Drugs? Rock and roll? He’s not buying any of it. “I’m not into drugs at all. God is the only cure for crack; He is the only one can bring you back. You can get over ‘herrone.’ Once somebody slipped LSD in my food. My chauffeur and bodyguard kept me. I cried. I was afraid, like a little boy. I didn’t take speed. I was going too fast. I needed to take some breaks and I did. God gave me a break. Do you know what I enjoy now? Tellin’ pe
ople the right way to go, the pitfalls, how to love people.”

  And I believe him. But deep down, selfishly, I wish somebody could tempt him to fall from grace just one more time. Imagine that demon style rearing its ugly head in maturity! I still want him rippin’ it up, screeching, scaring all the white folks. Getting a hold of myself, I resist the urge to whisper conspiratorially, “Come on, Richard, let’s put on some false eyelashes, take some pep pills, and call Lee Angel, your onetime sex magnet, and see what’s cookin’!”

  Richard looks distractedly at the silent late-eighties news show on TV. “Excuse me; didn’t the Ayatollah get killed today?” “He did?” I ask, alarmed (he didn’t). “Didn’t Iraq bomb his home?” he asks, before blithely getting back to our conversation. The thought enters my mind that maybe World War III has broken out and I don’t even know it. I’ll spend the end of the world with Little Richard in a hotel room. Religion might come in handy, after all. Preach to me, Richard! The best of Reverend Ike and Marjoe rolled into one.

  “I only came out of show business one time,” he states, unaware of my inner turmoil. “I was in Australia and I saw Sputnik and I got afraid. When I was quitting, I was admitting I was scared of Sputnik. You know I came from the country; I’m not from the city, what a pity. I was scared to death to get back on the plane to come home. I was scared Sputnik would run into our plane, Russia done set this thing up. I had read about the Tower of Babel; you have to remember my people are Seventh-day Adventists, my people go to church on Saturdays…” “Are you Jewish now?” I inquire, repeating published reports that Richard had followed in the footsteps of Sammy Davis, Jr. “There’s something I prefer not saying,” he teases mysteriously. “I will say this. I’m a believer in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I believe the seventh-day Sabbath is God’s way. I believe we should eat kosher. I was invited to a party night before last. Rod Stewart’s. I didn’t go, because I open the Sabbath on Friday.”

  “How about the rumor that it was Bob Dylan who converted you to Judaism on your deathbed following your accident?” “Bob Dylan is my brother. I love him same as Bobby Darin [deceased] is my baby. I feel Bob Dylan is my blood brother. I believe if I didn’t have a place to stay, Bob Dylan would buy me a house. He sat by my bed; he didn’t move for hours. I was in pain that medicine couldn’t stop. My tongue was cut out, leg all tore up, bladder punctured. I was supposed to be dead. Six feet under. God resurrected me; that’s the reason I have to tell the world about it.”

  “I wish you had been Pope,” I blurt out, all whipped up in a religious frenzy, throwing caution to the wind. Richard doesn’t miss a beat, and I wonder if he has already considered the possibility. “I idolized the Pope when I was a little boy,” he says reverently. “I liked the pumps he wore. I think the Pope really dresses!” But there were other, more low-down ecclesiastical fashion casualties who seemed a bigger influence. “There was Prophet Jones of Detroit—he used to walk on this carpet. They would spread this carpet out of the limo and he would walk on it. When I got famous, I had the guys just spreading carpet for me to walk on, and they would kiss my hand…and I used to like to live like that.” How about one of my personal favorites, Father Divine, the black messiah who ruled his fanatic flock of millions with an iron fist and blatantly proclaimed, “I am God”? “I [tried] to have dinner in one of his kingdoms in Philadelphia, but the lady put me out…I just had on one of my typical outfits, my hair hanging down, and she said, ‘The Father don’t allow nothing like that in here.’ I felt bad, ’cause I went there to eat, they had a good dinner, you could eat all you wanted for a dollar. I’ll never forget it.”

  It’s time to go. The phone is ringing. The Grand Ole Opry. The Joan Rivers show. Richard is getting a headache. “What about the future?” I lamely ask, hoping for a few more minutes. “I was just offered a role with Gary Coleman. They wanted me to be his father. And they wanted me to weigh three hundred pounds. He was to be a bad little boy, like a demon. My management people thought it was not a good idea, ’cause there wasn’t no other name people in the cast. I’d like to play a detective. I can see myself playing something really rugged—macho!” Little Richard starts growling, and this tears Mark away from his silent TV program. He laughs out loud. “Mark, that ain’t funny! He always laughs when I say ‘macho.’ I can’t be macho? Shoot, I’ll be macho if I want.” Vainly trying to picture him calmed down, alone, reflecting, or, God forbid, falling asleep, I ask, “What kind of music do you listen to?” “I like classical music,” he answers bashfully, “something quiet. Strings. It just makes me think, relaxes me. I’ve been doing that for years, but I was afraid to tell anyone. They might not like my music anymore.”

  Suddenly all business, Richard rises and hands me a typed release. “This is something we give everybody. I’d appreciate it if you’d sign this here.” Good Lord, what is this? I wonder, reading, “We agree that you [Little Richard] shall have approval of the content of any article written hereunder predicated in whole or in part upon the interview.” “But, Richard,” I sputter, mentally cursing Jet for causing his press paranoia. “I can’t sign this; all freedom of the press is gone. If you had shown me this first, Playboy would never have sent me.” “Why not?” he asks. “I don’t want people to hate me. I saw Elizabeth Taylor do this. I’ve seen Michael [Jackson] do this.” I call information and get my editor’s home phone number in Chicago and wake him up. I explain. Richard is adamant. “Can’t you just leave?” my editor quizzes. “Is somebody going to pull a gun?” “Who knows?” I say, eyeing Mark, who has politely backed up his boss, and wondering if maybe even I could beat him up. “I’d rather you not publish it at all. Just leave the tapes; I’ll pay you,” announces Richard. Church is definitely out. I feel as if I’ve been excommunicated. Oh, great, I think, I’m going to be in the first fistfight of my life with my favorite role model over some goddamn tapes! Richard then debates my baffled editor. “John asked me about my peeping! I’m so old I can’t even see through the hole!” Suddenly I’m afraid I’ll start laughing hysterically. Why is Little Richard so worried? All his fans love him for his outrageousness. The book had just been published in the United States; of course reporters will ask about the content. As for his religious followers, what are they doing reading Playboy anyway?

  By now, an hour or so had passed. Are all celebrity interviews this hellish? Would Barbara Walters bolt? I then argue with Little Richard’s lawyer on the phone. Talk about putting a damper on things! Being over budget and behind schedule on a film shoot would be a picnic compared with this. Finally, under extreme duress, we make up. Richard explains his worries. I explain my job. We hug. He signs his book to me, “God Always Cares, Little Richard.” I think about how I used to sign mine “See You In Hell, John Waters” and realize the miles we’re apart.

  I rush out of the room and realize my own world did end today in its own peculiar way. Maybe I don’t want to switch identities after all. A few days later, a press representative calls me at home, announcing that Little Richard is threatening to call the NAACP. Later, I hear he’s calmed down. He is still the undisputed king in my book. The man can’t help it. But I learned one thing that day. Not all role models turn out the way you want. Pssssst, Richard? More than twenty years have passed—wanna come over to my house this time and try again?

  O U T S I D E R P O R N

  Marines like three things,” confides outsider pornographer Bobby Garcia, “beer, porn, and blow jobs.” He should know. Bobby is obsessed by male Marines and has been chasing, filming, and having sex with them for the last thirty years. “Never tell a Marine you are gay,” Bobby advises anyone who shares his taste in presumably heterosexual men; “tell them you are a cocksucker.” From the look of Bobby’s amateur porn tapes, his advice seems to have worked.

  Bobby Garcia is a great artist but doesn’t know it. His filthy little “screen tests” are all shot in his apartment, usually in the bedroom, filmed just like Andy Warhol’s Blow Job but with the camera zoomed back a lit
tle further to reveal all. A lone Marine begins by taking off his clothes, folding them military style, and lying down on either Bobby’s bed or couch. Watching hetero offscreen fuck movies, they know they are supposed to jerk off on film, some going along with Bobby’s cockamamie story of this being an “audition for a straight porno shoot.” Bobby can tell how far they might go. “I look them in the eye…and then to the crouch” (as he pronounces “crotch”—just the way Edith Massey did!). His movies all have the same story arc—sometimes the Marine just jerks off; sometimes he looks embarrassed, sometimes not. Sometimes the good ones feel exhibitionism throbbing in their veins and Bobby’s antenna goes up. You see Bobby’s hand creep in from the side of the frame to “pose” their Hollywood loaf (semi-hard) dick. If the Marines don’t object, he blows them. If he sees they are touching their asshole in any way, he rims them. Bobby wears breakaway exercise pants for easy access to his hole. He’s a director, so he knows time is money, and this way he can save screen time—he’s fuckable with his pants still on! “Marines don’t want to see a dick,” he has said; “they want to see your mouth and your ass.” Once in a great while, the Marine will reach over and touch Bobby’s dick and you can see his disappointment at the hint of the soldier’s being gay. Bobby likes dominant abuse. “Call me names,” you can hear him order on camera, but these reluctant studs usually are pretty lame in the ad-lib department and Bobby has to cue them the phony taunts he wants to hear, like “Bitch!” or “Cocksucker!” The worst for Bobby is when they want to blow him. This seldom happens but he goes along with it because he doesn’t want to waste valuable videotape by starting over and knows that his appreciative audience will be just as shocked as he is that every once in a while he discovers a real gay live wire. And woe to the unlucky Marines who reveal (usually after doing the poppers Bobby always has on hand) that they want Bobby to fuck them. “Disqualified!” you can imagine Bobby yelling in his mind in desperation and sexual letdown. Bobby is a bottom, but he’s a “bossy bottom” if there ever was one. Bobby is not only the best porno director there is; he also knows how to “top from the bottom” with style, wit, and a raw sexuality that speaks to the voyeurs who lust after hetero-flexible men everywhere.