I was scratching recently through the stacks at my local library ,And my car crazy brain I saw a dust jacket with the word “car” in the title, and the gray matter controlled my flesh-and-bone mech suit to pick it up. A dose of serotonin was immediately administered to the gray matter discovered that the book was a series of short stories by the surrealist and absurdist American filmmaker, writer, actor and artist John Waters as he set off a hitchhiking adventure across the country from Baltimore to San Francisco. “Oh, this will be good. I don’t need to know anymore, I’m already sold,” I told myself as I pushed the tome towards the checkout.
I was right, but I had no idea how right I would be. Nobody hitchhikes anymore, least of all famous people with money. The act of roaming around the country was once quite popular decades ago, but in many states it was discouraged and banned outright. The decline in hitchhiking has less to do with fear of serial killers and the possibility of murdering vagrants than with the proliferation of automobiles. Fewer people have to do it, so fewer people do it.
This experiment by Waters was always an interesting experiment, but he obviously had to take his own approach and emphasize the drama and absurdity of the world. The book is divided into three parts, with the first two sections being a series of short stories depicting best- and worst-case scenarios of how the journey could have gone. The last third of the book describes the actual course of the journey (with a little embellishment).
Waters’ dream scenarios often contain homoerotic, quasi-pornographic segments, such as the one in which he has sex with an alien and wakes up with a magical rectum. In many nightmare scenarios, Waters spends the entire journey narrowly escaping death – and the cops – only to end up in hell anyway.
Out in the real world, hitchhiking through the country actually went quite well for our protagonist. He left his Baltimore home armed with credit cards, a cellphone and a GPS tracker so his staff could keep tabs on his whereabouts in case something went wrong. It was picked up and driven by regular Joes and Janes. A farmer, a miner, a teenage Republican who drives a Corvette, and the indie band Here We Go Magic.
Like much of Waters’ career, this book is not the best thing I have ever read, but it is provocative and entertaining. It’s 322 pages of raw and outrageous prose, a kind of love letter to the oddities that make up everyday life in Central America. Most people on the street don’t recognize Waters or mistake him for Steve Buscemi, and he’s often treated better by the strangers who don’t recognize him than by the fans who do. It’s a quick and entertaining read. You should get a copy and try it out.
Does it make me I want to hitchhike across America? In a way, yes. Especially if the deal gives me a magic rectum.