by John Waters
As soon as we drive across the Utah border, there is nothing. Beautiful nothing. Suddenly, the CHECK ENGINE light comes on. If we break down here, we are incredibly screwed. It is hot as hell. No one is around. I have never even seen a cop. We just pretend that it’s not on. Gas stations are few and very far between; as in, there aren’t any. The Kid’s tank is getting low. Now that warning light comes on, too. Check engine and no gas. I picture the vultures circling overhead. The Kid suddenly points happily to a sign announcing a gas station coming up. We pull over with great relief to a Shell station in Thompson Springs, Utah. Gas is $4.14 a gallon! It was $3.19 in Kansas, but I guess they’ve got you by the balls here. There’s not another one within hundreds of miles, so what are you gonna do, not pay? The Kid opens the hood to check the engine just as his vehicle has ordered him to do, but I can tell he’s no gearhead. “The oil seems okay,” he says, perplexed. Don’t ask me! I don’t even know how to open the hood of my car! We pull out and the CHECK ENGINE light is still on. We try not to talk about it.
Route 70 West ends in about an hour, but Trish and I had mapped out with AAA the more direct route to 80 West by cutting up north on Route 191 to 6. This turnoff is about ten minutes ahead, but looking out the window and at my AAA TripTik and the Rand McNally Road Atlas, I realize these roads are almost entirely through the desert. What the hell, let’s take a chance.
We turn off on 191 and it’s just two lanes, one in each direction, where if you have to pass a car, you risk a head-on collision. The fucking CHECK ENGINE light is still on. It’s so bleak that we both are energized by the extreme landscape. We see little baby dust tornadoes, just hoping to become lethal ones. They may call this soil “desert” in these parts, but I thought a desert was sand. This is dirt.
Once you veer west onto Route 6, you are in rattlesnake heaven! We pull through the coal-mining town of Wellington, Utah, and I fall in love with the place. Such a weird little community. Tiny houses. Sheds, really. But painted in gay pastel colors. One little blue one was so sad yet proud, crumbling but imposing, that I wanted to move in. There are so many scary little churches, too. I picture Marjoe-type preachers curing leprosy. It may be the best oddball city in America. I want to come back and have a vacation here one day. We stop in some convenience store and feel as if we were in The Twilight Zone. The Corvette Kid pays for the snacks. I can tell he wants to get out of here. Fast.
We drive north to Salt Lake City. Slowly, suburban life begins to come into view. We’re making good time. Obviously, the CHECK ENGINE light is not warning us of anything dire—we have been driving all day at high speeds and we’re still going!
We pull into Salt Lake City, which I know a little about from being here to promote my films. I even recorded the score for Serial Mom here. We look around for a motel. It’s Sunday, luckily, so except for some Mormon art festival, the city is dead. We check into the Comfort Inn, and without discussing it, I pay for two rooms. I tell him to bring in all his stuff because we’re in a city and I’m always nervous someone will break into the car. I see he brought with him a real Republican preppy suit and regimental tie. It’s hard for me to picture him dressed for his other life.
We go to our separate rooms and agree to meet in the lobby to try to find a place to eat—somewhere that has “real food.” I text my office that I’m in SLC and that “The Corvette Kid is totally genuine—a sweet kid seeing America for the first time.” I e-mail my sisters, “I’m in Salt Lake City. Send Mom love from the entrance ramps of America.”
The Corvette Kid and I aimlessly walk the long blocks of Salt Lake City until we come to what looks like a fairly upscale Chinese restaurant. We enter, I get recognized, and they seat us outside at a nice table. The Kid tells me his mother is absolutely horrified now that he has told her he is back with me. She is “freaking.” I again offer to talk with her, but he declines and turns off his phone so he can’t see her frantic texts. I tell him I’m going to get out of his car in Reno and continue hitchhiking to San Francisco by myself. I’ll give him my apartment keys; he can drive there on his own and stay until I arrive. He smiles in agreement but says he is not telling his mom and dad that now. I confront him about that interview he gave to his hometown paper and how it said he was on his way to Joplin to help tornado victims the first time he picked me up, which wasn’t true. He readily agrees and explains the paper got it mixed up; he had told the reporter he was supposed to go there about a week later. I believe him.
We talk about our “types.” He admits the waitress at that Applebee’s we ate in who wore tight jeweled pants was “hot.” So I mention how this one truck driver we had seen in a rest area looked pretty good to me. Earlier, when we had pulled into the lot of our Salt Lake City motel, he had checked the oil yet again, worrying about that CHECK ENGINE light, and I had cracked “how butch” he looked under the hood. He burst out laughing—he was getting used to my sense of humor. The Corvette Kid picks up the dinner check. I knew he was a classy guy.
As we walk back to the Comfort Inn, I see a lot of student types hanging out and say to The Kid, “Go out by yourself if you want. Have some fun!” I can tell he’s been considering just that possibility, but I’m unsure if he actually will. We go to our rooms and promise to meet in the lobby early—a big day ahead of us. Nevada, here we come!
I wake up too early and go down the hall to the dreaded breakfast room and see a DO NOT DISTURB sign on The Corvette Kid’s door. Oh God. Hope he didn’t pick up a girl. I stop myself on that one. Why not? If he did, I hope she’s pretty and smart. At least this breakfast room has some decent cereal. I eat and worry. Wouldn’t he come here first to get something to eat before we check out? Oh well. Young people sleep longer.
I take the elevator to the lobby and pace back and forth. As soon as The Kid’s one minute late, I picture him dead, cut up by some hooker, but a few seconds later there he is, lugging all his bags back downstairs. He’s unharmed, with a big smile on his face, ready to explore America. Yes, he went out but nothing happened. Just “hung out in the street with some skaters and punk types” who were all students. I’m glad he mingled. He’s already had coffee in his room.
We stop for gas and I fill it up. We’re both revved up. It’s Day Eight for me and I’m feeling good. The Kid is rarin’ to go. Nevada—get ready! You are about to receive into your community—the filthiest people alive! Hardly. I need to calm down.
As soon as we drive out of town, the geography changes; the Salt Flats, Utah. Endless. Beautiful. GOVERNMENT TRAINING CENTER, the sign says. To train what? we both wonder. Then we see our first mirage—the cheesy cinematic kind where in the long, flat road ahead you see water, yet it disappears as you approach. Nevada must be getting nearer because we see great signs for the first gambling town across the border, West Wendover. $10 LAP DANCES. My God, what could those girls look like? Maybe this town is another future vacation spot for yours truly?
Once we cross the state line into Pacific time, I see the first and possibly the cheesiest gambling casino in the state. Its sign reads THE NUGGET—FREE TRUCKERS—7 DAYS A WEEK. The Kid and I marvel at this offer. Does it mean truckers can stay there without paying forever as long as they gamble? Imagine how exciting and dramatic and terrifying this place would be. A photo op that could raise Diane Arbus straight out of her grave.
We see a sign for a town coming up actually called Oasis, Nevada. When we pull through this, I would imagine, once highly anticipated burg, all that is left off the freeway are about five dilapidated buildings, deserted, rotted, and boarded up. What happened? Who was the last to leave? Are there squatters inside? What a perfect village—its name itself is a lie!
We stop for gas in Valmy, Nevada. Talk about local color. The cashier behind the counter, a tough desert moll if there ever was one, looks as if she just ate a pound of nails for breakfast. The decor seems done by Vincent Peranio, who production-designed all my movies. Two pitiful slot machines are inside. The Kid and I both play and we both lose. Has anyone ev
er won here?
As we’re going back to the car with our meager snack purchases, we see one guy and two ladies exiting their vehicle who appear to have stepped straight out of one of my screenplays. Pushing middle age but definitely not settled, they’re on their way, you can tell, to some kind of wild fun. Especially the dame with the extremely dyed-blond hair and the stilettos! Are they swingers? They give us a big grin as they pass us in the parking lot, but I’m not sure if they recognize me or are just looking to make friends. The Corvette Kid and I smile back and then look at each other slightly bug-eyed in surprise before I fill up the tank. Gas is $4.69 a gallon—a new high.
I look in the road atlas to see where we are, but Valmy is not on the map. We turn on the radio and not one AM or FM radio station comes in. The CHECK ENGINE light continues to add a touch of anxiety, but we’ve risen above that—just that we’re still moving is proof we’re okay. I wish there were highway signs that read NO SERVICES. NO NAME. NO SUCH THING, because that is exactly our location.
We’re starting to feel starved, but there aren’t even bad chain restaurants on this highway. Eventually we see a sign for a town coming up called Lovelock, Nevada. It sounds good to me. Like “Lovelips” or “Liplock.” There’s a prison there, too, which always makes me feel included. We pull off and instantly feel as if we’ve been cast in a cowboy movie. Lovelock is like a set for the Wild West, only it’s real. We drive around and pass the Cowpoke Café. How can we not stop? A perfect name for a perfect place.
Inside is even better! It’s decorated like the Long Branch Saloon in Gunsmoke. Home-cooked food, too. I’m shocked when a big, big lady approaches me and asks for an autograph. I pose for a picture with her and The Kid takes it. We sit down to eat and it is delicious! My chicken soup is the best meal I have had on the trip—by far. The Kid and I look startled when the swingers we saw back in Valmy enter for lunch, too! Wow! Are they following us? I wonder, before realizing this is such a great place maybe every traveler on the highway is in on the secret but us.
I go outside to take a phone call from my office and update them on my whereabouts. They are happy I’m with The Kid and inform me that the Kansas Couple have Facebooked pictures from our ride and now these have gone viral, too. I quickly check my Google Alerts and am both horrified and, I guess, flattered to see some company has already manufactured and offered for sale for $19.99 a “hitchhiking bull denim tote bag” with my END OF 70 WEST sign pirated from the Facebook picture. Jesus.
Back inside the Cowpoke Café, The Corvette Kid informs me he’s been talking to the swingers, and they did recognize me and he’s given them his phone number because they want to get together with us in Reno. I can tell The Kid is flattered by their attention. Maybe he doesn’t get hit on back in small-town Maryland. He’s shy, I realize, unsure of his sex appeal. I’m happy this trip is building his confidence, but suddenly I feel like the conservative relative. God knows what they have in mind; I wonder, a little granddad-grandson five-way? I roll my eyes and grab the check. “Come on, Kid, we’re leaving.”
We keep going. Lots of brush fires in the desert and nobody is even there to put them out. Some of them are big, too. Oh well … I’m not Smokey the Bear, but obviously no one listened to him. We’re getting near Reno, “The Biggest Little City in the World.” A place for which I have low expectations. We pull off in Sparks, Nevada, the town before Reno, which seems somehow shabbier than how I had imagined it with Connie Francis. One of the swingers has just texted The Corvette Kid that we should hook up here and party. I am slightly shocked. He gives me a shit-eating grin and chuckles.
We pull back on the highway and continue into Reno, auditioning entrance ramps for dropping me off for the final hitchhike leg in the morning. None look promising—too inner-city. I bet the cops are strict here. We drive around looking for a hotel. It looks depressing; the people in the street seem beaten down, old. We pull into the parking lot of a big-name casino hotel and go in to check prices and see if they have a vacancy.
The stench of cigarette smoke is overpowering. I literally gag from the odor and I’m not even born-again about people who still smoke. Rollo, the middle-aged doorman, sporting giant muttonchops, instantly recognizes me and escorts me to the proper check-in line. He’s a gay blade, all right, and says he will take care of anything I need. It’s only $29 a night. Good God … what could the rooms be like?
I go out and get The Corvette Kid and as usual warn him to take all his bags inside since the parking lot is uncovered. Rollo’s eyes light up when he gets a load of my traveling companion, and suddenly I feel like such a chicken queen. When we check in, the clerk doesn’t even ask The Corvette Kid’s name! What? Do they just write Trick on the registration? Naturally I pay for two separate rooms. Like the Daddy Warbucks they think I am.
We walk through endless casinos with Rollo as our guide to find the proper elevator to get to our accommodations. So many old people. So much emphysema. So many cigarettes. So little time. God, it’s depressing to see the blank looks of these elderly retirees, yanking down the handles on the slot machines and barely registering any emotion no matter if they win or lose.
Our rooms, down the hall from each other, are not bad. We’ve asked for nonsmoking but the toxic cigarette smoke is so overwhelming in this hotel that you’d have to hermetically seal off each room and fumigate for a year before you could even begin to promise such a thing. I’ll be sleeping in a modernly designed ashtray for the night. The Kid says that before we go down to explore and eat dinner, he has “some city council work to do” and wants to give another interview to a different hometown newspaper. I try to warn him that the fact he has come back to get me may raise a few eyebrows, but he just laughs.
But as soon as I’m back in my room, I get a frantic call from The Corvette Kid on my cell phone. He’s locked himself out. Seems ol’ Rollo brought up a VIP platter of cheese and fruit but, instead of delivering it to my room, knocked on The Kid’s and came into his room. Odd, Rollo knew which was my room and which was The Kid’s. I rescue The Kid from the hall and he’s unnerved. First, he never knew that management often sends up such food items to welcome hotel guests if they are famous in any way. Plus, it’s further unsettling that Rollo seemed a little “too familiar” in his in-room patter, never mentioning the curious delivery to the “unfamous” room.
The Kid’s even locked his wallet with ID in his room, so I have to call downstairs and get Rollo to bring back up a new key. He returns and asks to take a photo of us holding the VIP tray. The Corvette Kid is now chuckling. Here’s the blackmail photo. The two of us in the honeymoon suite of the hotel. I shoo Rollo away after thanking him for keeping such a good eye out for us. The Kid is still laughing, but he tells me his mom is stunned when he informs her that we are now in Reno together. I guess it does look bad. The hotel thinks I’ve checked in with some boy, and his parents think he’s run off with a pornographer. Plus I’m a Democrat. Even The Kid’s friends are contacting him nervously about his adventure. “Way to go,” one has texted, “you’re with a gay man in a hotel room in Reno?” We roar. It’s completely innocent but highly troubling to everybody but us. A bromance is not an easy thing to explain.
We walk out of the hotel at a different exit to avoid Rollo. He’s a funny guy, but yikes … a little overeager. The streets are mostly empty except for the sketchy homeless. Long blocks of nothing except cheapo hotels and tawdry gambling casinos that look understaffed and ready to go out of business. Then we turn the corner and see cop cars with lights flashing and a small crowd of rubberneckers. In the street is a body with a sheet over it. Some kind of shoot-out, I gather. We stroll by.
We enter another casino and try to get change to play the slot machine. I’m amazed to hear the woman in front of me in line say to her female friend, “God, I love it here.” I am stunned by this unironic remark. What could she possibly love about it? The smoke? The humiliation of losing? The free watered-down drinks? The pathetic glamour of a faux richness that
even she could certainly not believe?
We start playing one-armed bandits. The Kid loses a few dollars, but every once in a while, I win. How humiliating. Those dreaded sound effects of coins dropping, flashing lights, and the very public display of winning such paltry change. I go back and forth within my $20 limit, getting almost down to zero, when I win again and suddenly have a $20.25 balance. I cash out. Mr. Lucky! I beat this town! Even The Corvette Kid seems shocked at my gambling self-discipline.
We walk back into the disheartened streets of Reno. The dead body is still there. We look for a place to eat, but the pickings are slim. A lot of chain places. Finally we stumble upon a restaurant that advertises organic. Campo Restaurant. A jewel among the riffraff. We go inside and see cute people. No cigarette smoke. The hostess recognizes me and seems speechless I’ve wandered in. We get a nice table and I order skirt steak and The Corvette Kid has organic chicken salad. The owner stops by to say hello and I tell him I’m hitchhiking across the country. The waitress is nice, too; a lovely fan. She asks, “What are you doing after dinner?” and I politely say, “We can’t see the good local bars because we have to get up early.” I’m now used to saying we and forget what she is probably thinking: Christ, John. How old is he!? The Kid and I have promised to have a celebratory martini once we both land safely in San Francisco. We can’t do the town now. Not yet.
We stroll back to the hotel. It’s dark out now. The dead body is still there—is there some kind of strike at the local police morgue? The streets don’t feel exactly dangerous—I am from Baltimore, after all—but neither The Kid nor I feel like exploring any further. We enter the hotel by yet another door, hoping to avoid the services of Rollo.
Alone in my room, I think how safe I’ve been the whole trip: not one scary ride, not one bad driver, not one car accident, not one incident of police harassment. My AAA TripTik has been very helpful, and the Rand McNally Road Atlas is my manual to hitchhiking success. And my BlackBerry. My love! My life! “Will you marry me?” I ask it. Yes? Thank you and good night.
