Leave it to John Waters to write what is perhaps the first loving, learned homage to outsider pornographers. In one chapter of his new memoir, Role Models (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Waters introduces Bobby Garcia, "the Almodóvar of Anuses, the Buñuel of Blow Jobs, the Jodorowsky of Jerking Off." Garcia--who has somehow convinced thousands of straight Marines to star in gay porn--lives in a run-down shack overflowing with pigs, roosters, and hundreds of rats. But to Waters he is a genius. Role Models is a paean to the people Waters claims as influences, but not all are so predictably perverse. In it, he reminisces about artist Cy Twombly and Clarabell the Clown from The Howdy Doody Show, Tennessee Williams and Patty McCormack, the actress who portrayed the murderous little girl in 1956's The Bad Seed. And aside from one serious, soul-searching chapter--about Manson girl and convicted murderer Leslie Van Houten--the book is surprisingly charming and riotously funny. It's an especially good read for those familiar with Waters' hometown, a city "filled with nutcases who think they are totally levelheaded." Baltimore's own aficionado of filth names many Charm City natives as inspirations. There's Lady Zorro the lesbian stripper, who would come out on stage naked and snarl, "What the fuck are you looking at?" There's Esther Martin, the foul-mouthed founder of the Club Charles, who inspired her daughters with such inspirational adages as "A cunt hair will pull a twenty-mule team." And Waters devotes a good deal of his chapter on Baltimore heroes to his favorite scary bars, most of which--Hard Times, Morgan's, Boots--are no more.
But beneath Waters' exuberant, bawdy prose lies a challenge. "Filth is just the beginning battle in the war on taste," he writes. Parts of Role Models are, of course, shocking, some in the same sense as a certain famous scene in his classic movie Pink Flamingos. (In the book, the author wonders if it is as draining for Johnny Mathis to sing "When Sunny Gets Blue" over and over again as it is for Waters to have fans ask him repeatedly whether Divine really ate dog shit.) But the affectionate, respectful tone Waters takes with each profile--whether of a famous fashion designer or an unknown coprophiliac--is a deeper transgression. After reading the book, you feel that his fascination with those on society's periphery is accompanied by real empathy, a generosity of spirit that most of us cannot fathom.
Leslie Van Houten is perhaps the most notorious recipient of that compassion. At the age of 19, in the thrall of Charles Manson, she participated in the bloody murder of the LaBianca family. She is still in prison, and Waters devotes a long chapter in his book to her story and the story of their friendship. She is repentant and fully rehabilitated, he writes, and deserves to be given parole. The chapter is neither scandalous nor simplistic. It discusses the limits of redemption, the nature of accountability, and the purpose of imprisonment. And it reveals another side of John Waters, the repentant one. He writes that he is "[g]uilty of using the Manson murders in a jokey, smart-ass way in my earlier films without the slightest feeling for the victims' families or the lives of the brainwashed Manson killer kids who were also victims in this sad and terrible case." Role Models covers a great deal of strange, seemingly unrelated ground. It leaps directly from Van Houten to a section on Waters' wardrobe, a style he calls "disaster at the dry cleaners." After perusing "John Waters's Five Books You Should Read to Live a Happy Life if Something Is Basically the Matter With You," you're whisked to a drab hotel room inhabited by Little Richard. You'd think this eccentric narrative wouldn't hold together. But the book is, somehow, a brilliant self-portrait. It's a little like one of those photo mosaics so popular of late: Up close, it's a jumble of tiny colorful portraits. Step back, and there's the Pope of Trash himself.
Baltimore CityPaper
