I was a strange child.

  Not that I’m not a strange adult too. I mean, let’s face it, not many grown men have pirate fantasies. Mostly they watch the stock ticker and pretend they’re John Elway. But me, I want to be Blowbeard, Scourge of Heavily Polluted Inner-City Waterways the World Over. I could rule Venice.

  Alas, I’m not the dread pirate Blowbeard. I’m just a twenty-first-century gonzo faggot writer, a Hunter Thompson retro homo wannabe. Except Hunter Thompson never interviewed John Waters.

  I docked my ship just outside Waters’s trailer and let myself in without knocking. Acid kills brain cells and manners. Who knew?

  Waters wore a red silk kimono adorned with Japanese flowers, mostly in pinks and lavenders. It looked as if a school of silkworms had been slaughtered in a hothouse filled with orchids. His lips were as blood red as the robe, and above them crawled his trademark caterpillar mustache, looking, to be perfectly honest, like the lone fuzzy survivor of the aforementioned silkworm massacre. He’d been resting on an orange vinyl divan and might possibly have been asleep, except his eyes were open and my abrupt, extremely stoned entrance startled him not at all.

  I introduced myself and suggested we get down to business. “So, Mr. Waters—”

  “Call me John,” he said, smiling the smile of Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom right after she offs Ricki Lake’s ungrateful, unworthy, and most likely not-well-hung boyfriend.

  In my altered state I didn’t find Waters’s smile to be quite as unsettling as I otherwise might have. Forgoing unease, I jumped directly to the three questions I most wanted answered: “So, John,” I said, “what made you decide to make another installment of Pink Flamingos? Why did you decide to shoot the film in Los Angeles as opposed to Baltimore? And, more specifically, in all of Los Angeles, why the Valley?”

  He laughed and his robe fell open, revealing a bony chest and an even bonier boner, which bobbed as he spoke. “Good questions,” he said. “I decided to film a sequel when I saw an episode of The 700 Club and...I don’t know if you’ve seen the show, but it’s just this absolute morass of orange makeup, big hair, bad dresses, and bigotry—lots of bigotry—and I thought, ‘These people are disgusting. They’re more disgusting than me. They’re more disgusting than Divine!’ Well, I couldn’t let that stand. I mean, the far right out-nastying the far left? Not on my watch, baby.”

  He laughed at that last bit, and as he did, his exposed Pecker danced like a giant worm at a strip club for fish. I wished I had gills.

  “As for L.A.?” he continued. “Well, it’s pretty obvious this is where the truly tacky people live nowadays. Just look at Cher. Did you see what she wore to the Oscars? Divine only ate shit. Cher dyed it purple and rolled in it. As for the Valley? Well, it’s cheaper here and I do have a budget. So,” he said, his strip-club worm totally working the pole at this point, “here I am.”

  That last sentence was ostensibly to finalize his answer to my “Why L.A.?” question, but the way he said it suggested something entirely different. I suddenly pictured myself as Cookie Mueller in the original Flamingos—the scene with the chicken—and the image sent me careening toward the Land of Bad Trip. My most recent bad trip had resulted in sixteen stitches, $2,000 in legal fees, and considerable loss of pride. So you’ll understand why I felt the need to say, “You’re not hiding any live poultry behind your back, are you?”

  “Would you like me to be?”

  “Not very much.”

  “No, probably not. Still,” he said, pausing for effect, “there’s something kinda fun and just a wee bit dirty about chickens.”

  Despite my fright, I was more than a little turned on. I looked down to check out the worm dance—at this point I was seriously considering tucking a buck—and it winked at me. Lewdly.

  Have you ever been completely freaked out and completely turned on? I recommend it.

  I went with the flow, saying, “I believe you’re talking less about chickens than about choking chickens.”

  “Choking chickens,” he echoed. “Is that a euphemism?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Because if you haven’t noticed, although I’m not holding a chicken behind my back, I do have one in front.”

  Again I went with the flow, saying, “Your...chicken... appears to need choking,” leaving no doubt this time that chicken choking was indeed a euphemism.

  He smiled—Serial Mom again—and motioned that I should proceed.

  You don’t have to call me to dinner twice!

  I dropped to the floor in front of my bulbous-kneed idol, looked up past birdcage ribs to wondrously demented eyes set deep in visible sockets, and.... OK, the guy is just skin and bones. He’s the anti-Colt model. A wraith in red silk. Ghoulish. Gaunt. Ghastly. But still sexy. I dropped to my knees and yanked his rope with two fists.

  After a few moments he said, “Why don’t you suck it?”

  I’d have quoted from Female Trouble: “I wouldn’t suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls”—but Momma taught me never to talk with my mouth full.

  We settled in: his cock a giant peppermint stick, me crazed for sugar. I licked and sucked at the minty stalk, and...whoops down my throat! Sweeeeet candy. I pulled off to catch my breath and a gust of York Peppermint Patty air hit my throat and sped downward into my lungs, stomach, intestines, and ass.

  Refreshing minty ass: Experience the sensation!

  The explosion of cool halted when Waters grabbed the back of my head and forced my lips back onto his long, tumescent, red-and-white-swirled cock. Sweeeeet candy.

  “Is this Hairspray?” asked Waters, digging gnarled fingers through my hair and into my scalp.

  “Mffh,” I replied, forgetting Momma’s admonition.

  He pried me off. “Come again?”

  “Mousse.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I prefer Dippity Do. It holds better, it makes you look like a cool-assed greaser, and if you’re really desperate you can use it for lube. Although I don’t recommend it.”

  He repositioned my face and his suddenly flavorless but still striped cock spun up and into my mouth. A barber pole. His pubes grouped themselves in foursomes and commenced a Barbershop Quartet competition. A group calling itself “Fruits of the Loom” won by unanimous acclaim, and thanked their friend The Sphincter for its years of friendship and support.

  Before the applause died down, a chainsaw rattled my spine: “What is this? A party? How come I wasn’t invited?”

  I spit out the barber pole and craned my neck to see...Divine! “Is it really you?”

  “Of course it’s me, you stupid fuck. Who were you expecting? Edith Massey?”

  “But you—”

  “Died? Yeah, I know. So did John Travolta, and look at him.”

  “But that was only his career,” I protested.

  At this point Waters entered the conversation. “Honey, in show business you’re only ever dead until your next movie.”

  “I look good for a corpse, don’t I?” said Divine, batting her inch-long eyelashes.

  She wore purple cha-cha heels, a form-fitting, psychedelic-lime-green Polyester minidress, and face paint to match. She did look good. But the effect was marred by a smudge of brown on her upper lip, to which I pointed.

  Waters noticed it as well. “Divine, sweetheart, have you been eating poodle shit again?”

  “No. Snickers.” She wiped away the smudge with a finger, sniffed it, made a face, and smeared it on her dress. She appraised me for a short moment and said, “How ’bout you spin around and suck Mommy’s dick now.”

  I’d resisted quoting Female Trouble once, but I’m not made of stone. “ ‘I wouldn’t suck—’ ”

  “ ‘—your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls.’ Very clever,” she said. “From now on, steal somebody else’s lines.”

  “Put something in his mouth,” said Waters. “That’ll shut him up.” He grabbed my shoulders, spun me around, and pushed me toward the Duchess of Depravity.

  I reached forward to grab her ample ass and bury my face in her taped-down crotch, but she stopped me with a strong paw to the forehead. “Not so fast,” she said. “Get down on all fours and chirp like a chipmunk.”

  What would you do for a Klondike Bar?

  I did as instructed.

  “Now beg for it! Beg me to show you my Temple of Venus! Beg me, I say! Beg me!”

  As I begged—“Divine, I worship you, let me pray at your altar”—Waters yanked my Levi’s past my ass and into a bunch at my knees. Then he slipped a spit-lubed finger up my shitter.

  He has very long digits.

  As I floated toward ecstasy, with a finger in my ass—make that two fingers—Divine hiked up her hemline, revealing to me the biggest, fattest, juiciest...pussy?

  I screamed like a little girl.

  Divine pulled my still-screaming mouth into her thick pink muff, saying, “Yeah, baby! Tell it to Mommy! Tell it to Mommy LOUD!”

  I pushed away, no longer screaming, but whimpering.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” said Waters. “Don’t be a Cry Baby, just eat it.”

  “How many times have I heard that?” said Divine.

  “Pretend it’s a big hairy pie,” suggested Waters.

  “I can’t,” I said. “It tastes like fish.”

  Divine smiled as only Divine can smile, as if Multiple Maniacs resided in her head, controlled her thoughts, and were giddy with delight at what she’d just thought up. “I have an idea,” she said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a Snickers bar. “Will this help?” Without waiting for an answer, she shoved it entirely up her tuna tunnel. “Want some candy, little boy?”

  I do like Snickers. And I did want to please both Waters and Divine. “Yes,” I said. “I’d like some candy.”

  “Then roll over,” she ordered.

  I obliged.

  “I like your pole,” said Waters, pointing to my rigid, reddening rod. “I think I’ll sit on it.” And he did just that.

  Divine, meanwhile, squatted above my face and fed me warm and gooey peanuts, chocolate, nougat, and caramel. A millimeter at a time.

  Waters bounced on my cock, flogging his own. Divine pussy-shat on my face and twisted my nipples. I writhed beneath both of them. We were all three on the verge of coming when in walked...Mink Stole. “What on earth are you three doing?” she shouted. “Have you no shame? Can you not see there’s an unfilled orifice?”

  Divine shouted, “An unfilled orifice? Where?”

  “That reporter’s ass hole,” said Mink, pronouncing asshole as two separate words, “ass hole,” and pointing to mine.

  Waters said, “Don’t just stand there, Mink. Fill it.”

  “Maybe I will,” she said.

  “Yeah, maybe she will,” said Divine, who reached behind and lifted the cheeks of her awe-inspiring ass to give me an unobstructed view of Mink shedding her fur and, ostensibly, affixing her strap-on pud. It wasn’t a view I would choose for my apartment, but it was light years better than Divine’s poop chute, so I didn’t complain. Off came the feather boa, and the high heels, and the dress, and the lingerie—revealing, not a vagina, but the true identity of Mink Stole: John Holmes, Drag Queen.

  The appearance of the not so recently deceased Holmes reminded me of Waters’s earlier statement: You’re only ever dead until your next movie.

  “Gosh, Mink,” said Waters, “that’s some...mink you’ve got hanging between your legs.”

  “They could make a whole coat out of that,” said Divine.

  They could’ve, too. I would have voiced something clever to that effect, but my mouth was full, and Divine had released the cheeks of her ass, and, frankly, I was having a little trouble breathing.

  Mink slithered around the pile-up to my rear end and, without asking, power pushed her porno-prick right up my ass. Bam! Bam! Bam! She’s in! And for the second time that day, I screamed like a little girl.

  Natoma Street

  J. T. LeRoy

  It’s like I’m pushed from behind, pulled down the slope of Natoma Street like a ramp down into another world. All the buildings are low and tight huddled around me. Heavy-gated sweatshops, sunken-down tenements, windows filled with dusty laughing Santas and graying fake snow and ancient slaughterhouses with rusted metal beams jutting suddenly out above me. I watch my shadow slip underneath them, sharpen under the piss-colored street lamp, and slide unsliced over the green and white pebbles of glass almost worn smooth from streams of urine. And behind me somewhere is the rainlike sound of a car window being smashed, and in front of me the crunch-crunch under my boots, pulling me forward. I tilt my head to listen to the blood in my own ear, and all I hear, and all I feel, is my cold ache. The sheet metal door glistens in front of me like an ax on a fire blade, and the sound of my pounding fist on the door echoes through me and down Natoma Street. Each split second of contact with the frozen metal is like a jolt trying to wake or stop me but all that’s racing in my blood is too old and too known and too mechanical to be turned back. I stand and wait and watch delicate white puffs of air float out from me. And it’s amazing anything can come out of me. Soon nothing will. I bang the door as hard as I can, bruising my knuckles, and wait a few seconds.

  “C’mon....”

  My teeth are clamped. I kick at the door with my boot. They’re gonna find me collapsed here as drained and as empty as if a vampire had fed on me. I kick the door again and again, and it shudders. I feel the panic and desperation in my stomach spread as my blood roars away, feeding on itself.

  “You’re supposed to....”

  I kick and hit the metal door.

  “Be fuckin’ here!” I yell. From behind me a window slams open.

  “People sleeping, people sleeping!”

  I turn and look up to see a bald Chinese guy, his face so chubby and squished he looks like a smiling Buddha. Christmas lights flash like a strobe around him.

  “You go ’way, go ’way!”

  From behind me I hear heavy latches and bolts moving, and I twist around, and it’s like an opening in the world, with cars, lights, and people passing the mouth of Natoma, and they have no idea I’m here, and waiting to be.

  “Goddamn, you’re eager....” The door pulls open like a bank vault, and blue light reflects onto the sidewalk.

  “It’s just eleven-thirty now, I don’t start early,” he says in a deep radio announcer tone. My ears pound and I look back up to the Buddha man, but he’s gone, just the empty flashing space of his gaping window.

  “Let’s go,” he orders, and I turn to face him, but he’s gone too. I climb into the blue lights and the door that’s framed in steel, and it slams behind me.

  “Bolt it,” I hear from ahead of me. I stare at a puzzle of red-and-black-painted locks and bolts. “The bottom,” he says. It’s a lock that will need a key to unlock. I feel it clink in my stomach as I watch my hand seal me in.

  I walk down an unpainted narrow Sheetrock hall with bare blue bulbs poking out like lights in an arcade. The ground is concrete and cracked.

  “C’mon!” he says impatiently. “Off to the right.”

  The hall opens into a huge warehouse with two giant Harleys parked in the middle and a maze of other halls, lofts, ladders, and doors surrounding it. I follow the blue lights into a smaller room that smells of rubbing alcohol and something else I recognize but can’t recall.

  “Over here.”

  He’s sitting in a director’s chair in the middle of the room, holding two Fosters. He holds an open one out to me. I watch my shadow like a black fog moving toward him. My shadow head hits his feet, black in engineer boots, and I trace up faded Levi’s, to a leather vest half revealing shining silver hoops through his nipples. His arms are like air-drawn traces of a woman’s figure. I avoid his face. I reach out for the beer.

  “Uhh, thanks.”

  “How old are you?”

  He crosses his legs.

  “Eighteen,” I say automatically, and sip some foam. He laughs.

  “Try again.”

  His boot wags.

  “Fifteen,” I mumble.

  “Fifteen?” he repeats. I follow the floor to a brick wall to my right. There are things hanging, attached, from the wall. A warm wave rushes over me; I swallow loudly.

  “Fifteen, I like that.”

  I nod my head.

  “But I have ID in case.”

  “In case of what?... Huh?!!”

  I look up at him. His cheekbones are cut too sharply, his lips are small, tight, and curled up like old newspaper. His hair is black and slicked straight back. His eyes are the reddish brown of dried blood.

  “This is between you and me, got it?”

  “Mmm-huh.” I feel awkward and stupid. “I got your money!” I say too loudly, and start to reach back to my pocket with my beer hand but spill some. He laughs, shakes his head.

  “Sorry...shit!”

  It takes me a few seconds too long to figure out how to maneuver my money out with only one free hand.

  “Blonds,” he sneers. “Fuckin’ geniuses!”

  He takes a big gulp of beer. I hand him $100.

  “So, how’s it feel being on the other side?” He smiles, crooked little teeth.

  “Huh?”

  He holds the money up and shakes it, eyebrows raised.

  “I had to borrow it.” I look away.

  “Jesus, you’re quick,” he snorts. “And stop rocking.”

  I didn’t know I was. I feel like my eyes are telescopes I’m peering through, somewhere far away.

  “Uhh, sorry.”

  “You will be.” He smiles sarcastically.

  “Huh? Oh.” I nod. “Yeah.” I feel my face getting hotter and hotter.

  He nods, grins, and says, as if I don’t speak English, “You are paying me...how does that make you feel?” He starts fanning the money.

  “I dunno...” I sigh. His foot taps.

  “Umm... weird.”

  “How?” He leans in.

  “Uh....” I rub my face, it feels red.

 

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