Role Models

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   When the Outcasts Become Your North Star

   

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   What kind of person builds their entire worldview around a murderous eight-year-old, a convicted Manson Family member, and a crooner who sings love ballads at Christmas? John Waters, that's who. His 2010 memoir doesn't parade the usual celebrity suspects-no Hollywood A-listers or inspiring mentors here. Instead, Waters offers something far more subversive: a celebration of the misfits, criminals, and eccentrics who taught him that the most interesting life is one lived defiantly outside the lines. From his pencil-thin mustache to his transgressive films like "Pink Flamingos" and "Hairspray," Waters has spent decades as America's gleeful ambassador to the cultural fringe. William Burroughs dubbed him "the Pope of Trash," and Waters has worn that crown with pride. This isn't a typical memoir-it's a manifesto for anyone who's ever felt too weird, too wrong, too much.

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   The Crooner and the Provocateur Walk Into a Bar

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   Waters' obsession with Johnny Mathis reveals genuine admiration for mainstream success beneath his shock-value exterior. Mathis knew all the eccentric performers Waters loved, like Johnnie Ray, the "first great white soul singer" who cried through performances and had affairs with men despite morals charges. When Mathis attended Ray's deathbed, he connected Waters' world of outsiders to mainstream acceptance. What captivates Waters is Mathis' elegant approach to privacy. When asked about his sexuality in 1982, Mathis simply called it "a way of life one's grown accustomed to"-no confessional interviews, just dignity wrapped in mystery. Waters attended Mathis' Baltimore Christmas concert where 2,564 seats sold without publicity. Despite cheesy backdrops, Mathis' voice remained as beautiful as decades earlier. Then came the shock: Mathis is a proud Republican with photos of himself with Bush and Nancy Reagan. Both men are single, have lived extraordinary lives, and face the same question-who will surround them at the end? Waters has already bought his burial plot near Divine's grave, accepting he'll die alone, hopefully with his mustache drawn on straight.

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   The Bad Seed Takes Root

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   Meeting Patty McCormack-who portrayed sociopathic child murderer Rhoda Penmark in "The Bad Seed"-was Waters' ultimate fan moment. He'd spent his childhood wanting to be feared like Rhoda, thrilled by the tagline "The Bad Seed is the Big Shocker!" At their Beverly Hills Hotel lunch, he found a beautiful 68-year-old with a twinkle in her eye about her villainous creation. Unlike Waters, who treats "The Bad Seed" as a lifestyle, Patty sees it as just a role. After "a sad time" when she tired of discussing it, she eventually "embraced Rhoda way late in my career." Their differences were stark. Patty doesn't mind campy drag queen versions that Waters finds offensive. She saved no props, while Waters collected handwritten notes from the original author. But Patty dropped one fascinating tidbit-she once took a college ethics class with Susan Atkins of the Manson Family! The Bad Seed and a Manson murderer in one classroom-crime showbiz history at its most bizarre. These childhood villains-including Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch and Cyril Ritchard's Captain Hook-provided Waters with models of memorable transgression he'd apply throughout his filmmaking career.

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   The Manson Girl Who Could Have Been in His Movies

   "I have a good friend convicted of killing two innocent people during a night of cult madness in 1969." Waters introduces his most controversial friendship-with Leslie Van Houten, one of the notorious "Manson girls." Now in her sixties and taking full responsibility, Waters believes it's time to parole her. He admits his own guilt: using the Manson murders jokingly in early films without considering victims' families or the brainwashed killers. In 1969, he was shocked the Manson Family looked just like his friends-Charles "Tex" Watson resembled his high school pot dealer, Leslie was "the pretty one" like his ex-girlfriend. Waters attended the media-circus trial, fascinated by how kids from similar backgrounds committed such terrible crimes. Since 1985, he's visited her for twenty-four years. Leslie stabbed Rosemary LaBianca sixteen times, her LSD-addled mind believing she was "an elf three inches high" who would "grow fairy wings" during Helter Skelter. Waters understands-he took LSD many times in the 1960s with his own "family" of filmmakers. But they never met a manipulator like Manson. Despite imprisonment, Leslie has rebuilt her life-teaching illiterate women to read, stitching portions of the AIDS quilt, making bedding for the homeless. The parole board praises her progress while denying release, always citing "the enormity of the crime"-the one thing she can never change. When is enough punishment enough?

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   Fashion as a Form of Beautiful Failure

   Fashion is vitally important to Waters, whose signature look is "disaster at the dry cleaners." His fashion god is Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, who creates torn, crooked, permanently wrinkled, expensive clothing. Critics call her work "unwearable," "post-atomic," and "fashion having a nervous breakdown" - descriptions that make Waters prouder to wear her designs. At forty-six, Waters modeled for Kawakubo in Paris. Among scrawny European models, he was the fattest, initially relieved to wear a conservative black suit - until he saw the accompanying hat. When Kawakubo entered, Waters trembled but begged her to reconsider. She frowned, then wordlessly switched it for one slightly less ridiculous. Right before walking, she yanked his collar sideways for a final disheveled touch, then shoved him through the curtain. The audience applauded quietly and severely - he'd made it from Lutherville, Maryland to the Paris runway. Waters' fashion choices face daily challenges in blue-collar Baltimore. At the Holiday House biker bar, a bruiser commented on his meatball-brown, permanently wrinkled polyester sports jacket: "That's a shame about that coat." He had no idea this Value Village look-alike cost a thousand dollars. Waters' fashion obsession reveals his lifelong commitment to disrupting expectations and finding beauty in what others consider ugly.

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   Baltimore's Beautiful Monsters and Invisible Roommates

   Every Friday night, Waters drinks-"an alcoholic one night of the week, a workaholic the other six." Bars shaped his Baltimore education. With fake ID, he discovered "Pencil" at Pepper Hill, a semi-legal gay club. Rail-thin in skintight black girl's jeans and bleached beehive, Pencil would screech at horrified truck drivers. Though they never spoke, Pencil influenced Waters profoundly-defiantly courageous against hatred, enticing despite repellent packaging, ecstatically living against the laws of the time. Before Pencil came "Lady Zorro"-the butch lesbian stripper who'd emerge nude and snarl, "What the fuck are you looking at?" Stripper Sheila's rage-filled performances gave her demented, hostile sex appeal. By eleven, her straight-A daughter Eileen was rolling joints and driving her mother's Lincoln to pick her up from bars. These Baltimore characters formed Waters' cultural education and inspired his films' outrageous personalities. Waters also lives with artistic roommates-their work surrounds him. Mike Kelley's "Wedged Lump" resembling a giant turd confronts dinner guests. His art infuriates some visitors, which Waters loves-revealing his aesthetic drawn to work that challenges conventions and finds beauty in the overlooked.

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   The Gospel According to the Pope of Trash

   Waters fantasizes about writing "Cult Leader" on his tax forms, envisioning followers making pilgrimages to Baltimore as saints of sordidness. Though not devout, he believes in basic human goodness. The Virgin Birth? "A real feminist concept-Mary getting pregnant without even enjoying sex!" His cult would require a new name, surgical tattoo removal, and restyled hair. Boys should turn their belt buckle 45 degrees off-center like Joe Dallesandro in "Trash"-the secret sign your gun is loaded. They'd pray to Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who removed prayer from Baltimore schools and was eventually murdered-"true martyrs to the cause." Waters wants to die by spontaneous combustion-being so guilty and happy, so obsessed and fanatical that you burst into flames. It's dramatic, internally cleansing, and all you leave behind is a really good pair of shoes. The religious lesson? Always wear stylish shoes. It hurts to be this pure. Waters' career has been a religious calling-preaching the gospel of filth, offering permission to be yourself, even if yourself is strange or offensive.

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