Saturday, October 19, 2024, was the 24th annual Las Vegas Book Festival. That year, John Waters was the featured author. The festival is held at the Historic Fifth Street School in Downtown. As luck would have it, I happened to be working at a law office next door that day. 

I’ve worshipped John Waters since the eighties. I have all of his books and have seen all of his movies. I wouldn’t even have to look for parking to attend the event, since I had a free space closer than any of the other attendees would be able to park. It felt like kismet that I could meet him that day, a serendipitous coincidence that meant the Universe wanted me to finally meet the idol who had shaped so much of my own sense of humor and comedy writing. 

I’d only found out about the festival or the John Waters appearance the day before, when another local author who is much more aware of these things told me. On the day of the festival, I was writing an immigration petition while I watched the clock. Would I be able to finish in time so I could run next door to meet the Pope of Trash? 

I typed as fast as I could and made it just in time to be one of the last people in line. It wasn’t until I was in line that I realized I had no idea what to say to him. 

How I Learned to Love John Waters

When I was 16, I dated a 28-year-old creeper who’d been rejected by women his own age. My friend and I referred to him as Dickey Dolenz because he inexplicably had the same haircut as Mickey Dolenz during the Monkees years. This guy regularly lured me out of my grandparents’ house with the movies of John Waters. I lived in a small town and had no access to these things outside of him. So I kept showing up for the Dreamlanders despite having to endure Dickey to do so.

My “dates” with Dickey consisted of us renting movies then going back to his swinging bachelor pad, which was located inside his mom’s house. He’d make me wait in the car while he made his mom go into her room, then hustled me into the house, shrouded in secrecy. I became convinced she was a corpse like Norman Bates’s mom. I based this belief solely on the fact that I’d only seen the back of her head. Like he had to go put Mother into another room before I saw her skull face.

I saw Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living, and, my favorite, Female Trouble, and later, when we got a decent video store where I lived, I rented the movies and showed them to all of my friends who were my own age. Today, decades later, many of my oldest friends still think of me when they think of John Waters. In more recent years, one of my friends attended A John Waters Christmas while wearing a Hello Kitty Charles Manson hat I’d crocheted. Another friend gave him a copy of one of my books.

The Fear of Forced Conversation

There was nothing I could think of that John Waters would want to hear from me or hadn’t heard a million times before. If we were at a dinner party or something like that, it wouldn’t have been as stressful. Conversation would have come about naturally. Someone would say something, we’d all laugh, and then next thing you know, we’d all be laughing together like old friends. I’d have plenty to contribute to whatever fucked-up conversation that turned out to be. But here, in a forced fan situation? The closer I got to the front of the line, the more my anxiety grew. 

The line was long, and he’d been there all day. He must have met everyone at the festival by then and heard the same things out of every one of their mouths. And I had nothing remotely interesting or original to contribute. 

While I was in line, the people directly in front of and behind me who also made up the very last of the stragglers decided it was a good time to get in a fight about Israel and Palestine. They began screaming at each other, conveniently ignoring the fact that I—a person who was thinking only of Mortville—was standing directly between them. It didn’t feel like a good omen, and it definitely did not help me think of any interesting icebreakers. Though if they’d been fighting about anything other than genocide, which is not funny, I probably would have joked with him about that.

From There, it Only Got Worse

When I was almost to the front of the line, I could see that John Waters seemed weary. He was behind a plexiglass shield so we couldn’t get our germs on him. He looked like he just wanted it to be over so he could go do whatever he was going to do next, and I felt like an asshole because anything I said would be taking up time and keeping him from it. I wouldn’t have felt that way if I’d been at the beginning of the line, or even in the middle. But when you’re one of the last three, it’s different. 

I’d spent the whole day updating my friends on social media about my quest to meet John Waters. I felt like I needed to at least produce a photo of us together after all that. So when it was finally my turn, I walked up, said hi, took a picture of us, and then left. That is literally all I said. “Hi.” He looked at me like he had no idea what in the fuck that was all about, which just made it all even more mortifying. 

I would love to say that I’d never felt like such an idiot, but that would be a lie. I have more than 50 years of idiocy under my belt. It was just the first and hopefully only time I did it in front of John Waters. 

Should You Meet Your Idols?

There is a popular saying that you should never meet your idols, but despite everything that happened, I disagree. You should meet your idols if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity. You should just be better prepared to do so than I was that day at the Las Vegas Book Festival. Absolutely meet your idols; just do everything in your power not to humiliate yourself while doing so. 

I’m not a beloved author people are lining up to meet. I mean, I’ve had that experience of being somewhere and hearing a stranger say about me, “Oh my god, it’s actually her.” But I assume they did not mean it in a good way. I’m just a self-published author who was also published in some magazines a long time ago. I have no idea what it’s like to be a captive speaker outside of giving Zoom presentations at work. My expertise lies more in the area of being part of a captive audience. So maybe I was making assumptions and reading too much into the situation.

After I got back home from the book festival, I realized it was Divine’s birthday. I could have asked him what he was doing to observe the occasion. It would have been the perfect thing to say. If only I’d thought of it sooner.