WATERS: No, but I’m not saying I wouldn’t. As a matter of fact, maybe I’ll try that this summer. I usually took friends. Once I took Patricia Hearst with me. But I think it would be a romantic first date to take someone hitchhiking. Most definitely. And it would be different, it would be a different first date.

MW: It definitely would be different.

WATERS: Especially if something terrible happened and you rescued them.

MW: That could be a moment for some real heroism. When you went to your publisher with this idea, you write in the book that it was a very short pitch. What was their reaction?

WATERS: Their reaction was “Yes.” And that’s one thing I learned a long time ago. I had a movie producer who once said to me, “Whenever they say yes, never ask one question and get away before they can say no.”

MW: The beginning of the book is fiction, with your best and worst expectations. How did the actual experience live up to those expectations?

WATERS: Like all things, fantasies are better left undone. You need to save one fantasy. You should die with one fantasy left that you didn’t do. But fantasies are extreme, especially when you ask me to think up the worst.

That’s a challenge — the worst and the best are tough. It’s like when people ask about the ten best films ever. It’s a tough choice. So I had to go through a lot of thinking to think what would be the most interesting to me and be a varied thing so it wasn’t all the same. I also tried to make it funny. The sex in the book is, I think, funny. The best is I have a sex in a car in a demolition derby, I’m with an exhibitionist bank robber and I get anally raped by a spaceman and have a magic asshole and my magic asshole later sings a duet with Connie Francis. Do I really expect that to happen in real life? No, I don’t. But it’s a fantasy.

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And the worst would be having diarrhea when you’re hitchhiking. That would be really terrible. And getting picked up by sports fanatics or getting trapped in Kansas, a state I really like but sodomy for men and women or any couples is still illegal there.

All of the stuff in the fiction was true as far as the location and how long it would take me to get there. We spent a lot of time researching it so the timing would be accurate. I did do a lot of research for the fictional parts.

MW: What was the reaction from your family and friends or staff to you doing this?

WATERS: The staff was opposed to me doing this, but what could they say? They work for me. I didn’t tell my family until just before, but they are so used to anything really. I didn’t tell my mother until it had broken in the press and I kind of had to. She wasn’t upset because hitchhiking was not bad to her. When I went to private school all the kids hitchhiked home. It was a normal thing to do then.

Now, reading the book, nothing is more mortifying than having your employees read your insane sexual fantasies. My mother unfortunately died this year — she was 91, she had a great life. But the only good thing I can think about my mother dying is she wasn’t meant to read this book. She would be proud, though, because I just found out today it’s number 12 on The New York Times Best Seller list, which really startled me. My mother would be really happy, and my dad, too.

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MW: It seems hitchhiking has become rather taboo. What do you think happened?

WATERS: What happened is there are serial killers that pick up women that are hitchhiking alone, who are sometimes hookers. There’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even in my own movies in the hitchhiking scenes, something horrible happens to the hitchhiker. It’s an easy villain, it’s an easy drama and it’s an easy danger to imagine. I don’t think it’s really probably any more unsafe than it ever was.

I’ve been doing this book tour where I do lots of radio, and many people have called in with their hitchhiking experiences. And most everybody has great ones. Once a couple even met hitchhiking and got married. But then there’s scary ones, too, every once and awhile. Nothing bad ever happened to me hitchhiking. Once somebody pulled a gun and shot it out the window, but I just thought, “Oh this is so Joan Didion.” People came onto me when I was young — and sometimes I said yes.

MW: Did you have any gay experiences on this hitchhiking trip?

WATERS: Not one. And as far as I know, not one gay person picked me up on this trip. A single woman did, a black person did, a cop did, a trucker. But no gay brothers.

MW: What do you think that says about gay people?

WATERS: They’re pussies! [Laughs.] I don’t know, it’s just maybe luck, but I was surprised in a way. Not that I thought somebody was going to pick me up and come onto me, I wasn’t expecting that, but I imagined in one of the [book’s fictional] parts that I fall in love with a door-to-door knife salesman. I don’t know what the answer to that question is though. And how do I know if they were gay or not, but I pretty much never felt that they were.

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MW: Tell me about the morning where you woke up and said, “This is the day,” and walked out of your Baltimore home.

WATERS: Well I felt like a fool, actually. I was so afraid the neighbors would see me. It was six in the morning, it was incredibly quiet and there was no one on the street. I walked to the corner and there were no cars. I had to stand there for 15 minutes before a car came by. And then no cars stopped. I was two blocks from my house at that point because I had walked to another corner and I thought it would be a little busier and it wasn’t. All of the cars were coming into the city, not leaving it because it was so early in the morning. And then I just stood there and it started to rain and I thought, “I never imagined this.”

But I couldn’t go home. I said I was doing it. So I just stood there. It took me an hour maybe before the first ride. But it never seemed real until the end of the second ride because I really didn’t know where I was when I got dropped off, and that’s when you’re really hitchhiking. Because you know the streets and everything but then you really realize you’re on a long journey cross country when you know you’re on Route 70 but you don’t know where you are really.

MW: Would you do it all over again?

WATERS: There’s no reason to do it all over again. There couldn’t be a sequel to this book because it would be the same thing. But I know I can hitchhike and I do know I would again if I had to if something weird happened. But I knew that even before I wrote the book. Now, I think if I went hitchhiking, people would think I’m just promoting the book, so I can’t do it anymore.

MW: When was the last time you yourself picked up a hitchhiker?

WATERS: That’s a good question. It was in Provincetown and it was, I assume, a lesbian who looked great. She was just going home from the beach. And I saw her other days so I saw that she did do this. And there’s another woman in Provincetown and she is Forrest Gump. All she does is walk from Truro to Provincetown and back. And that’s a far distance but she really is like Forrest Gump and I picked her up once.

MW: What makes you pick up or not pick up a hitchhiker?

WATERS: First thing, if they’re cute that helps. Secondly, if they look like you’d like them, that you’d want to be their friend, that helps. The third one is the surprise of it. If it’s somebody you figure could really use your help and doesn’t look scary — if they’re not escapees. And that’s the thing, if you just saw someone on the interstate walking around with no luggage or anything, I wouldn’t pull over, either. The main thing is not to scare people, basically. Look interesting.

MW: This is your seventh book. Your last book, Role Models, came out four years ago.

WATERS: And it’s in its eighth printing. And Carsick has had three printings and it has only been out a week. It’s exciting.

MW: It seems you‘re very much becoming John Waters the author.

WATERS: But wasn’t I always? I wrote all my movies.