Confessions of a Transylvanian (17 page)

“Tha
t’
s it!
I’
m done! Story told,” said Russ, throwing his hands up in surrender. “I had a job to do....and I
done
it. On your way, boys and girls.” Russ blessed the crowd, they disbursed and the bunch of us started to get ready.

After all...we had a show that night.

8

I’m Sure You’re Not Spent Yet

S
unday night and my first date with Holly. Going strictly by hours slept during the two days leading up to this event, by the time the date finally rolled around I should have been dragging a great deal of ass. Instead, I was wide awake and raring to go.

It had simply been an incredible weekend. Friday night had featured the show, followed by my night (and day) at the Orphanage. Then Saturday nigh
t’
s show, the post-show Denn
y’
s pow-wow and then, at last, home. Mom had not only given her blessing to my outing at the Orphanage that weekend, she even let me sleep in again on Sunday morning. It seemed like God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. (Tha
t’
s the kind of thing that occurs to you when you wake up at noon.)

As for the shows themselves, they were very well-attended for both performances and the turnout had resulted in a dramatic and very positive uptick in mood for the whole Rocky gang. Looking out at the sea of people each night allowed the ex-Hollywood cast to finally let go of their unspoken fear that the first couple of week
s’
attendance figures had been a fluke.

Now that I knew the full history of this cast and how they got here, I understood their uneasiness. If the Deerfield show fizzled out after just a few weeks, Marshall would be judged as having been right all along about the inferiority of this group. They would be seen as failures. No question about it.

Worse, if the show closed down, these people would be stuck. The choices would be to either (a) hope for another show to crop up somewhere (an unlikely prospect if this one was a bust), (b) go crawling back to Marshall (an abhorrent thought to all present), or (c) give up doing the Rocky show altogether. All three options were vying for the top spot on the “suck” list.

If, however, the Ultravision show was a big, fat hit, the Wild and Untamed Things would be vindicated and would, presumably, live happily ever after in a world of sunshine, flowers and unicorns and would one day dance the Time Warp on Marshal
l’
s grave. Or something like that.

Thus, the throngs who elbowed their way into the show that weekend—along with the fabulous gathering at the Orphanage—had lifted everyon
e’
s spirits. This euphoric feeling, contagious as it was, meant that by Sunday, when Holly picked me up for our date, I was flying.

And yeah, I know. Picked
me
up for our date? I could
n’
t pick
her
up like a normal human being? Well, her
e’
s the thing:

I did
n’
t have a car. My Mom did, of course, but she drove this old MG that was either in the shop or, when running, completely off-limits. She would sooner have allowed me to pilot a homemade jet-pack than hand me the keys to her beloved set of wheels.

Also, my school (my
tiny
school, as I may have mentioned) did
n’
t have a drive
r'
s ed. course. This meant, I am sorry to admit, that at the age of 16 (and dating a girl almost a full-year younger than me), Holly was the only one of us with a drive
r’
s license. Shocking, I know. Especially in Florida, where you do
n’
t get the newspaper in the morning without hopping in the car for the trip to the end of the driveway.

So, times being what they were, Holly picked
me
up. Go on. Sue me.

When she pulled up outside, I was out the door like a shot. Before she could even set foot outside the car, I had jerked open the passenger door and hopped inside. It was
n’
t that I did
n’
t want her to come inside the house and meet my mother or anything, but I was acutely aware of the difference in our social stations and I was
n’
t crazy about Holly seeing our humblest-of-the-humble abode. She lived in a freaki
n’
mansion for crying out loud. I had anticipated (perhaps unfairly) that she would be dismayed at the way we lived. This is called, I believe, reverse snobbery.

Neither of us was particularly hungry, but we had an hour or so to kill before the movie so we opted for a couple hot-wing appetizers at Tar
k’
s to start off the night. One could weigh the pros and cons of consuming spicy-hot barbecued wings on a first date, but Tar
k’
s had what were arguably the best wings in the hemisphere, so we rolled the culinary dice and gave it a shot.

Aside from our brief encounters at school, this was the first one-on-one time I had really had the chance to spend with Holly. Talking with her, one of the first things I discovered was that, despite her obviously privileged background, Holly was anything but a snob. Her famil
y’
s wealth and prestige (and they had a lot of both) did not seem to have affected her personality adversely in any way. She was this really sweet girl who took my comparative poverty in stride. She even tried to pay her own way that night but I was
n’
t about to let
that
happen. Drive me around, sure, but go Dutch? Please.

The movie we picked to see was the new Steve Martin film, “Pennies from Heaven.” While I thought it was really great (if completely different than the movie I expected), the story turned out to be a lot heavier than I thought appropriate for a date movie. Holly did
n’
t seem to think so, though, and as the evening progressed, I got the distinct impression that everything was going really well.

This feeling was reinforced when Holly went to drop me off at my house and, instead of booting me out of her car, we wound up lip-locked in her front seat for a few minutes before calling it a night. Nothing out of the ordinary (rated PG, our little front-seat romp would have been), but if what had happened with my Rocky friends earlier that weekend had
n’
t already put me in the greatest mood imaginable, this certainly would have done the trick.

We decided to start seeing each other on a regular basis and there were, as far as I could tell, no foreseeable obstacles to our making a real go of it.

Well, except the fact that I would, eventually, have to introduce her to my friends. The ones with the leather bustiers and the fishnet stockings. But really:

How bad could it be?

The weekly routine became familiar, if difficult to endure.

Boring week, followed by two weekend nights of fun and excitement in and around the movie theater (with the occasional jaunt down to the Orphanage). Then a night to recover and another week of tedium. Rinse and repeat.

It was tough going. Thankfully, as our relationship got more and more serious, my time with Holly slowly made the weekday
s’
boredom far less boring. And while Holly, despite my diligent attempts, was
n’
t quite willing to advance to DEFCON 1, I was willing to wait. Hell,
I’
d waited this long.

So we developed a routine of our own:

We would hang out after school every day, most times winding up at my house for a little innocent bout of “what can I get away with today” and then w
e’
d part, each gratified for the time w
e’
d spent together and (pleasantly) sexually frustrated. Most of our afternoons had been spent in spirited but good-natured wrestling matches on my Mo
m’
s couch, but never advanced much beyond that. At least, not yet.

My opinion was, we were more than ready.

We were willing, even.

And able. Le
t’
s not forget able.

But I was also keenly aware that the worst thing you can do in a relationship where yo
u’
re looking to advance things beyond the comfortable and into the brand-spanking-new is to push. So I did not push. I may have wheedled, cajoled and even begged a bit. But push? I did not.

Whatever was going to happen was going to happen in its own sweet time and I would wait patiently to see how things developed. Well,
patiently
is perhaps too strong a word. But I waited anyway. And I had little in the way of expectations.

Which is why no one was more surprised than I was the night Holly decided that the time was right, the waiting had been sufficient and my restraint in not pressing her had finally made me worthy of a great reward.

Thus, about five weeks or so after we started dating each other, in March of 1982, I was given one of those rare gifts that a truly generous young woman can bestow on her beloved:

I received an actual, real-life blow job. Live, in-person and in Technicolor.

How did I react? Honestly, it left me utterly and completely speechless.

Luckily for me, this was one of those rare instances where speech is
entirely
unnecessary. In fact, at moments like this, speaking is not only redundant but, from what
I’
ve heard, far more distracting than helpful. All that was required of me was to shut up, sit back and be grateful.

And you know what?

It was awful.

Well, not
awful
, really. “Awful” is smacking your thumb with a hammer or having someone walk into your stall in a public toilet. So it was
n’
t
awful
, really.

But...it was
n’
t great.

Okay, tha
t’
s not really true either. Because what was occurring was that, for the first time in my existence, I had a girl who was actually coming in contact with me
down below the equator
and, wha
t’
s more, it turned out that the sole purpose of the visit was to give me and me alone sexual gratification. So, when you put it in perspective it was, in point of fact, pretty great.

But le
t’
s get this out into the open—girls who have no experience in such matters are not going to hit the ball out of the park (for lack of a better expression) on their first try. Not even close. Oh, sure, the final outcome (for lack of an even
better
expression) might indicate that things had gone terrifically well, but do
n’
t be fooled.

Her
e’
s the simple truth: Blow jobs are not for amateurs. And truly excellent fellators, if I may coin a phrase, are made, not born. It is a skill that is learned and not, at least in my experience, innate.

So while I was immensely grateful, and expressed my thanks effusively, I could
n’
t help but think, in the back of my mind:

Tha
t’
s not really how tha
t’
s supposed to go, is it?

Turns out, it is
n’
t. But I would
n’
t learn that for a long, long time.

Back at the show, life was proceeding apace. That next weekend, with Ron still recovering from his car accident, Russ had graduated briefly from Floor Show Brad to full-time Brad and it turned out he had a real knack for it. He may not have had Ro
n’
s ability to capture the full “Bostwick experience” but, from what we saw, Russ was pretty damned impressive.

Another development: Jackie and Barry left the show, never to return. No explanation given, just....poof! They were off like the proverbial post-prom frock.

It was a little unnerving, watching someone just...
leave
like that. And yet, tha
t’
s just how it happened. They simply disappeared and we were left to reshuffle the cast. This meant that Iris would step up to the role of full-time Janet and that we would have a big hole in the Rocky department. Namely, Rocky himself.

Enter Billy.

Billy was To
m’
s younger brother and
I’
m here to tell you—there have rarely been two brothers in the history of the world who were less alike. Think Randy and Dennis Quaid, but not nearly as similar.

Tom, the older brother (and Ton
y’
s boon companion), was a good o
l’
boy, as
I’
ve previously mentioned. He liked to accompany Tony to the shooti
n’
range or break out the ATVs and go freewheeli
n’
or tune-up their trucks and vote Republican and stuff like that. Tom had yellow-tinted glasses, a big toothy grin and a soup-strainer of a curly mustache. “Distinctive” I think is the word
I’
m searching for.