Confessions of a Transylvanian (3 page)

Oh, we had pools, though. Millions of
‘
em. Big business down there, the pool trade. Cleaning them, providing chemical products for them, building huge screened structures to enclose them, manufacturing floaty things that...you know…
float
in them. HUGE money in pools.

And just about everyone had one. The rich, the moderately wealthy, even the lower-middle class, like us. For just about everyone who lived in the Swamp, there was, more likely than not, a cement pond in the backyard. You had to be dirt poor not to have one.

Not all of them were
private
pools, of course. When we first moved to Florida, we lived in an apartment complex and had to swim in the buildin
g’
s community pool. And while it was incredibly cool to us, coming from the frozen north, to have a swimmi
n’
hole we could dive into at our merest whim, to the locals it was pretty low-rent. Most people found the idea of a
community pool
distasteful.

In fact, it was
n’
t until years later, when our grandmother helped Mom to buy her first house, that we finally had a pool we could call our own. And once we got it, David and I practically lived in the thing.

I mean, honestly—what else was there to do? Taking part in outdoor sports was, for the most part, a horrifying experience in that climate. You could
n’
t run ten yards without having perspiration shoot out of your body like a geyser. It was
disgusting
.

That did
n’
t stop anyone from offering plenty of options, though. There was Little League, school sports (especially indoor sports like basketball—very popular) and even live sporting events to attend if your idea of athletic participation was sitting still and watching others do all the running and sweating. But despite all my attempts to get interested in sports, nothing stuck. And I tried
everything
: baseball, soccer, volleyball...whatever they had. Nothing really caught fire.

David? He took another route to defeat boredom:

He took drugs.

Nothing really heavy, mind you. Just some pot. Okay, a
great deal
of pot. But that was his way of dealing with the stifling lethargy of the place. And this particular route was desperately hard to resist. I got sucked into that world for a while myself. You could
n’
t really help it.

See, Florida was
made
for stoners. You could get totally blasted, black out and fall asleep curled up on the lawn if you wanted. Why not? I
t’
s not like you had to worry about freezing to death or dying of exposure. Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

Besides, it was
n’
t as if most people had any real responsibilities down there. At least, nothing they could
n’
t accomplish
while
they were high.

So drugs were big down there. Bigger than pool care, even.

As a result of growing up in this climate, living as a stoner became a big part of my world for the majority of my sophomore year of high school.

Know what got me to stop? My Mom.

And no, she did
n’
t sit me down one day and give me some big speech about how drugs were irresponsible and “tha
t’
s why they called it dope” and all that. She did
n’
t crack an egg in a frying pan and compare it to my brain. It was
n’
t really necessary.

She just gave me...The Look.

One day,
I’
m in the kitchen,
I’
m a little high, and
I’
m satisfying my stoner appetite by wolfing down a cold slice of pizza. All of a sudden, I catch my Mo
m’
s eye. And there it is. The Look.

The Look was
n’
t contemptuous. She was
n’
t trying to shame me or attack me or make me feel like a loser. Instead, The Look said: “Hey, kiddo.
I’
m really worried about you. Yo
u’
re a great kid and I love you and yo
u’
re disappearing in a cloud of bong smoke. Wher
e’
s my boy?”

And, hand to God, that did it. Tha
t’
s all it took to get me to quit.

Well, that coupled with the fact that, as a result of my descent into stonerland, I had almost no money. And I was eating absolute
crap
all day long. And I looked like shit.

Oh, and, maybe most importantly, the people I was hanging out with were the biggest collection of losers
I’
d ever met in my
life
.

Do
n’
t get me wrong.
I’
m not talking about recreational marijuana users or even mild potheads here. I know a few of both types and they live long, happy, interesting, productive lives.
I’
m talking about
stoners
here. Big, big difference.

See, a stoner is the type of guy who rolls out of bed every single day and engages in a ritual we used to call the Wake & Bake. Yo
u’
d get up and yo
u’
d spark up. From the moment you opened your eyes in the a.m. until you finally passed out sometime late into the night, you were fried out of your gourd.

Mostly, the life of a stoner centers around a few basic needs: something to toke, something to munch, something to watch and, to make ends meet, something to sell. That, after all, is how stoners make a living. To scrape together rent money, they naturally deal pot.

This lifestyle, you can probably imagine, does not exactly result in the production of a well-rounded, fascinating human being. Not exactly. Living like this every day creates, instead, a person with the personality and intelligence of a fucking
turnip
.

Want to know what a conversation between two stoners is like? Her
e’
s a sampling:

Man, I am completely baked
.

Me too
.
Tha
t’
s pretty good stuff
.

Not as good as the stuff I had last week though, yo?

Nah
.
That was awesome
.

Awesome
.

Yeah
.

Hey, you know what we did on Friday?

I can guess
.

I’
ll bet you can
.

Did you get wasted?

I
totally
did, man
.
It was this hash we got shipped in from Turkey
.
From actual Turkey, man
.
In
Africa
.

No way
.

No lie
.
My guy knows this dude who makes his stuff special right on the Turkish border, in Bangkok
.

Whoa
.

Yeah
.
So we get it and we only broke off a couple of cubes, you know? And within a few, we were just
flying
, man
.
It was like nothing else
.

Awesome
.

And it goes on like that. The primary topic of stoner conversation centers around (a) how high you are at that particular moment, (b) how good that feels, (c) how truly enjoyable it was when you got really, really blasted at some time in the recent past, (d) how much more enjoyable
that
high was compared to your
current
high and, of course, (e) how completely out-of-your-mind-
mental
you plan to be at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Sometimes you talk about music, too. But mostly not.

And tha
t’
s it. Tha
t’
s stoner life. Some folks can go on like that forever. And, you might be surprised to learn, they are tremendously happy people. Shallow as a saucer of hot nothing, yes. But happy.

For me, my little trip to Stonerville lasted about six months. Then, Mom gave me The Look and I was done. Oh, I still sparked up on occasion (I did
n’
t become a monk or anything) but my hard-core stoner days were, blissfully, over.

It was time for something else.

2

I WOULD LIKE, IF I MAY, TO TAKE YOU ON A STRANGE JOURNEY

Monday

S
o here I am, two days after my first introduction to Donny at the Rocky show, and five days away from reporting for duty on Friday night.

It was
n’
t going to be easy, slogging through this week. School was back in se
ssion after Christmas break and the minutes seemed to crawl by like very, very slowly crawling creatures.

Where I went to school did
n’
t help matters much. I mean, it was
n’
t that I hated going to school where I did. It was
n’
t great, but it was
n’
t awful. And I was the first to admit that it could have been much, much worse.

I went to this parochial school, which had its challenges, but overall beat the hell out of having to endure the South Florida public school system. The local public school, Deerfield High, was without question a triple-A-rated moron factory. So I was spared having to go there, at least.

My father insisted on sending us to private school and, wha
t’
s more, made sure that we attend one with a religious affiliation. It was the way he was raised so he wanted the same for us. As a child, he had attended St. Ignatius College Prep, the renowned Catholic high school on Chicag
o’
s south side. Problem was, there was no Catholic school anywhere near where we lived in Deerfield Beach. So Mom looked around and discovered that the closest parochial school to our house was none other than the brand-spanking-new Zion Lutheran Christian School.

How
brand-spanking-new was the place? Glad you asked.

This school was small. W
e’
re talking
really
little, okay?

I mean, our school was so small, our debate team consisted of one guy with schizophrenia. It was
not
big.

No, seriously, you want to know just how little it was? The history classes at our school only covered
yesterday
.
I’
m here to tell you: This was a small school.

Really, our school was so itsy-bitsy, my locker combination was
six
.

Okay, I think w
e’
ve established that it was
n’
t an enormous place. When my class graduated in 1983, for example, we had a grand total of twenty-eight seniors. You could fit our entire class on a single bus and have room for the entire
junior
class.

That last paragraph, by the way, is the Go
d’
s honest truth. There were, in fact, only twenty-eight of us in the Zion Lutheran class of
‘
83. (Tiny, I believe, is the word yo
u’
re looking for.)

Her
e’
s the thing—when you go to high school with a class as sparsely populated as ours, the school day is
n’
t quite like it is at other, larger schools. For example, the students in my class did
n’
t break apart and attend a variety of different classes all day, only seeing each other every once in a while. Nope. At our school, we all went to the same classes, all day long, without variation.

This meant that when I was in my junior year of high school, I spent seven hours a day with the same group of 16-year-old boys and girls. Day in. Day out. All. The. Time.

And when a group of kids see one another that often, work together that closely, share the same teachers, the same experiences, the same everything, all day long...

...they gradually grow to
fucking hate
one another.

Well, there are exceptions. I actually did have one good friend in high school. One. His name was Dean.

Dean was this Italian kid from Long Island (by way of Brooklyn) whose Mom, like mine, had finally given up on temperatures in the teens back home and headed South, dragging her kids down to the Swamp with her.

Having actually spent most of his life in the North, though, Dean was not cut from the same cloth as my other, raised-in-Florida classmates. I could, therefore, converse with him for more than ten minutes without having to resort to solely monosyllabic words.

I’
m not saying my classmates were dumb, but if you said it was chilly outside, the
y’
d bring bowls, spoons and sour cream. You get the idea.

Point is, there was really only one guy at my school I could talk to but...there was a problem. He was this tough guy, this New Yawker from freaki
n’
Brooklyn, so breaking the news to him that I was about to join a tribe of fishnet-stocking-wearing guys and gals for a little weekend fun was...risky. You might find this difficult to believe, but high school kids can be a trifle nasty to people who are different. They really can.

But, hell, I had to tell somebody.

“Hey.” Between classes. Dean is digging books out of his locker.

“Hiya doi
n’
?” he says. Accent so thick you could spread it on a bagel.

“Yo
u’
re from New York, right?”

He pauses, smiles. “You figured that out, huh?”

“Yeah, I have a sixth sense like that.”

“Sherlock Holmes, practically.”

“Yeah. So listen.” Deep breath. “Have you ever heard of a thing called
'
The Rocky Horror Picture Sho
w'
?”

His brow crinkles. I decide to help him out.

“I
t’
s a movie? Pretty big in New York, I think. You heard of it?”

He considers. “I think so, yeah. People dress up, dance around in front of a movie screen or something, right?

See? Culturally educated. I had a feeling.

“Yeah, tha
t’
s it.”

“Okay, so what about it?”

“You know the
y’
re doing it here? Right up the street?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. At the Ultravision. Weekend nights at midnight.”

“Uh-huh.” I do
n’
t say anything, so he feels compelled to fill in the silence. “What about it? You go to see it or somethi
n’
?”

Reluctant to admit it, I manage to say: “Yeah. I went last weekend.”

H
e’
s waiting for the review and
I’
m not providing one. “So? Any good?”

I ca
n’
t sound too enthusiastic, so it comes out: “Yeah, it was. It was, you know, pretty
weird
and all that.”

“Weird?”

“Oh, yeah. You know. All those people, dressed up in...all kinds of strange outfits. Stockings and feather boas and stuff. Guys, too. Weird. But really kinda cool too, in a way.”

“Wait, did you say
guys
?” Now
I’
ve really got his attention. And h
e’
s getting...a little
loud
, if you want the truth.

“Well, yeah.”
I’
m sweating now. “Guys, sure. Like they do in the movie. I mean, the guys who do the show here, they kinda
have
to dress like that. Because i
t’
s the same as the characters in the movie. You know? I
t’
s not like they
want
to or anything.”

“Oh, sure. They just show up on the weekend and dress up like that because the
y’
re under orders, right?” H
e’
s smiling, but h
e’
s serious too. What the hell, h
e’
s wondering, am I talking about?

And suddenly, I do
n’
t really know.

“Anyway, it was really crazy. Never seen anything like it really.”

“Yeah,
I’
ll bet.” He slams the locker shut. “
I’
ll see ya.”

And h
e’
s off.

And
I’
ve got four days left and nobody to talk to.

And i
t’
s all I can think about.

Great.

Tuesday

Sleep did
n’
t come all that easily the previous night but, by Tuesday morning, I had accomplished one small goal: I was twenty-four hours closer to my Rocky debut. Time to prepare.

In theory, it would
n’
t take much. All I needed by Friday, I had been told, was five bucks and a spiffy new outfit. Well, a
used
outfit, at any rate. Who buys a brand-new black suit to do the Rocky show? I was off to Goodwill.

Not surprisingly, black jackets, matching pants and white button-down shirts are practically jumping off the rack at your average South Florida thrift store. They were everywhere you looked, and with good reason. This was the the first type of outfit Northern people donated to charity when they first arrived in Florida.

It went like this:

“
Hershel!
I’
m heading to the Sal Army! You got anything to donate?
”

“
Yeah! My black suit! Get rid of it! It makes me schvitz like an Armenian, i
t’
s so hot!
”

So, down at the Salvation Army, they had millions of cobalt-black suits for me to choose from. All shapes and sizes. Take your pick. I fit into a 40 skinny and after searching for a grand total of five seconds, I had put my hands on what I needed, parted ways with less than ten bucks and was now the proud owner of my first Transylvanian outfit. Niiice.

But there was something else I had noticed about Transylvanian costumes when I had seen the Rocky cast the previous week: The basic outfit—black jacket, white shirt and black pants—was
n’
t nearly enough.

All by itself, the look was way too funereal. You wear just a plain black jacket yo
u’
re gonna look like a wedding usher, not a Time Warper. You need...stuff. A party hat, maybe. A colorful tie. Some buttons to pin all over the front of it. Maybe a pair of sunglasses.

Now, you might think that Transylvanians in the cast are under the obligation of trying to look like the corresponding Transylvanians on the screen just like everyone else in the cast. After all, the party guests at Frank-N-Furte
r’
s place are in the movie too, right? Why should
n’
t we, the actors in the movie theater, be assigned certain partygoers and do our best to try to look like them?

There are many reasons why not.

First off, i
t’
s too much goddamn work.

Second, who can keep track?

Young people who play Transylvanians in the live Rocky show come and go week to week and cannot be counted upon to show up with anything even remotely resembling consistency. You gonna keep that list of Transylvanians and their corresponding on-screen doubles? Because
I’
m not.

So the solution is—no list. The normal rules of verisimilitude that are a hallmark of the Rocky shows do
n’
t apply in the case of the Transylvanians. Instead, you can wear whatever the hell you want, within these parameters:

Black jacket. Black pants. White shirt.

And bring your five bucks. You do
n’
t want to piss Donny off. Beyond that? Go nuts.

So I scoured my bedroom for something suitably Transylvanian. Did I have buttons? I did. But all my stuff was incredibly lame. Ther
e’
s an “I
NY” button. Pathetic. My name tag from my brief career as a bagboy at Publix groceries. Even
more
pathetic. One from Disney World of a scowling Grumpy. Yeesh, this was useless. I grabbed some more of my few remaining dollars (setting aside five for Friday...must
n’
t forget that) and headed off to the mall.

The perfect store for finding appropriate Rocky buttons was located in the Pompano Fashion Square on Federal Highway. As yo
u’
d expect, the Fashion Square—being a typical American mall—had the usual selection of large-scale department stores (Sears, Penne
y’
s, Burdines) but it also had record stores, bookstores, shoe shops and, right in the center of the place, a quirky little store that every kid in South Florida loved to duck inside, called “The Barefoot Mailman.”

I’
ll describe it a bit, but I think you know this place already. Yo
u’
ve probably been to a million little knockoffs of the Barefoot Mailman at some point or another. Every tourist town has a version of it. They sell souvenir shirts from wherever the store happens to be (in this case, a lot of “Pompano Beach, Florida” and “Sunshine State” tees), cheesy junk like shells and pens and suchlike baubles. But in this particular place they also carried oddball stuff. Silly crap. Lowball humor kind of junk.