Confessions of a Transylvanian (44 page)

Also that November: Tracey and Ron finally became a couple. Well, at least they let it be
known
that they were a couple. They had been going out together and scromping for a few weeks, but we all pretended that we did
n’
t notice.

I was skeptical of this pairing right from the get-go. Ron was a tomcat and not much inclined to obey the strictures of a monogamous relationship. And Tracey was a true believer in deep, honest, long-lasting commitment.

This was not likely to end well.

But the big news that November, at least as far as I was concerned, was meeting Alice.

Storme had decided to throw a party one Saturday night after the show and when we heard the news, we dutifully trooped down to her place when the cast meeting was over. Why not? No reason
not
to go.

But rather than just invite her Rocky friends, Storme had expanded the guest list to include some people from her high school class as well. Maybe she harbored some secret desire to see how the teenagers at Pompano High would react when thrust into the hard-partying midst of the Wild and Untamed Things cast. Hard to say. She had her reasons,
I’
m sure.

I had been at the party for about an hour or so when I noticed this girl sitting in front of the television in the living room, watching MTV along with a group of about six or seven others. I might not have noticed her at all, but she had this blazing head of red hair. I just had to get a proper look at her.

Unfortunately, she was angled away from me in a way that did
n’
t allow for even the tiniest glimpse of her face. Slowly, and not a little awkwardly, I maneuvered my way across the room and positioned myself at an odd angle, perpendicular to the bedroom doorway, so that I could get a good look. I could
n’
t hold the position for very long (I was wedged between the Lay-Z-Boy and the wall), but I saw all I needed to see.

She had pale, almost translucent skin that was oddly free of the mass of freckles that usually comes along with the whole red-headed package. Her eyes were just enormous, so much so that in the few seconds I spent taking in her features, I could see the MTV vee-jays reflected perfectly in those brown pools.

Finally, I was finally forced to stand, as the pressure of leaning in my current viewing position was causing a disc to rupture in my back. But I had already decided that this beautiful young creature needed much closer examination.

I was
n’
t exactly a smooth operator in the Approaching Girls Department, but this situation did
n’
t seem to call for much more than my sidling up and plopping down next to her as if what really interested me was the current video on the screen. This I did, finding myself staring up at the TV just inches away from this girl who, up to now, did
n’
t seem to sense yet that I was zeroing in on her.

Trouble was, of course, that I was
n’
t at just any old party. I was at
Storm
e’
s
house. This meant that, just thirty seconds or so after I sat down, I heard a familiar voice call out:

“Hey, Alice. Yo
u’
re gonna want to keep an eye on that one.”

The redhead jerked around and looked back at Storme who motioned to me with her chin in a “Yeah,
that
one” sort of move. Following Storm
e’
s gaze, the girl turned to look at me for the first time.

She cocked her head and took me in for a few seconds. “So I need to keep an eye on you, huh?”

How could I respond? “I guess so.”

“Okay. So
I’
ll watch out for you,” she said jovially. Then she stuck out her hand. “
I’
m Alice.”

“
I’
m Kevin.”

And then I thought,
Kevin
?

Why the living hell would I introduce myself as
Kevin
? I was
Jack
, for Pet
e’
s sake. Practically everyone I knew (and
everyone
at this party) called me Jack. I was only “Kevin” to my family. What was this?

I did
n’
t have an answer. It was simply that, for some reason or other, I did
n’
t want her calling me by my Rocky moniker. I had no idea why.

“You in the show, too?” she asked. Apparently Storme had introduced her to some of my castmates.

I told her I was. She said she had
n’
t seen Rocky yet, but that Storme had described it to her. It sounded, she said, pretty weird. I was
n’
t about to argue with her.

Asked if she was planning to check it out for herself, Alice nodded and said that she was planning to try to come the following weekend. Friday, in fact.

My eyes lit up. The following Friday just so happened to coincide with my monthly performance as Riff Raff. With this in mind, I said that she had picked a good night to come and (casually, of course) mentioned who I would be playing that evening.

Of course, having not seen the film, she did
n’
t know Riff Raff from Rhett Freaki
n’
Butler, but she tried to sound impressed.

“Is that your regular role?”

“No,
I’
m the understudy, actually. But I get to play Riff once a month or so.”

“Oh. So who do you normally play?”

I found it next to impossible to try to describe the character of Dr. Scott and after giving it a shot, I finally gave up. “Yo
u’
ll see when you see it,” I said and left it at that.

I asked her how she knew Storme and it turned out that she and Storme went to the same high school. So we talked about that.

She asked me how long
I’
d been involved with Rocky and, given that it was a favorite subject of mine, we chatted about that for a while, too.

Then we talked about other things...our families, our school lives, our plans for college.

We talked for a long time.

When we were done, we looked around and noticed that we were the only ones still awake. Everyone else had dozed off hours earlier and, to our surprise, we saw that the sun had begun to peek over the horizon. We had been talking all night long and had
n’
t realized it until this minute.

“I should go,” I said. I stood up, but then I realized I did
n’
t have a ride home. “Crap.”

“Wha
t’
s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I just...I should have grabbed a lift with Steve. He must have left without me.”

“Where do you live?” Alice asked.

“Deerfield,” I told her. Storm
e’
s house was in Pompano and I lived about ten minutes away by car.

“No problem,” she said. “I live in Lighthouse Point. I can give you a ride.”

“Great.”

We made our way quietly out of the house, trying not to wake anyone up. Crossing the room, strewn with prostrate teenagers, was like picking our way through a minefield. We eventually made it outside.

The lawn was littered with vehicles but Alice knew just where she was parked. She stopped in front of her car and got out the keys to unlock it.

When I saw the vehicle she was preparing to get into, I froze. Alice turned around, surprised.

“Something wrong?”

“This...” I said. “This...is
your
car?” I could hardly believe it.

“Yup,” she said. “Pretty cool, huh?”

Cool did
n’
t even begin to describe it. Alice drove a car that would have made grown men weep. There was
n’
t a set of wheels like it within ten square miles. This pretty little redhead was about to step behind the wheel of a mint-condition, bright-red 1965 Chevy Malibu convertible with a snow-white ragtop, four white-wall tires, original seats and sparkling bright chrome rims.

And, somehow, I was being offered a ride in this amazing automobile. I could hardly believe it.

“Where the hell did you
get
this thing?” I stammered out. “I
t’
s incredible.”

“A friend of my Da
d’
s was selling it and the price was right. I still ca
n’
t believe i
t’
s mine.” She smiled. “Get in. It gets better.”

I jumped into the front seat. She slid the key in the ignition and the car started to rumble. It was like a giant cat come to life. She put it in reverse and backed out of Storm
e’
s driveway and into the street. With a quick look over to me, Alice grinned and gunned the engine.

“Hold on,” she said. And she hit the gas.

We shot out of that neighborhood like a goddamn cannonball.

Less than five minutes later, we pulled up in front of my house. It felt like we had barely touched ground. My knees were weak. And whatever was left of my insides had been left back in Storm
e’
s driveway.

The brief trip home had been an unforgettable experience. All of 16 years old, Alice piloted her car like a NASCAR veteran.

When we pulled up, I did
n’
t want to get out of the car. Given that it was 6 in the morning, I had little choice.

I tried to stall. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Sure. Happy to.”

There was a pause. I should have just gotten out, but it just did
n’
t seem possible. I had unfinished business here. I could
n’
t even bring myself to look at her. I just sat there.

Then, almost imperceptibly, I sensed that Alice had shifted in her seat and had inched the tiniest bit toward me. I was
n’
t sure if that was the signal
I’
d been hoping for, but I was willing to take the risk. I turned my face up to hers and she was staring me dead in the eyes.

I moved forward.

We kissed.

And just like that, we fell in love.

At least, it seemed that way to me. I had never felt a connection like this before. I could
n’
t explain it, could
n’
t define it. All I knew was, I had a hold of her at this particular moment and that was good enough for me.

After a few blissful minutes, we finally detached from each other and made hurried plans to reconnect that week. We spoke in excited whispers, as if worried that we would break the spell. We exchanged phone numbers. We kissed again, more at ease, less frenzied.

Then we disengaged. Reluctantly. I opened the car door. I got out. It was
n’
t an easy thing to do.

“Talk to you later today,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied and hit me with this dazzling smile. “Get some rest.” Then she put the car in gear and pulled away. I watched until she disappeared around the corner.

“Wow,” I said to myself. And a few seconds later: “Wow.”

21

When Worlds Collide

R
uss was pissed. Half of the damn cast seemed to be going out of town for Thanksgiving, including me. My father had arranged to fly my brother and me to New York for the holiday and it would be the first time in almost eleven months that I would miss a show. Upsetting, but what could I do? Family first and all that.

As Russ scrambled to make sure all the roles would be properly covered for the weekend, word quickly got around that I would
n’
t be the only cast member in NYC for the big holiday. Tracey was heading up to New York to visit her father and so was, of all people, Sunday. It was a little hard to believe that we
all
had divorced fathers living up north in the same city (and that each of our mothers had decided to spend their post-divorce lives down in the Swamp), but we quickly got over the coincidence and had a brief powwow on how to take advantage of our proximity to the big city.

We almost immediately decided that if we did anything in New York together, we absolutely had to see…The Show.

Now, for every Rocky Horror fan, young and old, there was one place that was considered the Rocky Mecca, the center of all things RHPS. This was the famed 8th Street Playhouse in New York City, where the longest-running Rocky show lit up the stage every weekend night. The president of the Rocky Horror Fan club, Sal Piro, was the Master of Ceremonies in this revered hall and it was the goal...nay, the
dream
...of every Rocky aficionado to make a pilgrimage there at least once. Of course, RHPS began its strange and storied journey at the Waverly Theatre. But by 1982, Sal’s cast had long since packed up and moved to 8th Street to set up shop as official Rocky Headquarters.

And so it was decided. Tracey, Sunday and I would meet up in New York City over Thanksgiving vacation and visit the world-famous 8th Street Playhouse to pass judgment on the pinnacle of Rocky life in America.

The trick, for me, would be to convince my Dad to let me go.

See, my father still thought of my brother and me as being roughly 5 years old. We had never lived with him and, tragically, he had
n’
t had the chance to watch us grow into the fine young men that we thought ourselves to be. He only knew us from the weekends and holidays we had managed to spend together over the years.

Our mother, of course, was a different story. She knew us top to bottom and, based on this familiarity and trust, she unhesitatingly allowed me to spend my weekends in Rock
y’
s warm embrace. But Dad? He looked at us and saw a couple of kids in short pants clutching a pair of all-day suckers. How could we convince him that we were mature enough to manage ourselves on a night out in New York City?

First, I enlisted my brother as a covert operative. Two heads being better than one, and misery loving company and all, there were many advantages to having an ally in this fight. And a fight it would surely be.

Da
d’
s overprotectiveness was fierce to the point of ridiculousness. He got antsy if we offered to walk down to the corner store to pick up a newspaper. And he lived on the Upper West Side. It was
n’
t like he lived in the Bowery surrounded by drug addicts and pimps. This was one of the nicer neighborhoods in Manhattan. If he did
n’
t allow us to roam the streets up here (where the greatest danger was the threat of being accosted by an East Coast liberal railing against Reaganomics), how were we ever going to get him to release us into the wilds of Greenwich Village without a chaperone?

And right there we struck upon the solution. A chaperone. We would have to fake a chaperone. But who? David and I conferred and came up with the obvious choice:

Sunda
y’
s father. We would convince our Dad that the entire evening would be spent under the close supervision of Sunda
y’
s
pater familias
.

Next, we had to make up a totally safe-sounding yet plausible scenario surrounding our protector. The setup, as we rehearsed it, became: He would never leave our side, he had been to the show already with Sunday a number of times, he knew the neighborhood really well and, to really bring it home, he was a former cop.

A complete fiction? Sure. But it sounded
great
.

With all of that in our favor, how could he refuse?

“No. No way. Not happening.” This started on Tuesday and continued through the week, even during our lovely Thanksgiving meal. By then, we had almost run out of time. My brother and I had only twenty-four hours to change his mind in time for the Friday show, forty-eight if we were going to make it on Saturday.

The battle raged over turkey and stuffing.

“Dad, seriously.
I’
m 17 years old.” I was, too. Seventeen. Think about that. “Next year I could join the
Army
if I wanted to, but you wo
n’
t let me go downtown for one night?
One
night?”

“You do
n’
t know the area,” he said. “I do. I
t’
s the Village. Down by NYU. Washington Square Park. I
t’
s crazy down there. Dangerous. Forget about it.”

“I
t’
s not like w
e’
ll be
alone
,” I stressed. “Sunda
y’
s dad will be there the whole time.”

“Oh, tha
t’
s comforting.
Sunda
y’
s
dad. Who names their kid Sunday? Who is this guy? Does she have a sister Tuesday? A brother October? No way.”

David took a crack at it. “Dad, Kevin does this every weekend down in Florida, no problem. Wha
t’
s the big deal?”

“The big deal is, this is New York City, boys. This is
n’
t Deerfield Beach. You guys could walk out of here and
I’
d never see you again.”

“Wha
t’
s the worst thing that can happen?” David posed. And clearly, this was the wrong question to ask. You could see our father thinking of all kinds of worst things that could happen.

“Plenty. Now stop asking.”

He held firm through dinner and all of Friday, and before we knew it, Friday night was upon us. Sunday and Tracey called. I said, “Maybe tomorrow.
I’
m still working on it.” They were amazed that our father was so intractable. Their own dads could
n’
t
wait
to get them out of their respective homes. Ours, though, was being way too...parental.

So Friday night passed, permission to go was not issued, and David and I remained at home.

And we were
pissed
.

Saturday morning around that apartment was pretty damn chilly, let me tell you. My Dad was
n’
t really prepared for the frosty attitudes we displayed. Having not spent a whole lot of time around sulky teenagers, he hardly knew what he was in for. And he was about to get a double-barrel full of brooding.

David and I ratcheted up the Sulk-o-Meter to full blast and let him have it.

We slumped at the table during breakfast. Poked at our food. Looked despondently at nothing in particular. And we did
n’
t say a word.

“
C’
mon, boys,” he cajoled. “Eat your breakfast.”

“Not hungry,” we mumbled. Oh, we were good at this.

Dad let the mood hang for a minute or so and then tried to change it.

“Hey, what do you want to do today?” he said perkily. “Head over to the park? Catch a movie?”

“Nothing.”

He looked alarmed. Two teenagers in the middle of New York and we wanted to just sit around doing nothing? Were we sick? What was the matter with us? (He had
n’
t really connected our mood to the previous evenin
g’
s refusal of permission. Dads can be a little slow.)

Now, the key to successful sulking is
lethargy
. Energetic sulking does
n’
t do the job. To really get your sulk on, yo
u’
ve practically got to go boneless and melt into the couch. After breakfast, David and I wandered over and wilted like tender orchids into the cushions. It was pathetic. Dad was completely thrown by this display.

Finally, the light dawned.

“Hold on. Is this about that show last night? The movie?”

“No. Whatever. Who cares?”

We withdrew further into our protective post-pubescent shells. Dad was on the outside looking in with a puzzled expression. This was a new experience. Moodiness was not our natural state. He was getting a little freaked out.

“Be fair now. I could
n’
t let you go. It was too dangerous.” He tried to say it with finality, but he could
n’
t muster it.

“
S’
allright.” Our vocabulary was devolving as well. Soon we would move on to monosyllables. That would drive him completely batty.

Dad considered. He knew he was really letting us down, but his protective instinct was not about to be defeated this easily.

“I wish I could take you myself, but I have a very important phone call tomorrow morning and I have to get up early and prepare.” Da
d’
s business, putting together trade shows for big-dollar clients, meant a lot of odd hours. We did
n’
t doubt that he was telling the truth. But we were also, in this scenario, completely without sympathy.

“‘
Kay,” we said. We stared at our shoes. We sighed dramatically. We deadened our eyes.

He was weakening. We could tell. David finally laid down the trump card.

“Listen,” he said. Then he sighed. “If you think...” he took a big gulp, like this was
really
hard for him to say. “If you think
I’
m too young or whatever, Kevin can go without me.” Dad and I both stared at my brother. He was the picture of Young Despair. “Really,” he said miserably. “I do
n’
t care.”

With this enormous concession, David sat back on the couch with his eyes misting over. He was
n’
t going to cry. He was going to hold it together. He was going to be
strong
. But it was obviously killing him, admitting that he might be less mature than I was.

I had to hand it to him. It was a masterful performance.

Rushing to the breach, I took up the gauntlet he had thrown down. “No, David,” I said, firmly defending him, the way a brother must. “It would
n’
t be fair. Of course yo
u’
re old enough. We both are.” Here, I tried on my martyr hat. “No,” I declared. “Either we both go or...” I let my voice waver a bit, “...or neither one of us goes.”

And I slumped down into my chair as well.

There was nothing more to say. It was all in our fathe
r’
s hands now. Everything depended on these next few moments. The Guilt Sandwich had been lovingly prepared. Would he bite?

Shaking his head as if he could
n’
t believe what he was about to say, Dad furrowed his brows and finally managed: “H
e’
ll be with you the
whole
time
?”

I leaped into action, every hint of listlessness suddenly evaporating. “Yes! The whole time! He will. And he even said h
e’
d walk us to the train after.”

“Train?” Dad looked horrified. “Yo
u’
re not taking the
train
home.” He was revving up the protectiveness, assuming control once more. He said firmly, “
I’
ll give you cab money. Yo
u’
ll take a
taxi
back here. The
minute
the movie is over. Understand?”

We nodded energetically. And that was that. It was settled.

I was on the phone to Tracey and Sunday within minutes.

We were on our way.

It was agreed that we would meet at Sunda
y’
s place in midtown and proceed from there. Tracey was coming from Queens and we certainly were
n’
t going anywhere near the outer boroughs, so Sunda
y’
s was the logical choice.