Confessions of a Transylvanian (47 page)

The night of the big show, we were all instructed to get to the theater at least a half hour early and set up our gear as quickly as possible when the feature film let out. The Ultravision management let us pre-load our props and costumes just outside the door so we could be ready to go as soon as the regular patrons had vacated the premises. We were itching to get started.

Even at 10:30, a crowd was starting to form in the Ultravision parking lot. We all knew that, on a regular night, there might be twenty or thirty cars parked in the lot by 11:30 or so. Tonight, there were over a hundred and it was still ninety minutes to showtime.

And they just kept arriving.

Finally, the late movie let out and we bustled into the theater and got ready. We moved at lightning speed, so that we would have plenty of time to get into costume and makeup before the crowd made their way in. The feeling was electric.

While we were setting up, the DJs arrived and the cast started buzzing. We had been listening to Nancy G. and Joe St. Peter for years on the radio, but this was the first time most of us had ever laid eyes on them. In the small world of the South Florida celebrity circuit, being a rock and roll disc jockey made you a
huge
star. And suddenly, there they were.

Nancy G. was a lot taller than we expected, but just as hot as w
e’
d hoped. Most female DJs have slinky, sexy voices, and Nancy certainly had one of those, but it was rare to see someone live up to their sound. She looked fantastic, with her light-brown hair pulled back off her shoulders, a pointy mode
l’
s chin and these beautiful, glittery eyes.

Joe St. Peter, on the other hand, had a look that said, “Good evening. I play rock and roll on the radio for a living. What do
you
do?” Black, curly hair. Neatly trimmed beard and a black leather jacket. Dark cowboy boots and a completely relaxed demeanor. The whole time he was there, he sported this huge, pleased-to-meet-you grin.

As excited as we were to see these living legends in our theater and in the flesh, we were also pretty well terrified to go near them and left Russ to handle the hosting duties. We had a show to prepare for.

I was scheduled to do Dr. Scott that night, which meant doing my regular Transylvanian job and then switching into the docto
r’
s outfit and hopping into the wheelchair. My pre-show prep, therefore, was very short and I found myself in the theater when the doors opened and the crowd began entering.

And entering.

And
entering
.

To the point, frankly, where it actually started to get a little scary.

I had been to the Rocky show at the Ultravision almost from the very beginning and I still remembered the first few weeks of the show. Back then, when curiosity about the whole Rocky phenomenon was at its highest, the crowds had been pretty huge. We had welcomed 300 people a night, easy.

Since then, we had drifted down to about half that size, sometimes barely breaking a hundred patrons a night. Not bad, actually, for a show you did every weekend, twice a week, for almost a year. And, excuse me, pretty fucking awesome for a movie that had been in theaters for upwards of
five
years. But there had been a significant tapering off, it was impossible to deny.

Halloween, of course, was the exception. The crowd topped perhaps 400 people that night and was a huge hit, no question. But we never, in our wildest dreams, ever expected to see a bigger crowd than that. It had been gigantic. Unsurpassable.

Well,
I’
m here to tell you: SHE Night, when it hit, put every other crowd to shame.

By the time we finally cranked up the new and improved pre-show, the crowd was over 600 strong. They were packed into the auditorium like processed tuna in a can and there was
n’
t a single seat left. As if to confirm our suspicions, we then got the official word from the box office:

We were sold out. Completely. First time ever, there was
n’
t a ticket to be had. People wanting to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in Deerfield Beach, Florida, had been
turned away
.

When we heard that, our collective blood pressure shot through the roof.

The chanting began at about ten to midnight.

“Rocky! Rocky! RO-CKY! RO-CKY!” They were itching for the show to start. We were getting pretty keyed up ourselves.

Finally, when it looked like everyone was seated (it actually looked like everyone in the state of Florida was seated) and the energy level hit its peak, the DJs, presumably used to this sort of thing, called the evening to order.

Joe St. Peter picked up the microphone and hollered:

“
Goooooood evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to SHE Night at
‘
The Rocky Horror Picture Sho
w’
!
”

The sound that came off the crowd was a force of nature. It was like being punched in the chest, it was so loud. Watching this enormous throng of people jump to their feet and whoop with joy, it crossed my mind that if they decided to storm the stage and eat the cast, we would have had little recourse but to sit back and allow ourselves to become tasty, nutritious snacks.

St. Peter went through some of the preliminaries, thanked the management and everyone for showing up and then, in Rocky parlance, asked if there were any virgins among the assembled crowd. More than half the people in the audience answered him in the affirmative. It was incredible for us to discover that the majority of this throng were here for the first time. Clearly, the marketing strategy had worked wonders.

The initial welcome over, St. Peter introduced his partner, Nancy, who received a warm welcome herself. She deftly segued into the Time Warp dance competition and invited a select group (the first three rows) to the stage. The two of them encouraged folks not to rush to the front and, miraculously, they complied. People, it seems, will do anything a disc jockey tells them to do.

When finally assembled, the participants numbered seventy-five or so, and as Nancy G. called out the steps (“Jump to the left! Step to the right!”), they all attempted to show us their best moves. It was
n’
t exactly pretty, but it looked like they enjoyed themselves.

Finally, they were done and the judges conferred. After a minute or so, a stack of record albums were distributed to what appeared to be a random group of “winners.” Everyone else got some type of WSHE swag (there were no “losers”) and the patrons took their seats again.

It was close to midnight. The mood was contagiously ecstatic. The DJs talked up how cool it was to be there with the best rock and roll fans in the country (huge applause) and then they told everyone to hold on to their hats, the show was about to begin.

And with a nod to Russ, we were on.

Russ turned and signaled the booth and, within seconds, the theater was filled with the opening guitar riff from “The Time Warp.” No picture on the screen, of course, just the music. But to anyone who knew the score of the film as well as we did, the sound was decidedly different. This was, after all, the music from the live show in L.A.

For their stage performance, the director in California had clearly chosen a much more punchy and faster beat for this number. And when the sound hit the audience, the energy level in the theater jumped about three notches.

Tom swiveled his spotlight from the WSHE disc jockeys to where Kenny was pre-set on the stage as Riff. Upon seeing the first actual Rocky character of the night framed in his own pool of light, the crowd, primed and ready, went crazy.

To this day, I do
n’
t know who the singer was that did the Roxy show in L.A., but
I’
ll tell you this: His voice was
amazing
. Do
n’
t get me wrong,
O’
Brien is the all-time Time Warp lord and master and all that. But this dude in California could fucking
sing
.

Kenny threw himself into it, parading across the stage as a newly unleashed being, free of the confines of having to do the song exactly as his on-screen counterpart had performed it. Then he passed the ball to Andrea, who took it and ran. They both tore into the number with an enthusiasm unlike anything
I’
d seen from either of them before.

Then they hit the big intro, swung into their Elbow Sex and the entire Deerfield cast stepped forward and hollered: “
Le
t’
s do the Time Warp again!
”

Every member of the Wild and Untamed Things, each and every one of us, was a Transylvanian that night. And for the first time ever, we performed the Time Warp as one; jumping, stepping and pelvic-thrusting to a version of the song we had never heard before.

It was a thrilling experience, doing something so familiar and yet so completely different. The mood, the energy, the driving beat...it elevated the experience to an entirely new level.

And it was while I was doing it, in the middle of actually performing the dance itself, that it hit me:

We were making it our own. We were
n’
t being forced to match someone on the screen who dictated the way we moved. We were doing
our
version, the “Ultravision Time Warp,” if you will, which consisted of whatever each of us, individually, thought this performance should be.

We could do
anything
with the song. Anything at all.

So we did. We bumped and ground against one another, we flailed our arms in the air, we ran around the stage. There were no
rules
. Rules? Those would be back soon enough. For now, the Rocky show was ours and no one els
e’
s.

And the audience could
n’
t get enough.

Finally, the song wound down, we sang our final chorus and we collapsed to the stage, completely exhausted.

The applause was thunderous, deafening. But we were
n’
t done yet.

When the music for “Sweet Transvestite (Roxy Version)” kicked in and the spotlight hit Boyd at the top of the ramp, I thought the roar of the crowd might actually blow out the back of the theater. These people went positively
bat-shit
.

Boyd, being a sentient being, could
n'
t help but be caught up in the wave of adoration that hit him. To us, he looked three stories tall as he strutted down the ramp and started making his way down the aisle. Rather than follow his regular blocking, Boyd used the entire theater, stepping up onto the armrests in the audience to address the crowd. When he threw off his cape to reveal the sexy outfit beneath...

...
I’
ll betcha they heard us in fucking
Miami
.

Boyd seemed to be everywhere at once, working the crowd and they, in turn, showered him with love. His every move, even the tiniest gesture, was met with a chorus of hooting and cheering.

He was a star.

Eventually, the number spiraled down to its final few moments and Boyd once again perched himself at the top of the ramp, center stage. He was, it seemed, pinned to the screen by the beam of light and the audience responded to him like 600 incredibly turned-on lovers. If it was at all possible for an entire
room
to have an orgasm, Boyd was giving them one.

Then “Sweet Transvestite” came to a close with its final power chord, the spotlight went black and the theater lights immediately dimmed, signaling the start of the film. The SHE Night audience, already whipped into a frenzy, roared out their excitement.

It was like that all night long. As each new character appeared, the crowd welcomed them aboard with a huge sonic embrace. When Riff Raff made his first appearance on-screen, Kenny got the biggest ovation of the night. Well, until Frank showed up again, of course. Boyd was, upon his entrance, treated to the kind of welcome that Lindbergh got in Paris.

Each of us, Andrea, Sunday, Billy, even l
i’
l o
l’
me in my wheelchair, as we hit the stage were treated to a tumultuous round of entrance applause. We drank it up like sweet nectar.

It was intoxicating.

Better than any drug.

We were mainlining uncut, pharmacy-grade adulation. And it was zonking us out of our
minds
.

At the end of the night, we took our curtain call and the applause seemed to rise up over the house like a tidal wave and come crashing down upon us, smothering the cast in a rush of love. By now, the army of people filling the house was no longer as frightening as it had been when they had first crammed their way into the theater. With the intimidation factor gone, there was nothing left but pure enjoyment.