Confessions of a Transylvanian (39 page)

I did
n’
t know that they still made velvet suit coats, but Russ had put his hands on one, along with a ruffled shirt, bow tie and, naturally, his hat Jake perched on top of his head. He looked terrific, but it was hard to keep your eye on him because of the young lady attached to his elbow.

Jill was sporting a strapless, light-blue dress that went from just below her shoulders straight down to her knees and did
n’
t stop to ask for directions on the way. It was clingy in the way that all things should be and in none of the ways they should
n’
t.

Holly was close on their heels and I had to admit that she looked amazing herself, having pulled her hair up for a change and shoehorned herself into a burgundy number that really...well, le
t’
s say it brought out her eyes and leave it at that.

These two girls had set the bar atmospherically high, as far as the hotness factor was concerned, and it was going to be tough for anyone to match them.

Yet, despite the molten-lava-level hotness of these two fine young specimens, there was another guest at this evenin
g’
s dance who appeared, to me at least, to be the most interesting to observe. And he stood, in a bespoke dark suit and tie, looking dapper and out-of-place, on Holl
y’
s arm. It was, of all people, Skinny Kenny himself. Our own Riff Raff. At homecoming.

Now,
I’
d like to say it had been my idea for the girls to invite a pair of RHPS dates to the school dance, but the idea had actually originated with Jill. Jill and Holly never went anywhere the one without the other, and since Jill was going with Russ anyway, she convinced Holly that they would have a lot more fun if she brought along a date from the Rocky show instead of one of the school schlubs.

Holly agreed and took a look around the cast for a prospective date. She had some difficulty deciding, but since she had met Kenny through me months earlier while we had been dating and had deemed him the most fun (and safe) person to invite, he got the nod. Any one of the other cast members might have taken her invitation as a romantic overture and tried to press the advantage. Kenny, a perfect gentleman (this evening, anyway), knew he was there to function as arm candy and was behaving himself.

I greeted them at the door (this was my party, after all) and made them feel welcome. Jill and Holly could
n’
t wait to hit the dance floor. Kenny and Russ seemed less inclined to be the first to jump up in front of the entire school, but once a few others trickled out onto the floor, they grudgingly obliged.

The band was now warmed up and the crowd began to swell. Within minutes of the food being brought out for their inspection, the student body swarmed the food tables like a pack of locusts and, deeming the fare acceptable, cleaned us out.

Within an hour, the quad was jammed with the biggest homecoming crowd the school had ever seen. The punch flowed, the assembled guests swayed and the party hopped.

About halfway through the proceedings, the Homecoming King and Queen were announced. Jill and Holly, though easily the best-looking dates in attendance, were not eligible, as they were juniors. Thus, the anointed royalty paled in comparison. Still, Russ and Kenny—well aware they had the best-looking companions in the joint—did nothing to disabuse the King of his belief that he had the sweetest arm-candy in the place.

After the homecoming crowning ceremony and honorary dance was completed, Dean and his bandmates took a break. Seeing that the moment was right, I detached myself from Russ, Kenny and the girls and made my way to the back of the stage.

Dean and the rest of the band were pretty charged up. Dance bands are, for the most part, loathed on general principle, but these guys had obviously done a lot of rehearsing since the audition and the crowd really seemed to love them.

I sidled up to Dean and made sure I had his attention.

“Now,” I said.

Dea
n’
s eyebrows shot up. “Now? Really?”

“Well, after your break,” I conceded. “But yeah. Next song.”

“You got it,” he said. I faded back into the crowd and found my way back to Jill and Holly. They were relaxed, cool and loving every minute of this evening.

They had no idea.

A few minutes later, the band stepped back onto the stage and J.R., the lead singer, grabbed the microphone.

“Hey everybody! How you doi
n’
?” he called out. It is a well-known Law of Rock that when a lead singer asks how you are doing, you scream with enthusiasm. Even if your dog just got hit by a car, you are required to yell, “Whoooooo!” at the top of your lungs. So the crowd obliged.

“Good to hear it!” he called back. “Now, listen, w
e’
ve got a little something w
e’
d like to do for you.”

The moment had arrived. All of my plans for this evening were about to be fully realized.

“This,” said J.R., “is by request. Hit it!”

I truly wish I could properly describe the looks on Russ and Kenn
y’
s faces when they heard the opening chords of the Time Warp coming from the lead guitarist at our homecoming dance. There was some shock, mixed with complete dumbfoundedness, rounded off with a dash of utter confusion.

Their heads whipped around to look at me and I hit them with a high-wattage smile just before I leaped to my feet and legged it for the dance floor. Both they and their dates were, naturally, close behind.

Happily, the five of us up on the stage were not the only people at homecoming who were familiar with the Time Warp. By the time we actually got to the part where you needed to jump, step and thrust, there were easily twenty people joining in. The faculty, of course, had not been privy to this musical selection, but by this time, even if they were inclined to object, there seemed little point in trying to put a stop to it.

So for that one evening, homecoming night, 1982, Rocky Horror took over the Zion Lutheran Christian School dance.

Nobody seemed to mind one little bit.

Well…until they played “Sweet Transvestite.”

18

The Charles Atlas Seal of Approval

T
he next Friday, the cast meeting was winding to a close when Russ announced that he would be distributing ballots for the upcoming “Wild and Untamed Things 1st Annual Awards Show Spectacular,” which was scheduled to take place at Iri
s’
s house the following Saturday.

I was completely knocked out. Awards? There were actual Rocky
awards
? Who came up with that?

Before I could ask, Russ got busy. He handed out the official ballots and instructed us to fill them out and get them back into his hot little hands by the following night so h
e’
d have time to tally up the votes, identify the winners and prepare the actual award certificates in time for the ceremony.

I got my copy and started to look it over. Almost immediately, I realized that the Rocky awards ballot was…unique.

At first, the categories seemed pretty straightforward for this sort of thing: Cast Member of the Year, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, that sort of thing. All your traditional awards categories. But then, as you got past the first part of the list, things began to get a bit...strange.

“The Sleeping Beauty Award for Best Grog.” “The Domin
o’
s Award for Best Pizza Face.” “The Leprechaun Award for Most Charming.” “The
‘
Osca
r’
for Best Hat” (after Kenny
’
s eponymous chapeau). There was even the “Edith Bunker Award for Worst Singer.” All told, there were over a
hundred
awards to be distributed and each category (Fight of the Year, Most Likely to Be Late) was odder than the last.

Asking around, I soon learned that ever since they were first presented, back in the old Hollywood days, these awards had been highly coveted (most of them) and the actual voting process was closely guarded and very secretive. Chatting amongst yourselves regarding your voting plans was strongly discouraged. Friendships, I learned, had been put at risk by voting for (or against) each other for particular categories.

This was a blood sport and we were, each of us, unwilling combatants. Two men enter. One man leaves. That sort of thing.

Also, there were
n’
t any rounds of voting. The first round was the last. No list of nominees, no whittling down of names. This was it. Vote, count, present the award. Quick and dirty. Tha
t’
s the way they liked it.

So, with that in mind, we each took our ballots home and began the soul-searching process of voting for the person most deserving in each category.

In some cases, it was easy.

Best Actor? Had to be Mark.

Best Actress? For me, Andrea. Piece of cake.

Best Supporting Actor? Being honest, I voted for Kenny, but I burned with secret envy in doing so, not only because he held the role I loved so dearly, but because he was so goddamn good at it.

Best Hat? My own Kilgore got the vote, naturally.

The voting was going pretty smoothly. But then:

Cast Member of the Year. Boy, that was tough. Donny? Russ? Impossible to choose. Donny had led us all to glory, but Russ had taken up the flag when Donny could no longer shoulder it and had borne it ever since.

I finally pulled the lever for Donny, since he was the one who had brought me aboard and given me my first break. Still, if Russ won, no one would be upset.

After that, the choices got a bit tougher:

Best Pizza Face? A horrifying category. How do you vote for someone to receive an award for their horrendous acne and not feel like shit? I could hardly contemplate the humiliation involved in “winning” this cruelly conceived trophy, much less consider voting for someone to receive it, deserving or no.

However, I also feared that I might actually win it myself if I
did
n’
t
vote, so in an act of self-preservation, I finally put down Kenn
y’
s name. After all, he had it almost as bad as I did. But I was
n’
t exactly proud of my behavior in throwing Kenny to the wolves.

It did
n’
t get much better after that. “The B.O. Award” for stinkiest cast member. “Boston Bean Award” for the fartiest cast member. And then, at the bottom: Worst Actor. Worst Actress. These were
awards
?

I hardly knew what to do, so I just filled in the first names that came into my head and handed in my ballot the next night.

There were a few awards that I stood a chance to win. But I did
n’
t covet very many of them.

In fact, a few of them scared the shit out of me.

Awards night arrived the following week and we all gathered early for the pre-show activities. It was a new venue for us, Iri
s’
s house, and we were admonished not to mess up the joint. Fair enough. We were
n’
t animals.

The presentations would be made by Mr. Entertainment himself: Russ. The tension was thick. The votes had been tallied. This was it.

Finally, the big moment arrived and we all took our seats. In the scramble to get a good view, I somehow wound up (to both my amazement and delight), on a couch in the first row directly in front of where Russ would be making his announcements, with Andrea sitting behind me, her legs snaked around my waist and my back pressed up against her. She was actually resting her chin on my shoulder.

Do not ask me how this occurred. It is an ungrateful lottery winner who questions why the numbers went his way.

Russ got right to work. The routine, established back in the Twin days, appeared to be that the presenter (in this case, Russ) would read each category, describe what the award meant (if necessary) and then announce the winner. There were no acceptance speeches. You simply took your award, smiled if you could and then sat the fuck down.

As awards ceremonies go, it zipped along quickly. (Given the number of categories, speed was an essential component to the hosting duties.) We roared our approval or dismay as the winners were announced and shouted down those who felt they were undeserving of a particular slight or insulting “win.” I soon realized that the “bad” categories were to be taken in the spirit in which they were given and that no harm was meant (though I was thrilled when Kenny did wind up winning the Pizza Face award. I was a hell of a lot more sensitive about my blooming complexion than Kenny seemed to be.)

To no on
e’
s surprise, including my own, I won the Grog award and
I’
m quite sure I clobbered the competition. But as happy as I was to receive even a single award, there was only one that I truly wanted. This particular honor was scheduled to be bestowed toward the end of the ceremony, so I had some time to wait. I ran into Tracey in the kitchen during intermission when I went to get a beer and I could see she was as excited as I was.

“I voted for you,” she said, reading my mind.

“I voted for you, too,” I said. “I
t’
s the least a husband can do.”

She laughed and we took our seats, waiting for the second half to begin. Finally, after a few more minor awards, Russ quieted the room with a wave of his arm.

“Okay, lads and ladies, here we go. The Rookie Award for Most Promising New Cast Member, Female, goes to...” He paused dramatically. “...Tracey!”

I looked over and Trace
y’
s face had turned bright red. The room exploded into applause. Eleven months earlier, she had been an anonymous nobody in a Transylvanian coat. Now she was the Principal Janet, kicking ass every weekend. She richly deserved the acclaim she was receiving.

“Okay, okay,” Russ called out after handing Tracey her award. “Shut the fuck up and le
t’
s get on with it. The Rookie Award for Most Promising New Cast Member, Male.”

I felt Andrea squeeze me ever so lightly with her knees as if she knew what was about to happen.

“And this yea
r’
s winner is...” Russ again paused for effect. Then he smiled. “Get on up here, Jack!” Russ called out.

I would be falsely modest if I said I was
completely
surprised. After all, I had been working like an Iditarod sled dog ever since I came aboard—doing pre-show, performing Dr. Scott and covering for Riff Raff—and I had been hoping that my efforts would be recognized. Ever since the moment I had spied the category on the ballot, this was the one moment that I had wished would come. And somehow it had.

I practically floated up off the couch and reached out for the award, which Russ was brandishing like a diploma. The entire cast was cheering enthusiastically and I turned to them and smiled, waving the paper in silent thanks to all of them. I saw Tracey in the back, howling her wifely approval. Sunday, Tony, Andrea, Kenny, Donny, Ron...all of them were whooping and cheering.

Then I did what I was supposed to do. The award safely in hand, I sat the fuck down.

The night rolled on and we finally got down to the most coveted awards. Mark won Best Actor in a walk. Iris won Best Actress, nudging out some stiff competition. Andrea won Best Supporting Actress and, fittingly, Kenny picked up the Supporting Actor trophy.

The big question hanging over the proceedings was the winner of Cast Member of the Year, but we were all pleased to see that Russ got to bestow the award on…himself. Nobody seemed more happy than Donny, who responded to the announcement by pounding the floor with his beefy legs and applauding uproariously.

Later that night, after the awards ceremony had concluded, we were all handed a bit of sobering news: Mark announced that he was quitting the show. This seemed a pretty shocking development at first but, upon reflection, it made sense. He had been performing Frank for more than two and a half years and tha
t’
s just about long enough for anyone. Besides, his best friend, Iris, had left the cast months earlier, so the show did
n’
t have the same thrill for him that it once did.

In true Rocky fashion, no one attempted to argue with him. When you hung up your bustier, you were done and that was that.

The question was: Who did we have who could fill those silver, high-heeled shoes?

When the answer came, we discovered that we were not the only ones who were surprised. The United States Army was a little shocked, too.

Boyd, I came to learn as I got to know him, was a Florida boy, through and through. Born, bred and likely to die there, presumably of a gator bite.

However, unlike the other South Florida native in the show (Tom), young Boyd was nobod
y’
s sidekick. If he followed anything, it was his own blinkered imagination.

He was a tall drink of water, our Boyd. Well over six feet, with short dark hair and an expression on his face that was perpetually set at, “What did you just say?” This was not, I should be clear, because Boyd was slow. He was
n’
t. But he did
n’
t approach life in what you could call a very serious way and, naturally, he assumed that you did
n’
t either.

Originally, Boyd had joined the cast as a non-performer, functioning as an official/unofficial cast photographer. But after a couple of weeks, snapping pictures just did
n’
t seem to satisfy him anymore, so he finally hit the thrift store: