Confessions of a Transylvanian (18 page)

Billy, on the other hand, was this soft-spoken, really good-looking young guy with a laid-back, surfer-boy attitude he must have picked up down at the beach. He looked, physically, just as yo
u’
d hope a guy playing Rocky would look. Well built, unabashed and willing to strip down to his skivvies at a momen
t’
s notice.

Plus, he pulled off this singular style that reigned supreme back in the ‘8
0
s: His brown hair drifted almost down to his shoulders but was feathered back (as was done in those days) giving him an almost feminine aura. It was the full Sean Cassidy look and Billy nailed it.

This, of course, explained why all of the young ladies in the cast, if they were
n’
t already sleeping with Ron, immediately gravitated to Billy.

And just like that, we had a new set of principals. Jackie and Barry were gone and Iris and Billy stepped up.

It was about this time that Donny, seeing how quickly this change had occurred, realized that we were severely lacking in the understudy department. Mulling this over, and completely unbeknownst to us, Donny began to look around.

Le
t’
s not kid ourselves. I know, deep down, if yo
u’
re curious about this cast at all, yo
u’
re curious about their sex lives. God knows I was. But le
t’
s make something clear:

I could, if I were so inclined, very easily take you through the cast and tell you who was sleeping with whom at various points during our time at the Ultravision, but her
e’
s the problem: To accomplish this task correctly and provide the detail necessary to be fully accurate about the whole thing,
I’
d have to employ pie charts and bar graphs and multi-level 3D dramatizations and honestly, who has the time? Suffice it to say that some relationships between cast members were a bit more relevant (and colorful) than others and I will, I swear, get to that.

For the time being, le
t’
s just say that these people got
around
. Most of the rest, I leave entirely to your imagination.

Another thing: Given that the movie unapologetically involved transvestites and featured explicit homoerotic behavior, there was a general assumption that everyone involved in the whole Rocky experience was sexually confused, bi-curious or simply gay. This assumption was, in actuality, very far from true.

Most of the young men who got involved with Rocky were straight as a plumb line. And to tell you the truth, this made things a bit frustrating. When yo
u’
re surrounded by beautiful girls and you want to get their attention, believe me, it really pays to have a lot of homosexuals around. I mean, think about it. Your odds of scoring with one of the girls increase exponentially with the inclusion of each gay dude. Tha
t’
s just simple mathematics.

But at the Ultravision, almost all of the guys lusted after the fairer sex.

While w
e’
re on the subject, I should mention that at the time that this story takes place, there was still a huge social stigma attached to being homosexual. Thanks to the efforts of Anita Bryant, this was especially true in South Florida. Still, by the time I joined the Rocky cast, I had known some adults who were openly gay and—due no doubt to the fact that my folks were old-school liberal Democrats—I had been raised not to fear or loathe my same-sex-preferring brothers and sisters. No big deal, I thought.

However, my experience at the Rocky show marked the first time I had ever met anyone
my own age
who was actually out of the closet. Most gay high-schoolers, purely out of self-preservation, usually did everything they could to hide their true identities. I was shocked, therefore, to discover that Mark, our stellar Frank-N-Furter, made no secret of the fact that he was gay. This might seem like an odd statement, considering that he dressed up in ladies underwear and flounced around the stage every weekend night proclaiming his lust for a muscleman. Of
course
he was gay, you might be thinking.

The truth was, though, that most of the guys I knew who played Frank over the years were straight, despite their impulse to don the bustier. Go figure.

So another important lesson that I picked up doing this show was: Being in the Rocky Horror show did
n’
t make you gay. Dressing up in wome
n’
s clothing did
n’
t make you gay. Playing Frank did
n’
t make you gay.

Having sex with another guy?
That
made you gay.

Ron returned to the show quicker than I would have thought possible after everything that I had heard about his injuries. When he showed up at the theater ready to resume his Brad duties after only a few weeks, there was much fanfare and tossing of confetti and the usual ball-busting about having gotten into the smash-up in the first place.

But it was actually pretty gentle, as ball-busting goes, and the cas
t’
s restraint was due in part to the fact that the accident had left him with some pretty serious scars along the right side of his neck and up behind the ear. He wore his hair long, which helped, but there was no mistaking that h
e’
d obviously been in a very serious wreck.

Do
n’
t get me wrong: He remained an unstoppable lady-killing machine, and now he had battle scars to show off, which does
n’
t exactly hurt.

Doc had been gone from the show the entire time Ron was recuperating and I had
n’
t really connected these two events until two weeks after the both of them had disappeared. When I finally asked after Doc, I was informed that he was more than just a guy working the crew. He was Ro
n’
s foster father.

When I learned this, a lot of pieces fell into place: Do
c’
s presence at the show had always seemed a bit strange, but I now understood why an old guy like him would hang around the Rocky cast. He was looking after Ron.

And when I finally put it all together, I was also able to grasp, a bit more accurately anyway, why Ron was such a fruitcake.

Up until this time, I did
n’
t really know Ron all that well. He was one of the principals, of course, which carried a certain mystique for us lowly Transylvanians, so I had kept my distance for that reason. But Ron was also, by far, the wildest cast member of the bunch. There was
n’
t anything he would
n’
t do on a dare, no girl he would not approach, no man or woman in the cast he would
n’
t clamp into his arms and afflict a ghastly hickey upon, no stunt or physical challenge he would reject as being too risky or dangerous. He was absolutely fearless.

Ron was also the only Rocky cast member who seemed to have
carte blanche
about breaking character on stage. If he was in the Dr. Scott/Frank scene and got nailed with a roll of toilet paper (an occupational hazard common to Brads,
I’
m sure), Ron would drop his Brad impersonation like a hot rock, scoop up the toilet paper and furiously hurl it back into the crowd. Or if something unexpected or funny happened on stage, Ron would
n’
t even attempt to keep from breaking up. H
e’
d just burst out laughing and recover his composure in his own good time. He embodied a strain of the Rocky ethos that said, “Hey, do
n’
t take yourself too seriously. This is supposed to be fun.”

And I despised it.

To me, sticking as close as possible to the character and
never
losing your concentration was paramount to all other concerns. Your job—your
only
job—was to try to embody whatever actor you were supposed to be mimicking on the screen and tha
t’
s it. If you ca
n’
t do that much? You do
n’
t belong on the stage.

The trouble was, when Ron was actually concentrating, really trying, there was no Brad like him. He was
exact
. He was precise. He had it down cold. He
was
Brad. And then, in the blink of an eye, Brad would disappear. For a few fleeting seconds, it was like Ron did
n’
t care at all. He was just this kid on stage, goofing around. Then, just as suddenly...BAM. H
e’
s back in it. H
e’
s 100 percent Brad. And yo
u’
d never guess he dropped the persona even for a moment.

It was maddening to watch. All that talent going to waste because the guy had no control.

Once I got a handle on his background, though, it seemed to bring everything into focus. Foster kid, did
n’
t know his folks probably, living this tough life, so he escapes to Rocky. I was putting on my Sigmund Freud hat and really enjoying picking apart Ro
n’
s psyche from afar.

I did
n’
t know him, I told myself. But, on some level, I
knew
him.

Pretty nauseating, huh?

Anyway, yo
u’
d think that flying through a windshield and almost dying in the middle of the road—as Ron had—would mellow a guy out, would
n’
t you? Not him. He was just as wild, just as freakishly daring as he had been before the accident. He seemed to want to assure everyone that the crash had
n’
t caused him to lose a step. Ron was back and he was better than ever.

This became apparent that weekend, when I finally attended my first Orphanage party where Ron was in attendance.

But before we get to that, you have to know about Storme.

It occurs to me, at this juncture, that
I’
ve introduced a lot of folks so far and that perhaps a Mouseketeer roll-call might be in order. Le
t’
s refresh our browsers, shall we?

Cast Manager, Donny. Lived with Russ in the Orphanage.

Main characters in the Rocky show at this time: Ron as Brad, Iris as Janet, Mark as Frank, Andrea as Magenta, Sunday as Columbia, Kenny as Riff Raff, Billy as Rocky, Tony as the Criminologist and Donny as Eddie and Dr. Scott.

Transylvanians: me, Steve, Felicia, Tracey, Jimmy, Cheryl, a few others whose names have been lost in the mists of time, and...Storme.

Storme is best described, I believe, as the female version of Ron, but without all the fucking. She was, without question, the least-inhibited person I had ever known. There was no filter whatsoever between what occurred in her head and what came out of her mouth. If it popped into her cerebral cortex, it shot out of her face. Often, I am sure, simultaneously. The words “shame” and “embarrassment” were, at some point, explained carefully to Storme, but the concepts must have puzzled her greatly because she suffered from neither of these ailments.

This made Storme particularly suited to replace Jackie as the person who wandered out into the audience during the pre-show and asked for money from the patrons. Her
e’
s why:

You know that feeling you get when you find yourself in a situation where you have no choice but to approach a complete stranger and ask them for assistance? Your car breaks down or you get lost and have to ask for directions, and you get that little tickle of nervousness or shyness that hits you right before you start speaking to someone yo
u’
ve never met before?