Free Confessions of a Transylvanian by Kevin Theis, Ron Fox Page A

choreography. It was more intricately detailed than that, their symmetry. There was the slight flick of the wrist here. A momentary turn of the head there. Their timing was impeccable. Watching them move together was a study in precision.
    Despite all this, they each somehow managed to maintain their own individual style throughout the entire song. The one on the right, the smaller one, had this bad-girl, dangerous thing going on (which, um, really worked on many levels). She was the more aggressive of the two, slightly sharper in her movements but, in every way, completely sensual. But for all her obvious attractions I was—for reasons I could not explain—falling madly, deeply in love with the girl on the left. The Magenta. A girl whose name I did n’ t even know.
    Her hair was impossibly curly and just rained down around her shoulders. She had a thin, aquiline nose and these secretive eyes that looked right through you. Her face, as was required of Magentas, was a deathly pale, slashed through with a bloody red mouth. And while she was deadly serious at her task, moving through her movements to accompany and accentuate the song, there was a smile playing around her lips that seemed to say, “Hey, is this fun or what?”
    I understood Donn y’ s attraction immediately. Who would n’ t want to spend the rest of their lives sitting here, drinking in this smoldering post-pubescent display of forbidden desire?
    For my part, I wanted nothing more than to stay right where I was for the whole number, but about three-quarters through the song, I felt a tug on my jacket. Steve was motioning to me to follow him, so I reluctantly scooted down the ramp and made my way to the stage-left side.
    Steve hissed at me, “ The wedding! ”
    I had completely forgotten, in my reverie, that I actually had a show to perform.
    “ Right! ” I whispered back. “ I’ m all set . Where do we go? ”
    I stumped him there. He had n’ t the slightest idea.
    We looked around and finally spotted a cluster of people gathering in the dark at the top of the ramp to our right. We thought it best to join them and sidled over. And since no one screamed, “What the fuck are you doing here?” we figured we were in the right place.
    And, you want to know something? That, in a nutshell, is exactly how a young performer learns to do the Rocky show. You get up on stage, you go where you think you should go and, unless someone says, “What the fuck are you doing here?” yo u’ re doing an excellent job.
    Apparently, we did an excellent job. Well, through the wedding scene, anyway. Steve and I stayed in our little cluster of guests and when the others on stage posed for the wedding picture, we struck a pose and smiled. When they waved to Ralph and Betty as they “drove” off, we waved, too. And when the other guests eventually wandered away, we wandered with them.
    Then…the scene was over. We had survived. We did n’ t bump into Brad or Janet or anyone else. We had n’ t engendered any harsh, urgent whispers, we had managed not to step on anyone and, best of all, we had not been invited to go fuck ourselves. Steve and I, for the first time in our lives, had performed in a scene in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”...
    …and we had not, as far as we knew, sucked at it.

    Before we move on to the rest of this evenin g’ s festivities, there is another very important thing about the Rocky experience that I feel compelled to relate and, really, there cannot be too much emphasis placed upon this aspect of the performance:
    The costumes. The costumes have to be absolutely, dead-on right.
    Now, Steve and I—like most of the people up on the stage—were dressed similarly at the top of the show. We had the Transylvanian uniform I’ ve already described: black jackets and pants, white shirts and neckties, various party hats, dark sunglasses and, of course, our buttons. Our hundreds and hundreds of buttons. But our pseudo-uniformity should have been the