If you are of a certain age that had your… how do I put this… sexual and gender awakening in the ’ 70s, you were exposed to a different set of rules.
Most of us being part of the more arty and sensitive crowd in the very openly sexual era, there was a lot of weird stuff going on. Some, grossly so. See rockstar pedophiles that nobody blinked twice at with some 14-year-old on his arm.
In 1978, on the cusp of 15, I convinced my very religious friend group to attend The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I knew it was something I wanted to go to, but once Dr. Frank N. Furter sang of creating his perfect man, my friends were appalled, but I was having a ball.
By the time I was 16, I had the good fortune of having local theater where the 12:00 regulars remembered us less often players. It was at the pageant that had become the midnight Friday and Saturday RHPS screenings where I figured out how I was.
A weirdo.
And that was okay.
Even some of the cool kids were there. Well, the cool girls, anyway. We high school kids had an early version of what stays in Vegas on Monday morning at the HS two blocks away. Other than knowing looks in the hall, not a word was spoken. Especially from the cool girls. And that often had to do with Reedies trolling for high school girls.
That was a formative memory, and I was later in life blessed to thank Tim Curry, Meat Loaf, and Barry Bostwick. They had made my country mouse turned city mouse teenage angst bearable.
I started writing this when Tim Curry passed. He stayed authentic just like Meat Loaf, and that is one other thing I can take to heart.
I’m still a weirdo. And it wouldn’t be authentic if I were anything but.
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