My Life in the Frank-N-Furter Cult: The Hangover Hour Report, #3

By David Macpherson

Don't ask Dave how many times he has seen Rocky Horror Picture Show. He doesn't remember. He does remember enough of his time seeing the movie to write about it. This not THE Rocky Horror story. It is only a Rocky Horror Story.

 

The Hangover Hour Report is a new journal where each issue allows an writer to create whatever they want. The one rule is that it must be completed in 72 hours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Macpherson
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393605751

Book preview

One

Everyone plays with their number. No one is accurate when they are asked what their number is. How old are you? How many partners have you had? How many hours did you study for this test?

How many times have we fancied up the total? We think the real number is never as good for our image as one we can fabricate. 50 becomes 41 becomes 39. 4 becomes 7 becomes 11 becomes so many I can’t remember. Numbers are flexible.

Numbers make us seem more dedicated. Numbers give you an impression of how cool, how mad, how focused we are. Got to have the right number for the person we want to be.

D’Isreali said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Numbers are not to be trusted. Hell, this quote can’t be trusted. D’Istreali probably wasn’t the one to say it. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. It doesn’t mean that numbers lie all the time.  Who’s D’Isreali anyway? What role did he play in the floor show?

When I tell about my time with Rocky Horror, I am aware of the lies and exaggerations. I have lied about my amount of participation. About how much it means to me in my life. But there is nothing that Rocky Horror people lie about more than their number.

How many times have you gone to Rocky Horror Picture Show?

This was a big deal. People would make announcements of their anniversaries. This is Kendra’s 100th showing of Rocky Horror. And everyone clapped and cheered and wondered when they would get to 100 showings and imagine the applause they would receive. For what? For seeing a movie a lot of times?

There was a guy who was part of the front row crowd when we went to Rocky Horror at Pearl River Theater. He hung out with us seventeen year old kids but he was older. He was well into his twenties. He didn’t have most of his teeth. He smelled of dirty clothes and old cigarettes. He was loud and pushy, so he kind of ran the front row.

I noticed he was off a lot with his numbers. In the summer of 1986 he had at least three anniversaries. In the beginning he told us this was 100th showing of Rocky. Somewhere in August, he was at 150 viewings. Then, when I got back from school in October, he was at his 200th. The movie played only twice a week. Midnight on Friday and Saturdays. The math didn’t work.

But who gives a fuck about the math? He told us his number and we believed it. We cheered. We were in awe at his dedication. He was making it work. He was annoying and I didn’t like him, but I still wished I could be that important to the Rocky scene.

I spent a lot of my time trying to keep my number straight. For a hot second, I even wrote down the dates of my attendance in a notebook dedicated solely to this endeavor. That didn’t last. It became one of those wasted notebooks that only had one or two pages written on. The rest of the pages were blank. So much unrecorded history. I wasn’t good at tracking my homework and my friend’s phone numbers. There was not a chance in hell I was going to preserve my life with Rocky Horror.

Even this. This is just a gaze backwards through a lot of mist and blackout pauses.

If you pressed me, and I rather you didn’t, I will say that i