Steven Michael Carr - It's Just a Jump to the Left

 

When it came to Shaina and I, we weren't just weird, we were evangelical Jesus freak weird. [audience laughter] We were equally obsessed with Wuthering Heights and the Gospel according to Mark, okay? You see, we had heard about midnight movies before, but we'd never actually been to one. We were curious to get outside of our little bubble of Shepherdsville, Kentucky. And so, that is how two conservative Christian teenagers found themselves at 11:50 PM on a random Saturday at their first midnight viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. [audience cheers and applause]

 

Now, when we go into theater, our jaws drop to the floor, [audience chuckles] because every single person, man and woman, are covered head toe from full makeup, fishnets, high heels, honey. The first thing I think in my brain is, "Mm, these people need Jesus." [audience laughter] Yes. While we are picking our jaws up off the floor, there is this woman with short red hair in a fully sequined outfit who tap dances her way on over to us. And you know what she does? She pulls a little red tube of lipstick out of her bra. It's like she can smell the discomfort oozing out of our pores. [audience chuckles] She looks at us and she smiles and she says, "First time?" [audience laughter] We nod in absolute terror, mind you. 

 

Before we know what she's doing, she's put these little red V’s on our cheeks with the lipstick, [audience chuckles] and she's ushering us into theater. There's all these people in fishnets and pearls behind us pushing in to get around, right? Now, the next few things happen in a very quick succession, so keep up if you can. [audience chuckles] There is this tall man with the largest heels, the highest heels I have ever seen, who comes to the front where the screen is, there's this little stage, and he says, "Bring up the virgins." [audience laughter] We look around. The crowd begins to push us out into the aisleways. And the next thing we know, we're up on the stage. 

 

And for the next two minutes, this man with the heels straps a plastic basketball hoop to my head and forces Shaina to try to shoot as many baskets as she can [audience laughter] with a plastic basketball onto my head. I am mortified, okay? But I don't have very long to be mortified, because the lights all go out, we're plunged into darkness, and the next thing I know-- There is this music video playing on the screen, and it's this song I have never heard of before, and it's called I Do the Rock, right?

 

These people all start running in this giant stampede in a circle around the theater. It's like a mosh pit, you know? The high-heeled man pushes Shaina and I into this throng of people, and we have no choice but to run, so that we don't get stampeded on, you know, crushed beneath their feet. When the movie finally starts, there's these shadow actors that are on the stage performing the whole thing and lip syncing it while it's happening. We got all the cast of characters. We've got the main stuffy characters, right, Brad and Janet. We've got the high heeled man who is obviously Dr. Frank-N-Furter. 

 

The audience begins shouting all of these things at the screen, things that I will not repeat on this stage unless I want to get canceled. [audience chuckles] At some point in the evening, Shaina and I start doing this dance called the Time Warp. [audience chuckles] By the time we get to the entrance song of Tim Curry's Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and he says, "I see you shiver with anticip--" 

 

Unison: [00:14:35] -pation] 

 

Steven: [00:14:38] Everyone in the crowd is saying, "Say it, say it" I find myself shouting, "Say it, say it" And when he finally says, "--pation," we all jump and we cheer. And something clicks in my brain and I begin to relax a little bit. By the time this whole story is over on the screen, and Brad and Janet emerge from this experience, new and sex positive and burlesque performing freaks, I realized that in the metaphor of the movie and what's taking place, Shaina and I are Brad and Janet. [audience laughter]

 

You see, this was my first time brushing up against queerness. It was the first time that I saw sex portrayed not as this stuffy, serious thing from my evangelical background, but something that really wasn't a big deal. It could be freeing. And in fact, could be funny. In this room with all these people, some of them my age, some of them a lot older than me, people who were just reveling in the ridiculousness of it all and being absolutely stupid together, I thought for the first time in my lonely, closeted Southern Baptist life, I found my people. [audience laughter] I found my people. [audience applause] 

 

“Don't dream it, be it” is the thing that the cast says to the audience. I really took that in. And for the next four years, once a month, Shaina and I would go to the midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Baxter Avenue Theater, because it was church for us. [audience chuckles] Now, there are people in this day and age, the youngins, right, who would say that there might be some problematic things about The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Things like the consent of the characters or dated terminology. 

 

But for me, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was the place that I got to meet weirdos. They took all those things that I thought I hated about myself, and they wore them like first prize ribbons from the Kentucky State Fair. [audience chuckles] The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the place that I learned to love myself. And with a little bit of lipstick and a lot of eyeshadow and that inspirational refrain of “Don't dream it, be it”, I hope that tonight you can also do the same. Thank you.