Ann Bauer [2]In the early 1980s, when I was 16, my friend, Martha, picked me up at 11 p.m. in her father’s enormous Buick, and we drove from our neighborhood in Minnetonka to the Uptown Theater [3] for the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show [4].

I was brought up on an entertainment diet of The Carpenters [7], The Waltons [8], and films like The Goodbye Girl [9]. And Rocky Horror was like nothing I’d ever seen: its black-lipsticked hero, wearing dominatrix garb and wielding an ax; colorfully-dressed Munchkin-like people doing the “Time Warp”; a bizarrely compelling hook-nosed butler who had an unorthodox relationship with his sister, the wild-haired maid.

Then there was the audience: kids chanting lines along with the characters and throwing things at the screen. Rice, toilet paper, toast. I didn’t remember much about the storyline (in fact, when I saw the film again, recently, I was amazed by its sci-fi ending); what made an impression was the experience. Raucous and sexually-charged, yet strangely wholesome.

That’s why, when my not-quite-13-year-old daughter came home from a sleepover last summer, proclaiming that she’d watched Rocky Horror twice and it was her new favorite film, I didn’t fret. Despite its themes of party sex, incest, murder, and cultishness, I believed it was pretty harmless. I’d known interesting people over the years who hadn’t fit in anywhere else but found a home in one Rocky troupe or another. I was all for it.

As an English professor, I realized Rocky Horror was informed by a wide range of classics: it’s a sexually-charged homage to Frankenstein [10], with a healthy dose of The Fall of the House of Usher [11], and a little bit of Hansel and Gretel [12] thrown in. This is the story of two naïve kids who fall in love, then travel out into the world and become both wise and jaded. The protagonist, Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter, is sympathetic but deeply flawed — a character that turns from sinister to childlike but appears, in his twisted little heart, simply to want everyone who visits his castle to disrobe, dance, and have a good time. What’s so wrong with that?

Nothing, I decided. . . .even for my adolescent. And it struck me, too, how remarkable it was that Rocky Horror — which was made when I was seven — remains relevant today. The film has, indeed, time-warped.

I thought it would be interesting to sit down with an expert to find out why.

We meet at the Longfellow Grill at 9:30 on a rainy Saturday night. I’m in straight-leg jeans and a purple blouse. She’s wearing a leather corset, fishnet stockings, and four-inch heels. We start by talking about regular life.

Five days a week, Diana McCleery drives a school bus in the mornings and afternoons, spending the hours in between with her three-and-a-half-year-old, Morgan. She loves being a mom, and she’s grateful for the job that allows her so much time to parent. It’s only on weekends that she leaves her husband home with Morgan and goes to the Riverview Theater [13] in Southeast Minneapolis, where she simulates sex on stage.

For the past couple years, McCleery has served as the director of Transvestite Soup [14], a troupe of fifteen local volunteers that puts on a live performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show while the 1975 cult classic film screens behind them. And she’s well qualified for the job. In addition to holding a psychology degree from the University of Memphis [15], the forty-one-year-old witch (McCleery is a third-degree leader in the Blue Star [16] tradition of Wicca [17]) has been performing in live renditions of Rocky Horror—here and in Tennessee—since 1990.

“I went to Rocky every so often in college,” she says. “Then one day my boyfriend and I were like, ‘Let’s dress up and get crazy.’ So I wore my sexiest underwear, and he put a leash on me. I found out I enjoy performing, and I love this movie. In fact, the more I see Rocky, the more I want to get up on stage and show it to people.”

McCleery points out that there are subtle, heartfelt relationships between the characters, such as Riff-Raff and Dr. Frank-N-Furter, which casual viewers often miss.

“Frank is beautiful, and Riff-Raff is ugly; Riff-Raff has no one but Magenta, while everyone adores Frank.” She ticks these things off on her long fingers. “And there’s a hint that Riff is in love with Frank-N-Furter. At the end, when he kills Frank, Magenta says, ‘I thought you liked him,’ and Riff answers, ‘But he never liked me.’ If you look closely, he has a little tear in his eye.”

Her college boyfriend didn’t enjoy their Rocky experience, she admits. As McCleery grew increasingly uninhibited, wearing less clothing for performances and experimenting with different roles, he became uncomfortable. She soon broke up with him and immersed herself fully in the show.

Luckily, her husband, Rob, an administrative assistant at Wells Fargo [18] whom she met long after starting with Rocky, is a big fan. Before their daughter was born, he attended nearly all her shows.

For McCleery, dinner is gorgonzola cheese fritters: crisp little pucks made of sweet corn and gorgonzola that are battered and deep-fried, served with an olive-green puddle of chimichurri. She eats daintily and asks for a box to take half her fritters home for after the show.

I order a goat-cheese chicken sandwich, which sounds wonderful—sherried arugula, roasted tomatoes, and tarragon goat cheese—but is, in fact, bland and bready. There’s not enough creaminess to make up for the thick, crumbly ciabatta, and the chicken tastes old. The side order of sweet potato fries, however, is exquisite: hot, meaty, perfectly spiced, and accompanied by a peanut pesto aioli so good I could eat it over ice cream.

While we eat, McCleery explains what it means to be a Rocky person.

“When you see the film for the first time, if you’re one of us, you recognize yourself,” she says. “You say to yourself, ‘I’m a part of that tribe.’ Rocky people look at that screen and see other people who are pushing the boundaries and pushing their inhibitions and pushing the realm of naughty. They feel a commonality, a bond.”

Apparently, real Rocky people are rare. Transvestite Soup is willing to audition hopefuls whenever they want. But more than half of those who request auditions never show up. And of those who do, few understand what it means to be a part of Rocky.

You have to know what’s happening on screen even when your back is to it, McCleery says. And you have to be versatile: She, for instance, is on her way tonight to play Frank-N-Furter—as she has for the past several months—though she began her Rocky career as Magenta; she also played Janet in bra and panties throughout nine months of pregnancy.

We talk about Richard O’Brien [21], the English stage actor who wrote the musical stage play The Rocky Horror Show [22], adapted it for screen as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and played Riff-Raff, first on stage and then in the film version. She calls him a “brilliant and multi-faceted” author and performer, saying that he’s never been properly recognized by the theater world for his contributions.

McCleery leaves at eleven o’clock in order to change in time for the midnight screening. The outfit she wore to dinner is “street legal,” she tells me, whereas her costume for the show definitely is not.

“It’s hard to be shocking at Rocky these days,” McCleery tells me in parting. “So we have to be a lot edgier than the movie itself.”

We take separate cars to the Riverview. I’m there by 11:15, part of the crowd milling out front. There’s a group of guys playing hackey-sack, several women wearing feather boas, and a young person walking around with a tube of red lipstick, painting V’s on people’s foreheads.

“You aren’t a. . . .virgin, are you?” the lipstick-wielder asks. It’s amazing how a person can be utterly beautiful — dreadlocks, eyeliner, tight jeans over fishnet stockings — without giving off a single, solid clue as to their gender. This, I think happily, is what Rocky Horror is all about.

I’m one of only three people who isn’t smoking, but for once, this doesn’t bother me. The rain has cleared. The night is fresh and cool.

Inside the theater, however, things are a bit stuffy. The cast mills in and out of restrooms (again, with little regard to gender), putting on their costumes. McCleery adds a good half-inch of white makeup and a black, curly wig. A delicate young man slips into a sequined suit and becomes the siren, Columbia. A luscious, zaftig Magenta walks by. There’s a kid with a ducktail haircut and a leather jacket who’s a dead ringer for Meatloaf — 25 years ago.

I enter the auditorium, which was not cleaned after the previous film (or, perhaps, the previous ten films). The floor is sticky, and the air is musty, full of spores. It’s 12:20 before the cast climbs onto the stage. And even then, it’s only for the pre-show.

McCleery, dressed now in a leather thong and vest, takes the microphone and begins. Gone is the articulate woman I dined with. She entreats everyone to move up to the front, and when we don’t, she starts the chorus of screaming: “Fuck you back row!” “Fuck you front row!” “We fucked you first!”

Periodically, she turns, leans over, and shows every inch of her butt cheeks to the crowd.

This goes on until a middle-aged woman with long gray hair boards the stage. McCleery introduces her as “Rocky Mom,” and her role, it seems, is to take the virgins (those who have never been to a live performance before) into her care. Everyone bearing a red V is called to the front and made to repeat the following pledge:

I, virgin scum
Pledge allegiance to the Lips
Of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
And to the decadence
For which it stands.
One Movie
Under Richard O'Brien
With sensual daydreams
And erotic nightmares
for all.
So fuck me!

Afterward, most of the virgins are dispatched, but four or them — college-age kids— are kept on stage.

“We’re going to have a contest!” McCleery calls out. “It’s time to see who can show us the best orgasm!”

I am uncertain what she means. At least, I hope I am. I have students around the ages of those children on the stage. If my worst suspicion is true, I want to run up and say, “No, please don’t! This is nothing to be taken so lightly — I don’t care how drunk you are.”

Yet, I sit and watch, as horrified and mesmerized as if I were witnessing a hanging, while the “virgins,” each in turn, go through the shivering, hip-thrusting motions of simulating an orgasm on stage. The girl who wins the contest engages in a performance so long and so full of moaning and shrieks, it’s not clear whether she’s acting or not.

And this is where my internal monologue starts. Am I a prude? Have I grown that old? What has happened to me? Shouldn’t I be having a good time?

In fact, I am not. I’m wretched. I feel irrationally trapped, completely alienated by these loud and perpetually profane goings-on, miles from home. It’ll be better when the movie starts, I think. And it is, for a couple minutes.

The lips come on and begin singing, “Science Fiction/Double Feature.” It’s a great song, and I actually enjoy a bar or two. Then a woman comes out on stage. She is wearing a coat and holding a whip. The boy who’s playing Columbia follows her and kneels. She begins to flog him.

Around mid-song, she tears off her coat. Underneath, she’s wearing a leather bra and underwear. The crowd goes wild. (This, I will discover later, is Trixie — a character from O’Brien’s original play who did not make it into the movie.)

When the film does start, the people playing Brad and Janet appear onstage. Finally, something I recognize. This Janet has nothing in common with Susan Sarandon; but Brad is eerily like a young Barry Bostwick. I settle back in my seat; I start to watch. There’s a large blond man behind me, breathing a heavy, steady Budweiser odor. But I’m able to ignore him — mostly — until he begins to yell.

“Slut!” he bellows when Janet walks across the screen/stage. He has a voice like a foghorn. “Slut, slut, slut. Fucking WHORE!”

That’s when I make a decision. Rocky fans have a right to experience this movie any way they choose. But I just don’t hang out with people who talk about women that way, real or imaginary. So I get up and leave.

Outside, the air is cool. I breathe, incredibly relieved. I turn to walk toward my car.

That’s when I notice the small person hunched down in front of the theater, smoking a clove cigarette — the luminous transgender kid who was putting V’s on foreheads earlier. I stop to say good night and meet two quiet eyes. Then I don’t know what else to say, so I simply nod and move on.