Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

Ophelia was swishing down the aisle like it was a red carpet, with another wisp of a girl closely following.

'I’m here!' Ophelia sang with a flourish. 'Start the show!'

'I thought you had a date with a waiter,' said Abby, looking suspiciously at Ophelia’s companion.

'Make room next to the birthday girl!' said Ophelia, in what was clearly some kind of coded reference to Sejal. Doug scowled but moved two seats down, and was reassured when Sejal moved down as well. Now she had Ophelia on her right, and the new girl between Ophelia and Cat. Cat tried to introduce herself but was met with stony silence.

'All right, you lucky bastards!' shouted a cast member. She looked out of place next to the decadently costumed actors around her. If anything, she was dressed for tennis. 'You’re about to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show! Do you feel lucky?'

The audience shouted, 'YOU’RE LUCKY, HE’S LUCKY, I’M LUCKY, THE BANNISTER’S LUCKY!'

'Jesus,' muttered Doug. 'What the hell was that?'

'I can see from the frightened and bewildered faces out there that we have some virgins here tonight!' said the girl. 'Virgins stand up!'

Doug hadn’t planned to volunteer any information, but Ophelia took to loudly outing all the first timers in their group, so when Sejal stood, Doug did, too. Two cast members stalked the center aisle and examined the crowd like they were selecting a lobster.

'Ooh, you’re cute,' said a top-hatted girl to Adam as she took his hand. 'You’re coming with me.'

A boy wearing nothing but gold hot pants motioned to Sejal. 'I like the looks of you, honey. Come down here.'

'You don’t have to,' said Doug to Sejal, but she was already leaving.

Adam and Sejal were made to stand side by side and face the audience. They were loudly married by a tall boy who wore a nun’s habit over his garter belt and corset. The recitation was much like a regular wedding service but with a greater emphasis on ass play than Doug thought was customary.

'Now then,' the nun boy purred, 'do you promise to love, bone her, and fellate — whoops! I mean love, honor, and obey, as long as you both shall live?'

Sejal and Adam each muttered their I dos.

'You may lick the bride!'

Most of the audience showered the theater with rice, which they’d apparently brought from home. Adam and Sejal looked at each other with brittle grins, until Sejal presented her forehead and Adam gave it a kiss.

The rest of the virgins were marked with lipstick V’s and had to give the cast pantomime blow jobs.

When everyone was seated again, the movie started. A faceless red mouth appeared, and the theatergoers shouted, 'LET THERE BE LIPS!' The lips sang, the credits played, then the first scene opened on a little church. On the screen, and among the live actors down below, there was another wedding scene. More rice was thrown. The hero of the story, Brad, proposed to the heroine, Janet. Every few seconds the crowd shouted something funny, offensive, or offensively funny. Doug couldn’t make it all out, but the word 'asshole' cropped up a lot.

Doug turned to Sejal, tried to smile at her in a wow, what a show, who could doubt that we two are the only sane actors on this crazy stage called life sort of way. But her eyes were fixed on the screen.

There was a lot of singing. Even now Brad and Janet approached a castle in the rain, singing hopefully about their prospects there. The theatergoers waved flashlights, covered their heads with newspapers, and fired squirt guns into the air. Ophelia shrieked, though she arguably should have seen this coming. Her friend hid under her jacket. Sejal giggled, but Doug turned to glare at some kids he didn’t know a couple rows behind him. He was certain they were shooting their pistols directly at the back of his neck. His turned head earned him a squirt right in the glasses.

He whispered, 'Asshole.' Exactly at the same time the rest of the theater shouted it, as it turned out.

Sejal turned her head and smiled at him. Had she heard? He tried to look like he was having a good time. In truth, the evening was giving him the same feeling of anxious dread he got whenever he passed a couple of guys tossing a football around, or a Frisbee. You never knew if it would suddenly come your way, and you’d have to show that you couldn’t catch or, should you somehow manage to catch it, throw. This theater was swarming with existential Frisbees.

But then everyone was made to stand and do a dance called the time warp, a dance that was thoughtfully described on-screen, and Doug began to wonder if he might be enjoying himself after all. There was a sweet cloud of togetherness that is perhaps inevitable when a hundred people are pelvic thrusting at the same time.

'They should do this at the United Nations,' Doug shouted to Sejal. 'World peace!' And she laughed and nodded, because in that moment she knew exactly what he was talking about.

The drag queen mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter joined the scene, a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania.

'Is that Tim Curry?' Sejal whispered to Ophelia. Then, to Doug, 'That’s Tim Curry!'

Tim Curry looked uncomfortably like Doug’s rabbi, but in heels and lingerie. Like Rabbi Bartash was the new Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. Doug wanted to say this out loud, but it was a comic book joke, so Jay would probably be the only one to get it. Maybe Adam. Doug’s blood rose when he thought of Adam. Now that he was fake married to Sejal he better not get any ideas.

By the time Doug took notice of the movie again the location had changed. Brad and Janet were in white bathrobes. Tim Curry was wearing a green smock and pearls.

'I think my mom has that dress,' said Doug. Sejal stifled a laugh. 'I think my mom and Marge Simpson and Tim Curry all shop at the same store.'

Now Sejal really laughed, and Ophelia and Cat, too. A boy behind them shushed.

'God, look at that tux with all the turquoise,' Doug said, a little louder. 'I’m totally wearing that to prom.'

This last comment was somewhat drowned out by the snapping of a dozen rubber gloves all around them, but Sejal heard it. Ophelia leaned in and asked Sejal to repeat it, and after she did Ophelia passed it down the row.

On the screen Dr. Frank-N-Furter revealed his creation, an artificial man in a tank. He ordered switches to be thrown and cranks to be turned, and called down a red metal apparatus from the ceiling, hung with multicolored nozzles. The doctor tapped each, and they ran with a rainbow of liquids.

'It’s like he’s milking a gay cow,' said Doug.

Everyone laughed. A boy behind them, maybe the same one, shushed him again. Another said, 'If you’re not going to say the real lines, shut up.'

Abby turned and whispered, 'There’s no right or wrong thing to say. You shut up.'

A tense silence followed, or what passed for a tense silence in an auditorium full of people shouting, 'SLUT.'

In the movie, the artificial man was revealed to be a muscular golden boy under his bandages. Dr. Frank- N-Furter swooned. The boys behind Doug weren’t shouting lines with the theater crowd anymore. They were reading from an entirely different script.

'If he doesn’t know the talk back, he should be quiet and learn,' said one of them.

'He should stick to chess club,' said another. 'He should stay home and play on his computer.'

'He should stay home and play with himself.'

Sejal turned to face the boys. Doug stole a glance. She didn’t look angry. She just looked naive to him, even disappointed. Innocent.

'You are not being polite,' she said.

'Why should I be?' a boy answered. 'I don’t know you.'

'That is the point.'

'Turn around and watch the movie, goth girl.'

'Yeah, goth girl. Aren’t you a little brown for a goth, Kama Sutra?'