Cast of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" – "Time Warp" (1975)

But it’s the pelvic thrust

That really drives you insane!

There’s a story going around about a certain young lawyer and several friends of his who were regulars at the midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Washington, DC in the summer of ’78.  

The young lawyer and his pals attended the showing in costume and joined in with the other Rocky Horror fanatics in the audience who brought props, shouted out snappy comebacks to the movie's lines, and sang along to the movie’s wonderful soundtrack.

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To this day, the young lawyer vividly remembers the most amazing example of audience participation he ever saw at a midnight Rocky Horror showing.  It came during the scene where Eddie – an ex-delivery boy whose brain was partially removed by Dr. Frank N. Furter for use in his scientific experiments – rides a motorcycle out of the large deep freeze where Frank N. Furter is keeping him.

As Eddie roared out of the freezer on his bike, someone rode a real motorcycle up the movie theatre’s center aisle.  The noise it generated in that small enclosed space was absolutely deafening, and the vibrations it produced were such that you felt like you were experiencing an earthquake.  

Meat Loaf as “Eddie”

[NOTE: Eddie was portrayed by Marvin Lee Aday – you know him as “Meat Loaf.”  Sadly, Meat Loaf  died recently at age 74.  His date of death was January 20, which just so happened to be ONE YEAR TO THE DAY after Joe Biden’s inauguration.  (Just sayin’.)]

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The young lawyer was housesitting that summer for a wealthy old Washington couple who were spending July and August at their vacation home in Maine.  He decided to host a big bash in his temporary abode on the Saturday night before the couple were due to return to their permanent quarters.

He had only moved to Washington a few months earlier, so the young lawyer didn’t have a lot of friends.  But his friends told their friends about the party, and his friends’ girlfriends told their friends, and the girlfriends’ friends told their friends – you know how that goes.

The party got a little out of control.  For example, the young lawyer discovered a couple of frozen ducks that the homeowner – an avid hunter – had brought down the previous fall and stored in an ancient chest freezer in his basement.  It turns out that frozen ducks make surprisingly effective bowling balls.  (If you ever have access to a couple, just set up ten large plastic tumblers and have a go at them and you’ll see what I mean.)

But the highlight of the evening came when the young lawyer instructed a friend to cue up the Rocky Horror soundtrack, then slipped upstairs to the master bedroom and donned a pair of black granny panties and a black 40D bra belonging to the lady of the house.

According to the story, he then made a grand re-entrance into the party, sliding down the staircase banister just as Tim Curry belted out “I’m just a sweet transvestite . . . from Transsexual, Transylvania!”

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Shortly after his show-stopping performance, the young lawyer was pulled aside by a law-school friend, who said that he intended to desert the young lady he had brought at the party and go home by himself.  (It seems the friend was vacating the apartment he had rented for the summer and heading back to school the next day, and that his date had refused to help him clean it up before he left – so he had decided to dump her *ss and let her find her own ride home.)

The friend then handed the young lawyer a wedding invitation.  It seems that he was planning to marry his college girlfriend a month later.

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The other homeowners on the quiet suburban cul-de-sac where the young lawyer was housesitting had never seen quite so many trash cans and plastic garbage bags full of empty beer cans and bottles as they saw outside his summer quarters the morning after the party.

The young lawyer suspected those neighbors told the couple he was housesitting for about those trash cans and garbage bags . . . not to mention the loud music that had filled the sweet summer air that Saturday night . . . and the dozens of cars belonging to the partygoers that were parked willy-nilly on the cul-de-sac until the wee hours.

The young lawyer was not invited back to housesit the next summer . . . and that’s the end of our story.   

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2 or 3 lines has chosen not to induct “Sweet Transvestite” into the 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME despite that song’s significant role in the story that was just told.  Instead, “Time Warp” – the song that precedes it on the movie soundtrack – has been chosen for that honor.

That’s in part because it’s a better song.  Also because the young lawyer – who is, lo these many years later, still young at heart if not actually young – can still dance the “Time Warp” beautifully.

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Click here to listen to “Time Warp,” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack.

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon: