Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [52]
Dora Arnold, Justin Nagy, the ringleader Starr Pauley (a pseudonym), and a changing cast of others operated as a loose-knit fraternity of jesters, affecting in their dress and various capers the attitude of exaggerated and campy excess that lay at the heart of Rocky Horror. It was innocent and antic, yet the aggregation provided a sense of belonging for these teenagers who could not or would not fit the suburban cookie-cutter mold. They were fat or scrawny, dorky, unathletic nonscholars, and they had zits. “These were the first people I found to whom it didn’t matter what you looked like. They’d still hug you,” recollected Dora recently. At the time she was pudgy and unflatteringly plain.
Rather than live stifled undercover lives, they chose the reverse strategy. They would do anything to get attention. Justin would dye his hair green or red, make it big on top, with a duck’s ass in back. They’d wear rhinestones on their clothes, most of them period pieces bought at Goodwill or thrift shops. They favored funky ties from the 1960s and hideous hounds-tooth jackets. At other times they’d choose to dress like the B-52’s, a hot rock band of the period.
They competed to come up with the wildest ideas: go cruise and chat with the prostitutes in Oakland, dress up as Laverne and Shirley, chase old men in supermarkets, drive backward through Jack in the Box, or simply go to San Francisco and try to sneak into the bars without ID.
And on weekends there was the main event, Rocky Horror. The midnight showing in Walnut Creek (and simultaneously around the country) of this musical send-up of old horror films had become a national cult event. The group would make a grand entrance decked out in the Rocky costume of the week, to the standing applause of the audience. Here they enjoyed a kind of freak celebrity that compensated for things like never making the cheerleading squad at school. Any regrets they may have had about those times were submerged in their efforts to be cool, to consider themselves an elite clique that only the deserving and lucky got to join.
Starr, who had an unreciprocated crush on Bobby, introduced him to the group. Bobby glommed on to the band of zanies like a voyeur, a fascinated observer who admired their abandon but couldn’t bring himself to fully participate. He traveled with them, dipping cautiously into their adventures like a wader in an icy lake.
They found Bobby shy and charming. With his newly sculpted physique and angelic face he was easily the most physically imposing member of the group. Justin, himself tall and blond and not at all bad looking, fell silently in love with Bobby (though fearful of stirring Starr’s enmity). Bobby in turn seemed fascinated by his new friends’ chutzpah. They sauntered audaciously down the street virtually daring anyone to object to their strange looks and behavior. (Some did object; several of the group were bashed by local rednecks over a period of time.)
Like a kid at Christmastime, Bobby delighted in their spontaneity and theatricality. “This is rad, this is mischief,” he would exult. “This is what I heard about.” He longed to let go. Once, at Starr’s house, they opened a chest of doodads and baubles and somebody put a string of pearls around Bobby’s neck and a pearl earring on one ear.
“Oh, I hate you,” said Starr, himself a chubby. “You look good in pearls, too!” Everyone laughed, and Bobby strutted, incongruous in a formfitting Izod shirt and Gap jeans, looking great. It was a luminous moment.
Such moments were few. Dora noticed that much of the time Bobby was terribly concerned about what others thought. He would be shaken if someone gave him a snide look or a sideways glance. She tried to inspire Bobby to adopt an attitude. “If somebody doesn’t like you,” she lectured, “fuck these people. If they don’t have good taste, who cares what they think? Just move on.”
It was a radical concept. If Bobby had bought it, he might have found a pathway out. He longed to be liberated from the tyranny of external approval.
In moments of grandiosity, he didn’t care: “When