On the way back from a middle school band trip a very long time ago, we unexpectedly stopped at Penn Square Mall for lunch. While most kids were blowing their cash on food court eats, I instead strolled over to the long-gone Camelot Records. In their always dependable cut-out bin, that’s where, on a whim, I bought the gender-bending soundtrack to The Rocky Horror Picture Show on cassette.
Even though I had never seen the film, I obsessively wore the tape out in my Walkman knock-off, methodically memorizing every near-nude number inside and out. It wasn’t even until high school when I finally rented the flick on VHS, desperately loving it but learning to keep it a dirty secret; between the religious Oklahomans that dubbed it a “perversion” and a father that told me he’d “kill me” if I ever brought a gay person into his house, for many years I had to be a closeted Frankie fan.