On The Rocky Horror Picture Show and My Mormon Mother

Jordan Floyd

Word Count: 599

Inspiration: three lies, or so I have conceived of them, that deal with my mother and our relationship now that I am no longer Mormon

By the time my Mormon mother faced the metallic tube of red lipstick, rolling in fingers that belonged to what seemed like animate fishnet and glitter as abundant as stars, she knew she would lie. The lipstick had left a wake of V marks on the nervous foreheads of other theatergoers, who stood in line that October night at the Tower Theater in Salt Lake City to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

The V, my mother knew, meant virgin. Not in the constructed, sexual way. The V signalled one did not know the Rocky pageantry—actors becoming its characters, the dances and chants, the coalescing of story, actor, audience. The assumption the V invited, perhaps, was too much to bear.

My mother tells me about her first time seeing Rocky, almost yearly. When we have driven past the Tower Theater, or over the phone, when I’ve mentioned seeing Rocky with friends, at a bar. 

She describes how when Brad and Janet married, there was a flurry of rice that rose above the theatergoers’ heads, and that she flung bits of rice too, if a little late. 

She says after the sensual stretch of time between when Dr. Frank-n-Furter sings “antici-” and finally, with breath and flair, “-pation,” when the crowd erupted in moans, she opened her lips and joined. 

She tells me about the lie, how she affirmed to the lipstick she had seen the show. But she has never told me why, or what it meant to her that when the lipstick passed, her forehead, rendered gold under the Tower Theater’s light, was bare. 

The first time I saw Rocky, I was ten, watching t.v. with my mother. Unexpectedly, disembodied red lips grew to fill the screen. As the movie continued, I watched in horror, while my mother looked delighted. 

 “What is this,” I asked. She responded without explanation or reproach, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It felt lied to. 

As Mormons, I thought then, Rocky was not the kind of movie we watched. How could my mother, who I believed was an example of morality for me, an actor whose role I would assume as I grew older, enjoy this?

I did not watch Rocky all the way through. I went to bed, trying not to ignore those giant red lips and whatever they might say about my mother. 

Now six years an ex-Mormon, I am realizing while I have done work to shed parts of my Mormon identity I found toxic or boring, I have not looked significantly outward. I have lied about my venture beyond Mormonism’s bounds, deluding myself into thinking I altered my world only—that my mother, in particular, would remain as I had known her for those 19 years I was Mormon. 

But that, too, is a lie. Rocky says as much. 

For all Rocky does to complicate gender, sexuality, monogamy, and morality (not to mention time and space), it most strikingly for me challenges the conceptions I held of my Mormon mother. Rocky suggests there is much I cannot know about her, and much she cannot know about me, even though I want, sometimes desperately, for her to know and understand who I am as an ex-Mormon completely. 

I have begun to cling, as a result, to our mutual love of Rocky. To the scenes of our first times, how she lied to the lipstick, and I, 20 years later, did the same.

    Why did I lie? I don’t know. I kept the Pittsburgh Pirates hat I wore that night low on my forehead and watched the tube of lipstick pass.