This show may not be suitable for incoming freshmen. Viewer discretion is advised.
I still remember my first introduction to the Hopkins community. Scrolling through the Hopkins Groups catalog during orientation week, an invitation to watch a horror movie caught my eye. I soon learned that my friends from pre-orientation, also big horror fans, had already signed up. We planned to meet up and go together.
The movie was scheduled to start at midnight.
“Is this your first time at The Rocky Horror Picture Show?” they asked at the ticket booth.
“Yes,” I said.
“Perfect, it's free your first time.” She uncapped a cherry red lipstick and drew a large “V” on my forearm.
Strange, I thought. Why did she write on my arm? And why is this a stage, not a movie theater?
Before I could answer my own questions, a Spotify playlist titled “F**k the Virgins” started blaring through the loudspeakers. The lights brightened and someone walked onto the stage.
“Are there any virgins — I mean, first-timers — in the audience? If so, please come up to the stage.”
My friends and I looked down at the “V” on our arms. Oh no. As we stepped forward, three letters floated through my mind: W. T. F.
The cast strapped a woman's bra onto each of us.
“Now, raise your dominant hand. Good. Now put it behind your back. You will use your non-dominant hand to remove the bra.” I stood there, dumbfounded. Slowly, I reached behind my back with my left hand and felt around for the clasp, fiddling stubbornly with the straps. A loud cheer erupted from the audience as the student to my right triumphantly held his in the air, like he had just won a national championship.
After the “team bonding activity,” the main show began. The film rolled and the shadow cast took its place on stage. My only remaining fear: that the next surprise would be a 1980s porno projected onto the screen. I had already mentally drafted my gravestone — “Here lies Edmund, scarred for life after mistaking Rocky Horror Picture Show for a screening of Scream 5” — when the film finally started. What followed was approximately two hours of the most gloriously unhinged cinema I have ever witnessed, punctuated by commentary from the shadow cast that I cannot fully reproduce here for reasons of both memory and decency. The film was strange. The commentary was stranger. I remember laughing until my face hurt and understanding almost nothing. The only thing funnier was imagining my parents’ reactions if they had been sitting next to me.
“What happens in Rocky Horror stays in Rocky Horror,” I said to my friends as we filed out.
I meant it as a joke. But that night became one of those stories we kept coming back to, retelling it every time we ran into each other, laughing harder each time. In the chaos of freshman year, it became an anchor. A shared experience so bizarre it could only belong to us. I've lost touch with many of them since, as we each found our own corners of Hopkins over the years. But four years ago, that stage was a gathering of strangers who knew nothing of who they would become or where they would land. We have found our people, our rhythms, our places. Nobody knew each other. Nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew what would happen next. And yet, for one gloriously unhinged midnight in Baltimore, none of that mattered. We were all equally lost, equally bewildered, yet somehow completely at home.
Edmund Sumpena is a senior graduating with a degree in Computer Science and Neuroscience from San Diego, Calif.
