I wasn’t going to write about Tim Curry.
Everyone and their grandma—and their grandma’s dog’s fleas—has been talking about his death. The tributes are everywhere. The photos are everywhere. The clips are everywhere.
And I just… didn’t want to.
I’d already had enough when Dolly Parton died. Then I found out Tim Curry died the same fucking day, and apparently the universe decided August 25 needed to take a couple of cultural load-bearing walls out at once.
But this one has been sitting heavier on me than I expected.
Because Tim Curry wasn’t just an actor I loved.
He was part of how I found my people.
Don’t Dream It. Be It.
This will shock absolutely no one who knows me now, but I was a hopeless misfit in high school.
I know. Shocking.
I didn’t fit neatly into the places I was apparently supposed to fit. Then somewhere along the way, I found The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
And there was Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
Fishnets. Pearls. Makeup. Heels. Sex. Camp. Chaos. Absolute unapologetic fabulousness.
It wasn’t just a movie. For a lot of us weird kids, Rocky Horror was practically a homing beacon.
Oh. There you are. These are your people.
Eventually I ended up working in a club in Shreveport, Louisiana that played Rocky Horror every Monday night. We didn’t just put the movie on. We participated. We dressed up. We performed along with it.
Every. Fucking. Monday.
And I loved it.
There’s something wonderful about looking back and realizing that some of the things adults probably would have considered the weirdest parts of your youth were actually the things helping you figure out who the hell you were.
Tim Curry was right there in the middle of that for me.
Then, of course…
Pennywise
Because apparently permanently embedding himself into one formative piece of my life wasn’t enough.
Along came Stephen King’s IT.
And Tim Curry became Pennywise.
For someone who would eventually build entire corners of their home around Stephen King, collect his books like sacred artifacts and happily surround themselves with horror for the rest of their life, that performance became another constant.
Frank-N-Furter on one side.
Pennywise on the other.
Two characters that couldn’t possibly be more different, connected by this one extraordinary human being who somehow became woven through completely different pieces of my life.
He was just always there.
That’s the part I didn’t understand until he wasn’t.
So Today, I Did the Time Warp
Today I changed my Zoom profile picture to a blazing Dr. Frank-N-Furter to entertain our class.
I played The Time Warp at 8 am and did the dance all over my new house.
Because what the hell else was I supposed to do?
It was fun. It made me smile. It gave me a chance to celebrate him instead of simply sitting here being sad about him.
For a few minutes, I got to do something wonderfully stupid and joyful.
And I think that’s a pretty damn good way to honor Tim Curry.
But when the song ended and everything went back to normal, that ache was still there.
I hadn’t realized how much this death was going to hurt.
Maybe that’s because certain artists stop feeling like celebrities somewhere along the way. Their work attaches itself to memories and people and places and versions of ourselves that don’t exist anymore.
Then decades pass.
You change.
Your life changes.
People come and go.
And somehow that movie is still there.
That voice is still there.
That face is still there.
That character is still there.
The constant is still there.
Until suddenly it isn’t.
There has been too much death lately. Too many reminders that the people and animals and voices we’ve carried through our lives don’t get to stay here forever.
I’m tired of saying goodbye.
And I’m really fucking tired of discovering how much someone mattered only because the world suddenly feels different without them in it.
So I’m not writing an obituary for Tim Curry.
Other people can document the awards, the productions and the extraordinary career.
I’m just saying goodbye to the man who helped one weird high-school kid discover that there was a place where the misfits weren’t merely allowed in.
We ran the fucking place.
Thank you, Tim.
For Dr Frank.
For Pennywise.
For the fishnets, the fear, the laughter, the music and the glorious weirdness.
And for being one of my constants for all these years.
I didn’t know losing you would hurt this much.
Don’t dream it. Be it.
I think I’ll keep doing exactly that.
🖤
Tim Curry — April 19, 1946 – August 25, 2026
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