So, yeah, this is the thing that changed my life. Right here. I mean, immediately after this happened, people were offering me, I think the highest I got was $20,000 for the jacket.
Hi, I'm Atticus, and I'm Lady Gaga's most first viral fan. First time I ever heard Lady Gaga was on the radio in my car. It was Just Dance that came on the radio.
It was the first time I heard it and There was a lot of new artists at the time, but she really stood out, and and that's when I knew I was really interested. When the Born This Way Ball was coming out, I had two girlfriends that we wanted to go see the tour. So we ended up buying tickets and, we made a pact to not watch any videos from the tour.
Like, let's be surprised, this woman is theatrical. Like, it will be a production. So the excitement just built and, at one point I was taking dance classes in Austin.
I was teaching dance, and, I just kept reading online. That the Scheiße dance was, like, out of this world. So I had the interest of, like, teaching it.
And so I did I went online and I watched it. People always ask me like how I learned the dance. It was in my room, in my underwear, watching YouTube videos to teach this dance class.
That's when the story started to unfold. Her show had like an inner pit and then a general admission outside of that and the first, I want to say, maybe 200 - 300 people got into the pit. And this is not something I'd ever done before.
I was not usually a person who would wait overnight for a show, but it just was different. And so we got our numbers and we were maybe 20 from the cutoff. So we got in, we got into the pit.
When Scheiße came on, I leaned over to my girlfriends and I said, because I wanted to teach it for dance. So I broke our deal. But, at the time, like, you know, I had, as people know, the bright orange jacket, which is not hard, to see, especially in that era.
Everything was dark and gothic and black and leather. I was– just started doing the dance within the crowd. There was room to.
The moment I heard her say there is nobody else in orange around me. And so I'm telling you, I pushed through that crowd like a battering ram, to the front of the stage. I was probably halfway back.
I started to scale the barrier, and the security guards were trying to decipher, like, what was happening. And then they helped me over the, onto the stage, and blackout is not the right word because I was so conscious. I remember I can close my eyes and I can see the stage.
I can see the steps, I can see the lighting. I don't feel like I had control over my body. I had done this dance enough.
I trusted myself to, to know how to do it. The parts that I didn't learn were, you know, do you move upstage? Do you turn– like, I knew the dance.
And so to try and fit in with the dancers, and they did an incredible job of like, there's parts in the video where they're like steering me in which direction to go. And then the next thing I knew, we were stopped at the front and the lights were on us and screaming was happening and things were being thrown at the stage, and I took the opportunity. Someone threw a big bouquet of flowers.
Again, autopilot. I didn't even think about it, I got on my knee. I held the flowers to her.
And all of a sudden she kissed me. Gotta put that one down. What's next?
Am I going back to the crowd? Like, how do I find my friends? Gaga takes me back through her stage.
That's where the real magic happens. I'm talking, She's saying, like, so cool– she like, kind of stands up. People are stripping her down, put a new outfit on.
There's, like, dancers flying around. She tells her security guy, she’s like, “Get him a wristband. I'd like to talk to him after the show.
” And security walks me to the backstage area, and I was greeted by. . .
I mean, the dancers are so wonderful. I mean, I still talk to a few of them today. they came over and they were just celebrating me, which was super nice.
And I got to meet all of them. And then they took me to Gaga, and she walks in and she just said Which changed my life. And we got to talking and took a picture and she, she signed my jacket, and I still have the jacket to this day.
Right here. Famous orange jacket. And on the back here it says “Work it Scheiße, from Gaga.
” I spent all night putting these studs on. I actually stole this from a girl from high school, and I messaged her on Facebook, and I was like, “Can I keep this? Because I've changed it.
” It was just a magical experience. So we hustle back to Austin. Things seem normal, except for the fact that, like, I can't wait to tell this story to somebody.
And, I woke up the next morning. We're groggy, had been up all night, and my phone had, like, 4000 notifications. It was– My Facebook had exploded.
I had like 600 friend requests, I mean, I was having breakfast the next morning and everybody knew my name, which was so crazy. Since then, it's just, it's continued to circulate. There's a new generation of fans, like people who were well not listening to her at the time.
When Scheiße comes on, one, I'm always happy to see Scheiße come back. It was not a single. It was not a lead.
But it's something that I think true fans really loved. There's a new choreography to it, do I need to learn it? Because I don't know.
It's really emotional to think about. The aftermath of this, I had people from her team, tweeting me, saying, like, “Get yourself into some dance classes in LA. Here's some choreographers, like, do you want to do this?
” But I kind of took to heart what Gaga was talking about, about like not bending to other people when it comes to your artistry. And I loved dance, but it wasn't where I was headed with it. And eventually I had like talked with some people and I said, I don't think it's dance I want to do.
It's photography, but it's in the concert world. But personally, I mean, it catapulted my photography career. I've photographed some of my favorite artists.
I've gone on tours with them. I've gone across the country, around the world and I really do have it all to owe to this moment. She probably changed my life more than anything else ever has.
