Naomi her 58 |Dix C |contours Main Feature nose before the show
owner of Durham’s “rock club and de facto community center” the Pinhook, agreed and together they opened a new hot spot for drag in the heart of North Carolina. “Vivica started the House of Coxx as a single person,” admires Ben Ether, a drag king and two-year member of the house. “She built all of this.” Many of the House of Coxx, such as Ben and Naomi, found their way to drag by winning one of Vivica’s monthly amateur shows—but doing drag for the first time is no simple task. “I bought a wig and went to Forever 21 with my friends and had them ask the sales people questions because I didn’t want them to know that I was the one shopping for women’s clothing,” remembers Naomi. After renting a hotel room to do her make-up and giving a knockout performance of Beyoncé’s “Partition,” she won. “In a non-corny way, I’ve been doing it ever since,” she said. *** Unlike a drag “family” that takes the same last name and performs exclusively together, a drag “house” is a collective of queens and kings who often share the stage and support each other artistically. The system was a central part of the ballroom drag scene in New York depicted in “Paris is Burning,” one of the most widely-viewed accounts of American drag culture and queer cinema. Filmed in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, “Paris is Burning” follows a group of gay and trans Hispanic and African-
Americans in the 1980s Harlem drag scene. Often rejected by their families, they would seek refuge in the comfort of the drag houses and the opportunities the ballrooms had to offer. “You go in there and you feel 100% right being gay,” said Pepper Labeija, mother of the House Labeija. “That’s not what it’s like in the world.”
“WE’RE SUCH A STRONG COMMUNITY WITHIN DURHAM THAT WE DON’T DEAL TOO MUCH WITH PEOPLE WHO DON’T AGREE WITH WHAT WE’RE DOING” Described as a cross between a party and a pageant, balls are an underground competition in which queens from different families are judged on how well they embody certain categories, ranging from business executive to pretty girl. It was from these balls that Madonna appropriated the famous “vogue” dance move for her hit song of the same name. The balls were more than a cat walk. They demanded each queen serve the utmost authenticity in her respective category.
“The idea of realness is to look as much as possible like your straight counterpart,” said queen Dorian Corey. Whether it’s high-fashion or school-girl “realness,” the balls gave disenfranchised homosexual minorities an experience that they otherwise would not have. “In a ballroom, you can be anything you want,” Dorian said. “You’re not really an executive, but you’re looking like one and therefore you’re showing the straight world ‘If I had the opportunity, I could be one.’” Although today we talk about drag as performance art, “passing” as a female in 1980s Harlem was just as much a defense mechanism as an artistic statement. These queens “give the society that they live in what they want to see, rather than having to go through prejudices about your life and your lifestyle,” Dorian said. “You can walk around confidently blending in with everybody else.” For this subculture of drag, “It’s not a satire; it’s actually being able to be this.” *** “I’ve had a lot of privilege in not having to deal with people who are not accepting of who we are,” said Naomi. She moves to her eyebrows now as the clock ticks closer and closer to show time. “We’re such a strong community within Durham that we don’t deal too much with people who don’t agree with what we’re doing.” Ben attributes their fortunate environment to Vivica’s ability “to pull the crowd in and make them feel safe but also make them accountable for their