People wanted this NC Drag Queen Story Hour canceled. So I went.
Naomi Dix was seated in between municipal buildings in a corner of Apex’s town campus, but she looked like she should be in a Disney movie. Her sky blue ballgown was offset by gold body glitter and accented with oversized chandelier earrings and cascading blonde curls secured in a ponytail. It was something that the children listening to her noticed too. One piped up in the middle of Dix’s Drag Queen Story Hour reading to compliment her hair.
Dix took it in stride, just as she did with all the childlike interruptions during storytime. She was reading Cinderelliot, a gay retelling of Cinderella where our hero is trying to cook at a palace bake-off and ends up meeting the prince, then running away and losing his chef’s hat at midnight.
“Who here likes sprinkles?” she asked the kids listening to her. Some raised their hands, while others remarked that they’d never had sprinkles on cake before. She had the children, their parents, and the other listeners wave magic wands like Cinderelliot’s fairy godfather, Ludwig. She read the story enthusiastically, describing the pictures and making funny quips.
Dix also took moments during the story to talk about some of the themes in the story: blended families, wearing the clothes and colors you like, and that anyone can be royalty, despite race or sexuality. At the end of the book, when Cinderelliot and his prince are celebrating their marriage and shoving cake in each others’ faces, Dix talked about the importance of asking permission before touching someone, even if it’s someone you are married to.
It’s hard to imagine that this event was almost excluded from the festival because of violent threats, but the signs are there: directly behind Dix is a glass door, where a police officer was standing by just in case. There was another officer across the courtyard. There were even more throughout the festival, not just at their booth.
Apex mayor Jacques Gilbert announced the previous Saturday that the event would be removed from the day’s festivities; a town council member specified that it was after members of the Apex Festival Commission received violent threats due to the inclusion of the program. It wouldn’t have occurred at all had it not been for Equality NC, the state’s oldest LGBTQ rights organization, stepping in to sponsor Apex Pride in its entirety and reinstate the activity.
Kendra R. Johnson, the organization’s director, said in a press statement that “we will not be silent, and we will not be forced back into a closet.” At the festival, she expanded on her feelings about the events that transpired, connecting it to moments of action like the Stonewall riots that sparked the beginning of Pride month and its festivals.
“Pride started because we were being policed in spaces that were supposed to be safe,” Johnson told me. “I think people see a sea of rainbows now, they’re happy to be out together, but we cannot forget the revolutionary roots of our Pride.”
Although it was the right decision, it wasn’t an easy one. Even without threats of violence, a semi-anonymous Twitter account was posting photos of children watching the story hour or the family-friendly drag performance, tagging Fox News host Tucker Carlson and popular right-wing Twitter account “Libs of Tik Tok.”
Even the presence of police was a complicated decision; the Stonewall riots, after all, were LGBTQ people reacting to a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. Mary Elise Chenoweth, the director of Drag Queen Story Hour in the Triangle, said it was part of the conversation she had to have when thinking about their renewed participation in the event.
“I need to make a decision not for my own safety, but the children and drag performers,” Chenoweth says of the overall choice she made to participate. “It was a really, really, really hard decision to make, to make sure I’m making the right one for everyone.”
For Dix, however, it was more important to show up than to let fear take over. “My husband asked me the same question, and I told him that I wasn’t scared,” Dix said, when asked if she was anxious about participating.
She sat in the kids zone until everyone had gotten the photos they wanted, whether it was small children or teenagers wearing pride flags as superhero capes. One little girl, who was too shy for a photo with Dix and her older sister, came back with her mom to make sure she could tell Dix she was beautiful.
“This is a ground and a space for inclusivity and peace and love and happiness,” Dix said, “and I understand that certain things are happening in the world right now, but that’s why we create spaces like this.”
This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 1:33 PM with the headline "People wanted this NC Drag Queen Story Hour canceled. So I went.."
