A Tale as Old as Time
or: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Plunge ‘Em
By Anthony Hudson / Carla Rossi
In 2018, I offered a Drag Queen Storytime at the St. Johns Library in Portland, Oregon that would eventually undo my life. It was the most attended Drag Queen Storytime Portland had seen at the time—over 100 youth and parents attended, left to standing room only while I, in my most child-friendly rainbow-print dress as Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi, read to children who could barely read themselves. Known for my whiteface makeup and satirical drag routines mocking whiteness in Portland, I was worried the kids would be afraid of my clown face, but instead, they saw a person: one four-year-old remarked “I love your lipstick!” as I sat down to read to her.
After the show, we moved to another room of the library for a dance party on bubble wrap. Dancing to Cher with a bunch of jumping toddlers, I lost my balance on the bubble wrap, in my six-inch heels, and fell over, thanks in part to the kids excitedly bouncing off one another and into me. Embarrassed, I laughed to myself as Carla lay defeated and fallen when a couple of the rowdiest kids jumped onto me in a pile. A librarian took a photo of us as their parents laughed and told them to climb off and help me up, and afterward, we all went about our lives.
Within a few months, the photo—posted to a Flickr account by the library—caught the attention of conservative media, and before I knew it, my face and names were all over the Internet: misgendering me, calling me a pedophile, and condemning me, my career, and drag as a whole. I gained a QAnon following that still tracks and logs my in-person shows and social media activity, making dossiers about my “Satanic” behavior and cautionary videos about me and my friends using our own Instagram posts.
While I forced myself at the time to keep going and move on, proceeding to host Drag Queen Storytimes until the pandemic took hold, I no longer offer them today. I still show up for drag engagements with Native youth (I’m Two Spirit from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and Siletz, and drag is how I honor my full self), but that’s yet to draw any conservative outrage. In an absolutely predictable twist, these folks don’t pay attention to or care about Native kids, just white ones.
Still, it took years for me to comprehend the psychological impact of what happened: how children were wrongly sexualized and exploited by rabid strangers on the Internet in the name of destroying me and people like me. Today, I feel a complicated mix of grief and shame over the fact that my Drag Queen Storytime and the infamous photo have been used to fuel hatred to enact anti-trans legislation. Because, let’s be real, the current “war on drag” is a coded war on trans people.
So, when it was time to present a new version of my touring greatest hits collection, Carla Rossi Does Drag, at Reed College in January 2023, I found myself running on my treadmill and listening to previous mixes from old drag numbers. I heard a silly mix that mashed up “Beauty and the Beast” with “My Humps” for no reason other than its absurdity.
Suddenly I had a vision: I realized that, since arguably one of Carla’s greatest hits was her Drag Queen Storytime from Hell, I could turn it into a “recreated” interactive drag number and incorporate the horrible headlines I’d screenshotted while parodying exactly what conservatives pretend happens at a Drag Queen Storytime in their worst fantasies. Creating this was one of the most terrifying things I’ve done in recent memory, but, demonstrated by their screams of laughter and the look of mind-blown shock on my best friend’s face, the audience was with me. I didn’t know it going in, but I performed something I had desperately needed for the last five years through the process: an exorcism.
Script
Description: Carla emerges from the wings in a stunning rainbow-print dress. She beams as she approaches her audience.
Carla: How many of you have ever been to a Drag Queen Storytime? How many of you have taken your children? Any kiddos that have been to Drag Queen Storytimes? (She sees that there is, in fact, a child in the audience) Oh, you might want to close your eyes for this next part.
I actually became quite famous for my Drag Queen Storytimes. And I would love to share it with you if I could! For this, I just need some volunteers that are of age—that want to sit here and be the facsimile of children. (Seeing some audience members raise their hands:) Yes, please, come down, come down! Let’s welcome our friends.
Description: The audience gives a round of applause as adult audience members approach Carla onstage.
Carla: Yes, please sit. Look, I’m Chris Hansen: “I’m Chris Hansen, have a seat.” (As she greets each new audience participant, she mimics the host of “To Catch a Predator:”) Hi, I’m Chris Hansen, sit down. Hi, I’m Chris Hansen, sit down. Hi, I’m Chris Hansen, sit down. Hi, I’m Chris Haaaansen, sit down.
Description: The audience participants sit beside her in a clump on the marley floor. Carla observes:
Carla: Now, this is wonderful, but you did it all wrong. If you could spread out more, like an oval, so it’s more pleasing for the audience to see me? And I’m just going to grab my book. Because you can’t have a Drag Queen Storytime without books!
Description: Carla shuffles offstage while the participants reshuffle their group into two parallel lines, parted like the Red Sea. Carla re-enters with a rolling chair and not a book.
Carla: Now you’ll notice this is not a book, it’s a chair. Because I like to multita—(she sees the new formation they’ve taken onstage)—oh, this is all wrong. Someone’s been reading the Old Testament.
Description: A new audience member takes a seat in between the two clusters, turning their formation into a U. Carla smiles.
Carla: Look at that: a community-minded solution! (A beat) I don’t want this chair.
Description: Carla exits with the rolling chair, finds a stationary chair with her children’s book on it, and re-enters with them. She plops her chair down in front of everyone.
Carla: OK, everyone. Now sit a little bit further back, so you’re not too close to me, because I’ll get upset. And—hit it!
Description: An instrumental track of the title song to “Beauty and the Beast” plays. Carla smiles while holding Jan Brett’s book “Cinders: A Chicken Cinderella.” After the first few tinkling notes of the piano, Carla goes on to sing:
Carla: Nope, it’s a false start. (A beat) Walt Disney—you might not know this, kids—Walt Disney’s a misogynist.
Description: She waits for a few more tinkling notes from the piano, before hitting her cue to sing:
Carla: Tale as old as time
Song as old as—rust?
Maybe old as Darcelle[1]
Poison’s[2] up there too
Anyway, the book—
Chicken Cinderella—
Will she end up gay?
I can’t really say
I don’t know how to read
Drag Queen Storytime…
Description: We hear an abrupt record scratch followed by the bumping beats of “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas.
Carla begins to bump back and forth in her seat as she slowly opens the pages of the book with an elfish smile on her face. As she does so, the notorious image from Carla’s real-life Drag Queen Storytime slowly works its way up the back projection wall, shown in massive size:
While Fergie sings “My Humps,” Carla drops the book and begins to slowly raise the bottom of her dress, revealing her “nude-tone” legs and crotch (which are actually covered in three pairs of tights, two pairs of underwear, Spanx, a girdle, and foam padding). The audience cackles while the adults on stage, watching like children at a Storytime, giggle to each other and bounce back and forth on the floor. Just as a bell chimes in the song, Carla drops the dress fabric back down to the floor, and the image onscreen zooms into her face before fading into this screenshot of a conservative news headline covering Carla’s Storytime fallout:
Still bopping to the song, Carla begins to teasingly cross and uncross her legs like Sharon Stone in “Basic Instinct.” The song chimes again and we see another screenshot on the back wall:
Carla swings herself to one side of the chair, sitting in profile and reclining back into the air, assuming a pose like Liza Minnelli’s Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.” She kicks her legs up and down in the air, then at another chime in the song we see:
Carla gets up from her chair and shimmies stage right, shimmying right into the face of an audience participant. She begins grinding up and down behind their head, facing away from them—and not even making contact. It is not sexy, but Carla thinks it might be in some universe. The song chimes again, and the projection zooms in on the body text of the article already seen on screen:
Still as unsexy and unrhythmic as ever, Carla tries working her way down three audience participants, bopping her butt up and down near the back of their heads while the audience watching from the house laughs at her awkwardness and the certifiably unhinged text onscreen, written by an alarmist blogger.
The song chimes again, and we see:
Carla dances her way back to her stationary chair center stage and pulls it further upstage. The song goes into a bridge, and onscreen we see:
Carla marches her over to something hidden in the shadows downstage right: a plunger. We hear an audience member gasp as she grabs it. Carla returns center stage with the plunger, and the image onscreen changes to:
Carla shuffle-steps slightly downstage, and grandly slams the plunger onto the ground, suctioning it to the floor, and just as Fergie lets out an “Oooooh” in the song. Next, onscreen, we see:
Carla wobbles her feet to line up directly on either side of the plunger, then begins to raise her dress to her knees. The audience gasps as a whole, letting out nervous wheezes. She drops the dress over the plunger, concealing it altogether, and dances in place with her hands in her hair. Then, onscreen:
Still dancing in place, Carla slooowly lowers herself down, and down, and down—kneeling directly where the plunger should be. Everyone loses it. Some audience participants clap while others cackle and cover their mouths.
Then, just as Fergie sings “Make you scream, make you scream,” Carla, still kneeling, grabs a mic and lets out a banshee cry. She screams with a shell-shocked look in her eyes. The image onscreen explodes and we hear another record scratch.
The song from “Beauty and the Beast” resumes.
Carla stands and backs away from the plunger, which her dress gets caught on, before trying to pick it up despite its being hermetically stuck to the floor. Instead, the wood handle breaks off in her hand, and she stares at it before throwing it across the floor. She sings:
Carla: Tale as old as time
Song as old as—rust?
What will happen to the chicken?
Will she marry the prince?
Drag Queen Storytime
Description: The audience has completely lost it. They laugh with exhaustion while Carla takes her place back on the chair with her book, still singing:
Carla: Tale as old as time
Song as old as—
Description: Carla falls silent instead of singing the last verse.
She stares blankly at the audience, shaken and empty with her eyes wide, mouth hanging open, as the song ends. We hear the final tinkles of the piano as she says to those gathered around her:
Carla: Now go home, children—go home and be weaponized by strangers on the Internet.
Description: The audience, still giggling and catching their breath, applauds as the lights fade out. Carla stands up and exits like there’s no tomorrow.
Footnotes
- Darcelle XV, Portland’s longtime drag legend, Guinness Book of World Records holder for World’s Oldest Working Drag Queen, and owner of Darcelle XV Showplace, passed away months after this performance on March 23, 2023, at age 92.
Back to reference 1 in content - Poison Waters, Darcelle’s heir apparent and quintessential Portland drag icon.
Back to reference 2 in content
About Anthony Hudson / Carla Rossi
ANTHONY HUDSON (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Siletz) is an artist and writer sometimes better known as Portland’s premiere drag clown CARLA ROSSI. Together they host and program Queer Horror—the only LGBTQ horror film and performance series in the country—at the historic Hollywood Theatre. Anthony has received project support and fellowships from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the NEA, NPN, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, First Peoples Fund, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Community Foundation, USArtists International, Ucross Foundation, Caldera Arts Center, and more; Anthony’s performances have been featured at the New York Theatre Workshop, La Mama, PICA’s TBA Festival, Portland and Seattle Art Museums, Portland Center Stage, and have toured internationally. Anthony also co-hosts the queer feminist horror podcast Gaylords of Darkness weekly with writer Stacie Ponder. Anthony is currently adapting their award-winning solo show Looking for Tiger Lily into a book.