Brenda the 7-foot drag queen affirms her art with sass, shade and plain speaking

Wearing a purple sequinned gown, a towering blond wig and size 16 heels, Brenda the 7-foot Drag Queen sashayed to the microphone and kicked off a rousing night of bingo, making this promise to a packed house of 400 fans:

“We are going to have a fabulous time tonight, and nobody’s going to tell us any different!”

With that, Brenda launched Friday night’s edition of North Carolina’s longest-running drag show: Green Queen Bingo, which dates to 2004 and regularly fills Piedmont Hall across from Greensboro Coliseum with raucous fun-seekers.

On any night, the crowd gets treated to a drag emcee so tall her wig brushes the door of her dressing room, who wears the brightest, gaudiest thing she can find in a size 24.

But on Friday night, the performance took on a markedly political tone because if a bill introduced in the NC House becomes law, Brenda’s entire act would be illegal.

Drag bingo becomes political

Performing drag shows in public or before people under 18 would become a class A1 misdemeanor — the most serious kind — and a felony when repeated. And considering the dozens of children attending Friday night’s show, the police would have grounds to raid Piedmont Hall and place Brenda and her drag sisters under arrest.

The idea got a loud chorus of boos from the hundreds at Piedmont Hall, and from the stage, Brenda offered this explanation for the bill’s political motives, echoing the Civil Rights Movement in the city where the sit-in movement began.

“This bill is not about drag,” she said. “It was never about water fountains, and it’s not about drag. It’s about being queer and being trans.”

To Brenda’s thinking, the bill backed by House Republicans means to make her a criminal for existing, suggesting that her presence by definition is threatening to children. In other words, it’s not that drag shows are offensive on their face — only the identity of the people performing them.

“Do I scare you because I’m seven feet tall?” she asked. “Do I scare you because I’m a drag queen? Or do I scare you because I’m LGBTQ? Because Mrs. Doubtfire didn’t seem to have the same effect.”

‘Shade-slinging comedy monster’

No other type of performer is held to such a standard: Chris Rock, she noted, can deliver a sexually explicit stand-up performance on Friday night, appear in an R-rated movie on Saturday and record his role as a “Madagascar” zebra on Sunday morning.

Kids, accompanied by a parent, aren’t barred from any of them.

So, she asks, why can’t she be trusted to modify her own performance based on the age of her audience? She regularly reads at Greensboro’s Drag Queen Story Hour, and the kids never have a problem. Only the adults.

“Kids will say, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?,’ “ she said “and I say, ‘The magical thing is I got to decide when I woke up today,’ and they understand. They move on.”

Brenda comes from Raleigh, where she attended Enloe High School and went on to study advertising in college. Away from the drag stage, she works for Triad Health Project, which provides HIV and safe-sex counseling in Guilford County.

On stage, she delivers a drag performance that comes slathered in Southern sass, and unlike most of her drag colleagues, she sings rather than lip-sync. She bills herself as a “shade-slinging comedy monster,” and the goal, along with dispensing bingo prizes, is simply to make people laugh.

“If anybody else calls false bingo,” she warns from the stage, “I’m gonna find your daddy and become your stepdaddy!”

Her humor veers into the ribald, but honestly, I’ve heard more suggestive jokes at a pro-wrestling match. The kids in the audience seemed happy to sip Dr. Pepper.

Between matches, a cast of drag performers danced between their bingo tables, lip-syncing the words to “The Time of My Life” and “Before He Cheats.” Fans offered them dollar bills in support and occasionally collected a kiss.

Brenda first performed after a five years ago, encouraged by a fellow performer who heard her karaoke performance of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from “The Little Mermaid.”

She staged her first show at The Bearded Goat in Greensboro, where her mural is painted under a rainbow, and she has since appeared on the TLC show “My Big Fat Fabulous Life.”

Brenda notes that most drag performers adopt the persona of the advocate and protector they wished they could have met as a child, and when she performs, the highlight is always a kind word from someone in the audience who felt less alone.

“Any event,” she said, “is more magical when someone comes up and says, ‘This was my first time, and it did something for me. I’ve never felt included. You created space where I felt seen.’ ”

It’s hard to find shoes that fit. It’s expensive to buy gowns that glimmer. But Brenda found the place where she belongs, and at 7 feet tall, is very easily seen.

She only wants to make the journey easier — and fun — for those nervously walking the path behind her.