After Two Decades, the House of LeMay Hosts Its Final Winter Is a Drag Ball 

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• Luke Awtry
• Bob Bolyard

In 2003, when Bob Bolyard became the producer of Vermont's Winter Is a Drag Ball, the job had an unofficial term limit of two years. But the staff of the event's beneficiary, the Vermont People With AIDS Coalition, recognized the skills Bolyard drew from his theater background. "I knew how to put together a show," he said, which meant less work for the organization. "And so, after my second year, they said, 'Ummm, would you mind doing it again?'"

Bolyard and his beloved drag troupe, the House of LeMay, have been producing and hosting the winter's hottest dance and entertainment party ever since. A fundraiser to support people living with HIV and AIDS since its inception, the drag ball will benefit Vermont CARES this year.

But it's a bittersweet occasion: The 29th drag ball, happening at Higher Ground in South Burlington on Saturday, February 17, will be the last one produced and hosted by the LeMays.

Founding member Michael Hayes, aka Margaurite LeMay, died last March, four years after a stroke ended his performing career. Two of the group's musicians, Rob Root and Michael Cusimano, have also died in recent years. The surviving LeMays will continue to perform — including Bolyard as Amber and Johnnie McLaughlin as Lucy Belle — but the girls from the Hot Damn Trailer Park are ready to pass the mics.

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• File: Matthew Thorsen
• From left: Lucy Belle, Amber and Margaurite LeMay at the 2016 drag ball

"I'm proud of what we've done," Bolyard said, noting that the drag ball has raised more than $300,000 during the LeMays' 22-year stewardship.

"Two days after this drag ball, I'll be 68 years old," he continued with a hearty laugh. "And times have changed, you know? Entertainment styles have changed. What I think is entertaining may not be what those who come out feel like is entertaining."

Over cocktails at the Whiskey Room in Burlington late last year, Bolyard asked drag king Mike Oxready to take over.

"And I graciously accepted," Oxready told Seven Days. "It's a huge honor."

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• Courtesy Of Craig Harrison
• Mike Oxready

Oxready, 41, who asked that Seven Days not publish his legal name to keep his private and public lives separate, has coproduced and hosted the lip-synch and burlesque show component of the drag ball on Higher Ground's smaller stage since 2015. Bolyard likes Oxready's style and professionalism, he said, and the fact that he considers the drag ball special.

"It's such a tremendous event of queer joy and celebration," Oxready said.

The six-hour party fills both rooms of Higher Ground with revelers in elaborate makeup, flamboyant headdresses and spectacular heels not at all suited to Vermont in February. Each year has a different theme — Back to the '90s, Broadway Bound, Beware the Ides of Drag. Dance teams, DJs, Lyric Theatre performers and drag acts entertain, and every attendee is invited to strut across the stage in the costume parade and contest, slated for 11:30 p.m. this year.

Oxready said things may change on his watch, but those changes will emerge from conversations with community members. Rather than just "copy-paste everything that's been done in the past, I want to hear from folks," he said. "Do folks have ideas on themes? Are there acts that they want to see? Is something not working for the community?"

Bolyard discussed this year's event — and reminisced about the evolution of drag in Burlington — with Seven Days while seated before his lighted makeup mirror in the basement of his Burlington home. It's a veritable LeMay museum, where Hayes' sewing table sits. Costumes and jewelry hang amid set pieces, props and memorabilia: the "Laundromat, Library & Community Center" sign; Grandma LeMay's cigarette-butt ball Christmas ornament; a name tag that says "Amber LeMay, Diva."

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• File: Matthew Thorsen
• Winter Is a Drag Ball in 2014

The House of LeMay will open this year's Apocalypstick-themed ball with an 8 p.m. performance honoring Hayes, Root and Cusimano. Backed by musicians Bones Blankinship and Craig Hilliard, they'll roll out such LeMay hits as "You Can't Take the Color Out of Colorado," "Wrap It Up," Margaurite's "Bigger Is Better" and the Root original "Happy Rockin' Drag Ball."

Winter Is a Drag Ball cofounder Rev. Yolanda Mapes will perform a four-song solo set of her original music, as well as a number with Craig Mitchell and one with the LeMays.

Much has changed since Mapes cofounded the drag ball. Her friend Chris Moes came up with the idea in 1995, after Mapes found out she was HIV-positive. "I didn't really know how long I would be around," she said.

Mapes, Moes and Beth Garfinkel staged the first drag ball in 1996 to raise money for Vermont CARES, a nonprofit supporting people living with HIV and AIDS, which was Mapes' employer at the time. "I'd like to think they were honoring my journey," Mapes said of her friends. "I felt that."

The first event drew more than 500 people to Burlington's Memorial Auditorium Annex and raised thousands of dollars. Seven years later, after the drag ball moved to Higher Ground, the LeMays took over. In recent years, it has raised $20,000 to $25,000 annually for the Vermont CARES emergency assistance fund for people living with HIV, Vermont CARES executive director Theresa Vezina said.

Due to medical advancements, most cases of HIV infection do not progress to AIDS, but raising money to help those with HIV remains vital, Vezina said. They need daily medication, can't be cured and may be susceptible to other diseases, she said, and many live in poverty.

Personal loss drives Bolyard's commitment to the cause. Three of his first gay friends from his hometown of Lima, Ohio, died of AIDS. Maybe he feels survivor's guilt, he said. "I don't know. But I've always felt that, if my friends Kirk and Chris and Dave were still alive — they were much more talented than I am ... how much more they would be contributing to the world today. And they can't. So I do because I can."

"Plus, I like to perform," he added. "I like to show off."

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• File: Matthew Thorsen
• Rev. Yolanda (far right) performing with the LeMays at the 2016 drag ball

Burlington's drag scene has evolved since Bolyard arrived from Ohio in 1987. For his first couple of years in the city, he wasn't aware of any drag performances in town, he said.

He and Hayes met playing volleyball and cemented their friendship working on the 1988 Lyric Theatre production of Annie. They performed with the Vermont CARES Cabaret Players, which raised money to fight AIDS. As a pair, they ventured onstage as the Green Mountain Gay Boys. "But no one really wanted to see us sing and do jokes," Bolyard said.

Then he and Hayes attended a show by the first two drag queens they'd seen in Burlington: Cherie Tartt and Mapes. "We said, 'We can do that,'" Bolyard recalled. "Mike says, 'Well, I got a costume degree from Castleton; I can sew costumes.' And I said, 'Well, I can write material and put together a show.' We started performing as the Sisters LeMay." Their name comes from the metallic fabric lamé.

The LeMays never lip-synch — "No! Oh, God!" Bolyard said. As actors, he and Hayes were always comfortable singing; lip-synching wasn't even allowed at early drag balls, he noted. He believes that the now-popular performance style impedes character development, and the LeMays are story-driven.

They introduce themselves at the start of every show. Amber and Margaurite were showgirls who had grown tired of life on the road and moved back home to Beaver Pond, Vt. Over the years, the sisters added members to their "house," including cousin Lucy Belle, a "foreign exchange student" from Mississippi; and cousins Nanette, Crystal, Bones, Craig and Rob. The three main characters became the most recognizable: Amber with her oversize glasses; Lucy Belle, the pretty one with the biggest hair and the Miss Beaver Pond sash; and Margaurite, the nice one, who smoothed the rough edges of the other two.

Waving from parade floats, working as celebrity waiters at the Ronald McDonald House, judging chili cook-offs and hosting fundraisers, the LeMays have endeared themselves to Vermonters and paved the way for the queens and kings who followed.

"I think we all have them to thank for making Burlington an accepting place for drag," said Justin Marsh, 34, an event producer who performs as Emoji Nightmare.

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• File: James Buck
• Emoji Nightmare at the 2018 drag ball

The Emmy-winning reality competition series "RuPaul's Drag Race" brought the performance art to prime time and played a role in shifting the local scene, from the men-in-dresses style of the LeMays to the double-take-inducing glamour of queens such as Emoji Nightmare, Bolyard said. The "showgirl dance stuff" isn't the LeMays' style, he said: "It's too much work!" And he prefers a less labor-intensive makeup routine. "Me," he said, "I can do mine in 10 minutes." The LeMays have never been female impressionists, he explained: "We were just characters ... We made no pretense of being women."

Another change in the local drag scene is the way some performers view their art. Bolyard has always considered it a hobby, while Marsh described it as a business — "because it is an expensive hobby." (Emoji Nightmare is incorporated.)

Drag kings — performers, typically women, who portray stereotypical men — have gradually gained ground in the scene. Burlington-based Kings Local 802 started in 2004 and performed until about 2020.

But even in 2009, when Mike Oxready started performing, it wasn't easy to get booked as a drag king, he said. Many people he encountered hadn't heard of drag kings, he said, while others had dismissive attitudes, assuming that drag kings didn't put in as much effort as drag queens.

In 2010, Oxready cofounded the Burlington-based drag king troupe New Cocks on the Block, which has since disbanded. He continues to produce and host. Among his recent shows is October's Drag King Night at the Telegraph Club in St. Johnsbury, a collaboration with Vermont Humanities and Catamount Arts.

As the genre widens, gender continues to bend. There are drag queens and kings and "in-betweens," Oxready said. "Some people identify as drag things."

These days, drag has moved beyond Chittenden County, but performers aren't always welcomed. In 2019, Facebook personality "Activist Mommy" stoked outrage against a Drag Story Hour at Montpelier's Kellogg-Hubbard Library. But far from scuttling the event, the backlash attracted supportive demonstrators and the largest crowd of any Drag Story Hour the library has ever hosted, library services director Carolyn Picazio said. In January, police received bomb threats targeting a Drag Story Hour at Northern Stage in White River Junction, along with the homes of the drag queen readers, Katniss Everqueer and Emoji Nightmare.

"The fact that these are happening, that the threats are happening, tells me ... there's still work to be done," Marsh said.

The LeMays will continue to do their part, advocating for equal rights for everyone as they spin their tales and sing their songs. They may be handing off the drag ball, "but House of LeMay isn't going anywhere," said Syndi Zook, who portrays Cousin Crystal. "We will be very grand old drag queens ... aging in our double-wide trailers at Beaver Pond in the Northeast Queendom."

For now, there's a party to plan. Last Friday, Bolyard was finalizing this Saturday's drag ball lineup, which includes the Champlain College Dance Team, Isis Vermouth, Merde Dance, Big J Entertainment and Sasha Sriracha.

Still on the maybe list was an Amber LeMay act. Bolyard has never performed solo on the large stage during Winter Is a Drag Ball. "I've been wanting to do a number," he said.

The song he's been rehearsing: "I Will Survive."