Colorado City, Ariz. • In a makeshift dressing room, while the other drag queens practiced turns on stilettos and helped each other secure their wigs, Violet Vox sat at the mirror in a feud with her false eyelashes.
“I don’t know why these are such a struggle today,” she said, her hands shaking.
A nearby queen reassured her, “They look great, babe.” But Violet didn’t want great; for this performance, everything had to be perfect.
After the fourth failed attempt and some four-letter words, she decided it was time for a smoke break. On any other night, the nicotine might have nursed her nerves. But not tonight. Not here.
From the back doorway, Violet looked out on the small community straddling the Utah-Arizona state line, a familiar grid of neighborhoods fenced in by towering walls of the reddest sandstone. She had grown up here in the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City, referred to collectively as “Short Creek.” When she was a kid, this place was under the strict control of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
And Violet’s parents were faithful FLDS adherents. To the south she could see the top of the chapel the family had gone to every week.
That was until, fearing the leadership of the self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs, they fled to a cabin to the north. Violet remembers escaping as a kid one night through the same landscape that she was looking at now.
“My dad packed us up, and we vanished,” she said.
Violet exhaled a cloud of smoke. The nervous butterflies in her stomach only seemed to get more vicious.
Her family stayed hidden for years, returning only after Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides. They came back to be close to relatives but didn’t return to the faith. And after that, Short Creek slowly started to change in the same way: becoming less FLDS, more secular.
Violet watched the slow march of progress. Outside of drag, Violet is Jordan Phelps, a now 25-year-old LGBTQ+ man who was one of the first openly gay individuals in Short Creek — something that could happen only outside of the confines of the church. But as such, Phelps experienced being threatened and beaten up and chased down by cars as a teen.
Now he was back here as Violet, getting ready to perform in drag for the first time in this rural hometown, at this little brewery that didn’t have a stage, let alone a dressing room. For the first-ever drag show held here in this conservative community. As the first drag queen to have grown up here, the first from an FLDS upbringing.
The anxiety was justified.
Had this place changed enough in the past few years to accept this? To accept her like this? Would there be backlash or protests?
One last drag on her vape pen and Violet walked back inside for another attempt at her eyelashes.
— — —
Phelps was maybe 5 or 6 years old when he realized he was different from the other so-called “cricker boys” his age; he felt feminine and wanted to express that.
Even then he knew to keep quiet about it.
He had heard the sermons of the prophet Jeffs. Men marrying men, Jeffs had once said, “is the worst evil act you can do, next to murder. It is like murder.”
Members of the faith were instructed to follow the ultra-traditional gender roles for men and women — or, he said, the lord would destroy them. They were also told to harass any “sinner” who they found acting against what he preached.
“I learned at a very young age to stay to myself and to be very wise with who I called my friends,” Phelps said.
Even with Jeffs gone, attitudes were slow to change.
Many who were still FLDS left the area, and those who stayed mostly left the FLDS, an extremist offshoot from the main Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But a lot of the beliefs about the LGBTQ+ community remained as deeply rooted as the juniper trees in the tough desert soil.
Phelps was maybe 11 years old when his family came back to Short Creek from the hideaway cabin on Cedar Mountain.
The house that the family lived in before fleeing had now been absorbed into a trust; and even though that was no longer run by the FLDS, they didn’t immediately have a place to go when they returned. A friend offered to let the family stay in an extra room.
Phelps didn’t mind so much sharing the tight space with his parents and four siblings as he did splitting the bandwidth of the internet.
It was one of the biggest changes that had started to shift Short Creek in Jeffs’ absence. The prophet had previously banned it, along with sports and television, public education and all music other than hymns.
With a Myspace account, Phelps switched from worshipping FLDS presidents to someone he personally found more godlike: makeup mogul Jeffree Star.
“I’d never seen anything like him before in my life,” Phelps said.
Star is known for creating both bold androgynous and feminine looks, with bright colors and playful wigs. For the first time, like he was looking at a reflection in the computer screen, Phelps saw someone he could identify with — and clung to it.
He’d watch hour after hour of Star’s tutorials on the best lip liners and the worst concealers, tricks for contouring, Maybelline versus CoverGirl versus L’Oréal Paris. Any extra money he had went to the drug store to buy more mascara or eyeshadow to test out new looks.
By seventh grade, Phelps didn’t want to hide any more, as he had in the cabin and as he had with his identity. He alternated between wearing glamorous Marilyn Monroe and gothic Marilyn Manson looks to school. His parents grew to support it. His classmates were merciless.
“I was always just so expressive,” Phelps said. “People around here did not like it one bit.”
Phelps started that year at El Capitan High School, which covers grades 6 through 12, on the Colorado City, Ariz., side of Short Creek. Kids there would yell homophobic slurs at him, punch and even threaten to shoot him. Every time he went to report it to the administration, though, Phelps said, they’d tell him the video cameras that were installed in every hallway hadn’t been working at the exact time he was bullied or somehow hadn’t captured any footage of it because of the angle.
“Convenient, right?” Phelps deadpanned.
His mom transferred him to Water Canyon High School in Hildale, Utah. But in this small community, where many are related, the same last names and the same beliefs are often shared on both sides of the state line. The other students professed to no longer follow Jeffs, but they’d repeat his words, “like murder,” “evil,” “sinner.”
At one point, Phelps said, his teacher was kicking him out of class every day for wearing makeup, alleging it was against the dress code.
By 11th grade, he dropped out. By what would have been his senior year, Phelps was abusing drugs.
— — —
In the cramped space where the six drag performers were getting ready, it looked like a tornado of tulle had touched down inside a Sephora.
The backroom at the Edge of the World Brewery — which is a first-of-its-kind business for Short Creek in its own right — is typically used for crafting a unique nitro Irish stout. Tonight, on the Fourth of July, it was transformed into a chaotic backstage. Surrounding the brewing hoses and buckets were piles of pantyhose and tutus, a single translucent six-inch heel separated from its companion, Violet’s black top hat, bottles of bronzer and something called “body adhesive.”
One bartender, trying to maneuver around the heaps to get to the adjoining kitchen, nearly got taken out by a cloud of hairspray.
“Oooh. Sorry, honey,” said Karma Z. with a wince.
Karma, the glittery drag persona of 26-year-old Jordan Aldrich, is a proud Colorado City resident and the force behind this inaugural drag show.
She is also a regular staffer at the brewery. And when the idea came to her, it felt like the perfect fit. Bar co-owner Ray Hammon agreed. “We’re a small town. We’ve had a lot of firsts,” he said. “We were happy to be part of this important one.”
Having grown up here and knowing this town, Hammon did have one concern: the possibility for violence — beyond a little accidental hairspray in the eye.
He’d heard rumors about protests as soon as the idea for the drag show was bandied about in conversation. Later, social media posts suggested more residents would participate in demonstrating against it than the number of tickets they could sell for those who wanted to attend the show, with the brewery’s capacity capped at 55 attendees.
Opening a bar is one thing, and there was a bit of backlash to that, but he worried this might be asking Short Creek to change too much too fast.
In the days before the show, Violet feared the same. “I’m scared for sure,” she said.
Karma didn’t have all the answers. But she had one. Using her own money, she hired two security guards to patrol the event.
She thought about when she was growing up and saw someone who was openly LGBTQ+ for the first time; it meant everything to her, and she didn’t want those in the community in Short Creek to be stopped from having the same.
Karma moved here in 2020, after a chance connection to the area. Her sister had met a formerly FLDS man in North Dakota. When they married, the husband wanted to return to his hometown; he is a “lost boy,” the name for the young men who were ordered out of the community under Jeffs’ reign, often because they were seen as a threat or competition. Karma decided to follow them.
In some ways, Karma said, it was more like a drowning than a baptism to get used to this place and its complicated religious past. In other ways, though, it was not unlike her childhood in deeply red Bismarck, where she knew only three other LGBTQ+ people at her high school, and they all felt like targets.
Sometimes it still surprises her that interactions she had there seem to play out again, almost identically, hundreds of miles away in this redrock town.
In Short Creek, the fundamentalist faith so heavily anchored shame to queer identities, Karma said, that the problems with homophobia sometimes feel deeper. But they’re also not exclusive to this place.
“Queer people in small or conservative towns are more likely to be exposed to homophobia,” she added, “and more likely to feel like they have to stay closeted.”
Just that morning, while Karma was taking a picture with other members of Short Creek Pride — the organization she and Violet both helped start to support queer people here — a group on motorbikes started circling them. The bikers purposefully kicked up dirt and pebbles that painfully pelted those dressed in rainbow colors, she said. Several young transgender members of the community had bruises and scratches. Then, the riders drove off.
A report to the police, so far, has gone nowhere.
Before the show, a few performers backstage were talking about what had happened, and fear started to swirl. They stopped humming along to the Rihanna song playing overhead.
Queen Plexi Glass, who is Wyatt Brown outside of drag, asked, “Do I have to worry about being shot tonight?”
“I’d tackle anyone who tried,” said Violet, feigning a bit braver than she felt.
Karma tried to calm the room. “Queens, listen up,” she said. “We’re as prepared as can be.”
She had strategically planned the show for the Fourth of July in the hopes that most residents would be busy with other plans and wouldn’t show up to protest. The holiday is cherished in this community, with most folks going all-out with their celebrations. The show was set to end, too, just as the huge fireworks display in Colorado City was getting underway.
As Karma talked, her phone dinged.
Her face, already covered in white foundation, somehow seemed to get even more pale. One of the security guards had texted her. He couldn’t make it.
— — —
From the brewery’s kitchen, Violet cracked open the door to get a peek at the crowd that had come to watch the show.
Even in the dimmed lighting, she could see the room was packed. She recognized a few people from around town. There were Timpsons and Barlows, the most common last names here, opening up bar tabs. A few folks were wearing rainbow shirts with their standard cowboy hats, which she didn’t expect.
And in the very back was Christine Marie Katas, an advocate for those both in and out of the FLDS faith.
Earlier this year, Katas convinced Violet to do the makeup for a group of young girls in the community who were raised fundamentalist and who are survivors of abuse — a sort of empowering self-care day. “It helped them really come into their own,” Katas said. It helped Violet, too.
She couldn’t decide if that made her feel more at ease or more nervous tonight. But it was probably a combo of the two.
“I’m doing a drag show in my hometown,” she said. “I have to get it perfect.”
From her little backstage hideaway, she watched the other performers take their turns wowing the audience to routines set to Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter songs. Karma, in an eagle leotard, sang along to the national anthem — Fergie’s version, of course. Billy the King twirled flawlessly on a pole.
Violet had spent four hours getting ready, which is typical for a queen. (“Drag is exhausting,” she said with a laugh.) And now she was dressed in her black lingerie and blazer. Her boyfriend had helped her lace up the corset. Her strappy heels were on tight, too.
And she whispered to herself, “Please don’t face plant. Please don’t face plant.”
Even though she has been performing in drag for a year, tonight felt like the first time again — back in June 2023, at the Sun Bowl in southern Utah’s St. George, unable to tell if she was sweating so much from the 105-degree heat or the stress.
She doesn’t remember what happened during her performance, if she hit her marks or not; all Violet recalls is her friend Mitski Avalōx telling her afterward that she’d done well. And it made her soar.
It was Mitski, one of the queens now suing St. George over the attempt to shut down the show there, who’d first encouraged Violet to do drag.
They’d met at a Halloween party a few months earlier. Violet had been partying a lot then. And drinking. And using drugs.
After leaving high school, she said, she was overwhelmed with anxiety and depression. She felt like she didn’t have a place in Short Creek as she was, but she also felt like she couldn’t transition into who she wanted to be as a transgender woman. Her instinct, as she’d done as a kid, was to hide.
“I struggled with gender dysphoria a lot,” Violet said.
The drugs, at least for a while, stopped her brain from launching its constant attacks on her body for not matching how she identified. Another hit would mean another minute of not having to think about it. She would do anything for that.
“I’m sober now,” Violet said. “I’m really lucky and really glad I got sober. It could’ve gone the other way. I could’ve slipped further.”
Ultimately, she said, it really was drag that pushed her to get clean.
It wasn’t a quick process, but each time Violet would dress as she saw herself, she felt better. Wearing the lacy dresses and the dramatic purple eyeshadow was healing. And she started wanting to help others in Short Creek heal, too.
She gave her drag persona the name she’d always loved and held for if she ever transitioned.
“She’s the girl that I’ve always wanted to be,” Violet said. “She’s the girl I always felt inside, very beautiful, elegant and soft, but very fierce at the same time.”
When Violet chose her drag surname, Vox, she picked it because she thought it sounded strong and androgynous. She didn’t know then that it was the Latin word for voice. But it’s the perfect fit for someone who found who they are, their voice, in the expression of drag.
Violet looked out at the audience again and could see Mitski was there, too, at the front.
She took a deep breath and pushed through the door.
Over the microphone, Karma had introduced her as the next queen to come on stage. “She is my Colorado City drag sister.” The crowd screamed with excitement.
“… The sexy, the stunning, Violet Vox.”
A smoke machine surrounded her in swirls as she walked out to a song called “Mistress Violet.” The lyrics crooned, “I confess I’m becoming obsessed / With the feminine and divine.”
That is the real combo that Violet represents for Short Creek.
— — —
She swayed effortlessly across the floor, the red and purple lights bouncing off of her with every step.
The performance was sexy and sultry and, more than that, an ode to confidence in visibility. It was like Violet stole strength from the spotlight.
And she was seen.
Everyone craned their necks or stuck out their phones to try to catch history as it was happening. They cheered louder than they had all night.
For all of the buildup, it was now done. Her second number only cemented it.
On a high, Violet returned backstage after a final bow. She’d forgotten for a minute about the potential for pushback to the drag show. Grabbed a cup of water, she went out the back door for another quick smoke break — this time, hopefully, able to hold her vape pen with less shaking.
As she stepped out and saw the sky had turned black in the hours since her last break, she panicked about what might be out there, waiting for the show to end.
In the streetlights Violet could barely make out the outlines of a few folks who had decided to take a breath, too. Everything else was dark except for the group quietly sitting at the tables outside the brewery.
She didn’t know one of them was Celeste Mackert, a transgender woman who, like Violet, had also grown up here in Short Creek in an FLDS family. Mackert hadn’t been back here since she left at 20 years old.
Just like Violet, too, she knew at 6 years old that she was supposed to be a girl. Her family did not agree, though, Mackert said, and she faced abuse as they tried to force her to act and look like a boy. She tried to run away several times and got caught. She finally made it out 22 years ago, she said.
“This is my first time back,” the now 42-year-old said. Mackert returned only to see this show. She came, she said, for the hope that people like her could exist now in this place.
“I never, ever, ever thought I could see something here this queer,” Mackert said.
She looked out on the same scenery, now in shadows, that Violet had stared out at before.
Mackert had noticed as she drove through earlier some of the changes in this town. Jeffs’ home no longer had the infamous words “PRAY AND OBEY” scaled down the side. There was a football stadium in Hildale. There weren’t as many “Zion” signs above doorways signaling who was a faithful believer.
And there was no one outside protesting the drag show.
It was like Short Creek had done its own costume change. Mackert wiped away tears.
From where she stood a few yards away, Violet’s eyes adjusted, and she sighed in relief that there was no one else outside, no one with picket signs calling her a “sinner,” no one with a gun, no need for security guards.
“My mom likes to say that I saved this town. But I don’t see myself as no Jesus or anything like that,” Violet said with a laugh.
“I do hope, though, that this brings new beginnings and softer hearts to a lot of people out here. For once, I’m excited for the future.”
With one last drag, Violet walked back inside to celebrate.
