Raafe Purnsley, better known as Stormie Daie, has spent the last decade-plus as one of the most beloved drag performers in Durham. If they've ever told you that it all began in the Bull City, however, you may have received some slightly embellished information.
"The first lie I tell people is that I was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina," they told WUNC. "The second is my face."
Purnsley was actually born on the Fort Ord military base in Monterey Bay, California, and grew up in a military family. Fort Ord closed in 1994, and the land is now a national monument run by the Bureau of Land Management as part of National Conservation Lands. Purnsley left the base almost immediately after being born there, but it's still an important part of their story.
"That military base is now a butterfly reserve, which I love because I'm a science girly and a gay pacifist at heart," Purnsley, whose first name Raafe is pronounced Raw-fee, said.
Even though they were born in California, Purnsley's roots run deep in North Carolina, and particularly in Chapel Hill. Their grandmother grew up in a historically Black community off Rosemary Street, and was part of the Hargraves family for which a community center and a park in the neighborhood were named.
Purnsley's great aunt was Miss Velma Perry, a community leader who is now the namesake of the Perry Place affordable housing community. Perry lived in the same house in Chapel Hill for 98 years, and fought for affordable housing and other issues relating to equality and fairness.
As a child, Purnsley split their time between family in Chapel Hill and Little Washington, near the coast, and finally moved to Durham in the third grade. Both they and their younger brother fell in love with the city immediately.
"When I moved to Durham I learned three things. It was Blacker, it was browner, and a lot of people saw it as the ghetto," they said.
Purnsley attended Durham School of the Arts, where they got to explore their creative side amongst peers. They played trombone, and also took some acting classes while at the school. Their first drag performance was the role of Titania in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Birth of Stormie Daie
Most of Purnsley's childhood was spent with family and at church, so it wasn't until 2008 when they left Durham to attend Elon University that they learned about the allure of the city.
"People would knock on my dorm room door and be like 'Hey, we're going out dancing in Durham this weekend. Is it safe?' And I was like 'I have not been out in the city. I'm a good Christian child who does not go out anywhere.'"
It was also at Elon that Persley started dressing in drag on a regular basis for the first time, both at parties and as a performer in the school's theatre program. They came up with the name Stormie Daie at this time as an homage to the X-Men character Storm, and the Billie Holiday song "Stormy Weather."
After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecological and Environmental Science at Elon, Purnsley moved back to Durham. It was a time of great artistic growth in the area, and it was at this point that they started to branch out and explore the creative side of the city. It was also a time when "Keep Durham Dirty" was a popular phrase going around the Triangle, even as other towns and cities in the area were pointing fingers at Durham and blaming the city for their own rising crime rates.
"There was all this talk about how Durham needed to get its act together, but at the same time there was the Bimbé Festival, and there was Centerfest, and there was the Arts Council, and then DPAC opened," Purnsley recalled. "Durham was always really this arts and culture place, deeply rooted in Black history. Very quickly it went from this hidden gem of North Carolina to being one of the big three. Durham started rivaling Asheville when it comes to queer, alternative, hippie arts and culture."
House of Coxx and the rise of drag shows in Durham
In 2013, Durham's nightlife was also on the rise, and with it came the genesis of its drag scene. After being booked to host a performance by RuPaul's Drag Race runner-up Manila Luzon at The Pinhook, Justin "J" Clapp rose up as Vivica C. Coxx and quickly became one of Durham's most elite names in drag.
Purnsley met Clapp the next year through Stonewall Kickball, a nonprofit sports organization for LGBTQIA+ people and their allies, and together launched the House of Coxx, Durham's first drag family. Besides Coxx and Daie, its other members included Brigitte Kiss, Spray J, and Miss Anita Coxx. The family has come to be known for its hilarious and high energy performances and their focus on messages of social justice.
"Vivica worked at Duke so she was bringing this academic background to our house," Purnsley said. "She was very serious about respecting pronouns. And if there was somebody in the audience who was short or disabled making sure they had a good spot in front of the stage where they could see the show."
Those were early days for drag, and while the art form was on the rise it wasn't necessarily easy for Purnsley to find the materials they needed to perform as Stormie Daie.
"I didn't know where to get good brown tights at the time. If you asked a ballet dancer back then, they would tell you you have to dye them yourself."
One local establishment that was crucial for early drag performers in Durham was The Scrap Exchange, an arts & crafts store that stocks reusable materials for creatives. At the time they had a bin filled with foam that Purnsley says came in clutch.
"My first ass was brought to you by The Scrap Exchange. I used to say that joke all the time."
Daie quickly became the second hostess of the family, and has often co-hosted events with Coxx. "I love hostessing. I love psyching up the crowd," she said. "I'm really good at it and I have hosted some really amazing things."
When it comes to picking musical numbers, Daie says she likes to keep it upbeat. "I feel like the audience is coming for fun, and it's hard to feed people vegetables when they're out on the town. I like to move. I like to have fun. I love upbeat music," she said. "Even in my own life, I'm really bad at listening to slow, heartbreaking music, because I'm a Pisces and I can get sad real easily."
Science with Stormie
Outside of the House of Coxx, Daie has several other creative ventures including Science With Stormie, which allows Daie to combine her lifelong love of science and education with her drag persona.
"There's a tagline I say, that everything is science, and science is everything," they said. "We study environmental science not only to understand our needs in relation to nature, but to understand how we both affect each other."
Purnsley says that Science With Stormie has evolved over the years. In the early days they were mostly teaching children of color, and it served as a way to uplift voices in science that don't always get the attention they deserve. Over the years it has evolved to focus on learning through playfulness, and the history of Environmental Science. Lessons involve mixing up ingredients you might find in your kitchen cabinet, or exploring nature by learning about the trees in your backyard. Daie says their favorite lesson teaches kids how to make invisible ink out of turmeric.
"I also have another saying, personally, that Environmental Science was started to fix all the things white people broke and then to prevent them from breaking them in the future. And I love saying that online, because people get so upset at me," they said. "We can take it all the way back to the Dust Bowl if you want to. The passenger pigeon, the dodo, the Steller's sea cow. Those things weren't killed by people of color."
During the COVID lockdown, Daie teamed up with the LGBTQ Center of Durham to post some of these lessons online. In 2022, they hosted an event at The Museum of Life and Science in Durham and this month they’ll be traveling to San Francisco for an anniversary event at the San Francisco Public Library.
Daie has also made a name for herself as a reader for North Carolina's chapter of the global phenomenon known as Drag Story Hour. Story Hour's main goal is to increase representation through storytelling for LGBTQ people, and all types of diverse families.
"I think a lot of people read to kids because it's fun and it's cute, but I really love the stories," she said.
In 2015, Daie became the first hostess for Alamance Pride in Alamance County, an event she has led every year since, thanks to relationships she formed at Elon University. She says that the opportunity allowed her to bring queer families together and read to both children and adults. It also gives her the chance to talk about queer and drag history in a space where people will listen.
"As a Black drag queen from the south, there are places that don't want me. It's not lost on me that when people try to eliminate a cultural group, they do it through the children. They do it through means of education, either withholding or indoctrination. And LGBTQ people often don't have a right to have children or to create families or to be together or to be seen around children."
