Sisters Doing it for Themselves: Pulse Queens Rebuild in Denver Stronger Than Ever

Images of the Pulse shooting victims flash across the screen, and a lone queen in a gold, sequined dress walks on stage. As the music picks up, she lip-syncs her heart out to Rihanna’s “Stay.” For the first time in Denver, Karma Kouture is showing the audience all her love, all her pain, all her sorrow. And they know instinctively that this queen knows more about Pulse than can be found in news reports or videos or social posts. She feels the pain of the people that night at Pulse.

Specifically, the name and face of one of the victims, Stanley Almodovar, is highlighted on the screen. In addition to images from the news, she plays a personal voicemail from Almodovar, left to someone close to him just before he went to Pulse on that fateful night. There is love in his voice, a little concern, and a note of expectancy about the future.

Then, the music changes to Rihanna’s “Diamonds,” as stars and beautiful landscapes flit across the screen. Karma perfectly conveys the message that each life is precious, and she chooses to love and embrace every moment of the life she has. As the song ends, an #OrlandoStrong banner flashes on the screen behind her.
In that moment, she is Pulse.

“I don’t think when I first meet someone I’m like, ‘Hi, I’m Karma from Pulse,’ but I had an amazing opportunity this season during Ultimate Queen All Stars to touch on it,” Karma, street name Derrian, explained regarding this performance. “We had the chance to do a Pulse tribute; we had a slideshow including everyone that passed, played Stanley’s voicemail, performed one of his favorite songs. That made me so much closer to Denver, because at that point it wasn’t me having to introduce myself.”

Karma Kouture and her drag sister, Kahlea, weren’t at Pulse when the shooting happened, but they got their start as queens, and as out, visible people in the LGBTQ community, at Pulse. Kahlea lost Stanley, her former partner, to the shooting, someone both sisters were close to, and together, they lost a lot of close friends.

Although they aren’t actually related, and they only identify as women in drag form, Karma and Kaleah are definitely sisters. The two got into drag together and supported each other, so much so that they took the same drag last name—Kouture. They cut their teeth in the same scene, and then experienced the ultimate test of sisterhood; they went through a horrible tragedy together, helped each other through it, and ultimately relocated to Denver together.

A Vibrant Community

The two got their start as queens performing at Pulse’s weekly Twisted Tuesdays open mic drag competition. Like many queens, they started out just pulling different looks that emulated established queens, trying to get noticed.
“I think Pulse was such a big family,” explained Karma. “On any given night, there was something going on. You might go to other clubs, but Pulse was such a family atmosphere; there were different nights, but one core group of entertainers.”

Around the same time the queens started going to Pulse, they also both came out to their families at home. Since this was their first time out and in the world as gay men, Pulse’s queens became a family to the sisters.

“I really appreciated the heavy hitters, how welcoming they were to us as far as being baby queens,” added Kahlea Kutoure, known by day as Don.

The sisters were well-respected in the drag world at Pulse, happily greeted by queens who accepted them with open arms, and talked to them every time they passed at shows or in the dressing room.

Drag helped them foster a sense of community with those they looked up to, and with each other.
The very first night the sisters performed at Pulse, Karma won the Twisted Tuesdays competition. From then on, every Tuesday, the two were at Pulse. They got to know Axle Andrews, who hosted the night, and met a lot of other queens they looked to in the community.

Karma recounted how the two were able to “be young and gay and in drag,” experiencing a sense of liberation the sisters hadn’t found before. Although they may have been baby queens when they started performing at Pulse, they quickly grew into a sense of style and grace as they gained more and more experience performing.

Tragedy Strikes

On June 12, 2016, the unthinkable happened. Both Karma and Kahlea had left Orlando. Karma was already in Denver after a stint working on a cruise line, and Kahlea had temporarily moved back to Houston. Karma was trying to start a new life in a new city, and Kahlea was trying to plan the next move. Then, Pulse happened, shaking up both of their worlds.

When Kahlea first found out about the shooting, it was from 3 a.m. phone calls about how her recent ex, Stanley, whom she was still very attached to, was involved in a shooting. Confused, Kahlea at first thought her ex was perhaps involved in a fight at the club. Then, details started coming in.

“People were sending me links to what was going on, and I was like OK, he was at a club where there was a shooting, and I was getting more and more info as far as what it was, that it was an attack. I was getting a little bit more scared, but I was also thinking, ‘No, he’s fine; he’s good; he’s good,’ until finally I was told he was one of the first four who passed.”

Karma didn’t lose a lover, but she lost plenty of close friends. Like Kahlea, at first she couldn’t believe what she was reading online and assumed that a fight or something else fairly minor had broken out at Pulse.

“I was going through my facebook and saw there was a shooting at Pulse, and immediately you don’t think a massacre; maybe someone got shot; someone got mad; there was a fight; that’s not uncommon. But, as I was continuing to scroll, people were like ‘Have you seen so and so; has anyone heard from this person.’ So, at this point, I was like, ‘This is a little bigger than a club shooting; something big is going on.’

Going back and forth between her boy page and drag page, Karma saw a feed full of news articles on one, personal pleas for missing queens and friends in the scene on the other.

Instinctively, once they heard the news, the two ended up on the phone together, having a moment for those they had lost. Once they heard the final reports of numbers, and were able to speak to the survivors who were there that night, they realized how truly horrifying it was.

“A lot of the survivors went into a dressing room and hid behind the clothes,” Kahlea explained. “The shooter went in and saw there was no one there, looked in the door and then closed it and left. There were actually a ton of people hiding behind the drag clothes. They were the people who communicated with the police in order for them to bust the shooting.”

In addition to processing the horror of losing friends and loved ones, the two had the jarring revelation that if they had still been living in town, if they had been in Orlando on that night, they probably would have ended up at Pulse.

Kahlea admitted that she had to dig into Almodovar’s timeline, retrace his steps. She found out that he was supposed to meet a group of friends there, but almost everyone ended up flaking or making different plans. Still, Almodovar showed up that night, presumably because he just wanted to hear Salsa and dance. Apparently, he also left the club ten minutes before the shooting, but then went back in to say hello to a friend and take a shot. Almodovar was still inside the building when the shooter struck.

Picking Up the Pieces in Denver

Shortly after losing his ex in the shooting, Kahlea moved to Denver to join Karma and start a life in the Rockies.
“I moved here and I started the Ultimate Queen competition about a year after I first got here,” explained Karma. “I learned so much, because in Orlando we didn’t really have an aesthetic; we wanted to look like this person, liked the way this person does this, so when I started Ultimate Queen it really forced me to not have these idols and find me as a performer, to find an aesthetic, how I look and act and dress. It really shaped me as a performer; it shaped me as a queen.”

Denver caused both queens to get outside their comfort zones and try new aesthetics, and they were suddenly experiencing a whole new world of competition. Instead of just vying to be the prettiest girl or the fishiest queen, they were introduced to a city full of queens with differing aesthetics.

“Orlando taught us how to conduct ourselves, Karma acknowledged. “It’s so much about professionalism; so many hosts in Orlando are your more polished queens, but here you have someone who is a baby drag queen and they are hosting. To have that humbleness is why we’ve been so successful in Denver; moving here and being a resident places, hosting nights, all that stuff is dope.”

Remembering Pulse

In spite of the happiness they’ve found here, the two will never be able to forget what happened at Pulse, and they now carry that bagage everywhere. Although the sisters don’t wallow in it, they also want to be sure never to take their lives for granted, and never to forget.

“We definitely don’t just bring it up, but I can say I do love talking about it because I can let them all know they died for us,” Kahlea explained. “It happened; it sucks that it happened, but they died for us. I don’t think people really understand unless they were in it and got to see what happened after it. If you heard the crazy things that were happening for the people that were involved. It was insane.”

“I remember there being tributes here when it happened, but thinking no one here can fully understand what I’m going through, what my sister is going through,” Karma added. “Now Denver has a connection to Pulse, to Florida, and I think that’s what’s shaping us.”

Never Again

Now, the two live life a little harder, a little more passionately. Kahlea pursues a musical career when in boy form as well and has been much more moved to work on music now that life feels more precious. They both push the envelope when it comes to drag and take their careers seriously. They also both have strong opinions on safety now. For the sisters, that means appreciating police presence and pushing for gun control.

Now, when the two hear the voice of a police officer at a club, see the flashing lights, hear a police radio, or see cops posted at the door of an event, instead of feeling anxious, they feel grateful. While they realize this may not be the same experience other people have, they are thankful for the protections afforded them by police.

“I don’t really know about digging into gun control, but I think when you look into other countries that have stricter laws, like you get interviewed, take a psychological test, get interviewed again, take a test on the gun, I think you need to make it harder for people to have a gun, make sure they are sane, and using it for something, either sport or house protection, make sure they are psychologically there,” Karma explained.

While their futures as entertainers aren’t set in stone, two things are for sure: their sisterhood, and their newfound appreciation for all that life has to offer.

Photos By Anna McCree Photograph and Bread + Milk