Drag Race royalty Alaska. (Screen capture via Entertainment Weekly)
In a plot twist we both absolutely did not see coming, yet, are we surprised, is that RuPaul’s Drag Race star Alaska worked as a shopkeeper at the gay porn store featured in Circus of Books.
Netflix show Circus of Books tells the story of Karen and Barry Mason, a straight couple who ran a gay porn empire.
Tiger King who?
Alaska, according to a clip shared to Entertainment Weekly, worked at the premier porn stop that’s now at the centre of the upcoming documentary produced by Ryan Murphy, the guy behind basically anything remotely homosexual on television these days.
Alaska: ‘It was always my dream to work in a porn store.’
In the clip, Alaska recalled: “It was always my dream to work in a porn store.
“I’m a weirdo and a kind of a pervert, I guess.
“They were very no bulls, no-nonsense, [like], ‘If you steal from us, you’ll be fired, and that’s that’,” Alaska continued, referencing the couple, Karen and Barry Mason, who run the store.
“They’re not offended, they’re not scandalized, it’s their job. It’s like they’re selling apples at an apple cart.”
Karen and Barry Mason are big allies to the LGBT+ community, even though their store has now closed down.
The couple never set out to support the LGBT+ community, but they “were not going to let other forces tell them what to do,” a voice-over in the trailer says.
The Netflix documentary will also detail how the couple struggled with what they did for a living as relatively conservative, religious people.
Over time, the couple learned to become more accepting and open — a process that was accelerated when one of their sons came out as gay.
Sadly, Circus of Books has since closed down due to the popularity of online porn, but the documentary will help to immortalise a store that was an essential outlet for the queer community in Los Angeles for many years.
Circus of Books will be released on Netflix on April 22.