Drag queen Stella D’Oro, a ‘bingo verifying diva,’ keeps the party going at GayBINGO

Meet Tim Johnson, associate director of the AIDS Fund, and his drag queen persona, Stella D’Oro, a longtime bingo verifying diva for GayBINGO.

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Two years after graduating from a conservative fundamentalist Baptist college in South Carolina, Tim Johnson was back at home in Norristown, hanging out at the Beagle Tavern, when a stunningly beautiful drag queen walked in.

“She was so overdressed. I was like ‘What is this wonderful woman doing here?’” he said.

Her name was Shelita Buffet and she told Johnson she’d come to the tavern to ask if she could host a drag show there. When the owner said yes, Shelita invited Johnson — who hadn’t performed in drag before — to join her.

“She told me she’d show me how to do my face one time and then I was on my own,” he said.

Johnson’s drag queen character, Stella D’Oro, began in 2010 by performing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera hits, but it wasn’t until Shelita invited Stella to a GayBINGO event later that year that she truly found her calling as a bingo verifying diva (BVD).

Today, Stella remains one of the longest-serving BVDs at GayBINGO, a monthly fund-raiser for the AIDS Fund.

Held once a month at Congregation Rodeph Shalom on North Broad Street, GayBINGO, currently in its 26th year, helps raise money for the AIDS Fund to provide emergency financial assistance to people living with HIV.

Each GayBINGO night has a theme, from “Dirty Dancing” to “Zombie Prom,” complete with performances by the BVDs, who entertain the crowd and verify winning players’ bingo cards.

At last month’s “Love Boat GayBINGO,” attended by about 250 people, Stella served as “cruise director” and host. She was very clear about the rules of the game: When a B7 is called, players must bang on the table “like a petulant 7-year-old.” When B13 is called, players must yell “mazel tov!” because that’s the age for a bar or bat mitzvah.

And then there’s O69, Stella’s personal favorite.

“When 069 is called, we jump out of our chairs, we shake it like we just don’t care, and we yell ‘Oooh 69!’” she said. “Now, there’s always some (expletive) from Haddonfield who thinks they don’t have to jump out of their chair … If you refuse to do it, ladies at table 9, you will be reported to me and I will make you come up here and do it alone.”

When O69 was drawn, Stella didn’t hesitate to call out a player who didn’t follow the rules. It was unclear if that player was from Haddonfield.

Being Stella is a dream for Johnson, one he wasn’t allowed to have growing up in a conservative fundamentalist Christian family.

“I always wanted a Barbie, I loved my sister’s cute, frilly, clothes, but I was never allowed to explore anything feminine,” he said.

Community theater called to Johnson at an early age (he was cast in his first role at 6), but after graduating from Calvary Baptist School in Lansdale, he followed his parents’ wishes and enrolled at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, where he obtained a degree in book publishing.

Johnson returned home after graduation and worked at supermarkets, a travel agency, and a small book publisher before joining the staff at the AIDS Fund in 2013, after three years of volunteering as a BVD.

“I honestly didn’t know when I first walked through the doors that the AIDS crisis was still happening,” he said. “A lot of that was due to my upbringing. I wasn’t taught about STIs. It was just ‘Don’t have sex until you’re married.’”

If he didn’t know, Johnson figured others didn’t either, and he wanted to change that. He started as the AIDS Fund’s event and volunteer coordinator and is now its associate director, doing everything from overseeing GayBINGO and planning the logistics of AIDS Walk Philly, to taking out the trash and watering the plants in the office.

Over the years, the AIDS Fund changed its model from offering grants to service providers to issuing grants directly to people with HIV who have emergency needs. It’s been a profound change for Johnson, who reviews the requests.

“Not only do I feel the money we’re distributing is being used in a better way, it’s given me a bigger drive for the job because I am reading these individual stories,” he said.

Johnson said 75% of the people the fund assists live below the poverty line and grants average around $400 each. Some are used to help people pay their utility bills or rent, others go to helping people get to medical appointments or obtain prescriptions.

When the pandemic put GayBINGO on hold, Johnson held Facebook Live “isolation cabarets” as Stella and raised more than $20,000 in donations.

“I would get up to a lot of antics because there wasn’t a whole lot to do and I enjoy a glass of wine every now and then,” Johnson said.

While Stella doesn’t perform often at bars anymore (”I like to come home, sit on the sofa, and watch Dateline”), she does enjoying emceeing fund-raisers for the AIDS Fund’s partner agencies.

Outside of his work and BVD life, Johnson, who lives in the Gayborhood, enjoys cooking, painting, traveling, and spending time with his 12-year-old Chihuahua, Clyde.

Sometimes, he still marvels at the events that brought him to where he is today.

“It’s still amazing to me that the whole career I have, and so many friends I have now, are all because I happened to be in a dive bar in Norristown and asked a drag queen, ‘What are you doing here?’”

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