A Tuber of a Gourd
What a time to be alive — my first smear post !
https://www.facebook.com/DjJohnJon/posts/10224637571384649.
I wish he put in this much time and care when I first started this adventure, but I feel his post misses what I think are important details and events that transpired outside of a single email and word document of texts that really needs to be brought up and addressed. I felt screwed over from what I thought was a good gesture; thus the reason I’m titling this post “A Tuber of A Gourd”.
He can lie about me and my business and tell local drag queens not to deal with me, but I will still be telling my side of the story, too, so I want to finally post my side of these happenings so people may see the truth.
The following is from my perspective to share how I understood what was happening and my own summary of my experience dealing with this.
For what it’s worth, the winner did receive the wig he claims I didn’t provide, so there is a positive to this terribly negative story.
In July 2021 a friend of mine told me I should sponsor a prize for a drag competition they hosted at a local bar, the Chez Est, so I offered $225 toward styling a single wig as a grand prize along with a small wig maintenance kit that was to be curated for drag queens (FYI: the kit was dismissed later on), and I would deliver the finished wig/prize to the bar for the winner to pick up.
For context, $225 was how much the average styling would cost just for most drag wigs and the cost of the wig itself is variable. This amount specifically didn’t include the cost off any wigs since some queens could have wanted double stacks and that is twice as much material, but not always twice as much time or work. Plus, my pockets at the time were only so deep with a new business and there were limits to my available generosity — I could afford fronting the service costing and my friend was aware of that.
I sent my friend the email with my prize offer and I was supposed to hear back from the owner, John.
! Surprise ! — I didn’t hear back.
This was my initial prize offer email.
I visited the bar for a Friday the 13th drag show in August (2021) to see a good friend host and perform, and I introduced myself to the owner for the very first time; in that meeting he admitted that he hadn’t read the prize offer email forwarded to him until that moment. I literally saw him click the bold, unread email from the host, so I know he wasn’t lying about that; he even admits that he didn’t read the prize email in a text, too. Anyway, I understood that he was tending bar, so we agreed we’d set up another time when we could discuss my offer and where he could explain the contest and how the sponsorship worked in full.
I also mentioned to him that I wanted to do drag workshops at the bar because I wanted to be involved with the CT drag community even if he didn’t accept my prize offer. John gave me his email and we exchanged some emails to pick some dates to meet and talk business — but it never happened and I never heard back about the work shop or the prize offer.
My workshop proposal email.
Side note: I found out later, after I sent them the email about the workshops, they ended up doing a similar workshop for Drag Kings while this whole ordeal was going on.
A part of me felt like there was no movement with this, but around the very end of August a bar flyer for the contest was posted online claiming I was offering a “custom wig” as a prize with no indicator of cost, and my logo was on the bar website — up to this point I still never received any type of written agreement on the exchange, nor did I receive a legitimate explanation of the sponsorship.
I styled many wigs for the host, so whenever I saw them I’d ask about why I never got a written response about what I would receive as a sponsor, or why the flyer made my contribution seem like there was no limit to the winners order and not just a credit for styling — which was the biggest issue I had because if they didn’t understand my prize offer, I would have gladly explained it further. Nonetheless, all I received from my asking was a vague run-down of the contest proceedings, and told I would understand as time went on. This was my friend at the time, so I made the mistake of believing thing’s would get better with time and make sense later; things definitely made sense later, but not the way I had originally expected.
The original event flyer; if it said “$225 gift card from Blockhead Wigs” I would not have had so many issues with the situation since the way it was presented implied there was no limit to my prize offer.
John and I were never able to find a time to go over the formalities or sign any agreements, but on October 17th (2021) I went to the bar again to work backstage on a wig of a friend performing during a show and I was able to catch another moment with John. Throughout our talk he still never answered my questions about the sponsorship. For instance, I confirmed I was only making one wig for the contest winner and he’d agree, but then he talked about there being two winners implying I would be making two wigs; when I’d stop him to explain what he meant by two winners he would start talking about how many times they say my name on the mic or how I’d be in the brochure – but during his explanation he never answered my questions about how one winner getting a wig turned into two winners getting wigs. He even tried to change the subject about how someone else styled a wig and it fell a part on stage during a performance hoping I’d just talk shit about them, but I wouldn’t.
It took all the way til November for John to finally explain how the series of contests worked — in a text. In the above screenshots he goes on to tell me about how it was a huge miscommunication and he assumed his host had explained this to me (they hadn’t and I was expecting him to), so I wasn’t exactly mad at him and I still wanted to be involved. I was mostly annoyed that he expected me to perfectly know the inner workings of his contest as a total newcomer, and that his texts implied he didn’t have time for me taking this seriously. Not to mention, his texts suggested I had owed him something; pushing this idea that I got 10 weeks of free press when all I did was submit an offer and want to be involved. I still wanted a proper agreement or a legitimate contract.
What was always a red flag to me is he would always speed through a really vague breakdown of the contest whenever I asked questions about it, and the explanation always ended up with me styling two wigs a year (for $225 each) while also being told it was only one wig. Neither John’s nor the host’s explanation ever made complete sense, and it was incredibly frustrating since he already put my information up on the site and flyer.
I started feeling like it was a take-take-take situation and there was no recovery. In my mind, I was only offering to style one wig a year up to $225 for winner which to me is the person who wins at the end and doesn’t have to keep competing, and all I read in his text was: he expected a prize for each season’s winner — which with his understanding of my offer would have turned into $225 a year into $450 a year. That wasn’t what I signed up for; I wrote grand prize in my offer email for a specific reason.
To be fair, he really should have read my email sooner and contacted me to confirm he understood my offer so we could have been in formal agreement before he put his own version of my prize offer on the flyer. He and I should have had a real contract with exactly what he expected from me, what I was getting in return, and how the series of contests works since there were two for every one full cycle — but that was probably too much to ask for until he was forced to communicate with me in texts… I guess words are hard for some people.
I wanted to back out completely, but John’s feelings that he promoted my business were partially true; he wanted me to stay on as a sponsor and he asked I offer $100 for the season winner instead. His suggestion was fair enough for me to complete the season and then be immediately done. I figured if I said, “no”, there would have been way more negativity talked about me than there already was and sooner, so I felt forced to oblige.
To me, $100 made sense for each of the seasons because if I had split my prize offer between two seasons, it would still be within the $225 offer for what I thought was all one contest. That was totally fine.
The second and final season of the contest cycle ended on November 21st and a winner was chosen. It ended up being a queen I had met at the October show I worked backstage for. I already liked this performer and since it was the only season I was going to do the sponsorship, I was open to working with them regardless and getting them into some really great hair. I explained to them how there was a miscommunication and I would go as far as honoring styling a wig for them at $225 instead of just the new $100 offer John expected, but the styling wouldn’t include the wig; they totally understood and was willing to cover the cost of the materials – which was what I was intending to offer all along. The plan for the winner was to wait on styling a wig until they needed one for the second leg of the competition they also called, “All Stars.”
The winner and I still got to talking about what they wanted and we discussed a whole bunch of different styles and options, so after a couple major changes in direction, it was decided that I would need to produce or significantly alter a pre-made brown and blonde highlighted wig because they were looking for the style to be an impersonation of a celebrity. The highlight pattern we wanted wasn’t found in any available synthetic wigs at the time, so I offered to make the highlighted wig and since I had to do significant customizations, I included a tailored hairline that fully covered the shape of their own hairline and the wig was made to fit their head. I did need some sort of payment to buy all the materials to make this custom wig, but I also let them know plenty of times that they could just send a wig to my P.O. Box and they wouldn’t need to pay me for any materials at all for me to style a wig for them since the styling was on me.
Time goes by and January 21st they decided to continue with the custom option and since there was still no wig available to use out of the bag they paid $150 for material cost for me to make one.
Note: I was literally coloring 6 bundles of synthetic hair to make a wig to match the celebrity of choice because no one else was already making it; there was one other option available but it was more of a dimensional brown and the celebrity was more on the blonde side, but I picked that up too just in case.
For me to accommodate a personalized fit, I wanted to get a head and hairline mold like I would for any other custom order client. At the time I didn’t have a salon to send people to and I didn’t feel comfortable doing a house call with all the drama surrounding this event, so even though sponsorship for the season was over I asked John to use the bar dressing room for a fitting with the winner since I was still fulfilling the prize I promised along with some extra.
I got no response. I was still on the website after the final season ended, but after being ignored I told them to take my logo off their website. I didn’t like how I went through all this rigamarole just to get disrespected more than I already had, and I didn’t want there to be any confusion if I was still sponsoring their contest with my logo up. Of course, my logo was taken down within minutes of asking, but I still hadn’t heard anything about using the dressing room. Luckily, I made due without using the bar dressing room.
Come to find out, when John finally does respond he explained that he offered the winner $200 so they didn’t have to deal with me. Once I read that, I told the winner to take his money and buy another wig and I’d style it free out of spite — but I don’t think they did and to this day I’m not sure if that money actually changed hands or if it was all just talk.
John likely had no idea what was going on and when he found out the winner paid additional monies to go along with the promised styling he went berserk acting like I was stealing from the winner. I really think he expected me to do everything under the sun for free. He was so outrageous, on March 3rd he sent me a DM on Instagram trying to intimidate me over this ordeal saying if I didn’t return the winner’s money or honor the agreement I had (which I was honoring and even providing more than I ever offered in the prize email) he would speak out to publicly to call me a scam artist and an extortionist 🙄. Meanwhile, I felt the only scammer and extortionist was him thinking he could turn a $225 offer into an unlimited prize, and for demanding I pay or else he’d libel me! And to be fair, $400 would have been a reasonable ask for the wig the winner received even without any custom hairlines.
The DM from the bar Instagram page, sounding like a lot of bribery/extortion, while accusing me of extortion. It was unsent shortly after I opened it, but I still got that screenshot. Also, there was definitely a misunderstanding on his part where he thought I believed all the CT queens were bottom of the barrel, but in reality my judgements were on him and the host for dogging me for so long and just being terrible people to me.
Even at this point everything was fine between the winner and me; I asked them about John’s message and they told me to ignore him because they hadn’t told him that everything was going the way it should yet — so I ignored it. I also found it a little funny that I had to always wait for a response from him, but suddenly when he needed something it was 24 hours or else. Malarkey.
To me, I thought the whole “promising” me (which I saw more as him threatening me) that no other queen in Connecticut would buy a wig from me, and him making an attempt to make that happen by publicly shaming me later on in his Facebook post was purely ego driven because I felt (and still feel) the problem was he just didn’t care about another business sponsoring his event.
Because the bar (one could only assume it was from John) sent me that threatening DM I had officially had it and I was fully done, so I sent the winner this letter explaining that I would not be dealing with the bar or John and this order was basically from me and out of formality the terms needed to be renegotiated. I wanted to make it extra clear that even with this letter I was still styling a wig for the winner, and at no point was I considering taking advantage of them or not give them a really fabulous wig.
My letter to the winner.
I will admit: the winner misunderstood the letter, which I felt bad about — but as soon as I clarified that they were still getting their wig and the letter was to make absolutely certain that it was no longer a contest prize and John had nothing to do with this transaction, they were in total understanding and we continued on with producing their wig. They were 100% receiving a custom fit, styled wig that would retail far more than the cost of $150 in material, so it just didn’t make sense as to why John acted out so foolishly other than I hurt his fragile ego because I wouldn’t be subservient to his demands or threats.
Even though everything with the winner’s wig was on track, John still went on Facebook to publicly post libelous claims that I scammed him and the winner telling others not to do business with me.
John’s public Facebook post. Also, I found it ironic how specific he was with “… exchange for one year of promotion… ” because I don’t remember getting that in any emails about my offer.
This Facebook post — or what I’m calling libel — ended up being a real drag on my business with the local queens, and I did actually lose a lot of revenue from it. I think some queens were afraid to wear wigs from me out of fear they’d be left out or not considered for gigs. Some wouldn’t tag my in their photos if they bought a wig from me before this interaction happened. Some also didn’t care and still supported me and they are some real ones, but a lot of them followed the lie.
Which lets get into the lies.
Let’s first address the fact that there was no contract! Contrary to his beliefs, we never entered any contract. All I had done was make an offer by email and he did a lot of talking, yet for some reason he feels that my email means I entered a binding contract with him and that’s just simply not the case. To put it kindly, a single email is far from a contract. Our text about $100 was more of a contract than anything we had discussed or emailed prior.
In a now deleted comment that I luckily screen grabbed, he goes on to say that he and the winner were out $575 with nothing to show for it and how I just wanted to use his space to “poach his customers”. it watotal bollocks.
A comment made on the post by John where I needed to redact some personal information from the screenshot.
There’s so much wrong with this:
The total amount he presents seems arbitrary because at first he claimed he was out $225 in promotion, but previously in text it was barely worth a $100 gift card.
I found him trying to pay off a performer with $200 to “not deal with me” was incredibly unethical and has nothing to do with me.
I congratulated the winner and was initiating getting their wig order together the night they were crowned, so they were always going to receive a prize offer from me; the wig they ended up with would have retailed well over $1,200 ($375 plus tax shipping and insurance without any customizations) and they got it for $150 in materials.
The texts I sent in January were asking to only have a fitting (which take 90 minutes) with the winner and he somehow understood it as me needing his space to make/style the wig and that was never ever the case; it felt more professional to use the bar dressing room than my sun room to accommodate a client who was from his bar.
The plan was already for the wig to be delivered to the bar for pick-up, so if I couldn’t do that then I saw his comments as a refusal of my initial offer nullifying any so-called agreement he felt we were in anyway.
Part of the deal he would pedal to me is that I would receive exposure to expand my client base, but suddenly I was a “poacher” when I’m expressing my displeasure with how all of this had been handled.
For the record, the winner officially received a wig, on time and as planned, on April 21, 2022. They even performed in it as Fergie at The Chez on April 30,22 (watch). The wig I initially made from scratch ended up too light, so I used the brown base wig and added lighter highlights to it to match Fergie and tailored the hairline to fit their natural hairline — they got exactly was offered from me and it would have been totally fair to ask for around $400 for that wig completed because the customization to the hairline was basically my treat, for having to have such a sour experience after winning a local competition.
Which I’m truly glad the winner and I got through all the bullshit John was adding into the mix because things went so well for them they eventually wore it on the Snatch Game on season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race !
Image Credit: Amethyst as Tan Mom on RuPaul’s Drag Race (Season 15 Episode 4: "Supersized Snatch Game" on MTV)
Normally, I don’t give a damn about this stuff, but it’s just gross that something good was turned into something so shitty; the texts I received from John suggested to me that it wasn’t important enough to him — but it was somehow important enough for him to publicly bash me. It was however laughable to read that my outreach to give great hair to local drag queens turned into me “poaching” them as customers. Even in John’s previous texts, I felt I was getting conflicting and contradictory nonsense from him, so I couldn’t take what he was saying to heart – but his many accusations took the cake.
The whole reason I was interested in sponsoring the contest in the first place was to get closer to the local drag community and provide them services on-site, backstage during shows like a bootblack at a leather night because at the time my services were geared toward the queens and no one was offering such a thing. I was and still am the original “bootblack of drag” here in CT though.
Looking back, I said some mean shit — and I might still say mean shit — but disrespect meets disrespect and I don’t think I lead into this with disrespect; I wanted to get involved and be apart of the community while still providing a service.
