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 have feltreally screwed over from what I thought was a good gesture; thus the reason I’m titling this post “A Tuber of A Gourd”.
I refuse to let him lie about my business and tell local drag queens not to deal with me without telling my side of the story, too, so I want to finally post my side of these happenings so people can make their own decisions.
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 it would cost just to style out most drag wigs minus the cost of the wig, so this amount didn’t include the cost off the wigs since some queens could have wanted double stacks and that is twice as much material, but not always twice as much time/work. Plus, my pockets at the time were only so deep and there were limits to my generosity.
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 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 even 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 picked 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 — that was the biggest issue I had. If they didn’t understand my prize offer, I would have gladly explained it further. Nonetheless, all I got from 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 and sign any agreements, but on October 17th (2021) I went to the bar again to work backstage on a performing friend’s wig 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 didn’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), 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 any questions about it, and the explanation always ended up with me styling two wigs a year — for $225 each. Neither John’s nor the host’s explanation made 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. Not what I signed up for; I wrote grand prize in my offer email for a 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 — especially before he put his own version of my 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… 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, so I felt forced to oblige.
To me, $100 made sense for a season 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. 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. For me, I liked this performer and it was the only season I was going to do the sponsorship, so I was open to working with them 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 offering all along. The plan was to wait on styling a wig until they needed one for the second leg of the competition, “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 for a wig all the way to producing a custom fit wig for them. 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, and the highlight pattern we wanted wasn’t found in any available synthetic wigs. I offered to make the highlighted wig, and since I had to make it anyway, I include a custom hairline for a fraction of the price I normally would have charged in any other situation. 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 anything at all to style it since the styling was on me.
Time goes by and January 21st they decided to continue with the custom option and paid $150 so I could buy all the materials and put their wig together.
For me to accommodate the level of wig work they would need for this order, 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 host salon 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 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 clearly had absolutely no idea what was going on and when he found out the winner paid for additional services 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 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!
The DM from the bar Instagram page, sounding a lot of like extortion, accusing me of extortion. It was unsent shortly after I opened it. 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 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 was delusional because I felt (and still feel) the problem was poor management on his part.
Because they sent me that threatening DM I had officially had it and I was done, so I sent the winner this letter explaining that I won’t 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 want 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.
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.
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; I truly think the queens were afraid to wear wigs from me out of fear they’d be left out or not considered for gigs.
Let’s just 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.
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”. Total bollocks.
A comment made on the post by John where I needed to redact my 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 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.
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 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 their 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).
I’m truly glad the winner and I got through all the bullshit that John was adding into the mix because things went so well with that wig they even wore the wig on Snatch Game !
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 truly 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 didn’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.
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 really just wanted to get involved and be apart of the community.
