Suck Less: Where There's a Willam, There's a Way

by Willam Belli

  35

  How to SUCK LESS at

  INSULTING SOMEONE EFFECTIVELY

  Throwing shade has gained popularity in the past few years. Many try, but few succeed. Tone is everything. Reading a bitch is one thing. It’s direct and you’re detailing their flaws for them, plain and simple. But throwing shade implies that the delivery is shady. It usually involves a twist of some sort that isn’t caught until the end. It’s all in the pitch. Give out candy-coated tones right up until you push ’em in the oven. You can’t let the object of your abjection know what you’re thinking until the final blow, thereby obtaining the upper hand by Shutting. It. Down.

  Example: I hosted karaoke at a bar in LA, and whenever one of my friends who could wail would come in, I would let them skip the line. Alex Newell from Glee came in, and so I beelined for him and asked what he wanted to do. He pointed to the stage and said, “That,” meaning he was going to do the same song some little twink was trying to do. So the twink ended, and we welcomed Alex to the stage and got to witness some all-encompassing shade. The whole room was like when it’s overcast out, but you still need sunglasses. The song was “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls, and the twink just sat there stone-faced. All Alex had to do was what came naturally.

  And naturally queens know shade better than anyone. Especially the old school ones. Alexis Mateo got me with some old-school shade very effectively, with a simple bait and switch. We were rehearsing with Miley Cyrus for the VMAs and had just completed a run-through. We walked back to our positions, and she grabbed my arm and whispered to me, “Get it together, Mama. They’re talking about you over there,” motioning to production. She put the fear of God into me for a full two seconds before cracking a smile. It was a simple bluff, and I dunno why she did it—maybe she heard me call her Alexis Potato or something—but one thing is certain: I will never fuck with her again. That’s old-school shade right there.

  Laying a trap for someone is always a great way to make the target feel even more stupid for walking directly under the shade tree. For example, say there’s a blond drag queen in the room who maybe needs to be told what’s up:

  ME: Wow, you look like Charlize Theron.

  THEM: OMG, Charlize. You think? Really?

  ME: Yeah, in Monster.

  Confusion works well, but only if there’s plausible doubt. Like if you tell someone they’re “really book smart but, like, for a Kindle,” it’s confusing enough to make them think that you’re the actual idiot when, in fact, it’ll be bugging them all night. Using negative words but in a joyful manner also works for this. If you hate someone while they’re performing, go up to them smiling and snapping, with all your body language saying “Work,” but maybe actually saying something like “You are so rotted! I live!” Either way, you’re disruptive and shit-stirring but still not entirely terrible.

  MY TOP 4 SHADY QUEEN MOMENTS:

  1 Telling a girl about to go on stage she has a hair stuck in her lash and then ripping it off (make sure her music has already started).

  2 For brunch gigs only: put two dollars together along with a piece of bacon between the bills and then tip.

  3 Getting the audience to buy shots for a girl that just can’t say no. I watched Detox cross over so hard, she coulda sworn she was working at Ma’amburger Hairy’s.

  4 Walk up to any blond queen and say “Courtney?” or “Alaska?” and then while they turn around and say “I’m not Courtney” or “I’m not AT5000,” look them dead in the eye and say “And you never will be.”

  36

  How to SUCK LESS at

  REVENGE

  I’ve done things that would make the devil himself stand up and slow-clap.

  I tour with a lot of my outfits in big ziplocks ’cause I don’t want my dresses to get damaged by shoes or whatever else I throw into my suitcase. This one time at a club called B-Bob’s in Alabama, I wore a black-and-white striped dress onstage, changing afterward into a tipping dress and putting my stage dress into its ziplock in my tote bag. When I got back to my hotel and unpacked my tote bag to repack my suitcase for the plane, I saw the ziplock was filled with red liquid and the dress was fucked. Someone had poured a drink (vodka cran) into my bag and sealed the ziplock right back up. I was really sad because there had been only four people backstage and I thought they were all my friends. I didn’t let it bother me long. When I got home, I dip-dyed the dress pink, overlaying the stain, and threw some rhinestones on it. It’s been said that necessity breeds invention and that’s not a bareback joke. It means new things happen when they have to, and making that dress pink was my way of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.

  Letting go of the anger and hurt that make a person seek revenge is way more productive than actually seeking revenge. Carrying around all those reasons and pains that lead you to want to even out a score is some Scooby-Doo shit. Those old dudes trying to get back at the gang at the end never seem happy when they get nabbed, that’s for sure. Some bathroom reader Buddhism for beginners guide helped me get rid of a lot of the negativity afterward with the following quote: “A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.” Once I stopped worrying about being better than all the people I’ve sailed with career-wise, I was able to focus on just being the best me.

  I was in a band with Adam Lambert in the early 2000s and knew I’d never sing like him. Bianca Del Rio will never be surpassed by anyone comedy-wise. After halting that back-of-my-mind contest that only me and the Internet muckrakers were playing, I was able to truly excel at what I love: being a stunt queen who makes people laugh through any form possible. I say entertainter because lots of my humor is ass-related: The video for the song I wrote “Boy Is a Bottom” has over twenty million YouTube views; I buttchug onstage while singing Katy Perry–endorsed parodies of Katy Perry songs; and I’ve fisted someone while singing “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.” Discovering that I didn’t have to be the best singer—or the prettiest or the funniest—was my career turning point and allowed me to be happy with what I could give the world.

  This is my second-favorite way to see the world: through rose-colored glasses.

  But in the long run, it doesn’t matter. Channel your fuel to achieve so much that any detractor can’t help but see what you’re doing. The best revenge is success. My achievements while cross-dressing are so much sweeter to me because making myself a “thing,” as self-serving as that is, has made it easier for others to be themselves. I’m on billboards in Europe for Magnum Ice Cream, I had my picture on Sephora shelves for two years straight, and I repped American Apparel. Sure, that last one may have gone into bankruptcy, but I had a number-one album debut on Billboard’s comedy chart at the same time. All these things (which I list again in my author bio), braggadoucheus as they are, lead to visibility, and visibility leads to conversations, and that can lead to good change. (Bad change is when people throw quarters at me onstage—Hi, Detox!)

  If none of that has helped you realize revenge is a fool’s game, I would just find a way to take a shit in someone’s toilet tank. An upper decker is like high-fiving someone with shit in your hand.

  THE BEST WAYS TO GET REVENGE LIST

  I was infamously able to keep my cool when another drag queen flipped her wig on me during RuPaul’s Drag Race, and I attribute that to thinking twice and speaking once (and knowing where the camera is before striking to kill). I always take a few deep breaths. When you yell and get hyped, your brain doesn’t get as much oxygen as it would when you’re breathing properly. So deep breaths. You can even use that time to formulate a stealth retaliation. You want a clear path to revenge that will indicate utter defeat in the opposing party compounded with a perplexity as to who or what put the events into motion. The inability to credit a specific person with the blame will let the asshole know “Wow—my behavior sucks enough that it could be any number of people” and hopefully encourage the asshole to change. The anonymity is key. Here are a few w
ays to fuck with people boots.

  Send porn to their parents’ address in their name. Chances are their mom gets the mail and will be too weirded out to mention it, so it’ll just fester her every thought about her son liking piss-party MILF porn or something. And if they do actually address it, chances are the parents won’t believe them when they say it’s not theirs.

  If you live with someone, take their ice cream and throw it in the microwave for a few seconds—enough to make it slip out like a baby iceberg. Now take a Band-Aid (new or used—your choice), put it at the bottom of the container, and replace that baby iceberg. Throw the carton back into the freezer and live your life.

  Cookie butter. This is the same as above but worse. Scoop cookie butter out of the jar down to the label so from the outside it looks normal. Then put a turd in it (animal or your own). Plop the scooped cookie butter back in while taking care to not disturb the poop too much. The contents on top will be fine. The person won’t smell it until after a few uses or they actually eat the stuff that’s by the brown-town surprise. This is pretty vulgar, so I don’t recommend doing it unless you really are over someone. I mean there are only so many people who will have had access to your cookie butter.

  Slashing tires. Never slash all four wheels! If all four tires on your car are slashed, insurance usually covers it. If it’s just one, it’s out of pocket.

  Place a used false eyelash in a man’s bedroom or car or somewhere his partner will find it. It’ll lead the partner to think he’s either a cross-dresser on the sly or slipping it to a pole dancer.

  Upper decker is a time-lapse revenge tactic. What you basically do is shit in someone’s toilet tank. It will eventually go away on its own, but its torment is a solid ten outta ten.

  The best revenge is looking good. Go check out “Blurred Bynes” on my YouTube channel and see what this dress looked like before the world decided to shit in my purse.

  37

  How to SUCK LESS at

  NOT LETTING PEOPLE KNOW YOU’RE DUMB

  School can suck. I had a few great teachers, but most of them made me never want to set foot in another classroom again. I didn’t go to college because I didn’t want to pay to learn stuff I had no clue would be necessary since all I knew was that I wanted to be in Star magazine. There are no courses for Who Whored It Better or Gossip. My high school homeroom teacher was such a fuckin’ shit starter. She’d always be like “You wanna share that with the whole class?” when I was talking, and I’d be like “No, that’s why I fuckin’ whispered it, you stupid bitch.” Needless to say, I was done with school by sixteen. You should quit too, but only if you’re sure you’re going to be a moderately successful cross-dresser who will stumble into a book deal off of Tumblr (true story). I quit marching band and told my parents that there was no future in learning to make a bumblebee formation on a football field while playing saxophone. I wanted to spend my time in the library learning how to do my own taxes and how credit cards work, and sucking dick in the reference section. You know how hard it is to give a quiet blow job? Now, if I could just get Facebook to stop asking me to finish my profile by completing what university I went to. I didn’t go to college; I had gigs.

  SUCK LESS AT HOOKY

  Ya wanna know how to make sure you get sent home from school? Have blood on your shirt in the nippular area. Worked for me twice. The first time I hadn’t done my part of a group lab for my third period chem class and didn’t wanna tank the group’s grade, so I pierced my right nipple in homeroom. The second time I wanted to play hooky ’cause this one dude from an AOL chat room wanted to meet me at the beach for hot-dogging and other lockjaw-related activities. Both piercings were with safety pins and both times were actually behind the areola (I needed the blood effect). It totally worked. It only occasionally shot out puss the next year, but the payoff was other students thought I was officially crazy with a jumbo size helping of street cred. Which is good ’cause high school is like a mental hospital. Do your time and get out as soon as possible. I took an extra optional eighth period one year, satisfied two PE credits with summer school, and managed to leverage volunteering in the office after school into my final elective credit. I took English 4 the summer before my junior year and got the fuck outta high school before I was even supposed to start my senior year at sixteen. There’s always a way.

  I was smart enough to figure myself outta the public school system early, but I am not above admitting that homonyms are hard. Differentiating the words that sound the same but are spelled differently will help you avoid douche bags on Grindr or Tinder with so little appeal that they cockblock themselves via spell-check. These little things will make people think you’re smarter than you actually are, I bet. If they ask where you went to school, just say an online academy that lets you get your degree at your own pace (you don’t need to tell them that your particular pace is super slow and you haven’t even gone to the website yet). Fuckin’ nosy people. Why are you even talking to them? BGB.

  “As an escort, I only accept money for my time—except in this case because your badge is peeking out of your bag, officer,” said the lady in pleather.

  “Accept” means to receive something, and “except” usually means something other than or aside from whatever.

  Your behavior makes me want to say that you’re an asshole… asshole.

  “Your” is possessive and “you’re” is a combo of “you” and “are.”

  Oral sex (i.e., sucking dick) is so much more than just the up-and-down (e.g., breath control, skull fucking, and not vomiting).

  “I.e.” offers further explanation of something, while “e.g.” offers specific examples.

  The principle that the principal is your pal is a fucktarded lie they tell you in school to differentiate the homonyms.

  A “principle” is a fundamental law and a “principal” is usually something annoying like a school administrator or a loan balance.

  Pep squad sits over there because the cheerleaders said they’re tired of their selfies being ruined by all that talent-free fugliness.

  “There” indicates a location, and “they’re” means “they are.” Ownership is indicated by use of “their.”

  Whoever hung up that stupid “Hang in there” kitten poster should be hanged unless they are hung.

  “Hanged” only refers to the executionartorial act and “hung” is the past tense/participle of “hang,” which means something about a noose or something that’ll fuck you loose.

  It’s totally not as big as he says, but it tastes bigger than when it’s in its flaccid state.

  “It’s” means “it is,” and “its” is the possessive form of “it.”

  LEFT & RIGHT

  I’m terrible at right and left. I always tell people to make a ‘that-way’ and point when giving directions. My little right and left trick is making an L with both hands at the same time and the left hand has the L going in the correct direction. If you ever have to set a table, remember that both fork and left have four letters and spoon, knife, and right have five. Fat has three just in case you’re wondering where the dessert spoon goes.

  DRAGTIONARY

  A ABC [ay-bee-see] slang

  “a bitch can’t”—when an individual tries despite knowing efforts will be fruitless

  Why does Ciara insist on singing live when we know ABC.

  acknorigment [ak-nohr-ij-muhnt] noun

  acknowledgment of something or someone whilst ignoring the same subject

  As soon as I saw her fat ass, I gave her a nod of acknorigment to keep her away.

  afternoonted [ahf-tur-noon-ted] verb

  to have had intercourse between the hours of noon and four p.m. with at least one party on a break from work

  I got afternoonted real good today and don’t want to sit through a long dinner for risk of leakage.

  asslete [as-leet] noun

  1: an individual who plays games to an inappropriate degree of sportsmanship

  2: an individual wh
o plays sports just to show off his body in the respective game’s uniform

  That asslete in the booty shorts/visible jockstrap combo needs to stop throwing the dodgeball like a ninja assassin.

  B beat [beet] verb or noun

  1: (verb) to apply makeup

  2: (noun) a makeup job

  3: (noun) a place to walk back and forth

  After Mathu beat the #AAAGirls faces, they got to the club at last call and then sure did hit that beat from Starbucks to the gay pizza place hard.

  Beyoncénically [bee-ohn-say-nik-lee] adverb

  a way of doing something in a similar fashion to our lord and savior Beyoncé Knowles-Carter

  She had tried to do that kick all Beyoncénically, but it ended up looking like she had restless leg syndrome.

  BGB [bee-ghee-bee] slang

  “bye girl bye”

  BGB. Hafta poop.

  blaccent [blak-sent] noun

  a manner of speaking that intensifies any type of urban, typically African American twang

  RuPaul often uses a blaccent comically, but Tyra’s truly came out when she yelled, “We are all rooting for you,” at Tiffany.

  blaccurate [blak-yer-it] adjective

  being in the right regarding matters that are African American in nature