REAL LIFE HAS NO APPEAL

Aron Piper

Helena Christensen - By Peter Lindbergh

Andy Warhol protégé and model Jay Johnson poses with a kitten, photo by Jack Mitchell, 1970. Jay and his fraternal twin brother Jed were born in Sacramento, California in 1948, fleeing a bad home life with intentions to move to Montreal, Canada. Pulled off the train by a conductor who suspected they were draft dodgers, they settled in New York in 1968 where they were discovered by Warhol associate Paul Morrissey. The brothers, who were both good looking and gay, quickly became fixtures at Warhol's Factory, photographed by Andy, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Francesco Scavullo, and Jack Mitchell. Jay also modeled jewelry made by Robert Mapplethorpe and became the muse and assistant to fashion designer Giorgio di Sant'Angelo. His brother Jed became Andy Warhol's long-term life partner, editing and directing films at The Factory before becoming an acclaimed interior director and antiques dealer who counted Andy, Mick Jagger, Yves Saint Laurent, and Barbra Streisand among his clients. Jed was tragically killed en-route to Rome, Italy on an antiques buying expedition when TWA flight 800 exploded off the coast of East Moriches, New York shortly after take-off in 1996. He was only 47 years old. Jay created Jed Johnson Home in memory of his twin brother in 2006 and currently designs textiles and furniture for the retail collection. Of his early years in New York, Jay later recalled in a 2019 article for the arts, fashion, architecture and travel webzine Surface entitled Stonewall Then and Now: Leading Artists and Designers Reflect on the Stonewall Uprising that the first gay bar he ever went to was the legendary Stonewall. He also recalled an extremely dark incident that occurred in 1968 when he briefly worked at the nightclub Arthur's, which was managed by gay icon Judy Garland's eventual last husband Mickey Deans, who sexually assaulted Jay. "He was an awful person," Jay recalled. "He provided Judy with barbiturates and alcohol until she died, which was only a few days before the Stonewall riots." [Garland's funeral was held in New York, after a public viewing which saw 22,000 people file by her glass-topped casket, on the day of the Stonewall police raid.] "So when the police raided the Stonewall, people were grieving Judy's death—and the raid was the straw that broke the camel’s back. By the time of the riots, I was an out homosexual and enjoying the fruits of the city. I really believe that there was a correlation between the police’s action and Judy’s death. The Stonewall changed it all, and the gay presence became very visible, very quickly in New York."