Dean Johnson was a famous New York drag queen, rock star, sex party promoter and late-in-life escort. In 2007 Dean went on a job and never came back. Was it just an accidental OD – given Dean’s history of drug use – or was it something more sinister?
Another escort had died in the same apartment four days earlier. But the mystery of his death is only part of the wild story of a trailblazer. Dean was the first in many things: the first bald drag queen, the first to throw sex parties during the AIDS crisis, the first and only person to throw a LGBTQ party at the iconic rock club CBGB, and the first openly gay singer on Island Records (which cost him his record deal).
Heroin, sobriety, love, sex, music, community, HIV, poverty: Dean survived them all – until he didn’t.