[2] Johnson and future Playboy model Barbi Benton were Junior high school sweethearts.
[1][3] Johnson and his brother Jed left Sacramento, California, in early 1968 with the intention of traveling to Montreal, Canada.
[4][5][6] They found an apartment in the East Village, Manhattan through a heroin addict, got robbed, and lost all their money.
[6] Soon after, Jed delivered a telegram to artist Andy Warhol's Factory and was offered a job on the spot as a janitor by director Paul Morrissey.
[5] Warhol helped the brothers move into an apartment in a safer neighborhood and they were quickly assimilated into his entourage.
[4] Deans married actress Judy Garland a few months later and Johnson believes there is a correlation between the riots and Garland's death: "He was an awful person and provided Judy with barbiturates and alcohol until she died, which was only a few days before the Stonewall riots.
Johnson posed for renowned photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Jack Mitchell, and Francesco Scavullo.
[17][18] While modeling Paris, Johnson lived in a hotel with Corey Tippin, Patti D'Arbanville, and Donna Jordan.
[18][5] In 1971, Johnson appeared in the Off-off-Broadway musical Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned, written by fellow Warhol superstar Jackie Curtis, at the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and the WPA in New York.
[24] In 1996, Johnson's brother Jed was killed as a passenger aboard TWA Flight 800 when the plane exploded off the coast of Long Island, New York.