Christen — Story Time

By Lauren Jones

An old friend died today. My first thought was that she had been a victim of Coronavirus, due to her asthma and living in Chicago. For a brief moment i’d forgotten that life, and death were inevitable parts of being. Unaffected by the virus; Christen died from liver failure after years of heavy drinking on top of some hereditary health conditions that i’m unsure whether she was aware of or not. She slipped away peacefully in her husband’s arms which is as good as any of us can hope for.

I first met Christen in 2004 soon after ignoring the doctor’s advice and moving to New York as a precocious, unbridled 19 year old. At the time, I was supposed to have been recovering from a serious bike accident in which I had broken my jaw in three places and had two newly installed metal plates and eight pins holding my face together as well as having my jaw wired shut. It had been my dream of moving to New York for years and I had just been accepted onto a photography course at Parson’s with an internship at Teen Vogue waiting for me. Filled with brazen youthful arrogance, I took wire clippers to my mouth and fled for my new life in NYC.

Having shed my skin, I renamed myself Tallulah, after the Jodie Foster character in Bugsy Malone, and was soon revelling in American dating culture, where it wasn’t considered slutty or hurtful to be seeing multiple guys simultaneously. There was the Russian banker, the Hollywood actor, the Jewish film student, the Texan club promoter and numerous others whose performances escape me. Each person became a key that opened a different scene in NY and I screamed, danced, cavorted and contorted into every inch of the city that really didn’t sleep. Home was the bottom half of a room split in two by a makeshift mezzanine in a loft in Bushwick, way before Bushwick was Bushwick. I often found myself struggling to find a taxi that would take me home, whether it was because the area was too rough, or that it was 8am in the lower east side with me looking more in need of an ambulance, the few that took me would kindly drive around the back of my one way street and wait outside the imposing factory block until I got inside. I’m sure there were memorable conversations with these affable New York taxi drivers of which I cannot recall.

The friends that I made in my building and through my roommate and wingman Michael, aka Fahji, the super camp, fantastically fun, talented photographer, designer and creator of our loft space, became my real friends in the city - the friends that i’ve stayed in touch with over the years. Christen was someone I felt that I had made a real connection with, opposed to the easy come easy go New York social scene, and news of her death has put me in a haze of bitter sweet nostalgia, reading through old messages and emails and looking at photos from that carefree time in my life.

Christen wasn’t really like any other girlfriend I had before. At first she seemed like a total tomboy, she drank pints and had a blueprint of her dream house tattooed on her arm, she had a lip piercing, poker straight black hair in a sharp bob and a quiet confidence that I wasn’t used to amongst my gregarious, loud and self centred friends at home. She knew everything there was to know about music and was classically trained which she told me with a sort of irony as it was so far removed from the world we met in. She used to sort me out with stacks of records and cd’s from work, she taught me more than a thing or two and never made me feel stupid for not knowing some pretty basic stuff like who Stevie Nicks was or that she was a she.

Christen was one of a few friends who I played a game with where we would cut each other’s arms or chests and lick the blood as a chaser to a shot of tequila… we imaginatively called it ‘tequila scissors’. I guess that at the time we felt that this pretty disgusting and fairly dangerous act, that has given me life long scars, was the older and wilder sister to drawing a mere pin prick of blood from each finger and smushing them together in an act of lifelong bonding and solidarity.

One time we were at a party where the host persuaded some poor girl that he should take a shit on her face covered with a tenuously placed piece of cling film whilst the guests, us included, watched on in a limbo state of horror and hilarity. Looking back I wish I had done something to stop that arsehole. Christen always looked out for me, a naive Londoner wondering why no one ever ate at home; she got me a modelling job for Vice where she worked at the time. When I turned up they told me that I had to be topless and pretend to work in a peep show booth - Christen fought the sleazy photographer with me so I could at least keep a bikini top on - small victories! Bleary eyed we would head to Sunday BBQ’s at a gay bar where over pitchers of weak warm beer, Christen and Fahji taught me how to spot the differences in all the up and coming gender terms and would laugh at me very unsuccessfully attempting to turn gay guys straight with what I thought to be sexy karaoke renditions of Madonna hits.

One time, failing to get tickets for an outdoor Scissor Sisters concert, a gang of us broke into the building opposite and climbed to the roof to watch the band in our own private party. We went to countless gigs together, she was into boys from the rhythm section whilst I was more about the aloof front men, so we made a good duo.

At the time, New York felt like a film set, where we were all destined to fulfil the character tropes, its settings having been ever present in my film indulged adolescence.

Christen came to stay with me in London in Winter and we went record shopping, ate pizza and watched movies, talked and did all the normal things that bond you as much as all the crazed drunken adventures. Over the years we were in touch about meeting at various music events across the States and her coming back to Europe and me getting to meet her sexy drummer husband Jeff. But I never did get to meet him and now I am feeling for him with all of my heart, a man I never met but who I know loved my dear friend with all of his heart.

We all have someone that is distant, yet close to us, and represents a happy time, when things were simple and life wasn’t yet complicated. She was a friend who was truly kind, caring, hilarious, sharp witted, and always so encouraging. I wish we had been more in touch over these last few years and that I had made that trip to Chicago to see the life she had built for herself there, but I understand that separation is an unavoidable part of life. The last time I saw Christen was ten years ago, I had an exhibition in NYC and she flew in to hang out and see the show. Only recently she posted something about how “our time in NYC was the most formative and fucking bonkers”, she name checked a few of us and ended the post with, “I just want to acknowledge that we had a real special time ya'll, and I'll always think of you as my family.” It feels like it was her goodbye, maybe she knew somehow that it was nearly her time.