PHILIPSBURG--Bria Sorton was at school Monday when she heard that her friend and mentor Christian Lloyd was dead.
She refused to believe it then. She still doesn’t.
Like many other young girls and women, Bria (16) was Lloyd’s student. He helped groom Bria for the crown at last year’s St. Maarten Carnival Teen Queen pageant. Lloyd was a long-time friend of Bria’s mother Sheila and the two were close.
They were preparing for another pageant in the days before he died.
“He had so many plans for this year,” said Bria, who described Lloyd as a strict, but fun-loving disciplinarian. “He had everything ready. We had the dress; we had already started practising talent. He was so excited.”
They had until April to be ready.
A cousin found Lloyd dead in his St. Peters home Monday morning. The 37-year-old was lying on the bed bleeding from a head wound. He probably had been dead for at least a day.
Authorities confirmed Wednesday that Lloyd, a well-known model trainer, had been killed. He is the first homicide victim for the year.
Friends and family mourned that morning and cried in the St. Peters streets as police confiscated his body for the investigation. “Not my Christian,” a woman wailed as comforters pulled her close.
Another friend watched in shock as investigators combed the man’s home. “I was going to come see him [Sunday] you know, but my mind changed,” she said.
Bria was called that morning with the tragic news. She reacted as many might have, refusing to believe and demanding another answer.
“I just hung up … and then called my mother,” said Bria. She recalled her mother, a designer and dress-maker, crying as she picked up the phone. Bria left school that morning.
Lloyd’s sudden death was a shock to the teen. In disbelief, she tried to contact her friend, hoping that he was okay and that he would answer. “I called his phone over and over again, but it kept saying it was off,” she said, choking back tears. “Then I started crying.”
His closest friends remember talking to him as recently as Saturday.
Not even next-door neighbours saw him leave his house Sunday. Many passed the home, noticed the door ajar, but didn’t look in. It wasn’t until Monday that a cousin and his girlfriend, suspecting something amiss, decided to check on Lloyd.
Lloyd was very guarded, friends say. He would open the door to his Watermelon Road home only after visitors knocked and he had checked to see who they were.
But in socialising, he was relaxed, jovial, and “he’d just tell jokes and make your belly burst,” another cousin said.
Everybody’s Christian
Ask anybody who knew Christian Lloyd about him and they would tell you the same thing: he was a passionate man with an eye for fashion and skilled at turning girls into models and pageant queens.
Friends and family, without knowing, repeated the same words about his demeanour – fun-loving, loved a good argument – and his generosity. “He’d give you the shirt off his back,” said one of his oldest friends. “That was Christian.”
“He was nice, but he was bold too,” said Bria, remembering nights with Lloyd at her home choosing dresses and discussing pageants. “He loves his job and loves to model.”
According to friends and family, Lloyd enjoyed parties, joking, and his work with aspiring models and pageant beauties. He loved his mother so much that, three years ago, when he learned she was sick, he uprooted his life in New York and returned to St. Maarten. “He didn’t plan to come back,” a friend said. “He came to take care of his mother and stayed by her side until she died.”
After she passed in 2008, Lloyd seemed different to friends. He was more apprehensive about contact and was more careful. In the months before his death, however, he seemed to be doing better. “He was just calming down,” his friend said.
Friends faced with the reality of Lloyd’s death shook their heads and said, “Not my Christian.”
“Anything you want, he give to you,” one woman said.
“You need a ride to Grand Case, Christian would say ‘Come, let’s go,’” another friend said.
Passion for model-making
Christian Lloyd is best remembered for his life’s passion: model-making. “Anytime he entered a contest, if the girl didn’t win, she would place well,” said radio host and comedian Andrew Dick.
Another friend remembered that Lloyd had been about 18 when he and St. Maarten-born U.K. choreographer and trainer Francis Mathew started coordinating. “It was something he always loved to do.”
And it was something he always did well, said competitors.
“He was a brilliant young man,” said dancer-choreographer Clara Reyes of Imbali Centre for Creative Movement. “He was someone who I always looked up to.”
She remembered Lloyd as a “freaking funny person” and a “worthy opponent.” “Anytime I went up against him in a queen show, I would lose,” Reyes said. “He was someone I was proud to lose to.”
Reyes is considering a memorial event for the young man, but she wants her student Rudolph Davis, one of Lloyd’s cousins, to return from Curaçao before planning. “I think for his funeral all the drag queens should come out in full regalia to celebrate that side of him,” she said.
“He loved it thoroughly; we always encouraged him to start his own business,” she continued.
Lloyd helped Andrew Dick’s Hot Strotterzz Modelling Agency in several competitions since it started in 2007. “All I can say is Christian was a good friend. He is responsible for four of the Hot Strotterzz’ 11 titles,” Dick said. “The man was a genius when it came to preparing young people for queen shows.”
Make-up artist and designer Bevil Byam had worked with Lloyd since 1995. He said Lloyd had taken an immediate interest in pageantry and training. “He started doing shows himself and saw some success,” said Byam, who remembered Lloyd as “accommodating.” “He has a good eye.”
Though not as developed as in other countries, St. Maarten’s pageantry scene will miss Christian Lloyd, Byam said. The biggest reminders probably will come during show time. “For those who are familiar with the circuit, I’m sure there will be some flashbacks,” Byam said. “They’ll think about how Christian would’ve done it.”
‘Pumpkin’
Pumpkin was his nickname for many of his friends. He would call Bria Sorton, among others, just to say hello, leading with his almost trademark phrase. “Sometimes, he would call and just say, ‘Pumpkin, how you doing,’” Bria remembered. (D. Robin)
