No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (15 page)

I swallowed the cheese, not without difficulty, then noticed a box of Swiss chocolates on the counter between us. They looked very expensive. “I wouldn’t mind a little chocolate,” I said. “I love chocolate.”

That grin of his wouldn’t quit. “I like you,” he said.

“I’m going to put you on the cover again.” And he did. I had four back-to-back covers in
Elle.
I went island-hopping in the Caribbean for them with Sascha, a French photographer, and her Tunisian slave-boyfriend. She’d bark and he jumped. Next stop, Tunisia. A week later, I’m working with Guy Bourdin—one of the masters.

A photo session with him was almost as good as sex. He was on top of you. Touching, posing, rearranging. He generated heat—creative heat. He made me feel like the most incredible woman on the planet.

Suddenly I am hot hot hot. Everyone was asking about that American girl who didn’t look like all the other American girls. The Polish mutt was on fire!

104 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

One night in Paris, at a party with Bourdin, I told him everything Eileen Ford had said about me. That I was too ethnic; that my lips were too big; that I’d never work.

“She’s an idiot,” he said. “What does she know about real beauty?”

Bourdin spelled out what the other French photographers had been trying to teach me. “Be yourself, Janice.

That’s what I love about you. That’s what turns everyone on. Your craziness and big mouth and bad-girl attitude.

Your desire to be
shockant.
You are one of a kind, girl.” I could’ve kissed him. In fact, I
did
kiss him. A woman needs to hear shit like that from time to time. And me? I needed to hear it more than most. Especially now, when I had something to lose . . .

The fact of the matter is, I’d always been insecure—I’d been raised that way—and success was suddenly making me
more
insecure. I would think,
It’s all a bad joke. Everyone’s in on it but me. They’re just building me up to knock
me down.
So, yes—I was still that hyperanxious, hypervigilant, cripplingly self-conscious little girl; I honestly couldn’t get my mind around the fact that I was really beginning to make it.

“What is it?” Dominick asked me at lunch one day. We were at a sidewalk café, near the offices. I was studying the women at the neighboring tables. They were so classy.

They dressed beautifully and their hair was done just right and I loved the way they raised their forks to their mouths, unlike me—who bent down to meet it somewhere near my plate. These women even
chewed
with class.

“Nothing,” I said, and I smiled the way Dawn Doyle

had taught me to smile. My
confident
smile. She’d shared a whole repertoire of smiles with us: happy sad pouty smirky flirty fierce . . .
I’d learn to fake it,
I decided. I’d learn to sit the way they sat; eat the way they ate; walk the way they

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 105

walked. And of course I’d cultivate that touch of haughtiness that seemed to come so naturally to them. I was uncomfortable in my own skin, yes; but why the fuck did anyone have to know it?

“I’ve never been happier,” I said, and I raised the fork to my mouth and chewed with class.

I’m sure you’re wondering about Ron. I was wondering about him, too. I’d written him that long letter, but you know where that got me. Ron didn’t seem to care. I waited for him to call and when he didn’t I swallowed my pride and tracked him down at home and on the road and begged him get help, to clean up his act. I suggested he come to Paris. He said he didn’t need help, that he was clean and just too busy to come to Paris. He never called on his own.

Never wrote. And it felt lousy. I had a big jones for love and affirmation, and he’d gone out of business as my supplier. So I thought of him less and less, and called him less and less.

On the other hand, I did

think—and worry—about my

sister Debbie. I’d just turned

twenty. She was fifteen.

She’d just written me a

long letter telling me

how much she missed

me, how unhappy she

was. She’d enclosed a

MY SISTER DEBBIE

LOOKING STUNNING AT

TAVERN ON THE GREEN

IN NEW YORK CITY.

((((((((((((((

106 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

picture of herself on the beach with a group of crazy adolescent friends. Most of them had pimples; Debbie glowed.

I called her and told her how beautiful she was. Debbie cried. It was the end of summer and she was really, genuinely unhappy and didn’t want to go back to school; she wanted to go to New York to sing and act.

And suddenly I had this crazy idea.

I phoned the Silverstein brothers and told them to take me to lunch. We met at the Brasserie Lipp, my favorite hangout. “How would you like another Janice?” I asked them. I was pretty full of myself at this point.

“Another Janice?”

“I have a little sister. Debbie. She’s beautiful. Very wholesome, all-American looks. You’ll love her.”

I set the picture on the table in front of them. “Guess which one is Debbie,” I said.

I was amazed when she arrived. She was drop-dead gorgeous. It had been almost two years since I’d seen her, and the girl had
bloomed
. She was closer to the “ideal,” too.

She was good product. A traditional Cheryl Tiegs type, only more beautiful: pure home-baked apple pie.

We went back to Christa’s and she got the futon next to mine. She wasn’t even vaguely disappointed. Debbie is a survivor. Her attitude has always been “No matter how bad it is, I can fix it.” We talked all night. Families are complicated, but they can also be wonderful. I would have done anything for Debbie—was it guilt over having abandoned her to the rat bastard?—and I did.

I took her downstairs the next morning and everyone fawned over her, just the way I’d asked them to. (So sue me! There’s not much about this business that’s genuine.) But the fawning paid off. By week’s end, she’d booked a couture show for Louis Feraud. This was a good thing. On N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 107

the very day she booked the job, Guy Bourdin called and told me we were going to Milan for Italian
Vogue.

Before I left for the airport, I gave Debbie some valuable advice about the shoot. One, be on time. Two, don’t chew gum—it’s not classy. Three, don’t act like some goddamn superior queen with the assistants: They’re there to help make you look good, and looking good is what it’s all about. Four, you’re great, remember that, and if you don’t feel great, fake it.

Finally: Always always always make sure he wears a

raincoat.

I wish someone had given me advice that good when
I
started out.

MILANO

ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª

For those of you who don’t know the business, Milan is the capital of the Italian fashion industry. Armani, Prada, Versace, Valentino, Gucci—all the great design houses are clustered together here, and, twice a year—during show seasons in February-March and September-October—

everyone who’s anyone descends on the city.

So Bourdin took me to Milan in September. Me and all the medium names. Our plane was filled with desperate wanna-be models. I felt a little sorry for them, but not
too
sorry. I’d paid my dues—why shouldn’t they?

When we got off the plane, the first thing I saw was a bunch of handsome-if-oily Italian playboy types, waiting around with big colorful bouquets in their arms. It reminded me of the day I arrived in Paris, when Dominick Silverstein met me at the airport with daisies, except that all these guys looked kind of sleazy.

“Who are these creeps?” I asked Bourdin.

“Rich boys who like to fuck models,” Bourdin said. “It’s a seasonal thing. They show up with flowers and their fathers’ Ferraris and fuck their brains out for a couple of weeks. The locals call them
figli de papa
—Daddy’s boys.”

It wasn’t like that for me. There was a limo waiting for us at the airport. The driver got into some heavy fawning. I liked it. This was the A-list ticket, and I’m thinking,
I’m

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 109

the Flavor of the Month, yes. But I’m going to make my
month last forever.

We checked into our hotel and went off immediately to do a shoot for Charles Jourdan shoes. The next day, we did a spread for a Bloomingdale’s lingerie catalog (which has since become a collector’s item, thank you very much).

Then Bourdin took me to the city of Parma.

It was my first time in Italy, and I was seeing it in grand style. I discovered prosciutto. And Parma ham, which is even better. And Parmesan cheese. Everything was delicious—the food, the people, the views. I promised myself I would return to Italy someday and sit around and eat and get fat and be happy. I couldn’t stop stuffing my face. There’s a Bourdin shot of me in a spectacular gown, with a hunk of prosciutto literally crammed into my mouth. It was red-hot sexy.

“That’s you, Janice, all the way,” Bourdin said. “That’s POSING WITH MYSELF. MY FIRST ITALIAN
BAZAAR
COVER, SHOT BY JAMES MOORE.

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

110 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

how you are in real life. Hungry. Big appetite for everything. What is this word you use all the time?”

“Gnarly,” I offered.

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “Gnarly Janice.”

Of course, the trip wasn’t all gluttony and happiness.

From the
figli de papa
on, the whole affair had a decidedly dark side. What you have to understand is that a lot of aspiring young models go to Milan to try to make their mark. They have to fight for the all-important tear sheets that will launch a real career back home. And, in Milan, they actually have a shot at it: There are so many magazines and so many photographers and
faux
photographers and
fashionistas
that you can literally get discovered on the street. Of course the chances, at best, are still pretty slim.

Most of the girls stayed in a hotel the locals called the Fuck Palace; those who couldn’t afford it shacked up in the less expensive Pensione Clitoris.

At night, in restaurants and clubs all over the city, you could see girls of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—girls who hadn’t made it and probably would never make it—resorting to good old-fashioned sex to survive. Some of them were so desperate they’d fuck a guy for a decent meal.

The Arabs came over, too, in droves—and not for the fashions. A thousand dollars to them was chump change, and if you’re a pretty girl, in need, and your inner voice is telling you,
Hon, you ain’t making it as a model,
well, that thousand dollars will help you get home, right? And of course then you figure a second thousand won’t hurt—
I’ll
take a few gifts back to Des Moines, for the folks
—and then a third and fourth . . .

The fact of the matter is, there are American girls in Milan who have been there for years and years. They get rough around the edges, fast, but they’re still pretty. You can find some of them in the Yellow Pages.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 111

The night before we returned to Paris, a young girl overdosed in the rest room of the nightclub where we were celebrating. The paramedics carried her out, trying hard to be discreet, but there’s nothing discreet about early death. I was thinking about that poor girl on the plane back to Paris. What lies would they tell her family, home in the States? Whatever they needed to hear, I guess. “Your daughter was a wonderful girl. Very gifted. She was on the verge of making it. Another month or two and she would have been a major star.”

Bourdin was seated next to me. I turned to look at him.

“This business is pretty tough, isn’t it?” I said.

“It’s just business,” he said. “No worse than any other.

When the stakes are high, people get nasty. It’s inevitable.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes. I have a friend in real estate. You should see the backstabbing that goes on there. And another friend who moved to Hollywood a few years ago. The things he tells—