No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (22 page)

Mike came by, urging me to leave, but just then Steve Rubell showed up and insisted on taking us to his office.

Mike rolled his eyes, but I wasn’t ready to leave—and Patrick and Casablancas were still partying. The little girls followed Casablancas like puppies.

Rubell closed the door and laid out a fucking ounce of cocaine. There was something kind of repellent about him, to be completely honest. Repellent and charismatic at the same time. You felt like running away, but he’d smile his wicked smile and you knew good times were just around the corner.

He chopped up a few lines and offered me a silver

straw. I plunged in. Mike didn’t. He gave me a dirty look, but I was in a fuck-you-don’t-tell-me-what-to-do mood.

Then I asked Patrick to dance with me. As we fought our N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 161

way through the crush of writhing bodies, everyone

seemed so happy that I couldn’t help feeling good, too.

Who cared if it was all chemical? I was going to take Andy’s advice and live in the fucking moment. All this analyzing the Deeper Meaning of Life, what had it ever done for anyone?

“I hope Heaven’s half as much fun as this!” I hollered in Patrick’s ear.

We didn’t leave for Southampton until two in the morning.

Patrick was driving, I was in the front seat next to him, and Mike was fast asleep in back. He was pissed, and he had a way of falling asleep when he was pissed. It must have been some kind of Zen Master bullshit.

The bad news is, John Casablancas and a couple of his trashy little girls were in the car behind us. Patrick and Casablancas had been friends for many years, but I still didn’t like the idea of having him out to the house. He had treated me with such disregard in Paris, but I was still expected to be the charming hostess. I don’t think so. Still, at the end of the day, the house was certainly big enough. I guess we could stay out of each other’s way.

The next morning I walked into the kitchen and found him with one of his girls. I have no idea how old she was. She was sitting on his lap, topless, and the way she smiled and said good morning made me want to slap some sense into her. I managed a forced smile and poured myself a coffee.

“Janice,” Casablancas said, “you should come work with me.” I laughed and left the kitchen and ran into Mike. He was all decked out in biking gear; he was pushing forty but was still thinking he might take a shot at the Tour de France.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re doing thirty miles today.”

I went. Bicycling gave me these beautiful legs. Ah, van162 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

ity, vanity! All is vanity. Like every other model, I’d been obsessed with my body since the day I’d noticed it. And like every other model, I tried to stay in shape. Of course, now that I was successful, I didn’t have as much time for jogging and bike riding and yoga. But there was coke and binging and purging, and I had taught myself to stop eating a third of the way into my meals. Like confused women everywhere, I was turning food into the enemy.

Christie showed up later that day to hang out, and we had dinner out back—or a
third
of a dinner, in my case—

facing Wooley’s Pond. The house was between the pond and the ocean, near a marina. It was perfect. I loved it there. Pierre Houles showed up, too, in time for dinner. He and Christie liked each other right away, but of course she knew who he was. He could do things for her career. Nothing wrong with that, right?
We all used one another.

Sunday morning I was up early and called home.

My father answered the phone. I asked him to please put Mother on and he didn’t seem to understand. I thought he was fucking with me, but then I realized he was genuinely confused. He started screaming at me, going on about how he was sick and tired of people calling at all hours of the day and night asking for money. Then he hung up. When I called back a few minutes later, my mother answered. I asked if everything was all right.

“Oh, fine,” she said. “But I think I’m going to need a new car.”

Not a word about my father. But I didn’t care to ask, frankly. I sent her a check for the down payment on a new car. I was making oodles of money. I didn’t know how to handle it, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I just wrote checks—to my mother, the grocer, the liquor store—until the bank called to tell me I was overdrawn and would I be good enough to come in and do something about it.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 163

The thing about money is this: You have to have enough money so that you don’t ever have to think about money again. And that’s not an easy place to get to. What I had, I spent. I bought a Jeep. A Roballo boat. I’d go into town and buy lobsters for twenty guests. The best champagne.

Beluga caviar because it reminded me of Paris, of the time I’d spent being an innocent little nobody . . .

And of course I worked for my money. Only it didn’t feel like work. This is what you have to understand: It was fun.

Then.
I would sit there surrounded by fawning assistants and hair and makeup people and dressers and think,
I
can’t believe I’m getting paid for all this fawning!
And I couldn’t. Really. So I didn’t stop. And it kept being fun.

I remember meeting the legendary Scavullo for the first time. He shot me for
Cosmo,
with whom he had a contract.

He worked out of a carriage house in the East Sixties, where he lived with his lover, Sean Byrnes, who was also ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

SEAN BYRNES AND FRANCESCO SCAVULLO

AT SCAVULLO’S STUDIO.

ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª

ARTHUR ELGORT IN TOKYO.

his chief stylist. They were a real

hoot, those two. “If you don’t

behave yourself, Sean, I’m going to

cut you out of my will,” Scavullo

would say. Sean was the party animal in

the relationship, and the threats kept him in line.

He would bite his tongue, and go quietly about his business, but within a few minutes he’d be studying Scavullo with a sharp, appraising look.

“What?”
Scavullo would snap.

“Oh, nothing,” Sean replied, the picture of innocence.

“You look like you’re retaining water.”

The truth is, they were inseparable, and they knew it, but they went at each other like an old married couple.

They even started to look alike. It was always quite the show.

Scavullo was nuts about me. He kept asking me back. I was in
Cosmo
every month for about six months, until I finally had to beg for a break. I thought I was getting overexposed, and I wanted to spread my wings.

I went off and did a session for
Vogue
with Arthur Elgort, who had made a name for himself as a ballet photographer. He said he loved the way I moved, which—from him—was a major compliment.

Richard Avedon saw the result and sent for me. I was nervous. I admit it. Here was this kid from New York whose career began in the U.S. Merchant Marine when he was asked to take ID snapshots of the sailors, and he went on to become The Master. Intimidating? You bet. I mean, JVC was a fucking advertising campaign. Avedon—well, we’re talking
art.
And art—well, that’s another world.

So there I was, heading off to Avedon’s place in the

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 165

West Seventies. The whole way there, I told myself I was wonderful, amazing, good enough for Avedon. Then I rang the bell and a chubby little assistant opened the door and walked me through. I had to remind myself to breathe as I waited. I felt like I was meeting one of
The Beatles,
or getting an audience at the Vatican—which kind of scared me, frankly: It brought back memories of Pope Giorgio.

Moments later, Avedon appeared: a little bespectacled waif of a man, smiling, oddly normal. And he shook my hand and took me into the studio and—with no fanfare, no fuss—quietly introduced me to the two geniuses who had been working with him for years and years: Way Bandy, who did makeup, and Ara Gallant, on hair. Way took great pains with his outfits; he was partial to flowing Japanese robes that made him look like a geisha. And he had this wacky Prince Valiant do that was so weird you couldn’t help staring. Made me wonder why Ara didn’t fix it. Ara wore a pin-studded black leather biker cap and matching leather pants. That was
it;
I seldom saw him in anything else.

“Janice,” Way said, flailing his arms like the queen he was. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

And Ara said, “I love you more.”

And Way began to sing, “I love you more today than

yesterday . . . ”

And Ara joined him.

Now, I’m here to tell you,
that’s

entertainment.

Avedon was over on the far

side of the room, conferring with

RICHARD AVEDON:

THE MASTER OF MASTERS.

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

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

Gideon Lewin, his lighting guy. It was surreal. Things hadn’t happened exactly the way I’d envisioned them—Avedon and Lauren Hutton didn’t discover me in a lousy Florida pizza parlor—but they were happening just the same.

When the musical interlude was over, Ara took me by the hand and said, “I need you to come to all my parties from now on,
comprende?
And I won’t take no for an answer.” Ara’s parties were legendary: A-list all the way.

“I’ll be your date,” Way said. “It’ll ruin my reputation, but what can you do?”

Gay men—gotta love ’em. They were as damaged as I

was. They had grown up the way I’d grown up: with fear and shame and no sense of self-worth and the feeling that there was no place on earth for them. They were my spiritual next of kin.

WEARING A PATRICIA FIELD BLACK WIDOW WEDDING DRESS

IN GIDEON LEWIN’S STUDIO.

ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 167

Suddenly, Avedon cleared his throat. He was ready. He took his place behind his large-format camera. Way and Bandy blew me kisses, told me I looked like a goddess, and moved into the wings.

Now Avedon turned his attention to Gideon Lewin. He worked with handheld reflectors, controlling every ounce of light in the room. This was a far cry from the French Mafia’s kamikaze approach to fashion photography. This wasn’t about pumping off a hundred motor-driven pictures and hoping for one lucky shot. This was about masterminding every inch of every setup, every photon in the air . . .