No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (32 page)

Monique Pillard got some complaints about me. As I

said, as long as you’re making money for them, they don’t give a shit. And they’ll keep you in drugs if that’s what it takes. But Monique gave a shit. She’d been a fan from Day One.

“You’re turning into Gia,” she said.

“Oh come on!” I said. “I was a few minutes late. Big deal.”

“You couldn’t hold your head up,” she said.

“That’s not true!”

Fuck it. I wasn’t going to listen to her. I was on to bigger and better things. I was about to make my feature film debut, in James Toback’s
Exposed.
I didn’t need her shit.

Of course, to be completely honest, the reason I hadn’t N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 239

been able to hold my head up at that memorable shoot was on account of my big movie debut. . . .

I’d had a call about James Toback a few weeks earlier.

He wanted me in his film—it had to be me—and wondered if I’d meet with him. I was reluctant, to be honest. Especially when it turned out he was holding court in a hotel room. But I went—hope springs eternal. And he ushered me into his shabby suite—a big bear of a man, unwashed, with pink, sweaty skin and greasy hair—and offered me a seat and said, “You are the greatest.”
Good start.
“I love your work. You are my favorite model working today.”

Jesus, he was beginning to sound like John Casablancas. I was ready to sign with him. But finally he got around to his movie,
Exposed.
He began to describe it. He claimed it was a love story, though you sure couldn’t tell from listening to him. Nastassja Kinski was in it, he said; so was Harvey Keitel.

I said yes. Simple as that. And, on the night in question, I found myself at a SoHo restaurant, closed for the shoot, with Nastassja and Harvey and Rudolf Nureyev and two fellow models—Nancy Donahue and Hilary English. But no script. We were just supposed to chat, be ourselves.

(Rene Russo would have loved that!) And we chatted and got drunk on good wine, and kept talking and shooting and drinking till the sun came up. So, yeah, Monique—I couldn’t hold my head up the next day.
Mea
fucking
maxima culpa.

Monique was pissed. Understandably, justifiably. And she moved on. She started mothering Cindy Crawford, who’d found her way to Elite at age seventeen, through their
Look of the Year
contest. She hadn’t won the contest, but she was a very smart girl. She was all about business.

She knew she’d been blessed with superior looks—and she 240 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

knew how to convert them to legal tender. I guess Cindy was the first of a smart new breed: the Model As Businesswoman. I wish she’d been around to tutor me.

I can say that now, of course. But I’m sure at the time I must have been a
tad
jealous. I was still on top of the world, sure, but younger girls like Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington were very much
of the moment.
My moment hadn’t passed—not yet, anyway—but I was suddenly interested in exploring new possibilities. Photography. Music. Film. And anything else that piqued my interest.

That’s when I got a call from Mark Fleischman, the guy who’d taken over Studio 54. He’d heard I was singing and wanted to know if I’d consider making my debut at the club. It was for a good cause, he said: the Alvin Ailey Dance Company was strapped for cash, and he wanted to help.

I was flattered. I said I’d think about it. It
was
for a good cause.
Two
good causes, actually—Alvin Ailey and
moi.

In the weeks ahead, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I spent time in the studio with Keith and Ron and John Oates, and there was actually talk about a recording contract. Everyone had me convinced I was a brilliant singer. When I wasn’t at the recording studio laying down tracks, I was in the shower belting out tunes, or on the dance floor, shucking and jiving and singing at the top of my voice. I know, I know. If I saw myself now, out there on the dance floor, wailing, I’d slap me, too. But back then there was no stopping me. Everyone fed my confidence.

So I went to see Fleischman and told him, sure, I’d do the show. He decided we’d invite everyone who was anyone, and we’d charge thirty-five dollars in advance, and another thirty at the door.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 241

I asked Scavullo to do the invitations, and they were perfect. Mick Jagger called when he got his. “Who the fuck do you think you are, then?” he said. “I’m Mick Jagger, and
I
don’t even get what you’re getting.”

He was just goofing, of course. “I’m Janice Dickinson,”

I said. “And it’s a fucking benefit.” I was goofing, too.

Two days before the show, I went to see Harry King and asked him to chop off my long hair. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. He thought the pressure of my professional debut had gone to my head, and not in a good way.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

He chopped. It looked fucking great. But everyone I saw in the next forty-eight hours thought I’d lost my mind.

I looked like a boy—and this was before androgyny was all the rage. They thought I was nuts; I thought I was ahead of my time.

I went over to the club the afternoon before my big debut to make sure everything was ready. The florists were there. Mark wanted thousands of fresh rose petals to rain down on me as I came out on stage. And who was I to argue? He also had T-shirts made up with my name emblazoned across the front.
Janice!
They were great.

The DJ tested the sound system, using a tape of me

singing “Outlaws,” the Ron Wood song. It was part of my demo—I’d laid it the previous week with Ron and Keith—

and that was the first song I’d be singing that night, in a matter of hours. I sounded fucking great.

“Everybody’s coming!” Mark said. He was incredibly

excited. “And all the major record labels are sending scouts.”

I went home and got decked out in a Halston-designed rose-petal pink leotard and a little pink tutu. I looked like Peter Pan on a bad day. Mark sent a limo around to fetch 242 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

me. The club was full by the time I arrived; people were being turned away at the door.

I walked through and grinned my alligator grin for the photographers: They were out in full force. There were searchlights lighting up the New York skyline. It was like the fucking Academy Awards.

Friends and fans mobbed me when I got inside, but

Mark dragged me away. He took me out back and sat me down and told me not to be nervous.

“I’m not nervous,” I said. “You’re making me nervous.

You’re hyperventilating.”

He said the house was packed. Liz Taylor had just

walked in with Halston. Robert De Niro was there. All the girls from Elite.

And suddenly—it’s showtime, folks! Mark walks on

stage. I hear him say a few words about the Alvin
Ailing
Dance Company, hear him thanking everyone for coming, thanking them for their friendship and support, and then he’s calling my name. I did two quick toots of some dynamite Peruvian flake, then stepped through the curtain and onto the stage. . . .

It is raining rose petals and everyone is clapping and hooting and hollering. The noise is deafening. It goes on and on: a roar of approbation.

I look down at the crowd and see everyone I know. I see Mick and Keith and Patti and Iman and Stephanie and Warhol and Calvin and Diana Vreeland and half the photographers I’ve ever worked with. Jesus.
Everyone.
Charlie Haughk is there with his cop father. Charlie waves. Bob Menna is there, a fellow model, a sweet guy. He waves, too. He’s excited for me. He points at a passing waiter. All the waiters are running around in
Janice
T-shirts. It’s all about me. Everything is about me. They’re all there because of me.
Life
is about me.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 243

Yes. I am feeling the love in the room.

Suddenly it hits me.
This is it. This is the moment. It’s
really happening.
And it takes me back to that fateful night in 1969, at the Doors concert in Coconut Grove. And it occurs to me that Jim Morrison is long dead, and that it’s
me
up there now—me, Janice, just as I’d always hoped.

This is my moment. I am an angel, bathed in angelic light, and it’s raining rose petals.

I am adored, goddamn it. I am adored.

And as I look down at all those smiling faces, I see one face that is smiling more brightly than all the rest of them.

It is my father’s face. And of course I think I must be hallucinating. That must have been some pretty powerful toot back there. So I blink and I look again and it
is
my father.

In a tuxedo. And my mother is with him. And Debbie is next to them, with her Indonesian millionaire boyfriend.

And she’s grinning. And suddenly I get it. She flew them in. She and her boyfriend. Wasn’t that a nice surprise?

And just then they cue the music and I’m standing there with the microphone in my hand, and I goddamn freeze. . . .

You’ll never amount to anything.

I feel myself going weak at the knees. I lean against the mike stand for support.
You’ll never amount to anything. . .
.

Nobody’s clapping now. They’re all staring. And the room is spinning.

And suddenly I hear my voice on the sound system,

even though I know I’m not singing. And it hits me. Of course! It’s the tape. The DJ saw me freeze up and he’s playing the tape.
Maybe I can lip-sync my way through
this.
And I try. God knows I try. But I can’t even catch up to myself. So it’s Janice lyp-syncing to Janice, about three or four beats back. And I can’t fucking catch up.

I stumble over my own words. I try to prance across the stage. I try to smile. And my smile is about as convincing 244 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

as their smiles. They’re all looking up at me with those Stubie Gardner smiles: “You stink, but I’ll be the last to tell you.”

Somehow I make it through the song, and everyone

applauds, politely, out of duty or embarrassment. And I disappear backstage and inhale a massive amount of coke in record time. Then Mark comes by to tell me how well I did: I’m a hit, a star. Everything is a blur now. He’s leading me out, into the crowd. Everyone is fawning. “You were wonderful!” “A triumph!” “Big things are in store for you, Janice!” Only I know they’re all fucking lying to me. I’ve never been more humiliated in my life.

And then Debbie’s there, at my side. And I look at her like I’m going to kill her, and growl, “Get me the fuck out of here.” And she hustles me out to the Indonesian’s limo and takes me to his big house in Scarsdale, and I don’t say a word the whole way there. I am catatonic. I will not talk to her or the Indonesian. She is saying, “I’m sorry. I thought it would be nice, having Mom and Dad here. I’m really sorry, Janice. Really.”

Not a word. I just stare out the window, seeing nothing, trying not to think, not to feel.

We reach Scarsdale and I get out of the limo and find my way to one of the guest rooms and crash and I don’t open my eyes till the next afternoon. I stumble into the kitchen. One of the servants brings me coffee. I ask the limo driver to take me home.

I get back to my apartment and the phone is ringing.

It’s Mark Fleischman. “You saved Alvin Ailey! You raised seventy-five thousand dollars for the company. You were great.” I mumble my thanks and hang up.

The phone rings again. It’s Jerry Hall. “Have you seen the papers?” she says, then quotes from one of the more scathing reviews . . . “Nice try, Janice. Stick to modeling.”

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 245

“Thank you for sharing that,” I say, numb with shame.

“Stay the fuck away from Mick,” she warns me. “I have a gun in my purse. And I know how to use it.”

My mother calls, but I hang up on her. I get into bed and stop answering the phone. An hour later, the buzzer sounds. It’s Charlie Haughk. I tell him to go away. Debbie comes by. She has her own key. I don’t even have the energy to be angry with her. And was it really her fault?

Maybe she thinks we had normal parents. She didn’t go through what I went through, what Alexis went through.

“How you doin’?” she says.

“I’m fine,” I say. I just want her to go away.

“I just, you know—I

thought it would be a

nice thing to do,” she

stammers. “Daddy’s not

doing so well. And I

thought, you know, it

would be nice for him

to see you up there,

in front of all your

friends.”

JERRY HALL

(((((((((((

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

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask. Not that I’m interested.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Mom says he forgets things.

He’s confused a lot.”

“I don’t blame him for forgetting things,” I say. “I’d try to forget, too, if I’d done what he did. No wonder he’s confused.”

“No. It’s like, sometimes he doesn’t even recognize her.