No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (42 page)

The party was terrific—that’s what the newspapers said, anyway. I don’t remember it too well. I remember smiling my denial smile, and shaking lots of hands and bussing lots of cheeks, and thanking people for their kind compliments. I remember not answering when I was asked if Sly was coming; I just smiled harder and tried to look model-dumb.

Later in the evening, I found myself on a balcony. I was taking deep breaths, trying to steady myself, but I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs.

“You are a stunning woman,” I heard someone behind

me say. “But you don’t look particularly happy.”

I turned around. It was Ron Galotti, the publisher of
Vogue.
We’d met before, but only briefly. He had wonderful eyes. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m not happy.”

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” he said, “and you can tell me all about it.”

So we went for a walk and I told him everything. I told him about Sly, Savannah, Birnbaum. I told him about Ron Levy, my first husband. I told him about my father. I told him about the lurking demon that had followed me from Milan to Los Angeles and had now made its way to Paris. I talked until the sun came up. And Ron listened. He held me 322 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

when I needed it and dried my tears every time they flowed. And then he said, “Janice, it’s time to face the demon.”

He was right, sure; but I didn’t want to face the fucking demon; I didn’t know where to begin.

HIDE YOUR HEAD

IN THE SAND,

LITTLE GIRL

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

So I ran away. I took Savannah and the nanny and spent two weeks with friends on a yacht off the coast of France. We stopped at every fashionable port and hit all the best clubs and restaurants, but I felt like shit. On top of everything else, I think I was going through vitamin withdrawal. I was jittery all the time. I ran into Ivana Trump one night. “Dahlink,” she said, “vat happened to you? You look so sad!”

“Dahlink,” I shot back, “why are you pretending you don’t read the tabloids? My life is a mess. Sly just dumped me.”

“Men! Vee don’t need men, my little pumpkin. Go out and rule the vorld!”

But I couldn’t rule the fucking world. I was miserable. I called Nathan from the yacht every day. I told him he was my little man. That I loved him and missed him and that I’d be home soon. He told me that he didn’t like pizza anymore; his new favorite food was cheeseburgers. And Ron Galotti called me every day. Sometimes twice a day. His spies found me on the yacht. Why had I run away, he wanted to know. He missed me. He missed my voice. He missed my tears.

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

I guess I needed to hear that. When I got back to the States, we tried the bicoastal thing for a while. He was tender and attentive and a wonderful lover, but before long I realized I was just repeating the old mistakes. I was still looking to be saved, still looking to be told that I
wasn’t
worthless, still looking for someone to undo the damage that had been done a quarter of a century earlier.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“We’re all scared,” he said. “Look at me: I’m just a little street kid who happens to know a little bit about magazines. The Big Questions? I’m as lost as the next guy.”

“As lost as me?”

“Well, not
that
lost!” he joked.

Truth in humor. At that moment, it struck me that I was the only one who could change my life. And I got started: The bicoastal thing wasn’t working for either of us, so we ended it—amicably. I went home to life with my two kids, my photography, and an occasional modeling gig. And for a while there I thought I was on the right track.
Here I am,
Janice. Taking my son to school, preparing mac and cheese
for dinner, making rules about TV, and reading my little
girl to sleep each night. Here I am, taking pictures, honing
my craft; here I am, still modeling, taking acting classes,
staying away from drink and drugs
.

There was, of course, one little problem. I still didn’t know who Savannah’s father was, and there were two possibilities: my friend the abstract artist or Michael Birnbaum.
Please God,
I said to myself,
please let it be
Michael.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the artist. I liked him fine. But he’d been a one-night stand, a mistake. And Michael? Christ—Michael had really been there for me.

Michael had really loved me. Michael and I had actually been
in love
at one time. He had to be the father, right?

But what if it wasn’t Michael? I was paralyzed with N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 325

worry. My head was spinning with questions. If it wasn’t Michael, well—maybe that would be for the best. After all, the artist and I didn’t have a relationship. He wouldn’t want anything to do with her. But then Savannah wouldn’t have a father. Of course, if it
was
Michael, there was always a chance that he might not want to be her father.

Then again, if he
did,
how was that going to work?

I called the artist—it was less emotionally demanding—

and told him the story. He didn’t say much on the phone. I could picture him sitting in his house, in near shock, hearing what he was hearing and not wanting to hear it. I mean, God, I don’t think he ever expected to hear from me again.

Then I dropped the bomb:

“How would you feel about taking a DNA test?” I

asked.

“Well, I, uh . . . ” He had a hard time getting the words out. But at the end of the day he was a perfect gentleman.

He agreed, and for the next few days we waited. I was a nervous, miserable wreck—but no doubt he was more so.

Then the tests came back: He wasn’t the father. I was immensely relieved, and so was he—trust me. Then I

thought about the task at hand—calling Michael, whom I hadn’t seen since I’d told him about Sly—and relief went out the fucking window.

I’d been through a bitter, hellacious custody battle with Simon Fields. I didn’t want to go through that again.
Ever.

I wasn’t going to lose my little girl. So I decided I simply wouldn’t tell Michael. End of story.

But it wasn’t, of course.

At night, I would wake up drenched in sweat, thinking someone was in the room with me. Was it my father’s ghost? Was it the lurking demon? I started sleeping with the lights on. Or not sleeping at all. I began to lose my sense of time. I was up at four one morning, making mac 326 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

and cheese for breakfast. I hollered for Nathan.
Time to get
up. Move move move!
I took Savannah out of her crib and marched into the kitchen and plopped her into the high chair.

The nanny walked into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I think you should talk to someone,” she said. I looked over at Savannah, who lay slumped in her high chair, asleep again. Nathan was awake but miserable.

“Can I go back to bed, Mom?” he asked. “
Please?
”

I looked over at the nanny, mortified. This is what my life had become: I was so alone that the only person who could see I was in serious trouble was the nanny.

I went to visit my Beverly Hills shrink. He told me I looked beautiful and wrote me two prescriptions. “There’re all sorts of wonderful new things on the market,” he said.

“That’s great,” I said. “Because I don’t want to feel anything.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” he said.

As predicted, the new drugs were pretty wonderful.

“Hi, Mom,” I’d say, calling Florida now and then to see how she was doing.

“Hi, honey,” she’d say.

“How are you?” I’d say.

“Fine,” she’d say. “You?”

“Fine,” I’d say. “You?”

It was like a comedy routine gone wrong. I’d become my mother. All I needed now was a man just like the man who’d married Dear Old Mom.

Then Sly called. “Yo, it’s me,” he said. “How you

doin’?”

“Go fuck yourself,” I said.

“I want you,” he said.

“You had your chance,” I said.

The house on Nichols Canyon started feeling claustro

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 327

phobic. I called a realtor, who found us a new home off Beverly Glen. He asked me if I was seeing anyone; he had a friend who was newly single. He thought I’d like him.

“Set it up,” I said.

The friend’s name was Albert Gersten. He came by and picked me up and took me to a trendy little place in Beverly Hills. I liked him right away. He had ice-blue eyes and thinning hair and lots of energy. He was loud and confident and cocky—and more so because he liked to drink, as I did.

After dinner, he took me to the Gate, a club he owned on La Cienega. It was a bit second-rate, but I didn’t mind.

There were a lot of sleazy-looking characters hanging around looking for a good time. Shannon Doherty was there. She broke a beer bottle over her boyfriend’s head. It was very entertaining.

Albert got louder and crazier. He laughed. He liked my sense of humor. He took me home as dawn was breaking, and we kissed a bit in the Ferrari. I wouldn’t let him into the house.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I’m not that easy,” I said.

In the days and weeks ahead, he began to romance me in earnest. He took me to his place in Malibu. He took me to Las Vegas on a private jet. He was very rich, clearly. His family had made a fortune in real estate. But it wasn’t just about money. He said all the right things. He told me he was in love with me, that he wanted to adopt Savannah, that together our life would be better than anything I’d ever dreamed of.

Yes, Dear Reader, I slept with him—and savored the

feeling of being held again. But something about the feeling scared me. He scared me a little, too, to be honest. During the day he was the sweetest guy in the world. But 328 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

sometimes, after a few shots of chilled Patron tequila, like many people who drink, he turned into another person—

I called my shrink, looking for refills, but he was out of town. There was a message on his machine providing the name of a backup shrink in the event of an emergency. I called the backup shrink, but he refused to give me pills over the phone. I went to see him. He was young and good-looking and very smart. We talked for the full hour. I went back the next day and the day after that.

“Janice,” he said. “This has to stop. You’re giving them all the power.”

“Who? What power?”

“It’s all well and good to be swept off your feet and fall in love,” he said. “It feels great, yes. And it’s wonderful.

But what happens when it ends?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just know I hate it. It’s fucking horrible.”

“That’s because you don’t like yourself.”

“Don’t I?”

“You tell me,” he said.

He was right. I didn’t like myself. There had been times lately when I looked at my reflection in the mirror and found my adolescent self staring back at me, her eyes red from crying. I was seeing her more and more lately, and it scared me. I got the feeling that she wanted something from me—that she wanted the adult me to tell her she was a good little girl. But I didn’t know where to begin.

“What about that refill?” I said.

“It’s not as hard as you think, Janice,” he said. His voice was low, gentle. “You’re alive. You’re smart. You have your health. You’ve survived. That’s a miracle in and of itself—

the fact that you survived the abuse. That right there is something you can be very proud of. Why don’t we start with that?”

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 329

“Fuck this,” I said. “I don’t need this deep bullshit. I’m just a shallow, happy girl. I want my fucking drugs.”

“I think you’ve had enough drugs,” he said.

“You’re not the only shrink in town.”

He took a beat. “Janice, listen to me,” he said. “If you judge yourself solely through other people’s eyes, you’re going to get into a lot of trouble. A man tells you he loves you, you feel good. He stops loving you, you feel rotten.

You get a high-profile modeling gig, you feel good. You don’t get it because they like Cindy Crawford better, you feel like shit.”

“That was cruel,” I said.

“No,” he said. “It was honest. You’re giving everyone else the power. Men. Work. Your ex-husband. Your current boyfriend. Your children even. You’ve got to take the power back. You’re the only one in the world who should stand in judgment of Janice Dickinson. You know the difference between right and wrong, between good and bad. Take responsibility for yourself and your actions and your life.

Grow up. You’ll be a lot happier.”

“I like me just fine,” I said, standing. “It’s you I don’t like.” I turned and stormed out.

By the time I reached the lobby, I felt as lost and alone as I’d ever felt in my life. I looked at my watch. It wasn’t quite four o’clock yet, but what the hell. I took myself drinking. I made the rounds of all the best bars in town. I made pit stops on Melrose Avenue, Sunset Boulevard, Rodeo Drive.

At about three in the morning, I’m driving along, trying to find my way home, when a deafening wail pierces my brain. I ignore it. I think it’s in my head. I’ve burst a fucking blood vessel or something, no biggie. Only it’s not in my head. It’s coming from the police car behind me. I pull over, scraping the tires against the curb. I cut the engine. I