No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (28 page)

“Fuck you,” she said. “Let’s party.”

The thing is, you start to feel immortal. Every day, every hour, someone’s telling you you’re beautiful, wonderful, a goddess. So you begin to believe it. And if you’re cursed with an accommodating constitution, as I was, you can party till six A.M. and show up for a shoot two hours later looking like a dew-kissed rose.

Sure, there were times when you showed up late. Or not 206 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

looking your best. But the business tolerates an awful lot.

Especially when you’re on top. On more than one occasion I called a messenger service to go downtown to fetch a gram or two to get me through the day. No one said a word about it.
We need her and she needs this and that’s the way
it is. A little cocaine never hurt no-bo-dy.

“You’re product, baby,” Ara Gallant once told me.

“That’s all you are. Fashion seems so glamorous, but it’s just advertising. And as long as you’re selling their shit, they’ll do what they have to do to keep you upright and grinning.”

You listen to people like Andy Warhol, and learn not to think beyond the
moment.
You learn not to peek around the next corner. And when people say things like “The only thing you have to know about the future is that
everything
gets worse,
” you nod and murmur,
Right on.

Things certainly got worse for Gia. A lot worse. She was mainlining by this point. People started to call her “Sister Morphine” behind her back. She was only working for the drugs now. One summer night she finally fell completely apart and looked at herself in the mirror and went home to her mother to try to get her head straight. She got on methadone, and for a while it actually looked like she was turning her life around. She came back to Manhattan a few months later. Scavullo wanted to shoot her. I think he knew how much trouble she was in and—God bless his generous heart—he was doing what he could to help.

In April 1982 the shoot made the cover of
Cosmo.
Gia looked beautiful, unless you looked real close. If you looked real close, and you knew Gia, you noticed something about her eyes; her eyes looked dead.

The following year she left New York and never came back.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 207

You forget.

Gia
who
?

You compartmentalize.

You learn not to think about anything that might fill you with terror, like your own uncertain future. Like the fact that you’re another day older.

You party.

You say, “Hey, I’m just a shallow happy girl.”

And you get on with your shallow, happy life.

When Ara Gallant wasn’t busy making Avedon’s models look beautiful, or taking pictures of his own, he was giving the best parties in town. His best friend, Zoli, of Zoli Models, had some very hot girls on his roster—Apollonia, Pat Cleveland, Angelica Huston, Geena Davis—and together they used the girls as first-class, surefire attractions for celeb-watching party-goers.

Men are so easy! I was sitting in Ara’s crowded apartment one night trying to decide who to go home with. Warren Beatty was too good-looking; Dustin Hoffman too short; Robin Williams, the new kid on the block, too frenetic; and Jack Nicholson too much of a wolf. But Jack had a great smile, and he was irresistibly funny, and he really, really wanted me. He was surrounded by some of the most gorgeous models in the business, but he behaved as if I were the only woman in the room. So I left with Jack—much to Warren’s chagrin—and we went back to the Carlyle, where he had a suite. He ordered champagne and lobster and steak, rare, and he was a wonderful host. He wanted to know all about me, and he was earnest and genuine and attentive and outrageously funny. Yes, most of all he was funny. And I’m a sucker for a man who knows how to make me laugh. So I ask you: What’s a girl to do?

You were okay, Jack. Really. And you can take that any 208 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

way you want. But you pissed me off a little the next morning.

“I want you to do me a favor,” Jack said as I was

dressing. I had a shoot with Avedon, and I was hurrying because I was already late. “Don’t tell anyone you’ve got star cum inside you.” He wasn’t kidding, either. He was lying there naked, propped up on the pillows, grinning that famous grin. I couldn’t believe he could be so full of himself.

“I hate to come and go,” I said, and I left.

When I got to Avedon’s, Ara greeted me at the door.

“So,” he said. “How was he?” Everyone was waiting to hear. Avedon and Way Bandy and Perry Ellis and the

whole damn crew. They were all staring. Ara had obviously opened his big mouth.

“Yes, it’s true,” I said at the top of my voice. “I’ve been up all night, fucking Jack Nicholson. And I don’t think he’ll be getting an Oscar this time out. Now, if you don’t mind, can we get to work?”

Jack kept calling and calling, but I avoided him. He was fun, sure, but I felt empty. I wanted more than just that same old daddy-thing. I also felt a little guilty about Angelica Huston, Jack’s longtime girlfriend. I’d met her and liked her. So I wondered, Why am I sleeping with her man?

Not to mention, why is he sleeping with me? Are all men dogs? Whatever happened to fidelity?

“Why can’t I find a nice, decent guy?” I asked my

friend Alexandra King, as her fuck-me parrot looked on.

“Just a nice guy. That’s all I ask. Nice. Decent and nice.”

“Your standards are too high,” she joked. Then she went on to tell me that she had this theory about why love doesn’t work. “It’s like this, see: A man meets a girl and thinks, ‘Wow, she is hot and mysterious and exotic and a little dangerous. I am
way
turned on by this bitch.’ So they N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 209

jump into bed and start hanging out and before you know it she’s less hot and less exotic and not much of a mystery at all. In fact, she’s become completely domesticated. And he looks at her and wonders, ‘What am I doing with this crashing bore?’ ”

Alexandra was smart. And her theory made sense. But there was another side to it. I brought my own demons to the party. I thought about putting an ad in the paper.
Girl
Seeks Dad. Must be kind and loving and nurturing and
willing to deal with both of me: the beautiful self-confident
babe and the little fucked-up girl inside.

There was another man who also called around this

time—twice—but I ignored him, too. It was Steven Spielberg. Someone at his office left a message for me at Ford: Mr. Spielberg had met me in a restaurant in Southampton and was interested in having me audition for something called
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I didn’t remember meeting Mr. Spielberg, so I imagine I must have been really drunk at the time. That was starting to happen to me from time to time. Blackouts, they call them. Fugue states. You wake up the next day and your memory is shot through with holes.

Raiders of the Lost Ark,
huh? Audition, huh? He must have been talking to his friend Cosby. No thanks. I’m not that naïve.

But there was a third man who kept calling around the same time, and he was the most persistent of the three.

That man was John Casablancas. “You’re the only interesting model working nowadays,” he gushed. “I have to have you.” Yeah yeah. I know. I’m the bee’s knees. But I
did
think about it. And I started thinking real hard the day Monique Pillard left Eileen Ford and went to work for him.

The thing is, I had a lot of anger in me in those days. I hadn’t yet figured out, of course, that it was all connected

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

to my miserable childhood (boo hoo!), so it festered and manifested itself in strange and unexpected ways. At that point, not having a man in my life to be angry with, I was angry at a woman. Specifically, Eileen Ford. And the way I saw it, I had every right to be. She had been so dismissive of me when we first met, and now she was making money on me hand over fist. (Of course, if I’d been smart, I’d have seen that my anger had a lot more to do with my father than it did with her, with the fact that he had made me feel worthless and ugly; but I wasn’t smart in those days, at least not about my crazy emotions.) So I decided to punish Eileen. I went over to see John Casablancas. And I told MY COMP CARD

FOR ELITE.

ªªªªªªªªªªª

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 211

him he could have me, but that he’d have to cut his commission to five percent. Because if I came, others would follow.

“You’re crazy,” Casablancas said.

“Then what do you need me for?” I said, standing to leave.

“Okay,” he said when I reached the door. “You win. I’ll take the five percent.”

I walked back. Sat. Reached for the phone on his desk.

“It’s Janice,” I barked into the receiver. “I need to speak to her.
Now.
”

A moment later, Eileen was on the phone. “Hello?” she said. “Janice?”

“That’s right,” I said. “It’s me. Big-lipped Janice.”

“How are you, dear?”

“I’m leaving you,” I said. “I’m going to Elite. I don’t like you, I’ve
never
liked you. The only good thing about you is Monique Pillard, and she’s here, so I don’t know what the hell I’ve been waiting for.”

And I hung up. Casablancas was smiling at me. Shaking his head. “You’re crazy,” he said.

“You have no idea,” I said.

My life didn’t change all that dramatically. I was still Janice, and everybody still wanted me. Virginia Slims, Suntori liquors, Revlon. But none of these gigs had anything to do with Casablancas. At the end of the day, even with the reduced commissions, Casablancas got the better end of the deal. I knew everyone and I introduced him to everyone, and when I wasn’t available there was always another girl in his stable. So, yeah, in retrospect—he was a smart businessman, very smart. There was only one slight problem: I didn’t have Eileen Ford to kick around anymore, and I needed
someone
to kick around. So I began to notice men again.

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

I noticed Warren Beatty a lot. It was hard not to. He was editing
Reds
at some place in Manhattan, and I ran into him at dinner one night, and he called me over and said he’d like to see me. He was with some pale, mousy little man who didn’t say anything, just stared at me with his mouth open. I think he was a writer.

“Why do you want to see me?” I asked. “Did I get a

good review from your friend Jack?”

Warren laughed. “No,” he said. “I just want to see you.”

“Well, you’re seeing me now,” I said, doing my best Mae West.

Warren laughed again and asked me to join him and the drab little writer, but I couldn’t do it. I was on my way to Studio 54. I invited him to come along, but he said he didn’t party; didn’t like that scene. It was true. I found out later that both his parents had been heavy drinkers, and that Warren himself decided early in life that he’d never drink or do drugs. He never did, as far as I know.

So I went to Studio 54 and hooked up with a model

called Minka, and I told her that Warren was after me. She said she didn’t trust good-looking men. She wanted to be the pretty one in the relationship. I noticed her eyeing an ugly guy at the bar; his arms were covered with tattoos. I guess that was more her speed.

“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo,” she said.

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked. This was

long before every other suburban housewife in America was out there getting a tattoo.

“Janice!”

I turned to find Diana Vreeland making her way over.

She was the doyenne at
Vogue.
I loved her. She was so theatrical, with perfect blood-red fingernails that clicked and slashed when she talked. “How are you, darling?” she said.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 213

“Minka is thinking of getting a tattoo,” I said above the din.

“A tattoo!?” She flung her bead back and threw her eyes open in horror. “Oh no, dear! No no no! Never mar your body with ink!” And then she saw Liza Minnelli and hurried away.

“There you go,” I said, turning to face Minka. And I mimicked Diana’s highbrow lilt: “No no no, dear. Never mar your body with ink!”

My sister Debbie showed up; we were both at Elite now.

And then Iman arrived, followed by Andie McDowell and Apollonia. And I was looking at all of these beautiful girls and I had a crazy thought.

“John, it’s me, Janice. Janice the Great.” It was morning.

I was in my red bedroom, in my new apartment on West 74th Street, across from the Dakota, calling Casablancas. It occurred to me that my walls were the same color as Diana Vreeland’s fingernails.

“How are you, Janice?”

“I’m still the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“I know,” he said.

“Say, ‘Yes you are, dear. Whatever you want, dear.’ ”

“Yes you are, dear. Whatever you want, dear.”

“I want to shoot a Christmas calendar for Elite.”

“Huh?”

A few weeks later, I got all of them together in a studio: Beverly Johnson, Iman, Andie, Debbie, Rita, and half a dozen other Elite girls, along with Casablancas himself. I put Johnny in a Santa Claus outfit; the girls—