No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (30 page)

We shot for five hours, at a beautiful sandy beach a mile or two north of Malibu. As the day wore on, I became increasingly confident. My best shots—the ones that ended up in print—came toward the end of the day. I remember driving back to L.A. thinking,
I’m a photographer!

It was pretty late by the time I returned to my room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I showered and ordered room service, thinking about making it an early night. I had another shoot the next day—for Perry Ellis—and I was tired. But I was also wired from working. So I called my friends Elmer Valentine and Lou Adler, who owned two hot clubs on Sunset Strip, the Roxy and On the Rox. Lou was at the latter. He told me to come by.

I put on my micromini, slipped into my platform shoes, and got back into my rental car and drove over. Lou took me into his office and popped some champagne, and we chatted until he got a call to go deal with a problem at the other club. I left his office, buzzed on champagne, and worked my way over to the bar. I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I saw a lot of people I recognized. Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett were there. I remember thinking,
People on
the West Coast don’t know how to dress.
I saw James N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 223

Taylor. He was sitting at the bar, crying. I’d read in
People
magazine that Carly Simon had just dumped him.

The song ended. Tina Turner came on, cranking hard.

She was impossible to resist. I waltzed out onto the dance floor and shut my eyes and started to boogie. I love dancing with my eyes closed. I can just get down and imagine that I’m there with someone I love. But I sensed someone in my face. And I knew I wasn’t imagining it. And I wasn’t in love with anyone at the moment. So I opened my eyes.

Mick Jagger was dancing with me. I thought,
That
champagne Lou gave me—what the hell was it laced with?

So I closed my eyes, ignored the apparition, and kept dancing. But it wouldn’t quit. And it felt powerful. I opened my eyes again, and Mick was still in my face. He was no apparition, and he was grinning.

“Who the fuck are you, then?” he said. “I know you.”

“You wish,” I said.

He was pure energy. We danced—cleared the floor—

and everyone was staring at us. For a moment there, I went back to thinking that Lou really
had
laced the champagne.

But he hadn’t.

When the music ended, the actual Mick Jagger took me by the actual hand and told me we were going back to the Sunset Marquis. His entourage followed us into the street.

That’s the kind of power he had. He moved, and his disciples dropped whatever they were doing and stayed close.

“
You’re
going back to the Sunset Marquis,” I said, turning to give the valet my parking stub. “I’m going to the Beverly Hills Hotel. I have to work in the morning.”

“
Work?
Gorgeous girl like you shouldn’t have to work.”

“I
like
to work,” I said. “It keeps me sane.”

“I know I know you,” he repeated, squinting his eyes and trying to place me.

I offered him my hand. “Janice Dickinson,” I said.

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

“Mick Jagger,” he said.

“No!” I said. “Really? You’re not putting me on now, are you?”

He laughed. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I was planning on flying home to New York.”

“Well, don’t,” he said. And he climbed into his limo and disappeared.

Sonofabitch. On the one hand, I was proud of myself. I turned down Mick Jagger. On the other, I felt he could have tried a little harder.

I got back from the Perry Ellis shoot the next afternoon to find my hotel room filled with pink roses. “Someone will be picking you up at seven,” the card said. Mick Jagger, a man of few words?

I called Patti Hansen, who was dating Keith Richards, and told her about meeting Mick. “He’s
very
fucking hot,”

I said, stating the obvious. “What’s the story with Jerry?”

Jerry Hall, that is.

“She’s been busting his balls to get married,” she said.

“But they’re not married, are they?”

“No. I guess not.”

“You’re a big girl, Janice. And Mick’s a big boy. Do what you have to do.”

It was getting late and I showered and looked for something to wear. Models
never
have anything to wear. I found some striped leggings and a baggy silk shirt and a purple suede sash, and I looked in the full-length mirror and thought,
Shit! I look like Captain Hook!

But it was seven already—too late to change. So I hurried out to the hotel entrance just as a long black limousine pulled up. There was Angelica Huston, stepping out and coming over to hug me; we’d met in New York a few

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 225

times, at Studio 54 and on the social circuit. Jack Nicholson followed her out and approached with that Cheshire cat smile. “Jack,” she said, “this is Janice—Janice Dickinson.

I’m not sure you’ve met.”

Jack shook my hand warmly. “Janice. Big fan here.

Nice to meet you.” What an actor! I felt like slapping him.

I felt like turning to Angelica and saying, “Oh, Jack and I already know each other. We fucked in New York.” (And Angelica, if you’re reading this, I am so sorry!)

Instead, I smiled and looked Jack dead in the eye. “It’s really nice to meet you, too.”

Turns out we were sharing a limo. We’d all been

comped tickets to the Stones concert. En route, Jack nodded his head attentively and made small talk, asking me about my career. I played right along, Little Miss Innocent, and I found it disarmingly easy. Maybe I had a natural aptitude for acting. The next time Steven Spielberg called, I remember thinking, I should pull myself together and go see the man.

When we got to the amphitheater, we were taken in

through the back. Mick was waiting for us in his dressing room. The moment we walked though the door he took my head between his hands, put his big lips on my big lips, and gave me a loud smack. Our mouths were like two oversized electrical hookups, made for each other.

“You call that a kiss?” I asked. I grabbed his shaggy head, jammed my tongue down his throat, and pinned him to the wall. When I finally let him come up for air, he looked at me, impressed. “That was a promising start, Janice. Very promising.”

“I’ve never kissed anyone with bigger lips than mine,” I said.

But suddenly it was showtime, and Mick had to run

off. We went to find our seats, and I ran into Lou Adler 226 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

and his partner, Elmer. “You bastards,” I said. “I met Jagger at your club last night. He wants to fuck me.”

“You lucky girl,” Lou said.

And Elmer said, “Do
you
want to fuck
him
?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Liar.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Lou said. “Sleep with the man.

You’ll have stories for your grandchildren.”

So I did. We went back to the Sunset Marquis after the concert, Mick and I, and we fucked all night. The man was indefatigable. (I love that word.) He was pure energy—

kind of spooky, to tell you the truth. I woke up the next day feeling like I’d been through a war. And I wasn’t sure I’d won, either. And then I got my goddamn period, which put a damper on the morning festivities.

Mick had to leave early in the afternoon. He had a business meeting. That’s what he told me, anyway. Maybe he was just looking for a girl who wasn’t bleeding. He comped me two tickets for that night’s concert, too—I could pick them up at the door, he said—then set four hundred dollars on the night table next to my side of the bed.

“Here you go,” he said. “Buy yourself a pretty frock.”

Oh, man! How could he? But he was gone before I

knew it.

For the next six months, Mick became my new daddy.

He was away much of the time, just like the rat bastard.

And he wasn’t particularly nice to me when he was

around, which definitely made me feel right at home. But he had a lot of energy in bed. And that made up for a great deal.

“I love you,” he told me once. “You’re built just like a little boy.”

“You’re sick,” I said.

“Yes, I am,” he said. And he was off again.

The thing is, he was Mick Jagger. He could have had N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 227

anyone, and he did. But he wanted me.
Wanted
me. And I was still hungry for that. That meant I couldn’t be so bad, right? I mean,
Hello?
Do we detect a pattern here? Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger. Not exactly settling for second best, was I?

Yeah—okay. I know. I see it
now.
But I’m not alone in this. We’re all looking for validation. We all want to be wanted. Some of us are just more desperate than others.

By the end of those six months, though, I found I liked Keith better than Mick. Not that way, of course—Keith was with Patti, and she was a friend of mine. But he was more fun to be around. He was probably nicer to me than he was to Patti.

“Why is Mick so mean to me?” I asked Keith one

drunken night. He and Patti and I were hanging out at their place, on 5th Avenue and 16th Street.

“Men are always mean to the women they sleep with,”

he said.

“Are you mean to Patti?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But don’t let that get out. I’ve got a reputation to worry about.”

We drank some more, did some more coke, and before I knew it we were singing.

“You’ve got a nice voice, Janice,” Keith said. He was obviously out of his mind.

“Sure,” I said.

“No, really,” he insisted, sliding off the couch to the floor. “Talent like that—you shouldn’t let it go to waste.”

Didn’t I say somewhere that we believe what we want to believe? Well, I wanted to believe. And that’s how it happened. Two months later I’m in a recording studio, preparing a demo. Keith was on one guitar. Ron Wood on another. John Oates of Hall & Oates was on a third. Some session guy was on drums, looking frankly overwhelmed 228 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

to be playing with those three. And then there was me, little me, doing my own inimitable version of “In the Boom Boom Room.” They all thought I was great. John Belushi showed up in the middle of the session, and
he
said I was great. Who was I to question the judgment of these brilliant, distinguished gentlemen—paragons of honesty and refined good taste?

After we wrapped for the day, Belushi asked me what I was doing later. I thought he was going to ask me to sleep with him.

“Nothing,” I said, wary.

“Why don’t you come by the studio,” he said. “Watch us tape the show.”

So I went. Hung out, laughed at Belushi and Dan

Aykroyd and Bill Murray, who has always struck me as one of the spookiest funny men alive. There’s something indescribably dark about him.

“How are you, Bill?” I asked.

Bill looked at me in that special way he has, like he can see clear through to your soul. “Janice,” he said, “there are certain portions of my mind which are best left undisturbed.”

Aykroyd came over to say hello. We’d met before. He’d been trying to set me up with his brother, Peter. “Did my brother call you?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“He’s shy,” he said. “I’ll tell him again.”

“I’ll be waiting by the phone,” I said.

“I’d call you myself,” he said. “but I’m happily married.

However, I would be thrilled if you mailed me some nude pictures of yourself. But please send them here, to the studio. I’d hate for my wife to find them. She’d probably fall in love with you and leave me.”

Then the taping was over and Belushi came by and

asked if I’d drive to Memphis with him.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 229

“Why?” I asked.

“I want to dance on Elvis’s grave.”

“Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “Aren’t there any local dead guys you want to dance on?”

“I bet you’d go if I was Mick Jagger,” he said, all pouty.

But he was just horsing around. He was always saying,

“You know Mick Jagger. You fucked Mick Jagger! My

God, Mick Jagger! If he asked
me
to sleep with him, I’d probably say yes.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re on. Let’s go to Memphis.”

“Great,” he said. “But we have to stop in Atlantic City first.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Janice,” he said, “you ask a lot of questions. That’s okay when you’re four years old and everything in the world is new and strange, but—at your age—it’s very unbecoming.”

I don’t know whether there was any method to his madness, but he certainly had a strange sense of style. First, we went to Rent-a-Wreck for a car. I have no idea why he wanted a heap when he could have afforded a limo, and I knew better than to ask. Then we stopped at a 7-Eleven for two cases of Bud Tall Boys. It
had
to be Bud Tall Boys.

Belushi almost fell apart when he heard they were out, but an enterprising clerk found two cases in back—and got an autograph for his efforts.

“Do you know who this is?” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders.

“No sir,” the clerk said. He was holding on to the autograph as if his life depended on it.

“This is Janice Dickinson,” Belushi said. “She’s seen Mick Jagger naked.”

We went out to the car and got in. Then he noticed the pay phone, and he just sat there and stared.

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

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You think I should call Darlanne?” Darlanne Fluegel was an actress who’d been in
Conan the Barbarian.
I guess John had a thing for women in loincloths.

“John, you’re married.”

“Says who!?” he snarled, pouting again. He backed out fast, tires squealing, and we raced over to Tower Records.

It was all an act, of course. He was in fine spirits. He filled a shopping cart with tunes and paid for them with

Aykroyd’s credit card. I knew better than to ask about that, too.

“This is the fucking life!” John said as we pulled away.