A Father's Love (3 page)

My first job as a Jersey Shore lifeguard was at Long Branch, a busy beach at Seven Presidents Oceanfront Park. Our boss at Long Branch came from a military background and ran the beach crew similar to a military platoon. “Squared away,” he'd bark at us. “Everything has to be squared away.” Within a couple of days on the job, we knew exactly what that meant; he wanted us to do our jobs with excellence. Each morning we swam a mile in the ocean and did a vigorous routine of beach calisthenics, so I was in great physical shape and enjoyed the camaraderie of my fellow lifeguards. But the job at Long Branch was hard work. As a college kid, I thought,
I love being a lifeguard, but I'd like to have some fun, too.
After two seasons at Seven Presidents, some friends told me that Belmar, a popular beach farther south, was hiring. I applied there, passed my swimming and rescuing tests, and was hired.

I was stationed on Eighteenth Avenue, where Jim Freda was in charge of the operation. Jim was known as “Pirate” because he pushed his lifeguard crew to prevail in the tournaments and contests between our fellow crews up and down the beach. I won nearly all of the rookie events, and Jim and I became close friends. By midsummer, I was able to move to Tenth Avenue, which was our version of the dream beach made famous by a line in the Bruce Springsteen song “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” on the Boss's breakthrough album,
Born to Run
. Rumor had it that Bruce's E Street Band actually got its start practicing in a garage nearby. Whether or not that was true I didn't know, but I did know there was always lots of action at Tenth Avenue Beach. College kids flocked there because there was also a McDonald's right off the beach.

As lifeguards, we tried to keep a loose rein on the beach, calling people in only when the seas were rough, or lightning showed up on the weather screens, or if some other emergency or potential danger loomed. We usually let people swim because we trusted our rescuing abilities. There was never a drowning on our beach, although we came close a few times.

One day when the seas were a bit rough, I was patrolling in the water when I saw a little boy get sucked away in a riptide. I responded instinctively, swimming in his direction as hard and fast as I could. Just as I got close to him, another wave hit him, dragging him under the water. I swam to where I'd seen him go down, and I dove deep, desperately reaching for him in the dark, swirling waters. Finally, I felt the hair on the top of the boy's head, so I grabbed onto it. We were taught to do whatever was necessary to get a drowning victim to air as quickly as possible, so I didn't worry about the minor pain he might experience from this. I pulled hard on his hair, yanking him straight upward and out of the undertow's strong clutches. The little boy's head popped up above the waves, his eyes wide open in fear. He gasped for air and choked on some water, clinging to me for dear life as I wrapped one arm around his upper body to do a cross-chest carry and started back-paddling toward the shore. By the time I pulled the little boy out of the water and got him stretched out on the sand, he was still sputtering and coughing up seawater, but he was breathing okay. Looking at him, I guessed his age at about eight years old.

“Thanks for rescuing me, mister,” he managed to say.

“Anytime, son,” I responded in my best “grown-up” voice. “I'm glad you're okay. Let's find your parents.” We found the boy's dad, and the father shook my hand over and over as he expressed his thanks. A sense of quiet elation came over me.
Maybe someday, I'll have a son of my own,
I thought,
and if he ever has trouble, I want to be there for him.
I knew it was risky diving into the riptide, but it was my job and I had been well trained. The kid I saved was just a little boy fighting for his life against powerful, overwhelming forces. I had to do everything I could to help him. Had I allowed that child to be swept away by the tide, I would have been devastated forever.

On another day, again while working on the stretch of beach at the Tenth Avenue location, patrolling along the water carrying a “torpedo” life preserver, I noticed a camera crew on the sand. That in itself wasn't all that unusual. With our proximity to New York, photographers often found our beach to be a welcome location. But this crew was different; a photographer approached me. “We're going to be shooting some photographs here on the beach tomorrow with some girls in swimsuits,” he said, “and we'd like you to be the prop: sort of the lifeguard with the girl in the photo shoot. Would you be willing to help us out?”

Before I could muster an answer, the photographer sweetened his pitch. “We'll pay you for your time, of course, and we're going to bring Kathy Ireland down, and we'd like you to do some shots with her. You know who Kathy Ireland is, don't you? She's a
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit model.”

I was too nervous to say yes. I knew the magazine, and I was aware that
Sports Illustrated
did a swimsuit issue every year, but I really didn't know anything about Kathy Ireland, or any other model, for that matter. I was slow to agree to the photographer's proposal, and he must have recognized my ambivalence.

“Okay, I'll see you here tomorrow,” he said, “and we'll see how it goes.” And he was on his way.

When I got back to the lifeguard stand, I didn't mention the encounter with the photographer. Along with the guys on the stand, I had watched the photographer shooting catalogue photos of some beautiful women on the beach earlier that day, so I knew it wasn't a scam. That night, however, I called my college girlfriend at Virginia Wesleyan, as I usually did. When I told her about the photographer wanting to shoot some pictures of me with Kathy Ireland, she didn't believe me.

“Do you know who that is?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure I do,” I answered nonchalantly. “She's been in
Sports Illustrated
.”

I probably couldn't have identified more than two or three models by name, so my girlfriend filled me in about Kathy Ireland. She was, after all, hard to miss. She had appeared in eleven straight
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issues between 1984 and 1994 and had been in a few movies and television shows. With her gorgeous green eyes, bright smile, and athletic-looking curves, she was the epitome of the wholesome “girl next door.”

The next day, true to his word, the photographer showed up at my lifeguard stand, where I was watching the beach with a couple of other guards. “Kathy Ireland is here, David,” he said. “Would you be able to come over and shoot some pictures?”

My buddies on the lifeguard stand roared their approval, and nearly threw me off the stand before I had a chance to say a word or to think through the ramifications of posing for pictures with a swimsuit model. I made my way over to Kathy, and the photographer introduced us. After some perfunctory directions, the photographer roped off a section of the beach, positioned Kathy and me in place, and started shooting.

Kathy Ireland was the consummate professional model, and so friendly, kind, and easy to work with—especially considering that I was a total novice. She was ravishingly beautiful, too, dressed in a pink one-piece suit, her skin lightly oiled for the beach, with her makeup perfect and every strand of hair in place. It was a strange, new feeling for me, being photographed, especially with all my buddies cheering me on and a crowd of onlookers gathered around the roped-off area. My fellow lifeguards were tremendously supportive. I was living out their fantasy. “Hey, that's one of our guys out there with that celebrity model.”

Kathy did all the work, holding on to me or positioning her body into various poses around me. My job wasn't complicated, since all I had to do was sit still and act naturally. Kathy made my part fun and relatively easy. She was playful and spontaneous, totally comfortable with her craft.

At one point the photographer encouraged her to run her fingers through my hair, and of course my buddies went wild, hooting and hollering at the sight. I can't say that I was totally unaffected, either!

Before we finished the shoot I asked Kathy if she would be willing to take a couple of shots with my fellow lifeguards. “Can the rest of the guys get in the picture with us?” She graciously consented, and we did a shot with Kathy Ireland lying on a chair on the lifeguard stand surrounded by our entire lifeguard crew.

When we finished shooting, the photographer paid me a couple hundred dollars for my services, which seemed like a fortune to a struggling college student, but in actuality was a pittance compared to what they would have paid a professional model for such a shoot. I used the money to buy pizza and beers for my buddies, and we had a lot of laughs over my entrée into the world of modeling.

Over the next couple of summers, I worked with the same catalogue photography group, Popular Club Plan, a few more times and I enjoyed it immensely. On one occasion, during spring break my senior year, they flew me down to Florida and put me up at the historic Biltmore Hotel, a luxurious resort near the South Beach section of Miami. During the shoot, the producer provided a huge spread of delicious food from which we could freely partake, yet strangely enough, I was the only one of the models who ate anything!
Why aren't the other models eating?
I wondered naïvely.

I thought,
This could be kind of interesting. I enjoy the atmosphere, the food is great, and the work sure isn't too strenuous. I could get used to this
.

 

 

THE CAMERA APPARENTLY liked what it saw, and before long I had received more offers to model. Eventually someone suggested that I sign on with an agency. I decided to take some of my shots to New York, just to see if I could pique the interest of someone at a modeling agency. One agency was recruiting American models to work in Japan, so I walked right into the lobby and met a woman from the Japanese agency. I never even went into the main offices of the agency, but worked out a deal right there in the lobby, with the people booking the photo shoots in Japan.

I had no idea what the fashion modeling world was all about, but modeling was a well-established business in New York, with such prestigious entities as the Ford Agency and others taking virtually unknown women and men and making them into superstars. By the late 1990s, the term
supermodel
had become familiar. Few male models reached such heights, but many of the female supermodels earned millions of dollars working for top-name designers, well-known catalogues, and major corporate advertisers. For me, a guy planning to be a maritime lawyer, it was an exciting, new world.

Thanks to the deal I negotiated in New York, I traveled back and forth between the States and Tokyo throughout 1988–89. It was a fantastic experience, and the money was good. My time in Japan exposed me to some of the best elements of the fashion industry, and the potential pitfalls. I recognized early on that I had to make some decisions as to how I would live. Temptations of every sort surrounded me, yet the fleeting satisfaction they offered seemed to come at exorbitant costs.

When I returned to New Jersey, I worked again as a lifeguard during the summer. That fall, I received a call from an agency wanting me to do some work in Europe. Rather than going straight into law school, I decided to take the opportunity to see Europe, so I accepted the job.

My first stop was Paris. The city was beautiful, but I didn't enjoy my time there as much as I had hoped. True to their reputation, I found many of the Parisians to be a bit cool to foreigners. My not knowing the language didn't help.

Shortly after arriving in Europe, I received a call informing me that an Italian agency also wanted to represent me. I decided to go to Milan, where I had heard the people were much warmer, and certainly more receptive to American fashion models. I had also heard some horror stories of models living on canned tuna fish and bread as they struggled to develop their careers. I wasn't worried, though, because I had made good money in Tokyo. I felt that if my modeling career was a complete failure, at least I had my undergraduate degree, and I could always go back to the States and try to get into law school. I decided not to pass up the opportunity to take in the culture of Italy, and visited many of the great cathedrals, art galleries, and museums in Rome, Florence, and Venice, and toured the picturesque rural areas of Tuscany.

Work was slow at first, partially because I landed in Milan in the fall of the year. For one of my first jobs, I did an ad for a bike race. Part of the job requirement was to shave my legs so I could pass for a cyclist.

“I'm not going to shave my legs,” I protested.

“Well, if you want the job, you have to shave your legs and your arms.”

“No way. I'm not doing that!”

“Do you want the job?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, if that's the worst thing you ever have to do in this business, you'll be okay.”

I took the job and dutifully—and very slowly—shaved all the hair off my arms and legs. I felt naked! But the shoot went well and I got some more catalogue work as a result. Around the Christmas season, I received a call for another job. This shoot was a big one.

The job was with supermodel Claudia Schiffer, for a Soviet Jeans ad campaign. German-born, the five-foot-eleven blond-haired, blueeyed Schiffer was then skyrocketing in her career, having already been on the cover of
Elle
magazine. She had been the personal choice of famed designer Karl Lagerfeld to be the “face” of Chanel, and had done the provocative and groundbreaking Guess? jeans ads, which had catapulted her to the household-name type of worldwide stardom that eludes most models.

Claudia was professional yet friendly, and we conversed easily, especially when I found out that she had originally wanted to be a lawyer and, as a young woman in Germany, had even worked in her father's law office. For our shoot, I was dressed only in a pair of skimpy white underwear and lying on a bed, my body covered strategically by a sheet. Claudia was wearing a pair of unzipped jeans, and that's all. She was naked from the waist up. The two of us were to lie in bed while the photographers snapped one photo after another. Claudia lay on top of the sheet, giggling and doing all sorts of antics that were meant to imply that she had really worn me out. My job was to feign exhaustion and pretend that I was asleep, while Claudia positioned herself next to me, on me, and around me in ways that highlighted the jeans. It was tough work, but I survived it.