No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (24 page)

And then it hit me.

Christ! He’s right. My

CHRISTIE BRINKLEY

IN PALM SPRINGS.

I WAS TRYING TO

GET HER TO QUIT

SMOKING.

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N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 175

father didn’t want me. He wanted lips and a warm mouth, not the person who was attached. Me, Janice. And then I thought about my conversation with Calvin, about this crazy business, how it’s all about surface. Nobody cared about the real Janice, about what I had going on inside.

And then I wondered,
What if I look inside and find nothing?
And that scared the hell out of me.

So I decided thinking was too fucking hard. I would stop thinking. Period. I mean, I was just a dumb model, right?

When I got home—my head still reeling from Deep

Thought—Mike told me he’d just booked a job with French
Vogue.
He was supposed to go to Palm Springs and shoot some desert stuff. The French are big on sand and cacti.

“I told them I was using you,” he said. He said it like he was doing me a favor. Very off-the-cuff. But the truth is, he needed me. He was lucky to have me. And he knew it.

“Fine,” I said. Janice the Doormat.

“We’ll fly to L.A. and drive down.”

“Is it just me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t we take Christie?” I suggested.

“Why?”

I told him I wanted to take some pictures of her, which was true. I was honing my skills as a photographer. But in retrospect I think I might have had something else in mind.

If I didn’t have the strength to call it quits with Mike, maybe there was another way to break free.

We stayed in a motel in the middle of nowhere, a few miles from Palm Springs. Christie flew out with us. She had a friend in Palm Springs—Delphine, a French girl with whom she’d gone to the Lycée Français. Delphine came out to see us the second day we were there. She was sexy in a trashy, stripperish way—which was appropriate, since

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PIERRE HOULES IN PARIS.

that’s what she was, a stripper.

She watched us work in the

broiling sun, and I got the

feeling modeling must have

seemed pretty unglamorous

to her. When we got back we

had dinner, drank too much

wine, and Christie went to

bed early. But I was kind of

intrigued by Delphine. I

asked Mike if he was interested in getting together with both of us. I asked him in front

of Delphine. Delphine smiled. What was Mike going to say?
No?

It was, well,
different.
The taste. The smell. Sort of unexpected, though I don’t know exactly why: I’ve got one of my own.

Delphine and I were going at it long after Mike was finished. I enjoyed it. So did she. You know why? I’m a woman, I know where everything is, I know what feels good. You’d be surprised at how many guys can’t find their way to the clitoris, even when you’re pushing their faces in it.

Delphine was gone in the morning. Mike and I never

even talked about our little adventure. We shot some more pictures that morning and went into town for lunch. Late in the afternoon, when it had cooled off somewhat, I took some pictures of Christie. I never told her about Delphine.

When we got back to New York, I showed my desert

shots of Christie to Pierre Houles. “You’re better than Mike,” he said. (And he was one of Mike’s best friends!)

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 177

“And you made Christie look so beautiful. I see things here that I didn’t see in her when we first met.”

Pierre called Christie and invited her to his studio for a shoot. She was delighted. And of course they ended up in bed.

In December, Mike and I went to Saint Moritz and we asked them along. Mike had a nine-year-old son, Sandro, from a previous marriage. He lived in Paris with his mom.

The Christmas visit to Saint Moritz was an annual tradition with his father. I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to disappoint Sandro.

We arrived at night and crashed early. I remember waking up the next morning and drawing the shades and looking out at the most majestic snow-capped mountains in the world, feeling horribly sad and empty.

ON A SKI LIFT IN SAINT MORITZ.

THE FIRST TIME I SAW SNOW ON A MOUNTAIN.

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

The next morning we all went skiing together. Mike and Pierre and Sandro and Christie and me. But I got lost—

deliberately. I found myself standing on a snowy ledge, looking down at the village, sparkling below, and realizing that part of my life—the part with Mike Reinhardt—was coming to an end.

The next day, Christie and I took lessons with an irresistibly gorgeous ski instructor. When a woman’s in love, she doesn’t even notice other men. Well, okay, she might notice them, but she never
wants
them. She’s in love, for Christ’s sake. And I wanted this guy. I was
starving
for him.

The last night of our vacation, Mike cooked an amazing dinner. It was a very homey scene. Sandro went to bed early, and the rest of us sat around drinking and eating; Mike and I smoked a little dope. But I slipped Mike and Pierre a little something extra with their wine: crushed Valium.

CHRISTIE AND MIKE

IN PALM SPRINGS.

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N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 179

After they’d passed out, I told Christie I was going to pay a call on our ski instructor. I made her come with me.

We trekked through the crunchy snow, beneath the low-hanging moon, and found our way to his chalet. We got a little silly, and I necked with him, and we both got pretty hot and bothered. But I’d brought Christie along to keep me honest. And I stayed honest.

At about three in the morning, we went back. I opened the door and stepped through and
boom!
—confrontation time. Mike closed the door, and I just stood there against the wall as he called me every ugly name in the book. I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

In the morning we drove down from the mountains to

the airport. Nobody spoke. Mike flew to Paris to take his son home. Pierre and Christie and I returned to New York.

I called a realtor the moment I got home from the airport and was out looking at apartments the next day. I found a place on 93rd Street, a three-story walk-up. I was alone and scared and almost didn’t go through with it, but in the end I signed the lease. It was mine. I had a home of my own for the first time in my life.

A few weeks later, Christie dumped Pierre and moved in with Mike.

PARTY GIRL

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After I got the news about Christie I sat in my new apartment for days, staring at the walls, wondering how I’d made such a mess of my life. On the fourth day, Calvin Klein called.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You sound strange.”

“I’m fine,” I said. My tongue seemed to have grown too big for my mouth.

“I’m about to launch the biggest runway show of my

career,” Calvin said. “Tell me you’re available.”

I almost wept with relief. Work was just what I needed.

In work there is escape. “Well,” I said, trying to keep my emotions in check, “I’ll see what I can do.”

It was a slamming show. Calvin rounded up all the

hottest models, male and female, and made it a party.

There’s an energy in runway work you don’t find anywhere else. It’s electric, full of passion and adrenaline. Everyone becomes your New Best Friend.
We’re all in this together,
you think.
And aren’t we just fucking great!

I loved working with Patti Hansen. She was seeing

Keith Richards, who hung out in back telling outrageous stories about Mick and Jerry Hall. He looked like an insect; no, he looked like an ad for chewing tobacco—with those hollowed-out cheeks and his evil teeth. Beverly Johnson was there, too. She was very cool, almost detached. I sus

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 181

pected there was a lot going on inside her—but this was a surface business, so I knew better than to ask.

The men were dreamy—and, no, not all of them were

gay. Charlie Haughk was a fine specimen, though he didn’t have much of an edge. I heard he lived with his mother, out in Brooklyn. But he had style. He wore Hawaiian shirts before anyone else had even heard of them, and he had a collection of straw fedoras. Tony Spinelli was there, too. I had worked with him and Irving Penn; he was luscious. I just wanted to fuck him. And—
oops!
—guess what? I did.

Here’s what happened. We’re backstage before the

show. Everyone is running around like crazy. Half-naked, excited. You can hear the audience starting to arrive and take their seats. Anybody who means anything in the business is going to be out there, watching, judging, and that only adds to the nervous buzz. So you’re excited and half-naked and hot and nervous and surrounded by the most beautiful people in the world, and suddenly you find yourself horsing around with a perfect-looking man who wants you—and what do you do? You find a closet and you lift up your skirt and you fuck him. And you fuck faster because the show’s about to start—the G-rated show—and then you come and he explodes inside you and you barely have time to catch your breath and,
boom!
—you’re disengaged and heading for the runway.

And Calvin is screaming, “Where the fuck have you

been? I’ve been looking
everywhere
!” And the dressers are hovering around you, their hands flapping like nervous birds, trying to undo the mess you’ve made. And then you feel the come dripping down your leg, and you smile at Calvin and say, “I was fucking Tony Spinelli, and it was great, thank you very much,” and then you’re on the runway, trying to keep your knees from buckling.

And I was good at that runway stuff. Sure, when I’d 182 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

started, I was as nervous as the next neophyte. All the shit you have to remember. It’s not just about walking, people.

You have to hit your marks for the photographers. At the midpoint, you pause and give them the full shot, head to toe.

At the end of the runway, it’s the bodice shot, so you give them your trademark smile. On the return trip they want a shot of the back of the dress, so you turn your head a little and give them a nice profile. And, if you can swing it, you make sure they can squeeze the designer’s logo into the shot.

I was a pro by this time. As you start getting comfortable with the routine, you learn how to work the crowd—

which is what it’s all about. My friends would all score front-row seats and egg me on, and I’d dish with them as I sashayed my way along. There’s real energy out there. And the photographers—Jesus! They’re shouting your name—

“Janice! Janice, over here!”—like they can’t get enough of you. It’s pure performance. They love you and you’re flying and you began to feel like a rock star out there and you think,
I could get addicted to this.

Speaking of addiction, I was becoming quite the regular at Studio 54. On one level, I guess it was just plain fun. But I had a broader definition of “fun” in those days. Steve Rubell, the eternally stoned co-owner, was very generous with his drugs—mostly cocaine—but you could get anything you wanted from those cute, shirtless bartenders. I also became addicted to the noise. It was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think, which was fine, since I didn’t
want
to think. And the sex—everything you’ve heard is true, and then some.