No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (33 page)

It sounds really spooky.”

“Can you leave now?” I say. I reach for my Peruvian flake and don’t even bother to look for my Tiffany mirror. I dump a little on my nail and snort it up.

“I’m really sorry,” she says, and leaves.

At some point I fall asleep. I don’t know how long I’m unconscious but I wake up to find Monique Pillard standing at the foot of my bed. She has this look on her face like she’s at a funeral.

“Hello, Janice,” she says.

“What are you doing here?” I am disoriented. I am confused. I remember what Debbie said about Dad and wonder whether his forgetfulness is hereditary. “How did you get in?”

“Some of your friends are here,” she says. “Why don’t you wash your face and come outside? I brought you

something to eat. I’ll make coffee.”

What the fuck is going on?

I wash my face and throw on a pair of sweatpants and walk into the living room. Debbie is there with Monique and Charlie Haughk and Charles Senior. My model friend Bob Menna is there. They’re all looking at me like I’m dead or something.

“Why is everybody staring at me? What the hell is

going on here?”

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 247

“Janice,” Charlie says. “Listen to me. Sit down. We need to talk.”

I sit down. I think I’m losing my mind.

“We’ve been very worried about you,” Monique says.

She looks over at Charles Senior.

“Janice,” he says, “I know we don’t know each other very well, but my son has always had a soft spot for you.

And I can see why. I like you immensely myself. That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here.”

I look over at Debbie. She won’t even meet my eyes.

“I see people like you on the street of this city every day,” Charles Sr. is saying. “It’s my job as a cop. You’re killing yourself, Janice. You are going to be mainlining before long. And you’re going to end up dead.”

Just then, I remember what my father told me many

years ago.
Some day you’ll be on your knees begging guys
to suck them off for a few bucks.
I start to cry. Buckets of tears. Rivers of tears.

I am nothing. I am less than nothing.

REHABBING

AT THE REHAB

ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª

The next thing I knew I was en route to St. Mary’s, a rehab facility in Minneapolis. Charlie Haughk flew out with me. I sat in the plane, looking out the window, saying nothing.

Sat in the back of the cab with Charlie next to me, still saying nothing. Sat in the waiting room, still numb, still silent, until the woman who ran the facility came by and told Charlie it was time to go. Charlie stood up. I stood up, too.

He hugged me. I don’t remember hugging him back.

I followed the woman down the corridor, toward my

room. The place was like cell block C. Cold, austere. I could see the leafless trees outside, the ground covered in hard snow. I was miserable. I lay in bed that first night, in the dark, thinking that the abyss was all around me. If I fell off the bed I would fall for hours and hours, fall for eternity. And there was no coming back. I listened to my breathing until I fell asleep.

For the next twenty-eight days, life as I knew it came to an end. St. Mary’s was about taking stock, about admitting that you were a major fuckup. But that was supposed to make you feel good. Once you’ve acknowledged that you have a problem, they tell you, you can start working on the solution.

I didn’t feel good. I didn’t like the nurses. I didn’t like

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

CHARLIE HAUGHK

VISITING ME

AT ST. MARY’S

REHAB CENTER.

the doctors. I didn’t

like the psychiatrists.

I didn’t like my “new

friends” in Group, as

they called it. I didn’t feel

like talking or sharing. They

were a bunch of fucking losers. I

couldn’t possibly have anything in common with them. I mean, look: Mick Jagger sent me this huge basket of pâté and caviar. And these red roses?—they’re from Bill Cosby.

Look at all these cards and letters. From all over the world.

Here’s one from Paris. Here’s one from Kenya. Do you even know where Kenya
is,
motherfucker?

“You have a lot of anger in you, Janice,” one of the shrinks told me.

No fucking kidding!

By the end of the week, I had even more anger in me.

My friends in Group didn’t like it. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” one of the girls asked me.

“I’m a fucking supermodel, that’s who I am! I’ve been on the fucking cover of
Vogue.
I sucked Warren Beatty’s cock. Who the fuck are you?”

“Nobody. But I’m right here, bitch. With you. And I didn’t have to suck Warren Beatty’s cock to get here.”

She had a point.

“Eat,” the doctor said. “You’re too thin.”

I ate macaroni and cheese and thought about La Tour D’Argent in Paris and went back to my room and stuck my 250 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

finger down my throat. I sat in front of the window like a zombie, watching it snow. I told everyone to go fuck themselves and their fucking Serenity Prayer.

“Bite your tongue,” one of the nurses told me. She had a big crucifix around her neck. It was so big she could have put a real guy on it. I hated her. She reminded me of my mother.

“I don’t want to bite my tongue,” I said. “I want to take a bite out of life.”

Thirty-five thousand dollars for twenty-eight days. I could think of a lot nicer places to spend my time and money.

Bob Menna came to take me back to Manhattan. On the way to the airport, he tried to amuse me with stories about some of our fellow models.

“Everyone misses you,” he said.

But it wasn’t true.

Or maybe it was true, and I was just in Self-destruct Mode again. I was angrier than I’d ever been. I was ashamed. I kept imagining people were still talking about my fiasco at Studio 54. Or maybe I wasn’t imagining it.

I was back in New York,
home.
So fucking happy to be out of rehab. I’d forgotten how good good cocaine could be.

And champagne—I loved the way the bubbles tickled the roof of my mouth. I snorted too much and drank too much and misbehaved.

No, that’s a lie. I didn’t “misbehave.” I was a total bitch.

I showed up late and shouted at assistants, made everyone jump and a few people cry. I was the Nightmare Diva. I was abusive. I was good at it, too. After all, I’d picked up a few pointers along the way. I was Janice the Rat Bastard.

Monique called. “It’s getting harder and harder to book you,” she said.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 251

“Don’t tell me it’s hard to book me. I’m Janice Fucking Dickinson. Do your fucking job.”

“People don’t trust you anymore,” she said. “You’re throwing it all away. You have
never
looked more beautiful, and you are throwing it all away.”

She was right. It got harder and harder to book me.

Then Bill King called. He was doing a shoot for the Italians and wanted me to come in. I did, and started mouthing off the moment I stepped into his studio. Bill grabbed me by the upper arm and took me out back.

“Don’t fuck with me, Janice,” he said. He was one of those gay guys who could get tough and ugly if he needed to. And I guess he felt he needed to. “Pull yourself together. You’re beautiful. I love the short hair. You look like a boy.”

“That’s what Mick Jagger liked about me. I suppose you want to fuck me, too.”

Bill laughed. We were on firmer ground now. “You

okay?” he said. I nodded. “You are going to get your ass out there and do what I tell you, and we are going to make some art today.”

We made some art. Me and five male models. By the

time the shoot was over, we were all naked. One of them looked just like me. The cheekbones, the nose, the short hair—everything. It was uncanny. It was like looking into a mirror.

I took him back to my place and we started making

love, but just as things were getting hot I got out of bed and asked him to leave.

“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Everything.”

I had to get away. I called a travel agent and booked a flight to Bali. I was on it the next day. One small carry-on and a lifetime of baggage. I checked into the 252 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

Auberoi Hotel. No drugs. No drinks before sunset. No men.

I stayed to myself. I read bad “beach” books that the other guests had left behind, mindless summer reading.

And I sat in the sun, baking.

On the third day, someone came out to the pool to tell me there was an urgent call for me. It was Debbie. She was the only one who knew where I was.

“Monique called,” she said. “Avedon wants you to call him. And Bill Cosby is looking for you.”

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But Cosby left a number in Lake Tahoe. And he said it was really, really important.”

I called Avedon first. He was in New York.

“Janice,” he said. “How are you?”

“Don’t ask,” I said.

“I have a story for you,” he said. “I think you might enjoy it.”

“Shoot,” I said.

So he told me how he’d been deep in the heart of

Texas—scouting locations for a spread on death-row

inmates, of all things! And how he’d gone into the cell of the meanest, craziest motherfucker in the whole place—

maybe the meanest man in the entire penal system—and found a picture of me taped to the wall next to the motherfucker’s cot. Avedon described the picture. It had been taken by Hiro, a great Japanese photographer who had once been an Avedon protégé, and years ago it had

appeared on the cover of Italian
Vogue.

“Do you remember the image?” Avedon asked.

How could I not? Hiro had made me look like a demure little Sardinian girl, the epitome of Holy Innocence, all wrapped in cashmere, looking lost and lonely and huggable.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 253

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember the picture.” I remembered the day we shot it, too. I remembered going over to Hiro’s studio on Central Park West; remembered Hiro’s brown hair and brown eyes and soft, inviting smile; remembered the way he talked to me about my “inner glow”—how he said he could actually
see
it, that glow, clear and blinding and beautiful.

“I thought that shot was an odd choice for a death-row inmate,” Avedon said. The line was crackling with static.

“Yes,” I said. But I didn’t think it was odd at all. Hiro had captured my essence, in the days when I still had an essence. That guy on death row—maybe he wasn’t such a crazy motherfucker after all. He didn’t want to look at some cheesy pinup. He wanted to look at something innocent and holy—something that might be waiting for him on the other side.

Avedon was still talking. “I asked the guy, ‘Why this picture? Why this particular girl out of all the girls in all the magazines?’ And you know what he said? He said, ‘I don’t know, man. Look at her.
Why this girl?
Because this girl is some kinda chick, man.’ You like that, Janice? That’s what he said.
Some kinda chick.
”

“Yeah,” I said. “I like it.” I thanked him for calling and hung up.

Then I called Bill. Mr.
Jell-O.
Mr.
I’ll-call-you.
And as the line rang at the other end it struck me that I had no reason to be angry. He’d sent roses to St. Mary’s. A nice card, too.

“Hey, Bill, it’s me. Janice.”

“Janice! Janice, where’d you disappear to?”

“I’m in Bali.”

“Bali!?”

“Yes, I’m taking a vacation. A vacation from myself.”

Of course those vacations never work; you get there and 254 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

it’s beautiful and serene but you’re still stuck with your fucked-up self.

“Well, get your ass to Tahoe,” he said. “You can connect through L.A.”

“Why? What’s in Tahoe?”

“I’m doing a show here. I want you to open for me.”

I thought he must be kidding. I’d bombed at Studio 54.

“I can’t sing,” I said.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “Who hits a home run their first time out? Almost nobody.”

He had a point, right?
Right?
And he didn’t even know why I’d freaked. Nobody did.

I was on the next flight to Los Angeles. I had an hour to kill before my connecting flight to Tahoe, so I went into one of those tacky airport bars and had a drink. Or two. Or three.

I almost missed my connecting flight. They were just about to close the gate but held it for me when they saw me wobbling in their general direction. Everyone was very sweet to me. The pilots. The flight attendants. The other passengers.

Or maybe it was just the liquor. I suddenly had one of my brilliant flashes:
No wonder people drink! It’s not about making themselves feel good. It’s because it makes everyone else
in the world seem so nice.

I ordered two more drinks during the short flight. After an epiphany of that magnitude, I deserved them.

After we landed in Tahoe, I floated my way through the terminal, found a cab, and smiled all the way to the hotel. I smiled at the doorman, the clerks, the bellboy who escorted me to my room. I called Cosby. He was one floor up. He told me to come up; we had dinner reservations at eight. I hopped in the shower and went up.