by Jill Dodd
“No, no, this is too much already.”
He gets back in bed. “You’re going to need extra money for the things girls buy, like lipstick.” He giggles.
I snuggle into his neck with my head on his shoulder and stroke his hairy chest through the opening of his thaub. “I can’t believe you’re doing this for me.” Tears roll down my face onto him.
Later, when I return to my room, I look at the money: two large bundles of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, each wrapped in a narrow paper belt. I count one hundred bills in each stack totaling $20,000. I had never seen this much cash in my life. Sunday night, as I dress for the airport, I shove the bundles of cash deep into the ankles of my black-and-red cowboy boots. Airport security would surely question me if they found them in my purse.
I’m so excited about getting an education that I go a little crazy and sign up for French lessons at the Alliance Française and Hwa Rang Do, South Korean martial arts, on top of FIDM. I also keep modeling, against Adnan’s advice. At a shoot at Jim Britt’s studio in Hollywood, I ask if anyone knows of a place that I could rent close to school. The advertising agent, Claire, says there’s a vacancy below her, in Glendale, just a few minutes from downtown. I move in with my bed, a shipping crate I use as a coffee table, and two beach chairs. Coincidentally, Claire’s father works for Adnan’s brother, Essam Khashoggi.
School starts right away, in March. I pull into a parking lot on Figueroa and 9th and walk toward school. Homeless people are sprawled everywhere, still asleep. When I try to hand a twenty to a dreadlocked man sitting on a bench, he jumps at me, growling and shaking his box of Cheerios all over my head. This is my new neighborhood, for the next two years. Thankfully, I meet Benny Washington.
Every morning Benny stands in front of the Los Angeles Hilton, at 8th and Figueroa, across from FIDM, working as a doorman. He’s a full-figured black man, about fifty years old, and he radiates peace and joy. I want what he has. Every morning, we stand in front of the hotel, talking: Benny in a brown hotel uniform, me in some wacky fashion student outfit.
Benny leads by example, not to be afraid of, or intimidated by, people living on the streets. Every morning as he is handed tips, he discreetly gives them to homeless men slogging by. They count on him. Benny is full of faith, compassion, and optimism. He knows the Bible, but never pushes it on me. He believes that people don’t all get the same opportunities in life, and some suffer tragedy so great that their whole life is derailed. When mental illness and addiction are added, homelessness can be impossible to overcome.
The diversity at FIDM reflects the fashion business and the city itself. Students from all over the world—thick and thin, gay and straight, mostly young, but some old—come together to study fashion. My favorite: a petite, young Vietnamese man who struts the school halls in a shiny metallic suit, mirrored aviators, and a scarf fitted with wire inserts, making it look like it is blowing in the wind.
One buxom girl, with bright purple hair and tattoos, works as a stripper to pay for school. There are lots of students from Asia, who are so much fun once I break through their shyness. Together, we are a motley crew with a common passion.
Oh. I also make friends with Daisy, the girlfriend of a Colombian drug smuggler. I now have my own cocaine dealer.
Dior Couture, California, 1983
CHASING MY TAIL
Adnan moved from the Sands to the Dunes Hotel after renovating the entire penthouse, updating it with travertine marble and modern furnishings. He even built a pool on the roof. (The Dunes was blown up in 1993 to make way for billionaire Steve Wynn’s Bellagio.)
The glass doors of the Dunes Hotel slide open, and I walk through a smoky haze of ringing bells and clanking coins. The armed guard calls the elevator when he sees me. My ears pop as I speed up to the penthouse in the box of tinted mirrors. The elevator slides open to another guard with his finger on the trigger of a machine gun. This is normal.
I head down the long hallway to my suite, across from Adnan’s. I open the door and cross over the footbridge that arches over a small man-made stream in my foyer and see dozens of red roses on the coffee table. I smile, knowing he’s been thinking about me. I toss my garment bag of couture dresses on the bed and walk to the window. My room is silent, and cold from the air-conditioning. Outside, the pastel desert is noiseless, still, and 105 degrees.
Adnan bursts through the door and mugs me with a bear hug. We fall onto my bed and wrestle around, laughing. He nuzzles my neck, inhaling, saying, “You smell so fresh even after traveling.”
“It’s just a thirty-minute flight!” I giggle as I climb on his belly, pushing my face into his. His eyes bring me instant peace. He can cure my anxiety with just a look. We kiss and make love, as always. I need him.
After, he leans over me, saying, “Why do you have to work? Stop working and travel with me.”
“I’m in school now, remember?”
“Oh yes, I like that better. Just don’t do any modeling, okay?”
“Okay, I won’t work too much.”
“You still want to be the wealthiest woman in the world, don’t you?” He keeps asking this, and I never know what to say.
“I have to be able to take care of myself on my own.”
“We’ll continue this discussion later.” He gets up, goes to my bathroom, and splashes around in the bidet. After a long pause, he says, “If you’re so independent, why don’t you take me out to lunch? Show me how normal people do it.”
“What do you mean ‘normal’?” I laugh.
“There’s a place I’ve always wanted to go, no bodyguards. Want to?” He is as excited as a puppy.
“God yes, let’s go.”
His driver drops us in front of Caesars and we walk through the casino, toward the shops—no bodyguards. Adnan is always looking around, aware of who is around him. I don’t understand why he could possibly be in danger.
We walk through the marbled halls of shops, giggling, when he stops in front of a self-serve cafeteria. “This is the place.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Okay, let’s go.” So this is what a billionaire fantasizes about? Eating in a cafeteria like “normal” people? He studies the food behind the glass, not knowing what to do.
“Here.” I hand him a tray. “You slide this along and put whatever you want on it.”
He grabs one of almost everything. “Ooo, hot dogs, turkey, mashed potatoes with cranberry sauce. What’s this?”
“Jell-O. You’ve never had Jell-O?” I laugh and grab another tray. “Don’t you think that’s enough?”
“No, we need dessert, let’s get tiramisu. . . .” When we reach the cashier, we have three trays.
He doesn’t let me pay, like we’d planned, and pulls out a wad of hundred-dollar bills—one for the food, two for the tip. He is used to multiple courses, so he tastes bites of each dish. After lunch we go couture dress shopping, and then back at the hotel he presents me with a watch he says I need because I’m in school, and a beautiful spinning ring. Every time my hand moves, the diamond and gold squares spin around in circles.
As spring turns to summer, I fly back and forth to Vegas every weekend, carting all my homework along so I can work in my hotel room when I’m not with Adnan. It’s more effort to travel while juggling school, but when I’m away from Adnan I miss him so much. He makes me feel so loved and calm and safe when I’m with him, that I do it anyway.
However, my life is becoming one hundred percent split in two. The contrasts between my lives in Vegas and Los Angeles are mind-boggling, with everybody pressuring me on either side to conform to their way of life.
When I lived in Paris, I was never judged for being with Adnan. I wasn’t accountable to anyone. America is a totally different story. When my friends ask if I have a boyfriend, and I start explaining, they look at me in shock. Just the fact that he’s forty-five and Saudi Arabian is enough to make them think I’ve lost it. Trying to explain
the harem is totally not worth the effort. Adnan warns me not to tell anyone about our relationship, fearing someone will kidnap me and hold me for ransom. Adnan doesn’t know any of my friends. I ask Nicole to come with me to Vegas so she can meet him, but she’s afraid of his world and thinks the whole situation is insane. So, I keep talk about Adnan to a minimum. I can’t blame her for thinking it’s weird.
While my friends disapprove of my life with Adnan, he pressures me to give up my life and work to travel with him. He hates modeling, so I don’t talk with him about work.
On a go-see in Hollywood I run into a model friend, Gwen, the girl whose photos I saw in Dominic and Ines’s Paris apartment. When she spots my diamond rings, she asks, “Are those from Mohammed or Adnan Khashoggi?”
“Yeah, they’re from Adnan. How’d you know?”
She jumps down my throat. “You can’t wear those around! Everyone’ll know what you’re involved in!”
I feel a tinge of shame. “But why should anyone care what jewelry I wear?”
“You’ll be blacklisted!” she says. She probably doesn’t want anyone to know what she’s involved in either.
Thankfully, my parents don’t interrogate me. Alleen, on the other hand, totally freaks out. “Lambchop, you’re gonna be kidnapped and held hostage on an island somewhere off the coast of goddamn Africa!” Her screenwriter husband happens to be working on a documentary in which a model picked up in Milan goes missing. “She’s dead, Lambchop. She was sold to the Arabs! You need to get the hell away from these people, Jill.”
She never called me Jill. No one seemed to approve of any part of my life except the part they were in. I fantasize about my simple life in Paris, where no one tells me what to do. I feel like I am the rope in a tug-of-war, with five different groups of people trying to pull me apart!
Teen magazine, Hollywood, California
HOLLYWOOD MIMICS REALITY
California’s sunshine, sandy beaches, surf culture, and outdoor sports send the whole world an image of an “All-American California Cool.” Television shows, movies, and commercials all capture the good life. From drinks like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Gatorade, and all the beer brands, to yogurt, cheese, sugary breakfast cereals, and granola bars, and of course makeup, hair products, and fashion, they all come to Los Angeles and Hollywood to shoot their ad campaigns and commercials.
Hollywood’s job is to create the illusion that America is as perfect as a California sunset with beautiful, athletic, suntanned people enjoying paradise. Behind the scenes, though, it’s a totally different story. I must look like an all-American girl, because I always land these jobs.
My Sprite commercial is shot in a Beverly Hills swimming pool. The athletic, clean-cut cast and I play water polo, guzzling Sprite to quench our thirst. The poor guy chosen for the close-up drank so much Sprite that he threw up between takes. They ended up using me in the final cut, and I only had to drink it twice.
Another commercial, for a German department store, is shot at Magic Mountain. The theme park is closed for filming and we ride every spinning, dizzying ride, from the huge roller coasters, to the tube that spins so fast that when the floor is lowered, you stick to the walls. We ride the big coasters over and over for multiple takes. Half of the actors are hurling, so as the day wears on, there are fewer and fewer of us to shoot.
I shoot a Japanese yogurt commercial in Santa Barbara with a model named Candy, whose image is on the cover of the Candy-O album by the Cars. She dated the Cars’ drummer and was even friends with (and went clubbing with) Freddie Mercury! I was so jealous. We are hired for our figures and, as we find out later, our diving skills. Our agents asked us if we could dive into a swimming pool and of course we said yes. Who can’t?
When the whole Japanese-speaking crew, Candy, and I get to Santa Barbara, the clients motion for us to dive off an Olympic high-diving board—thirty-three feet high—twirling as we go like Olympic divers, mimicking stirring a yogurt cup. This is communicated with hand motions because of course they don’t speak English. I’m scared. I try to pretend I’m jumping off cliffs at the Colorado River so I can force myself to dive off a few times—just straight down, no flips, turns, or twists. The clients aren’t happy. They want me spinning and twisting in the air like when you stir together that damn yogurt with the fruit on the bottom. Candy won’t even jump at all. I don’t think we will got paid for that one.
I audition for a French Coca-Cola commercial, which requires me to skimboard, something I have never done. I go to the notorious “Wedge” in Newport Beach, borrow a board from my friend Frankie, and try to learn. Right after a wave comes into shore, you are supposed to throw the thin, wooden, mini surfboard onto the smooth, wet sand, jump on the board while it’s moving in the thin layer of water, and surf the sand, skimming along the wet surface.
After several runs, I start getting the hang of it and feel more confident, but on my last run, I forget to time the wave. It’s during a big wave swell when body-boarders commonly die from broken necks at the Wedge. As I fly on the skimboard down the sand toward the water, I look up to see a massive wave about to crush me, so I spit the board out with my feet, avoiding the wave, and land in a pile of crushed shells that get embedded in my right thigh. With blood dripping down my leg, I limp through the sand to safety, picking out most of the shells while I’m still numb, before the pain sets in. Even though I can now skimboard, I am eliminated from the casting when the director sees the disgusting wound on my leg.
Then there is a commercial I will never forget—the German hair commercial. They need a model who can water-ski—now that I can do. I’m sure they envision a bikini-clad girl skiing off the coast of Malibu in the California sun with her hair blowing in the wind. This would fully represent the product and make everyone in Germany want to buy it. But, on the day of the shoot, it isn’t sunny with blue skies—it is cold, dark, and stormy.
We board a fifty-foot yacht with a movie camera bolted to the deck. These Germans have obviously never water-skied. You need a speedboat, not a yacht. I try to explain, but they don’t speak English. I figure I’ll give it a go. How bad could it be?
We take off from Marina del Rey, bobbing in the huge-ass waves and freezing all the way to Malibu. The futile exercise of hair and makeup is performed on board, and I jump in the ocean with my skis and the rope. They take off slow, like a yacht does. When the rope is finally taut, I hold my breath while I am dragged underwater until the boat gets up enough speed to pull me out. An amateur skier could not do this. I’m not boasting—risking my life is ignorant. When I finally rise to the surface, skiing, I’m drenched. So they stop the boat and I sink back into the ocean. I tread water and wait an eternity for the yacht to turn around and find me.
Bobbing in the ocean is terrifying, the water is freezing, and the tiny life belt they give me is doing nearly nothing to keep me afloat. Huge waves crash on my head. I dive under them so they don’t push me under. It’s like bodysurfing in the middle of the ocean. I’m totally alone. I can’t see land. I can’t see the boat. It’s just me, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I wonder if I’ll drown.
I’m treading water, holding my skis, trying to stay calm because I’m thinking that sharks will smell my fear and eat me. Finally the big fucking yacht does its wide turn and somehow spots me in the six-foot swells.
When they finally appear, I climb back in, shaking. My lips are purple. I’m covered in goose bumps. They blow-dry my hair and style it all over again, telling me with hand language to not get it wet in the ocean. After repeating this futility three more times, I retire, shivering, to the captain’s deck for the ride back. The captain is American—the only one on board who speaks English. He says, “I didn’t want to tell you this, but we filmed the Gilligan’s Island movie out here last week and we spotted a bunch of sharks.” Thanks for the warning, you asshole.
We thrust over massive swells, up and down, being hit by waves that pour over the deck of the boat, drenching us, all the way back to
Marina del Rey. I feel like this scene is the perfect illustration of what’s going on in my life. I’m stranded in the middle of an ocean, churning with waves, waiting for help to arrive. Yet help is not coming. No one is going to step in and rescue me. No one is watching out for me. Everybody just takes what they want from me, without a care about how I’m doing—and I’m not doing well.
Mediterranean sea, summer 1980
QUESTION EVERYTHING
Billionaire wealth is a pain in the ass at least half the time. It’s odd. The food is fresh, healthy, and prettier than a flower arrangement. The clothes are mostly handmade with quality, natural materials—no plastic, polyester, or vinyl. The views of the ocean, sea, or city lights are heavenly and can put anyone at ease. And having hired help leaves you so much time to think, prioritize what needs to be done, and decide what you want to do.
Yet as soon as you acclimate to all of this, it becomes the new normal, and expected. Then normal things, which used to be just fine, don’t seem quite good enough. And the worst part is that all of this luxury can leave an unhealthy vacuum of space and time, where anxiety and guilt can thrive, creating a cesspool.
I never felt comfortable with the isolating feature extreme wealth and luxury has. The very rich live in an isolated bubble of champagne, chefs, intimate parties, maids, masseurs, hairstylists, skin care professionals, nannies, drivers, and private jets. They talk with one another about their hundred-year-old bottles of wine, how long their yacht is, or how they remodeled the interior of their private plane—something they can’t discuss with others. Just like extremely beautiful people, extremely wealthy people are stared at like freaks.
Trust is a major issue for the wealthy, as many are paranoid about people’s intentions, always wondering if others like them for who they are, or if they’re after their money. Their need to protect their treasure and status causes them to be suspicious. Envy is ugly. People stare. You stare back, trying to remember what it was like to be so excited about winning fifty bucks at a slot machine, or drinking Mexican beer stored in your cheap Styrofoam cooler at the beach with your friends. Luckily for me, I lived in both worlds at the same time and got to compare.