by Jill Dodd
I used to ask Adnan how he could justify being so rich, and what he does for the poor or war-torn areas of the world. “I load my airplanes with medicine and blankets and fly them to places in need,” he’d say.
I’d push, “What about all your expensive cars, clothes, and houses? Don’t you feel guilty about having so much?” Because I sure did.
“When I spend money, I create jobs. People who buy the finest things in the world spur growth in the economy and in each particular industry. When I order a special car, plane, or ship to be designed, this higher level of quality gives the whole industry something to strive for that elevates the quality, design, and engineering for products of all price ranges.” He had me there.
“Oh, like couture houses. They set a standard for the entire world of fashion to emulate,” I add. This made sense for the time being, but as time went on, I began to really question the idea of wealth and the unfairness of it.
The greatest gift that Adnan ever gave me was the understanding that wealth will never make me happier or more peaceful than I am without it. Beyond solving the problems of food, shelter, and health care, it doesn’t change the way I feel inside. It doesn’t automatically solve my problems or bring me inner peace, love, or joy. It only gives me short spurts of physical satisfaction that leave me hungry for more and make me obsess over filling the ever-widening gap in my heart. It makes me even more aware that something is missing.
I try to believe in God, but I feel so ignorant about religion and think that without this knowledge, I can’t know God. But I know there has to be more to life than what I can see with my eyes. I begin a whole new search.
Adnan and I have many deep conversations about God. I wish I knew more about world religion so I could contribute more than just questions. He has Islam, yet he exposes me to things besides the Quran, like his hypnotherapist, psychic, and holy man.
Adnan introduces me to Maria, his hypnotist, who was visiting the Sands Hotel. The first time I go under hypnosis she takes me on a subconscious journey of past-life exploration. It feels incredible to access my mind in this new way. I don’t know if it is real, but it’s intriguing to experience this parallel reality.
When I meet with his psychic, it’s similar, except her insights are focused on the future, not the past. I wonder how these women can access time in a nonlinear fashion, seeing it all at once. Both women talk about spirits and angels that live among us. With my intense hunger for answers, I soon become obsessed with talking to them. I begin weekly appointments with the hypnotherapist, who lives in Los Angeles like me, and I call the psychic who lives in Vegas.
The dangerous part for me, though, is that I don’t know how to live by faith, have patience, and trust in God. I want answers, and I want them now! I allow these sources of insight to become my god, and I turn their spiritual insights into my own anxious addiction. I’m so focused and obsessed with finding answers that it’s unhealthy. I’m more confused than I was before, and my search for peace begins tearing me apart. It’s not just the psychic and the hypnotist, though.
On set, filming a commercial for The Gap, I meet a girl who raves to me about her nutritionist in Hollywood, a Vietnamese man named Anthan. When I meet with him, I notice how full of peace he seems. I want to be filled with peace like he is, and I want to know how he achieved it. Over many months, we become close friends and on top of going out to eat together, he teaches me to cook Asian-style in his kitchen. During all of this eating and cooking, we talk about life. I learn that Anthan is a Buddhist and that he also reads palms.
I ask him so many spiritual questions, like “Why are we here? Who is God? Is there a God? Do you hear God speak to you? What is the purpose of life?” I go on and on. To aid me in my search, he takes me to the Bodhi Tree spiritual bookstore, where I buy armfuls of books on palm reading, astrology, I Ching, Carl Jung, Sufism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a whole series on Egyptian mythology. I dive in hard, reading any chance I get. I’m searching so maniacally that peace is beyond my reach. My confusion level increases as I take in all of these varying and conflicting viewpoints.
At the same time, I continue to question wealth. Every religion I study seems to be against it. I feel guilty sharing Adnan’s money and even wonder if I should give up all my possessions. I feel bad for all the people who have less than me and wonder if it’s wrong to pursue fashion, since I am reading that material things are so empty. Should I become a monk and just pray and meditate? Why do some people suffer so badly from disease, hunger, war, and poverty and others don’t? Why is the world so unfair? I question everything and drive myself crazy. Maybe the whole physical world is unimportant.
With Anthan’s advice, I become a vegetarian. I cut out all meat, poultry, fish, and dairy. I have no idea how to be vegan in a healthy way. I don’t know how to replace animal protein with vegan options. I become weak. At the same time, I’m working, taking an extra-heavy load at school, and continuing to travel to see Adnan.
I’m so hungry all the time, but I keep to my strict diet, punishing my body. Living strictly on fruit and vegetables sends my blood sugar on a roller coaster and I lose all of my muscle mass. My body feels mushy, even though I work out. All of this focus on what to eat and not eat becomes another nervous obsession and triggers a full-blown eating disorder. I’ve seen plenty of girls with this problem in Paris, but now the problem is mine. I starve myself, avoiding “bad food,” then binge on ice cream and frozen carrot cake. I balloon up, gaining ten pounds, which would be okay if I weren’t a swimsuit and fit model.
Everybody notices right away and keeps asking me over and over what’s going on with my changing measurements. The pressure by clients for me to be thin stresses me out even more, and the more stressed I get, the more I obsess over food. I compulsively visit the hypnotherapist, who is able to calm me down while I am under hypnosis, but as soon as I come to, the panic returns. So I go home and call the psychic, circling around and around in a vicious cycle. It’s ridiculous and so very sad. I keep my churning brain a secret. I’ve never been an anxious person, but I am one now.
I take everything to extremes. Everything I do, I do too much. If I go out dancing, I can’t just go out one night a week, I go out three—fueled by cocaine. I am driven by nervous, restless anxiety. I don’t know my limits. I don’t know how to say no without feeling bad or guilty about it. As foolish and pathetic as it sounds, I don’t even know that I’m not supposed to suffer. I think suffering is normal. I work to extremes, play to extremes, and try as hard as I can to push down my physical discomfort and mental anguish. I am determined to keep a lid on myself—instinctively afraid of a major blowout.
When Adnan asks if I want to meet “the holy man,” I’m thrilled. I meet him in Adnan’s Vegas penthouse, where he, Adnan, and I gather around the dining table, all wearing our white thaubs. It is late on a hot summer night. Outside the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows is a sky full of stars and a full moon. Brightly colored lights twinkle on the Strip down below us.
The holy man looks like Gandhi without the glasses, and somehow radiates peace and love. He doesn’t speak English, so he communicates with hand motions. I can see why Adnan loves him so much. I want peace like he has. I wish I knew how he got it.
“He wants to tell you your future,” Adnan says.
“Really? I’d love that.” I feel honored as I try to act composed.
The holy man hands me a blank sheet of paper, motioning for me to crinkle it into a ball, which I do, and hand it back. Holding the crumpled ball in his hand, he carefully examines it. With Adnan interpreting, he says, “You will have three children. Far apart in age.” That’s a shock. Three children sounds like a lot, and why would they be spread apart? Could this be true? How could he know?
“Your marriage will end in divorce.” No! I think. There is no way I’m going to get divorced. No way.
“You will marry three times.” What? No. No. I can’t.
“You will be a very successful businesswoman.
” That sounds better, but the whole thing is confusing. I wonder how Adnan plays into my future. Would he be one of my divorces? Would we have children?
To make things even more bizarre, I feel a presence in my Glendale duplex. My friends feel it too. I feel like I’m being watched, and sometimes chased. It’s terrifying. Furniture and objects move while I am away. This also happens at my friend’s place upstairs.
The bathroom is the scariest, though. One time in the shower, it feels like something jumps on my back, claws digging into my shoulders. The worst is when I wake suddenly one night to a dark, shadowy presence in the doorway of my bedroom. I feel it jump on me, and I can’t get out of the bed; it is pinning me down. I can’t reach the phone to call for help. I even call out to God, but it still doesn’t leave. Finally, after what feels like an hour, it leaves and I run upstairs to Claire’s place.
I don’t know if it is the paranormal. Maybe it is a lucid dream, where overexhausted people can have nightmares sometimes, even during the day, that feel so real it’s hard to tell dream from reality. I have no idea. My mind is a mess. I try to hide my insanity.
The quiet, calm voice I heard in Paris is nowhere to be found. All I have is panic, anxiety, and paranoia. I don’t tell anyone, afraid they may have me locked up in a mental hospital.
During my months-long search, the days become a ridiculous mix of opposing activities. My hair and makeup are done on a shoot where I’m made up to be the epitome of fresh-faced, all-American beauty—which is totally ironic.
Later, I go fabric shopping for school, near Skid Row, where I walk among homeless people with my shoot makeup caked on. The makeup gets more intense as the day wears on while the face powder wears off, so I look like a clown. Early evenings, I’m in martial arts class sparring, punching, and kicking. Late at night, I dance with friends at El Paso Cantina and snort cocaine. I read my friends’ palms, which is a great party trick. I drive to Culver City two nights a week for French class.
On weekends, I’m decked out in diamonds and couture, dining with ambassadors and sheiks, and indulging in sex and cocaine with Adnan.
I gravely underestimated the amount of work FIDM would be. It ramps up, and the workload grows each week. In flat-pattern class, I learn how to make patterns for shirts, skirts, pants, dresses, and jackets. In draping class, my favorite, I pin fabric onto a life-size dress form, sculpting the fabric any way my creativity takes me. My fashion illustration class teaches me to take the ideas in my mind and get them down on paper. I learn to do fancy illustrations, shading with watercolor and India ink, and also the more mechanical-type production sketches used in manufacturing.
Most nights, after returning home from my various activities, I sit at my sewing machine, where I struggle to sew yards and yards of circular ruffles onto a dress, or engineer each different type of pocket that goes into fine men’s tailoring, snorting coke till four in the morning to stay awake and focused. The time flies by because I love what I’m doing, but I’m burning myself out entirely. I think it’s clear I am about to hit a wall.
I have no idea how to care for myself or protect my own sanity and soul. I am doing drugs, reading palms, seeing a psychic and a hypnotherapist, studying five different religions at the same time, learning martial arts, studying French, modeling, attending fashion design school, going out dancing several nights a week, suffering with an eating disorder, and spending my weekends living in the harem of one of the world’s most powerful men. How could I possibly be confused?
Mediterranean Sea, summer 1980
LISTENING FOR GOD
October 1981
I manage to survive nine months of this insanity. I wear my mask. I show up, dress up, go out, and perform each role that I’m expected to. I keep going—until one night I become so weak and confused that I simply cannot move off my living room floor. I am numb and totally empty inside.
There is no more reserve strength to draw from. No possible adrenaline rushes left. Every single bit has been spent. Right then and there, on my back on my living room floor, I surrender. I raise my arm to the sky whispering, “Help me. . . .” I have no idea if God exists, but I have nowhere else to go.
I don’t think God will answer me.
I go about my life the way I have been—doing my many varied daily activities. Yet, as I’m driving on the freeway to my next appointment with the hypnotherapist, I hear an unexpected voice. A strong, peaceful voice inside me says, Jill, you don’t need the hypnotherapist. You have Me. It’s simple and profound and I listen. I cancel my session.
I go home and compulsively pick up the phone to call my psychic. As I nervously dial, I hear the voice speak again. You have Me. You don’t need the psychic. I set the phone down. Each time this happens, my heart overflows with love and some crazy euphoric peace. I know it sounds weird, but that’s how it feels.
After exactly three weeks’ time, my mind becomes completely still and peaceful. After living through those terrible months with my mind in chaos, peace feels utterly shocking. Love begins to well up inside me like I’m gonna overflow. It’s absolutely surreal and beautiful. I feel connected to the source of peace and love, and I never want it to stop.
I find an apartment in Downey and move from the haunted duplex. While I pack, I try to simplify my life and throw out all my new spiritual books.
All this boiling down of my life to the bare necessities makes me wonder if I really want a couture house in Paris after all. Adnan may be disappointed in me, but I can’t be owned by the business. I desperately need peace to survive. I need my personal life. I want freedom and time to reflect. Just like modeling, designing in a couture house could swallow me up. I don’t think I want it anymore. I continue packing and move my few things into the apartment in Downey.
With humility and deep gratitude, I go to Penny’s church to thank God for my new state of peace. I’m so overwhelmed that I’m shaking. I sit in a pew, bowing with my head over my knees with tears dripping on the floor. All I can do is whisper over and over, “Thank you, thank you. . . .” The pastor says something about how we are slaves to the things of this world, and how only God can break the chains and set us free. I can relate.
The other churchgoers probably think I look like a hooker in my miniskirt, thigh-high boots, diamond jewelry, and puffy, white-fox-fur coat, but I don’t care because my heart soars with freedom and overflows with love.
Hanging on to my inner peace is my new number one priority. School is two. Adnan’s got to be three.
Wearing Marina Rossi, Los Angeles, 1987
A CABINET OF DRAWERS
People compare FIDM to medical school, and it’s getting more intense as time goes on.
It’s harder and harder to make time for Adnan, and there’s no way I can travel the world with him like he wants. But I need him. When I’m wrapped up in his arms, I feel safe, loved, and protected.
He’s got creative answers to all my problems and so much wisdom about life. He calms me down, grounds me, and encourages me to follow my dreams. Then he worms his way into my brain and loves me inside and out. I never think of myself as replaceable.
A year and a half into our relationship, I have superiority as the number one pleasure wife. I never see any of the other wives I had met early on. It looks like they’ve moved on.
Whenever we’re alone, he keeps saying, “Stay with me forever. You’ll be the richest woman in the world. Don’t you want to be the richest woman in the world?” What I secretly yearn for though is to be in a monogamous relationship with him, where it’s just the two of us. I want a commitment that makes it clear I’m more special to him than his harem. I even hope he’ll propose.
There’s a rumor in the entourage that Adnan is looking to marry a second legal wife and, naturally, it will be me. If we marry, I wonder if he could give up the harem? After I graduate, I can work from Paris, designing in the atelier that Adnan will fund for me. We could live in Paris full-time, except for his business travels, of course. Only he and I
know I rejected the twenty-carat diamond ring he tried to give me in Kenya.
However, now that I’m used to seeing them on Lamia and Ines, I want a big diamond statement ring that sets me apart from all the other girls, a public declaration of his love. Because I am not capable of actually asking for what I really want in a relationship, I play it cool and act like I’m just fine with things how they are. But I’m not.
Two dozen of us are driven to the MGM Grand, where the ballroom’s crystal chandeliers are sparkling and a full orchestra is playing classical music. I am seated directly across from Adnan in the center of the long table, where we sip champagne and make toasts. Adnan is totally focused on me tonight, even more than usual. He leans into the table, talking and flirting with me. Then he takes a handwritten note from his jacket and recites a poem to me. He disappears for a minute and returns with a violinist. They come over to my chair and he takes my hand. “Dance with me. I’ve written you a song.”
We waltz together as the violinist plays, and he sings his poem to me. Photographers crazily click their cameras at us. We leave the party and return to the Dunes, where his bedroom is filled with soft music and candles. We indulge in each other.
He goes to his safe to get something, and jumps back in bed holding a red ring box. Oh my god, this is really happening! He opens the box and slips the ring on my wedding finger. But when I see the ring, my heart drops. This is not a ring Adnan would propose with. It’s a small band with a gold heart and arrow of tiny diamonds. I try to act grateful, but I’m devastated.