by Jill Dodd
Instead of saying, “Fuck the harem, Adnan, marry me!” I keep my emotions in check. Then I attack him. “How can you make love to all these women? How can you say you love me, and then make love to them?”
He is totally caught off guard. He smiles nervously, pointing to his furry, naked chest saying, “My heart is like a cabinet with many drawers. When I’m with you, I open that drawer and enjoy our love.” He demonstrates like he’s pulling out a drawer from his chest. “When I’m with someone else, I open a different drawer.” He points to a different spot.
This heart of cabinets sounds ridiculous to me. “I don’t understand how you can divide your heart into drawers! I could never do that. I don’t get it and I don’t like it.”
He gets defensive. “I told you not to fall in love with me from the beginning. I told you to wait for a younger man. I’m too old for you.”
“You’re not too old for me, and how could I possibly spend all this time with you, making love to you, and not be in love with you?” I break down crying. “Maybe if we were together more,” I whimper.
“I want you to be with me all the time! Travel on the boat with me. But you have school! You made it clear you have to work and that’s your choice, not mine.”
I can’t control my tears. He embraces my whole body, saying, “I love you,” and then, “Don’t you need anything? Can’t I buy you a house near school? Do you need a new car? What kind of car do you drive anyway?” He goes to his safe again.
“I drive a 1970 Ford Fairlane 500. I don’t need a car,” I whimper, crying and sniffling.
The safe is piled halfway up with stacks of money. He grabs a stack. “Here,” he says, handing me $10,000 in hundreds. “Use it to buy makeup and clothes—things girls need.”
“I don’t need this. You already paid for school.”
“Please take it. I insist.”
For the rest of the weekend, I shove my hurt feelings down hard, numbing them with cocaine and sex.
A few nights later, Dominic takes a group of six or so potential pleasure wives to dinner and a Paul Anka concert. I’m still confused and upset and feel like I want to climb the walls, so I go along. I sit in a booth with all these girls, judging them, knowing the only reason they’re here is for money. I feel like a babysitter and they’re all kissing my ass, knowing I’m his number one.
During the concert, one of the girls wants to show me a ring Adnan has given her. It’s dark in the concert hall, so she holds her finger in my face. I take her hand, pulling it to the candlelight to look. It’s the same exact damn heart ring he just gave me. He must have bought them in bulk.
My heart pounds so hard I can hear it. We all go backstage to meet the singer. I can’t wait to get back to my room.
The next morning I get up, do some floor exercises, and hit the homework. I sit in my bed, studying for a test in flat-pattern terminology. Afterward, I order a crab salad from the chef and start packing for my trip back. I shower and put on a white peasant blouse, shorts, and espadrilles.
I sit on the couch—my crab salad on the mirrored coffee table—and turn on the news. When I lean over to take a bite, the plate turns bright red. Blood is gushing from my nose. The dry desert air plus air-conditioning and cocaine are a bad combination.
I run to the bathroom, put a wet cloth over my nose, and hold my head back. Blood runs down my throat. It’s a bad one, but it’s time for my flight. I wet another cloth and bring it with me, pushing it against my nose. I grab my bags and rush over the little bridge that crosses the stream in my room, and out to the elevator.
Downstairs, I hurry through the casino. I jump in the back of the limo with the blood-soaked cloth over my face. Everyone stares at me as I get in. I know they think I’m a hooker. This is the last limo I take. I’m switching to incognito rent-a-cars.
After the airport, the flight, and the freeway, I drop my bags just inside my door and fall on my knees. I beg God to help me stop doing coke. I dump the leftover powder in the toilet and flush it.
Trying out for Revlon, Hollywood, 1982
RIBBON PURSES
Las Vegas
The perfect illusion and glamorous facade of Adnan’s world is cracking. The world that once felt like a family to me now feels cold and cutthroat. His sparkling perfect and luxurious life surrounded by his kids and a sophisticated, intelligent entourage has morphed into a stripped-down, cheap, sad version of itself.
Ines and Lamia, the Mother Queens, are gone. The only kid I see of Adnan’s is Mohammed, and that’s becoming rare. Everyone has left to settle in London, New York, or Santa Barbara. Who could blame them? A Vegas hotel isn’t a place to raise a family. Even Bob Shaheen and Keith are gone. Now it’s just AK, Dominic, and me.
At the same time, the multiple pleasure wives that Adnan told me about in Spain are becoming more common and all too real. In the beginning it was always just Adnan and me, and if I saw another pleasure wife, it was only one at a time and she was always well educated and elegant. Yet, classy girls studying to be doctors are no longer the type he’s entertaining. Now, when I go to Vegas, I meet a whole group of new and pathetic girls—sometimes I meet eight new women on one trip. It’s depressingly obvious they are here to exchange sex for money—and most are addicted to cocaine.
I’m embarrassed to be seen with them because of the way they act. They flaunt their newfound wealth, jewels, and Paris Couture. In the middle of a formal dinner with Arab and American politicians, a new girl named Kristy pops out of her chair, obviously high, spinning in circles around the room, screaming, “If only my friends could see me now!” I’m serious.
As I study each woman around the table, not all are as blatant as Kristy, but they all look desperate, hungry, and lost, like they can’t find another way to survive besides selling their bodies for sex. They’ve got no backup plan or career path. Surrounded by all these girls, I start calculating the numbers. If she sleeps with ten guys, and he has slept with twenty girls, then she sleeps with Adnan, then I sleep with Adnan, how many people’s germs am I sharing?! I feel troubled, conflicted, and scared. AIDS is spreading and I don’t want to get it.
A girl named Amber asks me to come to her hotel room. She sits on the floor in front of her closet and starts showing me all of her little handwoven rainbow-colored, satin ribbon purses she has made. They’re pretty, but she says, “All I want is enough money to keep me in cocaine so I can keep designing my purses. Will you talk to AK about it for me and ask him to fund me in my purse business?” She’s serious and it’s so sad. She has no idea how the fashion business works. She can’t make a living doing this. Money for cocaine so she can make ribbon purses—that’s her business plan?
These lost girls make me feel so sad. Yet, after I think about it, and it sinks in, my sadness turns into action. I decide to use these women as my inspiration. I become more committed than ever to succeed in school and build a strong career. I’m not going to wind up depending on a man for money.
Paris photo studio on the Seine, 1980
DRESS-UP DOLL
Neiman Marcus, Las Vegas
Adnan asks me to go buy some new dresses. This means Neiman Marcus and Paris Couture. I used to be enamored with couture, but now it feels like a work uniform. I go anyway. As I ride the escalator up, all I can think about is how much homework I have back home. I reach the couture department and come to a dead stop.
Suddenly, I don’t want any more dresses. My mind travels back to my high school days, when I bought just a simple T-shirt and felt so excited about it and appreciated it so much.
It hits me that the reason I don’t want any of these expensive dresses is because I’m paying with Adnan’s money, not my own hard-earned cash. I force myself over to the rack of dresses. A saleslady comes over.
“Can I help you, miss?”
“No, thanks. I’m okay.” She has no idea what’s going on inside me. I feel repulsed by the dresses. They’re worse than empty. I walk away. I negotiate with myself that I’m here
on assignment. Then, it hits me that all I’m doing is buying a dress to play a role. This isn’t really me. I’m just Adnan’s dress-up doll. I’m a table decoration for his fancy business dinners.
I walk over to the rack one more time, determined to get the job done and get out of there. I quickly grab a Valentino—black silk, covered in ruffles, with a purple satin bow at the waist—and hand it to the saleslady. “Charge it to Adnan Khashoggi, please.”
I return to the hotel in a mental fog and put the dress in the closet, still confused, when fast knocking at my door disrupts my thoughts. I open it to Dominic in a white thaub, using the cane he needs when his back hurts.
“Oh hi, come on in. I just got back from shopping. What are you . . .” He pushes the door open and hobbles in. Something is majorly off. I’ve never seen him like this. He looks druggy and woozy. He reaches out for a hug, drops his cane and grabs on to me, forcing his mouth on mine, trying to kiss me.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long! Come here, don’t fight me.”
“Stop it!” I shake my head back and forth trying to avoid his mouth. He grabs my blouse, ripping it off my shoulders. “What are you doing?! Get outta here!” I wedge my elbows in between us, but he hangs on, and we fall to the floor with him on top.
“I love your beautiful ass. . . . Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to do this?”
“Stop it, Dominic!” My martial-arts moves pop into my head, and I get out from under him and kick him away.
“Ouuuchhh!” He curls up on the floor.
“Get out!” I yell.
“I’m gonna have you,” he growls, looking possessed. He gets on his hands and knees, then onto his feet, grabs his cane, and limps out. I pull my blouse up, wondering if I should tell Adnan or Ines. We’ve come a long way from our little manners class.
Splash swimwear, Los Angeles, 1984
THE BLACK NOTEBOOK
The Dunes Hotel, Las Vegas
Adnan and I are working peacefully at a small round table in his office. We’re both wearing white thaubs. He works on legal documents while I’m doing fashion illustrations.
Dominic bursts into the room with a big manila envelope and a black notebook. “Hey, Chief, I’ve got this week’s clippings.” He opens the envelope and spreads the perfectly cut newspaper articles on the table. They’re from all over the world and all on Adnan. We each pick up a pile and read a few. Some are about his rumored multibillion-dollar divorce. Others are about arms sales. Then Dominic holds up the black notebook. “Remember the agency I was telling you about? Lots of beauties in here, take a look at this one.” He points, showing Adnan. They’re much more interested in this than the news clippings.
My pulse skyrockets. I try to act like I’m focused on my drawings, dipping my fountain pen into the black inkwell, but I’m shocked at what’s happening. The pages in the notebook are filled with photographs of women. Some are modeling composites like I had, and some are black-and-white glossies—head shots and body shots—just like the kind I’d seen on the walls of the pimp’s house in Beverly Hills that my first agent, Miriam, had sent me to.
“Yes . . . let’s see.” Adnan takes the notebook from Dominic, and they browse together.
“What about Julianne? What’s she like?” Adnan asks, pointing.
“She’s a good girl. She’s in the fifty-K range. These in the back are thirty-five K for an introduction,” Dominic says.
What the fuck? I stop pretending not to be paying attention. “Do you always do this?” I ask, stunned.
“Do what?” Adnan says defensively.
“Pick girls out of a notebook!” I take a deep breath. “This isn’t how you met me, is it?” They look at each other with raised eyebrows. “Did you pick me out of a book?” They giggle. My face feels like it’s on fire, and my mind races back to Monte Carlo and the pirate party. Dominic was there. Pepper had brought me there—for free! I knew something was up!
Back then, I never would have dreamt that it had all been orchestrated precisely for that purpose: so Adnan could meet fresh-faced, non-sleazy models from America and Europe. I naïvely took all of them at face value, unaware that these people had motives, secrets, and agendas. And that everyone’s agendas wove like a pyramid, up to the king—Adnan. Everyone worked for him. I assumed it was all about integrity, love, and friendship and thought they actually liked me. But no, I was a commodity.
I look at Adnan. “So, why do you need Dominic to find girls for you? Can’t you meet them yourself?” I’m shaking and trying not to let them know it.
“And how would I do that? Do you have any ideas?” He stands up. Dominic backs up.
“I don’t know—ask them out at restaurants or in stores.” I stand too.
“You know I can’t be in public. I can’t just go up to strangers and ask them out. I have to know their backgrounds. Besides, Dominic is better-looking.” They laugh.
“All the girls have to pass security clearance, Jill, you know that,” Dominic says, standing with his ankles crossed, leaning against a console a few feet away.
“I need to hear this from you, Adnan.” I look straight at him with my arms crossed.
Always charming, and with me usually wrapped around his finger, he says, “It doesn’t matter now, does it? We’re together. That’s what’s important.” He hugs me and kisses my cheek. I put my arm around him for a split second, then pull it away and start packing up my homework while they continue shopping for girls.
My mind is spun. So he can’t go around in public? That’s evidently Dominic’s job. Were Dominic and Pepper working together to find girls? Did Pepper show him photos of me? Did he pay Pepper to meet me? What about the girls in the black notebook? Were they offered money to sleep with him? Or are they being set up without knowing? Do they know who he is? Are they hookers? I’m different, right? I’m not a hooker. I don’t even want his money.
The school tuition was generous, but it’s to help me stand on my own two feet and not depend on anybody. The only reason I’m here is because I love him. Maybe he manipulated it all, but I fell in love with him all on my own. No one paid me to make love to him.
I survive the weekend’s business dinners and sex with Adnan, seriously shoving my hurt feelings down as deep as they will go. I mask my pain, while I try to gather my thoughts about what transpired. Massages and candlelit bubble baths help me appear somewhat calm. Underneath, however, my mind is ready to implode.
I leave on Sunday, just before sunset. The Vegas airport slot machine bells ring directly into my brain while the cigarette smoke makes my head throb. Images of me stuffed in a plastic sleeve and bound in a black notebook among other Paris models torment my mind.
I’ve got to hold it together. I have a shoot for Teen magazine tomorrow and a school project due. As the plane ascends over the quiet, still desert, I stare at the serene pink-and-orange sky. Yet I feel like I’m in a straitjacket, though. My chest is tight and it’s hard to breathe. This is not my idea of freedom.
I don’t remember paying for parking at Lot C. I don’t remember driving the freeway home. My mind has been sliced into a million pieces. Back in my Downey bedroom, I jump into work, draping and pinning pink satin onto my dress form. I need eight pattern pieces for the bodice, plus lining, and three for the skirt.
I do a strapless sweetheart neck and fold pleats in the front skirt. I add pockets because I love pockets. After a couple of hours of pinning fabric to the dress form with my tiny silver pins, I’m finally calm. I make a center slit in the back of the skirt below the zipper and cut all the pieces along the lines where the seams will go. I sew white lace on the top, hem, and back slit. I talk to God about everything while I sew late into the night—with no cocaine now.
It’s good to be home safe in my own apartment bedroom, working. With my mind engrossed creatively, peace floods in, washing everything else away. I fill the princess seams with stiff boning to hold up the strapless bodice. I try it on and it fits perfectly. It’s kind of Ma
rilyn Monroe tacky, but I love it.
In the morning, I stop at the Chinese drive-through donut shop on the way to the freeway. I reach Santa Monica Boulevard, where all the young boys are out, just like every morning. They sit like tiny skeletons on bus benches or at traffic lights, waiting for their next trick. Most of them are sick. They have sores and lesions on their necks and faces from AIDS. I pull into the farmers’ market parking lot in West Hollywood where I’m supposed to shoot, and all I can think about are those sick young boys.
My mind bounces back to the dinner table of high-priced hookers and the black notebook Adnan and Dominic were looking through. Do I have AIDS? I could easily have AIDS. Adnan never uses protection with me. And just like the boat driver knowing about the sharks but dropping me in the ocean anyway, Adnan isn’t protecting me; he’s putting me in danger. I can’t be his lover.
Jane from Teen rushes me into hair and makeup. I pose, biting into a peach in front of a fruit cart, with my mind on the notebook. I change into a dress and pose on the steps of a yellow school bus, holding a fake stack of schoolbooks. As the camera flashes I smile, wondering exactly how many women he’s slept with and how many people I have been exposed to sexually. After the shoot, I jump on the Santa Monica Freeway and head downtown to my sewing class.
After school, I throw my beach towel in my car and head to the boat docks in Long Beach. I spread my towel on the dock and lie faceup, to the sun, so the hot rays melt me like honey into the dock’s hardwood boards. I hear the water lap beneath the dock.
Focused on the sound of the water, I clear my mind of everything. Every thought I have comes into focus, then passes on. I pray. I give thanks for everything I can think of. Then I turn over on my stomach and hang my head over the white rubber edging of the dock. I look for fish, and check out the shiny black mussels attached to the pylons. Bright green seaweed that grows between the shells moves like wet hair with the water.