On the third night we took a break and went out to dinner with Debbie and a “new friend” of hers. Debbie looked great, but I didn’t like the guy. He was close to forty, older than Mike. She was a kid. I wondered what kind of evil father-daughter thing was at play here. It’s amazing how much a parent can damage a child. I wanted to say something to Debbie, but who was I to talk? I could see myself in her. We’d been shaped by the same forces.
Worse still, the next day I found out that the sonofabitch was running around claiming that he’d had his way with Debbie, not because of who she was, but because she was my sister—the sister of Janice Dickinson, the hot model. I was a little flattered, sad to say, but also furious. So here’s what I did: I called the guy and told him I found him irresistible, and I wondered why he was settling for my little sister when he could have the Real Thing. I said I was doing a shoot the next day at the airport, miles from town, and suggested he book a room for us at the Hotel Sofitel. The penthouse would be great. Oysters and champagne. Lots and lots of both. I’d sneak away at lunch and join him. “I must have you,” I said. I swear to God, I heard him whimper.
Poor sap. I had planned it so beautifully. Mike was gone all afternoon, riding his beloved ten-speed bicycle, and I was out shopping. But I stopped at pay phones every hour on the hour to call this character. I’m coming. Please wait; I’ve been delayed but the shoot is almost over and I’ll be there momentarily, honest. I made my last call around midnight, shortly after Mike had fallen asleep.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hey, shithead, it’s me,” I said. “I’m not going to make it, so why don’t you just fuck yourself?”
I went back to New York two days later and called Willie in advance to let her know I was ready to book and boogie. When I set the phone down, it rang immediately. I was sure it was Mike, but it was Ron. He was coming home. “I’m sorry I went crazy on you last time, babe,” he said. “But I’m good now. I’m clean.” Uh huh. He could barely speak.
I hung up and headed for the salon. My hair was fine, but I was feeling lost, and I wanted to see a new friend of mine: Edward Tricome, this wiry, high-energy kid from Brooklyn who worked at the hottest salon in town, on East 57th Street.
“What’s wrong, Janice?” he asked. He was standing behind me, the two of us reflected in the mirror. He had his hands on my shoulders. I told him the Ron story. He thought about it for maybe two seconds, then said, “Why don’t you move in with me?”
I packed a few things and went over to his apartment later that night. “You can’t live here,” I said. “This is a dump. We’ve got to find a new home.”
Mike reached me at the agency the next morning. “Where the hell were you last night?” he asked.
“I moved out.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To Edward’s place.”
“Edward? The hair guy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But he’s not gay!” Mike exclaimed.
“I know,” I said. “Neither am I.”
“Janice—”
“Would you relax!”
“This isn’t working for me,” Mike said. “I don’t like this at all.”
I should have been smart enough to see right then and there what fate had in store for me, but I was foolishly, blindly in love. “Mike,” I said. “You’re the only man for me.”
Guys like to hear shit like that from time to time.
He called every day. He was completely in love, he said. I swore I’d hang up if he told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him. It’s a line I hope never to hear again.
Of course, love is never uncomplicated. Mike was “sort of” dating another model at the time, Barbara Minty.
“Have you told her yet?” I asked.
“As soon as I get back,” he promised.
I worked like a banshee that next week. But every night after work, no matter how tired I was, I’d hook up with Edward and this mousy little broker and we’d trek from one apartment to the next. On the third night we found ourselves in a duplex on East 59th Street. There was something really tacky about the place. We loved it.
The following Saturday, Edward and I moved into our new digs. In the middle of the afternoon, the doorbell rang. Edward answered the door. A middle-aged man was standing in the corridor.
“Is Kathy here?” he asked.
“There’s no Kathy here,” Edward said.
FRIEND, ROOMMATE, PROTECTOR, AND BOYFRIEND-TO-DEBBIE: EDWARD TRICOME.
The man looked confused and left.
Twenty minutes later another guy stopped by. He was looking for Sybil. Ten minutes after that it was a Haitian businessman looking for Candy.
“This used to be a fucking whorehouse!” Edward said, doubled over with laughter. We couldn’t believe it. We went back to our unpacking but a few minutes later the doorbell rang again. A big guy was standing there. He looked like a mobster.
“Is Alice around?”
I couldn’t resist: “Alice doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Who the fuck are you?” the guy said. He pushed his way inside and began to look around.
“Hey! You can’t do that, pal,” Edward said. Edward, who was half the guy’s size. The guy ignored him. We followed him into the kitchen. There were boxes everywhere. What did he think, that we were bullshitting him?
“The girls are gone,” I said. I wanted him out of there.
“Oh yeah?” The mobster turned and took me in with his lopsided grin. “You look pretty good to me.”
Edward grabbed a butcher knife and put it to the guy’s throat.
“Hey, pal, I don’t think you’re listening too good. There’s no hookers here no more. They went bye-bye. And you better go fucking bye-bye, too.”
The guy left. I slammed and bolted the door behind him. I was terrified. “Jesus! Edward! I can’t believe you did that! You’re my hero.”
“Don’t look now,” Edward said. “But I think I peed my pants.”
When Mike came back from Paris two weeks later, he invited me over to his studio at Carnegie Hall and cooked me an amazing dinner. By the time we got to dessert he told me he’d broken up with Barbara and asked me to move in with him. I said I’d think about it.
I did think about it. But not too deeply. My last stab at conjugal bliss hadn’t exactly been a resounding success. I wanted to get to know Mike better, not get in too deeply too quickly. Plus I liked my newfound freedom. And I liked living with Edward. Well, living with Edward is a bit of an overstatement: I was at Mike’s about four nights a week.
This went on for several months. And it was working. Mike kept begging me to move in with him, and I kept saying no. Still, it’s nice to be asked, nice to be wanted.
Then Debbie came back to New York and crashed with me and two nights later I came home and found her in bed with Edward. It was kind of weird. My little sister and my roommate, lying there, grinning up at me like naughty children.
I called Mike. “I’ve thought about it,” I said. “You’re right. We’re a great couple. We should be living together.” He came over and helped me get my things and that was that.
I worked and worked. I began making oodles of money. I was hot and knew it and it went to my head. Photographers started learning to send limos for me. The other girls took the subway, but not Janice.
I’d go home after a hard day’s work and there’d be flowers waiting for me. Thank you, Janice. You were wonderful, Janice. You are beautiful, Janice. I would get a call from the office at night to make sure I was safe in bed, and a wake-up call in the morning to see me on my way.
I loved the way the photo studios smelled. They were usually cold and damp, with a hint of chemicals in the air. Coffee, too. Fresh-brewed, and tons of it. And doughnuts. You could always tell the bulimic models: They’re the ones who ate the doughnuts.
I was starting to take an increasingly aggressive interest in my career. Starting with the pictures. The agency was always sending new sh
ots of us to its clients. Most models didn’t get involved: Sifting through all those photographs was hard work, so they let the agency handle it. But I was very picky about what got sent out. I had opinions. I wanted more control, and I got it. I had a good eye for the way pictures worked. I knew more about photography than they suspected—more than I suspected—and what I didn’t know I was determined to learn.
BEING A TOUGH LITTLE BITCH.
Willie took me to lunch or dinner two or three times a week. She’d fawn over me. She’d invite clients along, and sometimes they brought their wives. They all fawned. One woman asked if I’d be good enough to autograph a menu for her teenage daughter. “She’s in awe of you,” she said. I took the pen and scrawled my name across the menu and thought, You bet she’s in awe of me. She should be. I’m fucking great.
Funny what success will do to a girl, particularly a girl with a split personality. The insecure, hyperanxious, self-loathing Janice was nowhere in sight.
The money started pouring in. Editorial was nothing: seventy-five dollars a day. I doubled it. They offered me twelve hundred for a lingerie shoot: I asked for two thousand and got it. I became the guinea pig. “If we can get twenty-five hundred for Janice, we’ll try to get it for Iman.”
I could hear the bookers in the office. “No, sorry. Janice isn’t available.” “Janice? You can’t afford Janice.” “I’ll talk to her, but, you know—Janice is picky.”
I weighed myself twice a day, every day. I was five nine and a half and 134 pounds when I’d first come to New York. I was still five nine and a half, as far as I could tell, but now I kept my weight at an even 125. And I had to work at it, people. You could find me jogging around the Central Park reservoir five mornings a week. Riding my bike Sunday mornings, when the park was closed to traffic. Practicing yoga with Zen Master Mike.
I was in total control for the first time in my life. I was driving this rig. And I felt good about it. I could look at myself in the mirror—my surface self—and see beauty there. Beauty and power. I would think, Fuck you, Ray, you rat bastard. Never amount to anything? Look at me now.
They wanted me for a shoot with Luciano Pavarotti. I said, “Fine, but if you’re going to put his name in the piece, I want my name in there, too.” I wasn’t about to hide in the background. I became my own publicist. And it worked. There it was. Luciano Pavarotti and Janice Dickinson Paint the Town Red. Janice Dickinson and the New York Mets Do Manhattan.
The thing is, I made it fun. I would do anything. I was game. I remember flying to Tobago for Sir Norman Parkinson, the preeminent British fashion photographer for damn near fifty years. “Janice,” he said in that tweedy upper-crust voice. “Would you very much mind scaling the side of a mountain in a thong?”
“No problem, Normy,” I said, and I scaled away.
“You know what I like about you, Janice?” he said later, as we wrapped up for the day.
“Slay me.”
“You do the work. You’re not a diva like most of the girls. And you make me laugh.”
There was no stopping me. One day I showed up to audition for a JVC Handycam campaign. It was a major gig, and I wanted it. I walked into a conference room and found myself alone with six Japanese executives. They were all dressed exactly alike, each with his hands clasped in front of him. They all just sat and stared, not even moving: If you told me they were breathing, I would have asked for proof. No warm hellos, no niceties, a big zero.
“Gentlemen,” I said. “The search is over.”
Still nothing.
“I am the new face of JVC.”
Still nothing. The fucking guys looked like statues. But I wasn’t going to let them get to me. No. I wasn’t going to let them see Janice the Terrified, Janice the Loser Who Will Never Amount to Anything. Hell no. Today, I was Janice the Magnificent, Janice Who Could Do No Wrong. Prepare to be dazzled, motherfuckers!
“You see these almond-shaped eyes?” I asked. I walked across the room, slowly, dramatically. Their heads moved in unison, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. “These are the eyes of my Japanese great-great-grandmother.”
Jesus! Where was I getting this bullshit?
“That’s right, gentlemen. My great-great-grandmother was Japanese. And in a moment of weakness, admittedly, she had the poor taste to sleep with an Irishman. That Irishman was my great-great-grandfather. And I’m not saying he was a nice guy. He wasn’t. But my great-great-grandmother was a fine woman, a fine Japanese woman, and if you think about that, gentlemen, I don’t know why you would even consider another model.”
I left without another word. What a fucking performance!
I got back to the agency and was told that Willie wanted to see me right away. I walked in and batted my way through the cigarette smoke.
“What’s up?” I said.
“The JVC guys called. They want you.”
My heart was beating a mile a minute, but I acted very cool. “I want twenty thousand a day,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Willie,” I said. “The business is changing. Can’t you see it? These guys have money. I want to make the jump to the next level. You have to be more aggressive.”
“You’ll aggress yourself right out of a job,” she said.
“Are you going to ask for the twenty thousand or not?”
“I’m going to ask for five thousand, and you’ll be happy to get it.”
I laughed and turned and walked toward the door.
“Janice!”
I kept going. I walked right out of the agency and across the street to Eileen Ford’s to see Monique Pillard, now the head booker. Monique had believed in me from the start, from the first time she set eyes on me, that afternoon when Eileen dismissed me as too ethnic. And she still believed in me. I told her about the JVC guys: I knew I had them, I said. And then I took another chance: I told her I wanted to speak to Jerry, Eileen’s husband, not Eileen. This was highly unusual, to say the least, a real slap in the face to Eileen—as Monique understood only too well.
“Eileen is sensitive, you know,” she said. “Are you sure about this?”
“I’m sensitive, too,” I said.
She nodded and headed for the inner sanctum. A few minutes later she returned to lead me down the corridor.
We went into Eileen’s office, Monique and me and my big fucking lips.
Eileen and Jerry stood up. She was so nicely put together. She had a big smile for me. But she knew I remembered; I could see it in her face.
“Hello, Janice,” Jerry said. “Nice to meet you.”
“So nice to see you again, Janice,” Eileen cooed.
“Here’s the deal,” I said, plunging right in. I told them about the JVC campaign, just as I’d told Wilhelmina and Monique. And I told them I wanted twenty thousand a day.
“Janice, really—” Eileen began.
MONIQUE PILLARD—AN INCREDIBLE FRIEND.
But Jerry cut her off. “You’ll get it,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “I get my twenty grand, you get me.”
Jerry said he’d negotiate the deal himself. We left Eileen’s office together. Jerry made the call, and I got my twenty grand. I called Willie and told her to send my books over to Ford. “I got what I asked for,” I said, and hung up. Okay, so I wanted to rub it in. Sue me. It felt great.
THE GOOD DAUGHTER
Once a week, Sunday afternoons, regular as clockwork, I called home to speak to my mother. I don’t know why I bothered—she’d never been much of a mother—but I guess part of me felt bad for her. Her life seemed so empty and horrible. She’d never seen Paris or Milan, and never would, and she’d never get out of that backwater because she was never going to find the courage to free herself from the rat bastard.
I was always anxious before I called, but a little wine or champagne did the trick. It was like magic. Boom! I’m okay now. And I’d pick up the phone and dial.
“Oh, honey, another magazine cover! I clipped it out an
d framed it. You are just such a star!”
“How are you, Mom?”
“I am great, thank the Good Lord.” The sound of her voice was enough to make me cringe. “I am just so happy to be alive, and to have a wonderful little girl like you, and oh, yes, I forgot to thank you for that beautiful silk blouse you sent me last week! I wore it to church this morning. I got so many nice comments on it!”
She was into God now, easing herself off the drugs and into a nice anesthetic church buzz. Debbie told me about the little pictures of the Virgin Mary, hanging all over the house, and how Mother never went anywhere without her blessed rosary.
“Glad you liked the shirt, Mom.”
“Have you talked to your sister?”
I told her Debbie was doing fine. She and Edward had broken up and she’d moved to the Upper East Side and was booking jobs left and right.
“And how’s our darling Alexis?”
Alexis was living in Pennsylvania, staining glass and making jewelry and hanging out with an older man who treated her less than nicely. I resented the way Mother always called her “our Alexis,” as if somehow we shared the blame for what the rat bastard had done to her.
“She’s fine, Mom.”
By this time, I was starting to get pissed. I always got pissed. I tried to be civil, but I couldn’t seem to get beyond my anger. She had never protected Alexis. She had never been a mother. She was too busy shutting herself down.
“The weather has been terrible here…a new administrator at the hospital…could use a nice pair of comfortable shoes…the mechanic says it’s the crankshaft, whatever that is…” I would let her drone on, not really listening, getting angrier, guzzling my wine to take the edge off. I was usually pretty buzzed by the time I had eased her off the phone. And I usually kept going until Mike returned from his Sunday power ride around Central Park.
“Are you drunk?” he’d say, all pissy. “Don’t you know drinking is bad for you? You’re not getting enough exercise. The body is a temple, and you’re treating yours like shit.”
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