Mike came by, urging me to leave, but just then Steve Rubell showed up and insisted on taking us to his office. Mike rolled his eyes, but I wasn’t ready to leave—and Patrick and Casablancas were still partying. The little girls followed Casablancas like puppies.
Rubell closed the door and laid out a fucking ounce of cocaine. There was something kind of repellent about him, to be completely honest. Repellent and charismatic at the same time. You felt like running away, but he’d smile his wicked smile and you knew good times were just around the corner.
He chopped up a few lines and offered me a silver straw. I plunged in. Mike didn’t. He gave me a dirty look, but I was in a fuck-you-don’t-tell-me-what-to-do mood. Then I asked Patrick to dance with me. As we fought our way through the crush of writhing bodies, everyone seemed so happy that I couldn’t help feeling good, too. Who cared if it was all chemical? I was going to take Andy’s advice and live in the fucking moment. All this analyzing the Deeper Meaning of Life, what had it ever done for anyone?
“I hope Heaven’s half as much fun as this!” I hollered in Patrick’s ear.
We didn’t leave for Southampton until two in the morning. Patrick was driving, I was in the front seat next to him, and Mike was fast asleep in back. He was pissed, and he had a way of falling asleep when he was pissed. It must have been some kind of Zen Master bullshit.
The bad news is, John Casablancas and a couple of his trashy little girls were in the car behind us. Patrick and Casablancas had been friends for many years, but I still didn’t like the idea of having him out to the house. He had treated me with such disregard in Paris, but I was still expected to be the charming hostess. I don’t think so. Still, at the end of the day, the house was certainly big enough. I guess we could stay out of each other’s way.
The next morning I walked into the kitchen and found him with one of his girls. I have no idea how old she was. She was sitting on his lap, topless, and the way she smiled and said good morning made me want to slap some sense into her. I managed a forced smile and poured myself a coffee.
“Janice,” Casablancas said, “you should come work with me.” I laughed and left the kitchen and ran into Mike. He was all decked out in biking gear; he was pushing forty but was still thinking he might take a shot at the Tour de France.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re doing thirty miles today.”
I went. Bicycling gave me these beautiful legs. Ah, vanity, vanity! All is vanity. Like every other model, I’d been obsessed with my body since the day I’d noticed it. And like every other model, I tried to stay in shape. Of course, now that I was successful, I didn’t have as much time for jogging and bike riding and yoga. But there was coke and binging and purging, and I had taught myself to stop eating a third of the way into my meals. Like confused women everywhere, I was turning food into the enemy.
Christie showed up later that day to hang out, and we had dinner out back—or a third of a dinner, in my case—facing Wooley’s Pond. The house was between the pond and the ocean, near a marina. It was perfect. I loved it there. Pierre Houles showed up, too, in time for dinner. He and Christie liked each other right away, but of course she knew who he was. He could do things for her career. Nothing wrong with that, right? We all used one another.
Sunday morning I was up early and called home.
My father answered the phone. I asked him to please put Mother on and he didn’t seem to understand. I thought he was fucking with me, but then I realized he was genuinely confused. He started screaming at me, going on about how he was sick and tired of people calling at all hours of the day and night asking for money. Then he hung up. When I called back a few minutes later, my mother answered. I asked if everything was all right.
“Oh, fine,” she said. “But I think I’m going to need a new car.”
Not a word about my father. But I didn’t care to ask, frankly. I sent her a check for the down payment on a new car. I was making oodles of money. I didn’t know how to handle it, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I just wrote checks—to my mother, the grocer, the liquor store—until the bank called to tell me I was overdrawn and would I be good enough to come in and do something about it.
The thing about money is this: You have to have enough money so that you don’t ever have to think about money again. And that’s not an easy place to get to. What I had, I spent. I bought a Jeep. A Roballo boat. I’d go into town and buy lobsters for twenty guests. The best champagne. Beluga caviar because it reminded me of Paris, of the time I’d spent being an innocent little nobody…
And of course I worked for my money. Only it didn’t feel like work. This is what you have to understand: It was fun. Then. I would sit there surrounded by fawning assistants and hair and makeup people and dressers and think, I can’t believe I’m getting paid for all this fawning! And I couldn’t. Really. So I didn’t stop. And it kept being fun.
SEAN BYRNES AND FRANCESCO SCAVULLO AT SCAVULLO’S STUDIO.
I remember meeting the legendary Scavullo for the first time. He shot me for Cosmo, with whom he had a contract. He worked out of a carriage house in the East Sixties, where he lived with his lover, Sean Byrnes, who was also his chief stylist. They were a real hoot, those two. “If you don’t behave yourself, Sean, I’m going to cut you out of my will,” Scavullo would say. Sean was the party animal in the relationship, and the threats kept him in line. He would bite his tongue, and go quietly about his business, but within a few minutes he’d be studying Scavullo with a sharp, appraising look.
ARTHUR ELGORT IN TOKYO.
“What?” Scavullo would snap.
“Oh, nothing,” Sean replied, the picture of innocence. “You look like you’re retaining water.”
The truth is, they were inseparable, and they knew it, but they went at each other like an old married couple. They even started to look alike. It was always quite the show.
Scavullo was nuts about me. He kept asking me back. I was in Cosmo every month for about six months, until I finally had to beg for a break. I thought I was getting over-exposed, and I wanted to spread my wings.
I went off and did a session for Vogue with Arthur Elgort, who had made a name for himself as a ballet photographer. He said he loved the way I moved, which—from him—was a major compliment.
Richard Avedon saw the result and sent for me. I was nervous. I admit it. Here was this kid from New York whose career began in the U.S. Merchant Marine when he was asked to take ID snapshots of the sailors, and he went on to become The Master. Intimidating? You bet. I mean, JVC was a fucking advertising campaign. Avedon—well, we’re talking art. And art—well, that’s another world.
So there I was, heading off to Avedon’s place in the West Seventies. The whole way there, I told myself I was wonderful, amazing, good enough for Avedon. Then I rang the bell and a chubby little assistant opened the door and walked me through. I had to remind myself to breathe as I waited. I felt like I was meeting one of The Beatles, or getting an audience at the Vatican—which kind of scared me, frankly: It brought back memories of Pope Giorgio.
Moments later, Avedon appeared: a little bespectacled waif of a man, smiling, oddly normal. And he shook my hand and took me into the studio and—with no fanfare, no fuss—quietly introduced me to the two geniuses who had been working with him for years and years: Way Bandy, who did makeup, and Ara Gallant, on hair. Way took great pains with his outfits; he was partial to flowing Japanese robes that made him look like a geisha. And he had this wacky Prince Valiant do that was so weird you couldn’t help staring. Made me wonder why Ara didn’t fix it. Ara wore a pin-studded black leather biker cap and matching leather pants. That was it; I seldom saw him in anything else.
“Janice,” Way said, flailing his arms like the queen he was. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
And Ara said, “I love you more.”
And Way began to sing, “I love you more today than yesterday…”
And Ara joined him.
Now, I’m here to tell
you, that’s entertainment.
RICHARD AVEDON: THE MASTER OF MASTERS.
Avedon was over on the far side of the room, conferring with Gideon Lewin, his lighting guy. It was surreal. Things hadn’t happened exactly the way I’d envisioned them—Avedon and Lauren Hutton didn’t discover me in a lousy Florida pizza parlor—but they were happening just the same.
When the musical interlude was over, Ara took me by the hand and said, “I need you to come to all my parties from now on, comprende? And I won’t take no for an answer.” Ara’s parties were legendary: A-list all the way.
“I’ll be your date,” Way said. “It’ll ruin my reputation, but what can you do?”
WEARING A PATRICIA FIELD BLACK WIDOW WEDDING DRESS IN GIDEON LEWIN’S STUDIO.
Gay men—gotta love ’em. They were as damaged as I was. They had grown up the way I’d grown up: with fear and shame and no sense of self-worth and the feeling that there was no place on earth for them. They were my spiritual next of kin.
Suddenly, Avedon cleared his throat. He was ready. He took his place behind his large-format camera. Way and Bandy blew me kisses, told me I looked like a goddess, and moved into the wings.
Now Avedon turned his attention to Gideon Lewin. He worked with handheld reflectors, controlling every ounce of light in the room. This was a far cry from the French Mafia’s kamikaze approach to fashion photography. This wasn’t about pumping off a hundred motor-driven pictures and hoping for one lucky shot. This was about masterminding every inch of every setup, every photon in the air…
For the next few hours, Avedon worked his magic. I was in and out of a dozen outfits, one more beautiful than the next. Avedon directed the show with little fuss. His voice calm, a rock. I grew increasingly comfortable, increasingly confident. He urged me to feel the clothes against my skin, to forget I was in the studio, to imagine myself en route to the Academy Awards/on a hike in the Alps/at the beach—depending, of course, on what I was wearing. And he was so goddamn gentle. If I went over the top, he’d ask me, in a whisper, to tone it down a little. And if I was too subdued, he’d urge me to give it a little punch. Avedon knew how to make a girl feel loved—you can see it in the pictures—and that’s no small part of his genius.
The result was a twelve-page spread in Vogue. The magazine was so happy with it that they booked me for a cover. With Irving Penn. Jesus! Did it never stop? Scavullo, Avedon, Penn. If Scavullo was the Genius and Avedon the Master, Penn was God.
I was really nervous about meeting Irving Penn. The thing is, not all that long ago, I’d been a little nobody, getting turned away, rudely, by these very people; now I was a sort of half-somebody from Wilhelmina. And it was fucking scary. There’s no manual that tells you how to behave. And I didn’t come from the kind of family that teaches you much in the “class” department. But you wing it. And I decided I’d wing it. I cabbed over to the studio, on lower Fifth Avenue, took a deep, bracing breath, and rang the bell.
I was ushered inside by an assistant—I thought I recognized him as one of the smarmy little assholes who had turned me away when I was a nobody—and Penn came over to say hello.
He had a huge studio. He must have had twenty underlings running around, getting ready for the shoot. Everyone was very quiet. It was almost sterile in there, like a hospital. Everything reflected his personality.
“Hello, Janice,” said the short little man approaching me. “I’m Irving Penn.”
We shook hands. He had small, soft hands. He reminded me of the Imp of Spring; a little munchkin. He was wearing a conservative coat and tie and he was polite and very soft-spoken. Old World to the core.
“Do you have any music?” I asked. There was a look on his face. What? “I have a hard time working without music.”
It was clear Penn preferred silence, but he humored me. Before long, we were all listening to the Rolling Stones. I went over and jacked up the volume and watched as he prepared his equipment. He was very methodical. Calm. Centered. His assistants did all the nervous scurrying for him. It was wonderful to watch. Penn ran the show with quiet grace.
Finally, when everything was ready, he nodded at two beefy guys who were standing in a corner. They looked like moving men. They ducked out back and returned moments later with a huge hunk of ice on wheels, rolling it into position on a dolly. It was as big as a steamer trunk.
IRVING PENN: ALWAYS INTIMIDATING, ALWAYS A GENIUS.
Penn came over and stood me in front of the giant ice cube. I was practically sitting on it. He shot and shot some more, and moved me this way. Gorgeous, wonderful, let’s have a smile, please.
I loved watching him work. Like Avedon, he was all about control, all about making the perfect image. These men predated idiot-proof cameras; this was before autofocus, autolights, autoinspiration. This was before the Almighty Digital Image. These men were artists in the truest sense of the word.
By the time we took our first break, my butt was freezing. I went over and parked it next to the radiator.
“What are you doing, Miss Dickinson?” Penn asked.
“I’m warming up your dinner, Mr. Penn.”
A couple of assistants looked over at me in horror. But Penn just smiled.
“You’re quite something, Miss Dickinson,” he said.
“So are you, Mr. Penn.”
Three weeks later, he called me back for another shoot. He took me out to Jones Beach with Patti Hansen and Shawn Casey, and we modeled bathing suits all afternoon. Penn seldom left the studio, so it was quite the big deal. His twenty assistants looked nervous and out of their element on the sand. But not Penn; he was quiet, commanding, relaxed. He was the opposite of Reinhardt and that ilk; there was no shouting, no ego, just a steady, calming presence.
At one point, all three of us were lying on the sand in red, one-piece bathing suits, so close we were almost touching. “I used to do this in South Florida,” I told Patti, remembering how I would lie on the beaches, on Quaaludes, dreaming of becoming a famous model. “I can’t believe I’m getting paid for it.”
Between shots, I asked Penn questions about natural light and reflected light. He was incredibly generous about it.
I got home that night and told Mike how much I’d learned from Penn in the course of a single day. I was wired; I couldn’t wait to whip out my cameras and put Penn’s lessons to work. Mike didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and laughed a nasty, disparaging laugh. For a moment, I saw my father’s face in his. I was livid. I stormed out and went downstairs to see Bill Cunningham, a New York Times fashion photographer and one of my all-time favorite neighbors.
“Fucking French Mafia,” he said. “They’re a bunch of pretentious amateurs—and that goes double for Mike Reinhardt!” I felt better instantly.
Bill only shot with Leicas. And he never went anywhere without his velvet beret. I used to go to visit him with my contact sheets and we’d pore over them with a loupe and he’d give me pointers. This shot has no depth. This one is poorly centered. This one makes me feel claustrophobic. He’d tell me how to fill the frame. He advised me to get right into people’s faces. He told me to keep working on my style.
“What style?” I asked. “I didn’t know I had a style.”
BILL CUNNINGHAM
“It’s getting there,” he said, showing me. “There’s something casual and edgy about your shots. And a little rough, like photojournalism. I like it. Stay on track.”
On my twenty-second birthday, Bill gave me a photograph of Greta Garbo. It was one of those paparazzi-style shots: the reclusive Garbo glaring at the lens, her eyes awash in venom. I loved it, still have it today. And, no, it’s not for sale.
But Bill gave me something much more valuable than a photograph and his undying friendship: He gave me confidence in myself as a photographer.
LOVE’S A BITCH
At around this time I started working with one of the handsomest men in the business: Calvin Klein. He was wonderful. He talked to me about my ongoing battles with Mike,
about life love drugs self-esteem and the crazy business that ran our lives.
Whenever I had a moment alone, a moment to think, I felt depressed. I wasn’t in love with Mike anymore; I wasn’t sure I’d ever been in love with him. I didn’t feel good about it, either. Or about myself. Sure, I felt beautiful. People made a living telling me how beautiful I was. But that didn’t do much for me on the inside. And nobody was asking.
“So I guess they don’t give a shit, right?” I asked Calvin.
“Of course they don’t give a shit,” he said. “This business is about surfaces. People don’t care to dig too deeply. They’d rather not know.”
So who was I? A successful supermodel? Mike Reinhardt’s doormat? The frightened little girl who wouldn’t suck her father off?
“Janice,” Calvin joked. “Models aren’t supposed to think.”
He was right. Models are supposed to be dumb, right? That’s what they tell us, anyway. And, yes, there are plenty of pretty girls who are thick as posts. But most of us can actually walk and talk and snort coke at the same time. And some of us even ask ourselves Big Questions, like, What the fuck does it all mean?
Christ, this thinking—it was exhausting. I needed help.
I called my old friend Alexandra King—the one with the foul-mouthed parrot—and got the name of a respected Upper East Side shrink. I went to see him. He was in his mid-forties, good-looking in a blandish sort of way. With his round glasses and graying temples, he reminded me of an owl.
I gave him my life story in about ten minutes. He nodded from time to time, but his expression never changed. I thought maybe he was thinking about fucking me, but I was wrong. He was actually paying attention.
“A great deal of what happened to us in the past searches for expression in the present,” he said when I was done. “Every relationship contains within it the ghosts of everything that wasn’t.” Huh? Okay, I’m a model. Slow down.
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