No Lifeguard on Duty

by Janice Dickinson

  I wish I’d brought a tape recorder, because everything he said was brilliant. And of course I never put any of it into practice. But this is basically what I remember—and I know I’m not doing him justice.

  All of us are fucked up, he said. Some worse than others. And much of what happened to us as kids, well—we want to fix it. No matter how many years have passed, we’re determined to fix it. So what we do, see, is we keep getting into relationships that mirror the relationships we had with our parents. And the reason we do is that we want to undo the damage by reexperiencing it and finally getting it right.

  So, yeah, what he was saying was that Mike Reinhardt was the latest version of my own personal Lost Ark: my abusive father. And, in some ways, I think I saw what he meant. Like my father, Mike made me feel I would never amount to anything. He would put me down at every turn. He would criticize the way I spoke, walked, talk, ate. And if I tried to do anything on my own—take pictures, for example—Mike was quick to put me down for it.

  “The psychiatric term for this is ‘repetition compulsion,’” the wise old owl was saying. “People spend the bulk of their lives recapitulating old conflicts, trying to undo the damage that was inflicted on them as children. But most of them never break free of it.”

  Well, thanks a lot! Never break free of it. That’s really fucking heartwarming.

  I walked the thirty blocks to Carnegie Hall, trying to understand what he was telling me. What did I want from Mike? Was I really looking for men who would mistreat me? No—that was insane. (Was I insane?) And this business about history repeating itself—surely there was some way to avoid that, no? I mean, if I actually understood what I was doing, why couldn’t I just stop doing it? But what was I doing exactly? I just wanted to be wanted. That’s all.

  CHRISTIE BRINKLEY IN PALM SPRINGS. I WAS TRYING TO GET HER TO QUIT SMOKING.

  And then it hit me. Christ! He’s right. My father didn’t want me. He wanted lips and a warm mouth, not the person who was attached. Me, Janice. And then I thought about my conversation with Calvin, about this crazy business, how it’s all about surface. Nobody cared about the real Janice, about what I had going on inside. And then I wondered, What if I look inside and find nothing? And that scared the hell out of me.

  So I decided thinking was too fucking hard. I would stop thinking. Period. I mean, I was just a dumb model, right?

  When I got home—my head still reeling from Deep Thought—Mike told me he’d just booked a job with French Vogue. He was supposed to go to Palm Springs and shoot some desert stuff. The French are big on sand and cacti.

  “I told them I was using you,” he said. He said it like he was doing me a favor. Very off-the-cuff. But the truth is, he needed me. He was lucky to have me. And he knew it.

  “Fine,” I said. Janice the Doormat.

  “We’ll fly to L.A. and drive down.”

  “Is it just me?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t we take Christie?” I suggested.

  “Why?”

  I told him I wanted to take some pictures of her, which was true. I was honing my skills as a photographer. But in retrospect I think I might have had something else in mind. If I didn’t have the strength to call it quits with Mike, maybe there was another way to break free.

  We stayed in a motel in the middle of nowhere, a few miles from Palm Springs. Christie flew out with us. She had a friend in Palm Springs—Delphine, a French girl with whom she’d gone to the Lycée Français. Delphine came out to see us the second day we were there. She was sexy in a trashy, stripperish way—which was appropriate, since that’s what she was, a stripper.

  PIERRE HOULES IN PARIS.

  She watched us work in the broiling sun, and I got the feeling modeling must have seemed pretty unglamorous to her. When we got back we had dinner, drank too much wine, and Christie went to bed early. But I was kind of intrigued by Delphine. I asked Mike if he was interested in getting together with both of us. I asked him in front of Delphine. Delphine smiled. What was Mike going to say? No?

  It was, well, different. The taste. The smell. Sort of unexpected, though I don’t know exactly why: I’ve got one of my own.

  Delphine and I were going at it long after Mike was finished. I enjoyed it. So did she. You know why? I’m a woman, I know where everything is, I know what feels good. You’d be surprised at how many guys can’t find their way to the clitoris, even when you’re pushing their faces in it.

  Delphine was gone in the morning. Mike and I never even talked about our little adventure. We shot some more pictures that morning and went into town for lunch. Late in the afternoon, when it had cooled off somewhat, I took some pictures of Christie. I never told her about Delphine.

  When we got back to New York, I showed my desert shots of Christie to Pierre Houles. “You’re better than Mike,” he said. (And he was one of Mike’s best friends!) “And you made Christie look so beautiful. I see things here that I didn’t see in her when we first met.”

  Pierre called Christie and invited her to his studio for a shoot. She was delighted. And of course they ended up in bed.

  In December, Mike and I went to Saint Moritz and we asked them along. Mike had a nine-year-old son, Sandro, from a previous marriage. He lived in Paris with his mom. The Christmas visit to Saint Moritz was an annual tradition with his father. I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to disappoint Sandro.

  ON A SKI LIFT IN SAINT MORITZ. THE FIRST TIME I SAW SNOW ON A MOUNTAIN.

  We arrived at night and crashed early. I remember waking up the next morning and drawing the shades and looking out at the most majestic snow-capped mountains in the world, feeling horribly sad and empty.

  The next morning we all went skiing together. Mike and Pierre and Sandro and Christie and me. But I got lost—deliberately. I found myself standing on a snowy ledge, looking down at the village, sparkling below, and realizing that part of my life—the part with Mike Reinhardt—was coming to an end.

  The next day, Christie and I took lessons with an irresistibly gorgeous ski instructor. When a woman’s in love, she doesn’t even notice other men. Well, okay, she might notice them, but she never wants them. She’s in love, for Christ’s sake. And I wanted this guy. I was starving for him.

  CHRISTIE AND MIKE IN PALM SPRINGS.

  The last night of our vacation, Mike cooked an amazing dinner. It was a very homey scene. Sandro went to bed early, and the rest of us sat around drinking and eating; Mike and I smoked a little dope. But I slipped Mike and Pierre a little something extra with their wine: crushed Valium.

  After they’d passed out, I told Christie I was going to pay a call on our ski instructor. I made her come with me. We trekked through the crunchy snow, beneath the low-hanging moon, and found our way to his chalet. We got a little silly, and I necked with him, and we both got pretty hot and bothered. But I’d brought Christie along to keep me honest. And I stayed honest.

  At about three in the morning, we went back. I opened the door and stepped through and boom!—confrontation time. Mike closed the door, and I just stood there against the wall as he called me every ugly name in the book. I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

  In the morning we drove down from the mountains to the airport. Nobody spoke. Mike flew to Paris to take his son home. Pierre and Christie and I returned to New York.

  I called a realtor the moment I got home from the airport and was out looking at apartments the next day. I found a place on 93rd Street, a three-story walk-up. I was alone and scared and almost didn’t go through with it, but in the end I signed the lease. It was mine. I had a home of my own for the first time in my life.

  A few weeks later, Christie dumped Pierre and moved in with Mike.

  PARTY GIRL

  After I got the news about Christie I sat in my new apartment for days, staring at the walls, wondering how I’d made such a mess of my life. On the fourth day, Calvin Klein called.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You so
und strange.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. My tongue seemed to have grown too big for my mouth.

  “I’m about to launch the biggest runway show of my career,” Calvin said. “Tell me you’re available.”

  I almost wept with relief. Work was just what I needed. In work there is escape. “Well,” I said, trying to keep my emotions in check, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  It was a slamming show. Calvin rounded up all the hottest models, male and female, and made it a party. There’s an energy in runway work you don’t find anywhere else. It’s electric, full of passion and adrenaline. Everyone becomes your New Best Friend. We’re all in this together, you think. And aren’t we just fucking great!

  I loved working with Patti Hansen. She was seeing Keith Richards, who hung out in back telling outrageous stories about Mick and Jerry Hall. He looked like an insect; no, he looked like an ad for chewing tobacco—with those hollowed-out cheeks and his evil teeth. Beverly Johnson was there, too. She was very cool, almost detached. I suspected there was a lot going on inside her—but this was a surface business, so I knew better than to ask.

  The men were dreamy—and, no, not all of them were gay. Charlie Haughk was a fine specimen, though he didn’t have much of an edge. I heard he lived with his mother, out in Brooklyn. But he had style. He wore Hawaiian shirts before anyone else had even heard of them, and he had a collection of straw fedoras. Tony Spinelli was there, too. I had worked with him and Irving Penn; he was luscious. I just wanted to fuck him. And—oops!—guess what? I did.

  Here’s what happened. We’re backstage before the show. Everyone is running around like crazy. Half-naked, excited. You can hear the audience starting to arrive and take their seats. Anybody who means anything in the business is going to be out there, watching, judging, and that only adds to the nervous buzz. So you’re excited and half-naked and hot and nervous and surrounded by the most beautiful people in the world, and suddenly you find yourself horsing around with a perfect-looking man who wants you—and what do you do? You find a closet and you lift up your skirt and you fuck him. And you fuck faster because the show’s about to start—the G-rated show—and then you come and he explodes inside you and you barely have time to catch your breath and, boom!—you’re disengaged and heading for the runway.

  And Calvin is screaming, “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere!” And the dressers are hovering around you, their hands flapping like nervous birds, trying to undo the mess you’ve made. And then you feel the come dripping down your leg, and you smile at Calvin and say, “I was fucking Tony Spinelli, and it was great, thank you very much,” and then you’re on the runway, trying to keep your knees from buckling.

  And I was good at that runway stuff. Sure, when I’d started, I was as nervous as the next neophyte. All the shit you have to remember. It’s not just about walking, people. You have to hit your marks for the photographers. At the midpoint, you pause and give them the full shot, head to toe. At the end of the runway, it’s the bodice shot, so you give them your trademark smile. On the return trip they want a shot of the back of the dress, so you turn your head a little and give them a nice profile. And, if you can swing it, you make sure they can squeeze the designer’s logo into the shot.

  I was a pro by this time. As you start getting comfortable with the routine, you learn how to work the crowd—which is what it’s all about. My friends would all score front-row seats and egg me on, and I’d dish with them as I sashayed my way along. There’s real energy out there. And the photographers—Jesus! They’re shouting your name—“Janice! Janice, over here!”—like they can’t get enough of you. It’s pure performance. They love you and you’re flying and you began to feel like a rock star out there and you think, I could get addicted to this.

  Speaking of addiction, I was becoming quite the regular at Studio 54. On one level, I guess it was just plain fun. But I had a broader definition of “fun” in those days. Steve Rubell, the eternally stoned co-owner, was very generous with his drugs—mostly cocaine—but you could get anything you wanted from those cute, shirtless bartenders. I also became addicted to the noise. It was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think, which was fine, since I didn’t want to think. And the sex—everything you’ve heard is true, and then some.

  Guys making out with guys. People fucking in the bathrooms. Drug-addled girls bent over the bar snorting while some sleazoid took them from behind. Sex sex sex. And somehow, since the common denominator was sex, all these crazy groups—the druggies, the fags, the black-leather set—managed to coexist quite nicely, thank you very much.

  It’s strange. Decadent as it seems now, I look back on it and think there was a certain honesty to the scene. It’s like people were saying, Yeah, we’re animals. We fuck. You can put us in nice clothes and take us out to watch Shakespeare in the Park but we’re still animals deep down, and we like fucking best of all. It’s all about fucking. Life is about fucking. Shakespeare is about fucking. Beethoven is about fucking. Name one thing that isn’t about fucking.

  And they were all there (though, admittedly, not all of them were fucking). All the people from People, glossy pages come to life. Smiling and cooing at each other. Look at us. Aren’t we special? Aren’t we interesting?

  One night I was there with this mildly interesting conga player who didn’t understand why I refused to go to bed with him. “Well, you know, we’ve had dinner all of two times,” I said. “I’m an old-fashioned girl. I believe in courtship.” He didn’t like that, and I got tired of listening to him whine, so I excused myself to use the bathroom. A girl was going down on another girl in the stall next to mine—yawn—and I did my business and left and bumped into Warhol. “Janice,” he said in that sweet voice. “Come over here and fill me up. I’ve been feeling so empty all day.” He always had his camera around his neck. He took it off and held it up and snapped another in a series of self-portraits, Andy and Janice at Studio, # 317. Some geeky guy was watching us. He was looking at me like he wanted to fuck me, again, since clearly he’d already fucked me—in his head—and come. Andy took me by the elbow and hustled me off. “How did he get in?” he wondered. “Who’s manning the barricades?” There was another guy wearing leather chaps and nothing else. He looked like something out of Midnight Cowboy, something that hadn’t made the final cut. Andy whinnied in my ear and led me to a quiet corner and sat me down.

  “So?” he said. “Talk.” Andy had many gifts, among them the ability to really listen. He’d ask you a question and look at you with this sort of gentle intensity, genuinely wanting to hear your answer. He was curious about a spread he’d seen in an Italian men’s magazine. “You looked like you were about to blow the camera,” he said. “Those lips must reduce grown men to tears.”

  “Thank you—I think.”

  Then Iman came over and asked me to take her to Rubell’s office, so I kissed Andy good-bye and off we went. I saw the conga player, scanning the crowd, looking for me, and I yanked Iman into a corridor until the coast was clear.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t think I’m putting out fast enough,” I said.

  Rubell greeted us like royalty. There was no incense or myrrh, but there was plenty of nose candy.

  Calvin Klein showed up. I thought he’d be mad at me, given our recent blowup at his runway show, but he was very friendly. No, that’s not right; this went well beyond friendly. He kept telling me how hot I looked. Fabulous. Yummy. And I did look hot. I was wearing a beautiful Sonya Rykiel cashmere dress, with pearls, and my hair was fucking perfect. Just thinking about it now makes me hot. Excuse me for a moment…

  So where was I? Oh, right—in Rubell’s office, with Calvin and Iman. And Calvin invites us back to his place. And we score a cab on 54th and get dropped at his Upper East Side apartment. And up we go. And Calvin makes us drinks and he keeps ogling me and saying, “You look hot, Janice. No, seriously. Really hot. I mean, hot.”

  And Iman sa
ys, “I think she gets it, Calvin.”

  And Calvin leaves the room and comes back a few moments later, having slipped out of his pants, to get comfortable. So now he’s sitting there in a boxy silk shirt and no pants and Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear and fucking knee socks. It was bizarre. Maybe he thought he looked hot. So I told him, “You look really hot, Calvin. I mean, hot. I love the socks.” But he didn’t catch the irony. Then I said, “Why don’t you do a line of underwear? Just put your name on it. I bet it’ll sell.” And his eyes lit up, but he didn’t say anything. He should have said, “Janice, you’re a genius. I’ll cut you in for ten percent.” But he didn’t.

  And then Iman changed the subject, saying, “That Studio. Those boys are really raking it in, huh?”

  CALVIN KLEIN, IMAN, AND BARRY SCHWARTZ DURING THE STUDIO 54 DAYS.

  It sure looked that way. And I guess the Internal Revenue Service was curious, too. They’d probably heard about the garbage bags full of cash that left the club every night. I wondered if they knew that Rubell liked dumping the cash on his bed and getting naked with young boys and coming into money, as it were.

  In December 1978, the Organized Crime Strike Force raided the club. It was big news. The U.S. Attorney’s Office claimed that Rubell and Schrager had two sets of books, one of which they cooked to avoid taxes. Apparently, along with the two sets of books, they found other books with lists of names—the People people, and next to each name a little notation about the drugs they liked and the kind of sex they enjoyed. Hey, it was a full-service club. Gotta keep the clients happy.

  There was a big party for Rubell and Schrager before they were sentenced. Halston was in charge. Everyone was there. Bianca, Warhol, Liza Minnelli. Richard Gere. Janice Dickinson…

  Diana Ross sang for the guests. I envied her, up there on the stage, bathed in light, looking like an angel…