But the truth is, it was all very sad. The party was over. It felt like a funeral. Studio 54 had been a place to run to when you were lonely. Just getting through the front door made you feel special, anointed. And once you were inside, you were with family. You felt accepted, validated, loved. So what if it wasn’t real? It felt real. And we all need our illusions.
For a while, to fill the gap left by Studio’s disappearance, people concentrated on dinner parties. Diane von Furstenburg gave great dinner parties. Then it was skating parties. Everyone would meet at the roller rink and get stoned on mushrooms and go happily crazy. I kept running into Charlie Haughk at these things; you couldn’t miss the Hawaiian shirts. One night after work he took me to John’s Pizza, on Bleecker Street. Best pizza in New York. We ran into his father, Charles Sr. He was wearing a shoulder holster. I was a little taken aback, admittedly: Charlie never mentioned that his old man was a detective with the NYPD. And, shit! I had a gram of coke in my purse. I kept thinking he was waiting for me to finish my pizza before throwing me against the wall and busting me. He didn’t, of course. He was a very sweet guy. Told me he was a big fan. Told me Charlie was a big fan. It was odd. I almost felt he wanted to see us together, me and Junior, out in Bayside, maybe, dodging rugrats behind a white picket fence.
Meanwhile, the work kept coming. But not at home. I went to Mexico City for Mexican Vogue; the cover. Mexican Vogue, not American Vogue. Big difference. But I wasn’t going to complain. Then I went to Greece, to shoot a cover for Vogue; Greek Vogue. Next, I was on a plane to South Africa, sitting in the first-class section next to a large woman, admiring the pictures Irving Penn had taken of me at Jones Beach, along with Patti Hansen and Shawn Casey. The large woman was eating peanuts, and she recognized me, and she went to say something…but one of the peanuts got lodged in her throat. Her large neck started to blow up like a balloon. And the next thing I know she’s on her back, in the aisle, her skin a deep shade of purplish blue. And I’m watching the stewardess perform an emergency tracheotomy. It was so horrible I had to watch.
The plane made an emergency landing, and the woman survived. Everyone was so impressed with the heroic stewardess that they applauded. I applauded, too. I was thinking, The next time somebody chokes on my beauty, I’ll know how to save their life.
One afternoon, back in the States, where I remained unfairly underappreciated, I got a call from Calvin. It was strange: I’d misbehaved during the runway show, and I’d made fun of his knee socks, and he still wanted to be my best friend. But suddenly it became crystal clear. He was doing a major show in Japan, for Isotan—the big department store. I was a star in Japan. One of my first big shoots with Mike had been for Suntori liquors. The result—a poster of me, head to toe, in a skintight yellow bathing suit—had become a collector’s item. In other words, Calvin needed me.
HAVING A LITTLE TOO MUCH FUN AT A FUNERAL PROCESSION IN TOKYO.
The minute the chartered plane took off, of course, someone offered me some drugs. Since we didn’t want to risk getting busted in Tokyo, we figured we might as well consume everything then and there. I had tons of friends on the flight—among them Iman and Charlie Haughk—and under the influence of the drugs I just let loose and joined the bacchanal. Some people were doing lines on their pull-out trays, a couple of gay boys were fucking in the bathroom. It was wild. Some were trying on clothes for the show and walking around the plane bare-assed. I was photographing everything. One famous model pushed her crotch in my face and said “take this” and I did. I have a wonderful photograph of a famous pussy, but that’s not for sale either.
Once in Tokyo, all of us managed, miraculously, to pull ourselves together for the first show, but I ran into a little problem on the second day. I was in makeup, getting ready for Round Two, when I saw a bottle of Vitamin C. I thought I felt a cold coming on—my nose was running, though of course it was the cocaine—so I helped myself to a couple.
Turns out they were somebody’s Quaaludes, in disguise. And they kicked in, big-time, about a minute before I was due to step onto the runway. One of the assistants saw I was in trouble and propped me up on a stool. Calvin came walking past just as I slid to the floor. I couldn’t have timed it better, but what choice did I have? My spine had turned to jelly. Charlie Haughk hurried over and tried to set me back on the stool.
“What the fuck is going on?” Calvin said between clenched teeth. “I told all of you—no drugs!” I could understand why he was upset. The cream of Japanese society was on the far side of the curtain. He had a lot riding on the show.
“It was an accident,” I mumbled. I could hardly talk. “I didn’t know, Calvin. I swear to God.”
“Get her out of my sight,” he snapped.
“Don’t be such a prick, Calvin,” I slurred. “I’m here because I’m doing you a favor. I’m more famous in Japan than you’ll ever be.”
Calvin was steaming. Or maybe I was hallucinating: That certainly looked like real steam coming out of his real ears.
“You will never work with me again, Janice,” he said, going red in the face. “You have my solemn promise on that.”
Charlie Haughk took me back to my hotel. He was very sweet. I was really out of it and I didn’t want to fall asleep in the cab, so I asked him to talk to me. He told me all about living in Brooklyn, in the projects, with his mom. He told me he was a triple black belt. He told me he thought I was the hottest bitch he’d ever seen. Okay, there are nicer ways to tell a girl you like her. But hey, Charlie was a street kid. And at least he was honest.
I didn’t sleep with him on that trip. But the trip we took later that year, to China for a Bloomingdale’s shoot, was another story. One day we were taking a cab to some tourist attraction. I had my cameras with me—I was honing my skills as a photographer—when we saw a bunch of Chinese guys practicing their martial arts schtick at the edge of a city park. I told the driver to pull over. I didn’t speak Chinese, of course, but I noticed that if you say HEE YAAAAA! in a really loud voice, it generally gets their attention.
“Why don’t you go over there and show me what you’ve got?” I told Charlie. The fact is, I didn’t believe his triple black belt stuff. Or black belt third-degree. Or whatever the hell he called it.
“Come on, Janice,” he said. “It’s not right.”
“What’s the matter?” I said. “You afraid?”
I can be such a bitch.
Charlie got out of the cab. I followed. He went over and did a little bowing and scraping and somehow, using hand signals and whatnot, the Chinese guys understood that the pretty American man in the loud Hawaiian shirt wanted to spar a little. They were delighted. Charlie took them on, one at a time, and—without hurting them—showed them (and me) what he was made of.
It made my Little Flower tingle.
I slept with Charlie for a few months. But he was too nice to me. What good was he if he couldn’t help me with my repetition compulsion?
Back in New York, the 1980s were shaping up like one big hangover headache. Rubell and Schrager had hired Roy Cohn, one of the biggest heavyweights in town, to defend them. But it didn’t help. They were fined for tax evasion and sentenced to three and a half years in federal prison.
People talked about it for a while, but then we all seemed to move on with our lives. It bothered me. I mean, it’s not like they were my best friends or anything. But I’d known Rubell pretty well. And it just seemed so hopelessly sad. It made me feel lonely; the world felt like a colder place.
Later that year, worse news. Wilhelmina was hospitalized with lung cancer. All those goddamn cigarettes had done her in, and she was only forty years old. She had two children, twelve and five. I’d met them once or twice. I felt awful.
I told myself I was going to visit her in the hospital, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t have the courage.
Gia went. She told me she climbed into the hospital bed and held her, and that Willie assured her she’d be out of bed
in no time. And then weeks later she was dead, of course.
I went to the funeral. It was a media event. It’s funny how you read about funerals in the paper the next day, and the reporters always point out how many mourners showed up, like it’s a competition or something. It was all very unsettling. All these people looking so chic in black. And all they talked about afterward was how it would affect business, and their careers, and what was going to happen to their little lives.
I wasn’t much better than they were. I couldn’t believe Willie was dead. She was the one who had validated me when I was starting out. Now she was gone. Did that mean I was over?
It was all so cheap. And it made me feel cheap because I was part of it.
I needed some drugs. They weren’t hard to find, in that crowd.
What was that line from Alice in Wonderland? Something about running twice as fast just to stay in place. Well, that’s how I felt. I felt like running.
MAKING IT?
In 1981, Mark Fleischman, a New York City developer, purchased Studio 54 for close to five million dollars. He didn’t want the party to stop, and who were we to argue? So we went back, like sheep. There was something tired and forced about it, yes, and it wasn’t the same without Rubell’s vibe, and once in a while I got the sense that we were all faking it, but it was still a good party. Right?
Well, okay. Not really. But if you tell yourself you’re having fun often enough, you begin to believe it. And we wanted to believe.
I saw Peter Beard there one night and went by his place a few days later to say hello and ask for his professional advice. Peter Beard, you’ll recall, was the photographer who “discovered” Iman, the African warrior. He was also married, briefly, to Cheryl Tiegs. When I walked into his place that afternoon, the first thing I saw was Mike’s Suntori poster. Me, seven feet tall, sleek in that skintight yellow bathing suit.
“You know,” Peter told me, “when Cheryl first saw that poster, she ran her fingernails down the length of your entire body, like a cat, and said, ‘Peter, you take Janice off the wall or I walk.’”
I loved that story.
POSING NEXT TO MY HOT LITTLE BOD IN PETER BEARD’S SCRAPBOOK.
“So what can I do you for?” Peter asked. It was almost noon; I was on my first glass of wine.
“I was hoping you’d take a look at some pictures I shot in China,” I told him. And I brought them out.
Peter was so impressed that I made an appointment with the art director at Bloomingdale’s, and he was so impressed that they put the photographs on exhibit at their flagship store, on Lexington Avenue and 59th. I was on top of the world. Whenever I was in the neighborhood, I would go by and look at them, out there in the windows for the whole world to see, and eavesdrop on people’s conversations.
“Janice Dickinson? The model? She takes pictures, too? I don’t believe it.”
Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Hell, don’t hate me because I’m talented.
Some time later, I got a call from Bill Cosby’s people. They were developing some ideas for television, they said, and Bill had been following my career with interest. He thought I had the right stuff. All I could think was, Model, photographer, actress. Is there anything this girl can’t do?
Cosby was staying on Fifth Avenue, at the swank Sherry-Netherland Hotel, overlooking Central Park. I was asked to meet him for lunch, and I was so excited about my new acting career that I ran out and spent nine hundred dollars on a new outfit.
I walked into the restaurant and saw him across the room, and he stood and smiled his big Jell-O smile. He took my hand in both his hands, and thanked me for coming. Telly Savalas was with him. Don’t ask me why. Savalas stood and shook my hand, too, and gave me that crazy look from The Dirty Dozen. If you don’t remember the movie, rent it. Savalas is very good in it. He’s insane.
We sat and chatted about our busy lives, enjoying that overhasty intimacy that comes with showbiz membership. At one point I reminded Savalas that he’d been one of the judges at the Waldorf-Astoria—a lifetime ago, it seemed—when I made my New York debut. He just grinned and looked at me with those big eyes, like he wanted to ravage and murder me at the same time.
Then Cosby asked about my acting experience. Just getting through the day was acting, I joked, and he and Savalas found this very funny indeed. And then I told him the truth: that I had only acted once in my life, in high school, as Lady Macbeth. But when King Duncan started forgetting his lines, I was forced to turn the play into a comedy. This got a lot of laughs from the audience—and, when it ended, a standing ovation—but the drama teacher wasn’t exactly cheering.
Cosby wondered whether I could sing. “Well,” I said, “Muddy Waters seems to think so.” And I told them the Muddy Waters story.
Both men grinned through the entire lunch. Grinned and stared and drooled. At one point I thought Savalas might ask his buddy Bill to hold me down while he had a go at me, right there on the table. But they were both unfailingly polite. And before I left Cosby asked me to do two things for him. First he wanted me to read An Actor Prepares, by Stanislavski. Next, and far more important, he wondered if I would be good enough to give him my home number.
When it was time to say good-bye, he walked me across the lobby, to the door, oblivious to the ogling fans (his fans, alas, not mine). “You have it, Janice,” he said. “It,” of course, is that magnetic inner glow thing that really gifted actors are said to possess. I’ve only seen it up close twice in my life. Once was with Jack Nicholson. He had it. The other was with Mick Jagger. He had it to spare. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I spent the following day devouring An Actor Prepares, and beginning, unfortunately, to take myself oh-so-seriously. So I was plenty prepared by the time Cosby called. He told me I should buzz Stubie Gardner, his musical supervisor. He was here in Manhattan, standing by for my call. Again he told me how beautiful I was, how powerfully I had affected him, and how much he wanted to see me again. It would have been nice to hear that under any circumstances, but in those post-Mike days all that soft soap was especially welcome.
I called Stubie and arranged to meet him the next evening. When the time came, I found myself standing next to his piano, trying not to betray my nervousness. But when I opened my mouth to sing, I can’t honestly say the angels in heaven pulled out their little trumpets. Stubie looked up from his piano bench with one of those silly smiles glued to his face. He was horrified, and hoping against hope that his eyes wouldn’t betray him.
Just then Cosby arrived, smoking a big cigar. He marched over and took my hand and literally bowed and kissed it. My Black Prince!
“So,” he asked Stubie, “how was she?”
“Great,” Stubie said. The silly smile remained in place.
At that moment I had a small epiphany: This is why there’s so much shit on TV and in the movies! Because people always lie to people in power. No one has the courage to tell them the truth!
“I’m glad to hear that,” Cosby said. He stuck that big cigar in his mouth and licked it. I tried not to read too much into that cigar. Maybe it’s true that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Cosby turned to look at Stubie and said with great gravity: “Because I’m thinking about having her open for me in Vegas.”
An assistant poked his head inside. “Mr. Cosby,” he said. “Your wife is on the line.” Cosby looked at the assistant as if he wanted to kill him. This was no time to be bothered with the fact that he was married. He turned and took both my hands in his, smiled sweetly, said he’d call me later. Then went off to deal with his wife.
I turned to look at Stubie. “What do you think?” I asked.
WITH PETER BEARD IN HIS STUDIO, 1984.
“I think he likes you,” he said.
“Really?” I said. I felt like a five-year-old, hungry for approval.
“Really,” Stubie said. He was still smiling that stupid smile, only now it looked like it was starting to hurt.
I left the studio and hurried off.
It was pouring out, and I was late for dinner with Debbie, so I charmed some middle-aged man into sharing a cab with me. He was very nice. He talked about his wife and kids all the way uptown, then asked if he could see me some time. I told him he should be ashamed of himself and got out and hurried through the rain to Debbie’s building. She and Edward Tricome had parted, now she’d found a nice little flat in a quaint old building on the East Side. She was an Uptown Girl all the way.
I told her the whole Cosby story. “I think he wants to sleep with me,” I said.
“Of course he wants to sleep with you,” she said. “You can’t sing.”
Debbie could be blunt like that. And as self-absorbed as the next model. Suddenly we were talking about her brilliant career. She was worried; she didn’t have her next gig lined up. Guy Bourdin was having an open casting for a lingerie catalog for Bloomingdale’s. I figured we should go together.
“Are you interested?” I asked.
“Are you kidding!?” she said. “Where do I sign up?”
The phone rang. It was Alexis. She sounded depressed, so I told her to come to town for a lingerie shoot. I don’t know what I was thinking, except that I was always worried about Alexis. I’m sure guilt had something to do with it: I had this crazy image of her living in a commune without electricity or running water, selling beaded necklaces by the side of a rural highway. And I felt she deserved better.
“But I’m not a model,” Alexis protested.
“No,” I said, “but you have a perfect ass.”
When I got off the phone, Debbie looked crushed. “More perfect than mine?” she asked.
“No, Debbie,” I said with a tired sigh. “You have a perfect ass, too.”
The phone rang again. I thought it would be Alexis, but it was Julio Iglesias. Yes, that Julio Iglesias. Debbie had a taste for the exotic, as it were.
Alexis arrived a few days later—Cosby never called, by the way—and we did the lingerie shoot with Guy Bourdin.
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