Everything About Me Is Fake . . . And I'm Perfect (8 page)

                Now that I’m in AA, though, I finally have a
haven in life—a haven where I can come clean, faults and all, and be welcomed
without judgment. “Hi, I’m Janice,” I say. “I’m an alcoholic, drug addict, sex
addict, candy addict, shopaholic, and all the other aholics in between. Yes,
that would be me. But I’m here to tell you that I got to the other side, and
now I’m here to be of service to others.”

                “Hi, Janice,” my fellow addicts say warmly,
and I feel at home. I don’t want to come off like some Alcoholics Anonymous
warrior. But my friend Tony, and others, recognized that this was the ideal
program for me because a good way to get out of my own head is to be of service
to the community, society, and mankind. It can be as simple as smiling at
someone at a traffic light. I just want to spread the warmth. At the grocery
store, I’ll tell someone, “That’s a very nice way you wear your hair.” Who
doesn’t want to hear one nice thing about themselves each day?

                I tell everyone I know to try the same thing
themselves. It feels just as good to give as it does to receive—sometimes even
better. E V E R Y T H I N G A B O U T M E I S F A K E . . . A N D I ’ M P E R F
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                The other thing that feels good to me is
staying busy. Personally, if I’m not multitasking, I go insane. I can walk the
dog in Gucci stilettos, stretch in my workout clothes, and talk on my cell all
at once. If you need stress relief, stretching can be your friend. Harboring
stress is the worst possible thing for your body and soul: keep too much
inside, and you’ll end up acting it out in other ways.

                So try everything you need to work it out
until you find what works. Tap dance, talk fast, work hard, play hard. Just get
it out. As Diana Vreeland once said, “The most extraordinary thing you can do
is just feel the power of the waves.”

                Waves are great, and sometimes I let the
ones inside me roar because I know one thing: it’s okay to be vulnerable today.
And tomorrow. And the next day.

                24.

               
Compulsives Anonymous

                I work like a demon when it comes to
everything—self, children, dogs, house, boyfriends, and friends. I need my own
madness in order to keep the career going. At a certain point, it has less to
do with brains and more to do with nonstop drive. My mantra is, “Just do
something, and do it as hard as possible.”

                But it sucks to be this compulsive. I suffer
for beauty, for work, for love; I’m always moving at 500 miles per hour. My
mind knows no speed limit. In my blindness to keep pushing forward, I often
wonder: What makes me so compulsive? And is it bad for me to be this motivated
when I’m trying to maintain an optimistic worldview?

                Here’s one thing I’ve learned: It was my
father who made me this compulsive. Whenever I’m left to my own devices—when I’m
not out there trying to break down walls—all my abuse issues come to the
forefront. I still hear his ugly voice constantly in my ear: “You’re not good
enough. You’ll never amount to anything.” After living through the storms of my
childhood, you might think I’d find tranquillity as an adult who knows it all.
I wish it were so.

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J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

                Just knowing isn’t good enough. Just
understanding why doesn’t make me happy. Now the problem isn’t someone else
telling me that awful stuff. The problem is me telling myself I’m not good
enough, and I can do that on a daily basis for one simple reason: I’m never
satisfied. At times, of course, I am content—when I go out on the town wearing
a beautiful black cocktail dress with dope evening shoes, or when I dine at a
lovely restaurant

                But that happiness is fleeting. Because the
minute I go home and take off the threads, my mind races and demands, “Now
what?”

                The need to keep moving forward brings me
right back to that ballet class I took as a child. I was never satisfied with
the basic ballet positions the school taught me. First, second, third
position—give me a break. I wanted to expand upon them, improve them, to create
new positions that came from me.

                As a teenager I was a skinny nothing, so I
rode my bike five miles every day to the beach to make sure my legs changed
shape (it worked).

                “Get your ass moving, Janice,” I berated
myself every time I slowed down. When that stopped working, I enrolled in
karate classes, even though some of the older guys hurt me when we sparred
together because they were so much bigger. “Flying side kicks will make for a
firm butt,” I told myself to get past the pain. Was it obsessive? You bet my
increasingly cuter ass it was. When you’re an obsessive kid that way, let me
tell you—you never shake it.

                The other day, when I popped into the
Starbucks by my house, I overheard a woman in front of me complaining to her
friend, “I never lose any weight, even though I’m on my treadmill for an hour a
day and take a yoga class,” she said. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do.
I’m ready to kill myself.”

                “Excuse me, ladies,” I interrupted,
addressing the potential treadmill suicide. “Can I just interrupt to say I
overheard your entire conversation, and you look fabulous.”

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                I meant it, despite the fact that she was a
large blonde woman far from the dewy, spindly model type with 0 percent body
fat. She was a chunky chick by most standards—but she was still completely
stunning. That’s why I felt the need to pay her a compliment.

                Of course, she refused to take it that way. “How
can you possibly say I look good,” she retorted. “Look at you!”

                I took a deep breath and reminded myself
that this woman wasn’t angry with me, but with herself. “You know what?” I
offered. “Why not try to find some balance in your life? I’ve led a life of
fucking-bingingpurging-working-out-until-you-drop. Believe me, I didn’t feel
the way you think I felt when I looked the way you want to look.”

                “Like you ever feel bad about yourself,” her
friend muttered.

                “Honey,” I responded, bringing it down one
level to a place where we could all relate—supermodel to model woman. “Look, I’ve
got my period right now. I’ve been so bloated for two days that I think I might
explode. I’m on the verge of hemorrhaging, but I still can’t miss one day of
yoga class. Because I’m just as obsessive as you are.” The women fell silent.
Now we were on a level playing field.

                “And as for not liking myself? Let me just
say that when I’m up five pounds with water bloat and blood, I have so much
self-loathing going on that I want to throw myself in front of a Mack truck.
And the only thing that keeps me from going through with it is the idea that I’ll
miss, get clipped, and then be scarred for life. You know, one more thing to
worry about,” I said, fishing around my Prada bag for my coffee money. By this
point, the women were in hysterics.

                “Clearly, you ladies better not argue with
me anymore because I’m hormonal, but my fucking yoga teacher just told me that
I need to learn how to embrace the hormones. Come to terms with them.”

                “Fuck him,” said the first woman.

                “Exactly,” her friend affirmed. “Screw him,
in the most Zen way.”

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J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

                How compulsive am I about having this
fantasy life I’ve created in my own mind?

                Well, a few weeks ago my loving son Nathan
didn’t get me a Mother’s Day card or a present. Fuck that behavior! I was
really hurt because Nathan is growing into a young man now, and he’s old enough
to know better. Apparently his father didn’t even suggest that he buy his own
mother a lousy card. In my mind, he should have insisted: “Nathan, do something
nice for your mother.” Hell, I’m always telling him, “Give your sister a hug.”
Kids need direction.

                So I stewed about that for weeks. For the
most part I kept it to myself, but I was mad.

                And then I realized something: in my own
compulsiveness, I was trying to write a script for everyone in my life. I was
trying to get them all to step up and fit themselves into my little vision of a
perfect world. I push my kids just as hard as I push myself, and I tell myself
it’s because it’s the right thing to do—but sometimes I realize it’s because I’m
still working out issues of my own.

                I’ve got to stop that. We all have to stop
that. And I’m trying. Really.
Sabotage: We All Do It

                Back in the late 1980s, on a Perry Ellis
shoot, I became fast friends with another model who had a serious coke habit.

                “You need help,” I told her through my own
drug haze, perfectly aware that I was talking not just to her, but to myself.
Well, my friend—we’ll call her Susan, for purposes of not ratting her out—was
smart enough to get herself into rehab that December. At the time, rehab was
becoming quite the chic place to spend the Christmas holidays. If you were too
young, too fast, and too rich, the way to ring in the New Year didn’t involve
debauchery at some tropical island, or even running up a billion dollars up and
down Madison Avenue. For once it was by doing what was actually good for one’s
health and sanity. Who would have thought?

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                The minute a hot model announced that she
would be “rehabbing,”

                though, the shit usually hit the fan—the
corporate shit, anyway. First of all, Susan’s agent didn’t think “a holiday
break” would be a good thing, because he knew he could book her straight
through to the New Year—

                racking up more money for her and more
commissions for himself. For Susan, of course, that would just mean more
opportunities to stress out and get wasted. But what did he care? What he
certainly didn’t want was his racehorse hanging out where the getting-to-know-you,
let’s-make-adeal cocktail of choice was Crystal Light or cranberry juice. Susan’s
bookers also went apeshit, warning her that she’d lose her spot in the modeling
pecking order if she dropped out of sight even for a few weeks. What was a girl
to do? Well, Susan was strong enough to tell them all to go to hell. “Happy
holidays, you assholes!” she said. “I’m going to rehab!”

                After clearing all the vodka and coke out of
her condo, she checked herself into a lovely California facility filled with
glamorous movie stars, rockers, and other beautiful people looking for a better
way. Her days were spent in group counseling sessions, where she talked about
her crappy mother and the guy who had raped her at age thirteen. For the first
time, Susan was actually talking about the things she’d been burying under
layers of designer clothes, pounds of makeup, and tons of drugs. The fashion
industry, of course, didn’t come to a grinding halt just because one babe went
AWOL for eight weeks. But there was one glitch for Susan. She was forced to
miss one final Perry Ellis shoot before the end of the year—and the rehab
offered no furlough for strutting your stuff in the Big Apple. Perry Ellis
cancelled her contract and refused to give her the promised Christmas bonus she’d
planned to use to pay for rehab. Her agent left her several frantic messages
explaining that she was also seriously pissing off Calvin and Ralph, who wanted
her to do holiday shows, and might not want to “deal with her” in the coming
year if she didn’t come through.

                I have to hand it to Susan: she finally told
the rehab people not to give her any more phone messages. She was sticking with
her plan—and if 240

J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

                she had to work at a convenience store when
she got out, well, so be it. She would wear polyester and be clean. End of
story. Cut to February. Susan was out of rehab, clean, sober, and feeling
great. An exec from one of the major fashion labels promptly invited her out to
dinner at the Ivy in Beverly Hills to discuss future contracts. (So much for
working that register!) It turns out he was willing to negotiate a nice long
contract with Susan, and to celebrate he had a wonderful idea.

                “I want to order the most expensive bottle
of wine on the list,” he announced. Now, this man knew Susan wasn’t drinking:
his company was one of the fashion houses that had wanted her while she was in
rehab, and her agent had been honest with them all.

                “But I’m just out of r-rehab,” Susan
stammered to this exec, not quite believing that anyone would want her to slide
back into the pit. “I’ll take a cranberry juice, and we can toast that way.”

                The exec just shook his head and ordered the
$200 bottle of wine. When it came to the table, he went through the whole vino
ritual: sniffing the cork, swirling it around in his glass, and tasting it. He
even took great pains to pour Susan her glass, and insisted that they toast. “Who
cares about sobriety?” he said. “You were much more fun before rehab.”

                Susan turned to the waiter, politely handed
him her glass of wine, and said, “I’ll have a cranberry juice.” The exec
shrugged and chugged down the rest of the bottle.

                Stories like this just go to show how many
people in this business (and in life) don’t want you to have it all together,
and couldn’t care less about your efforts to stay sane. That’s why it’s so
important to police yourself, and not let these assholes seduce you back to
those dark places you know aren’t good for you.