No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (14 page)

equalizer. These folks didn’t care that I was poor, white trash. Or at least they didn’t care enough to notice me. Or maybe they
didn’t
notice me. Or maybe I was having a good night; maybe I passed as one of “them.”

“What are you thinking about?” Guy asked me.

“That I deserve this,” I said.

Toward the tail end of dinner, he announced that his girlfriend was on her way back to Paris. I don’t know what he expected. Tears? I wasn’t upset. As I said, Guy was all about recreational sex. And that’s all I’d ever wanted from him.

“I’m not going to get all bent out of shape,” I told him.

“I knew this was coming.”

I think he was a little disappointed—men love it when women fall apart over them—but he hid it well. “You know something, Janice? You’re amazing.”

“I know.”

“You’re not going to make a scene?”

“Tell you the truth, I’m more concerned about living arrangements.”

I was sick of the “charming” girls from the Christa attic.

I was always running into them at the clubs around town.

They’d come over and fawn and tell me how fabulous I looked and go on and on about whatever layout they’d seen on the stands. And I would grin my alligator grin and hate them. Power does corrupt, I guess. And I had power. I was taking Paris by storm. And some of the girls, well—all they had was their masturbating Arabs. One of those poor things was so strung out on heroin she’d started hooking to keep the cash flowing. She looked worse than I’d looked on that fateful morning of the Christa cattle call. A
lot
worse.

“I’d still like to see you from time to time,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Does your girlfriend mind?”

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 97

After dinner, we went to Castel’s, a way-hot club, and bumped into John Casablancas. Casablancas ran Elite, a very happening Paris-based modeling agency. He told Guy that Mike Reinhardt had just done a fabulous shoot for him. Guy introduced us. Casablancas couldn’t have been less impressed. He looked me up and down with zero interest. That was his style. It was his way of telling me I’d never make it.

“What an asshole,” I told Guy after he left.

“It’s his loss,” he said.

I could have fucked Guy then and there. In fact, that’s what I did.

At the end of the week, just before Guy’s girlfriend arrived, I went to Noumea, New Caledonia, for a bikini shoot. (I really didn’t have to worry about living arrangements much; I was never “home.”) Benny Truitman was the photographer. He was a fat, mischievous guy who had made a name for himself taking pictures of Fiats, and I knew I was a lot better-looking than any car he’d ever photographed.

He had one shot where he got me in the ocean, half under water, half out—he had a camera made especially for the occasion—and there was a fucking great white shark hovering in the background. I didn’t know about the shark until one of the assistants told me to get the hell out of the water. Which I did. With alacrity. I love that word:
alacrity
.

Go look it up in the dictionary.

After a quick trip to Thailand for
Marie-Claire,
with Patty Oyai, another model, I took the train to Saint-Tropez to meet the great Helmut Newton. I checked into the beautiful hotel and there was no one around and I went outside and sat by the pool and had a drink. There was a cool breeze blowing and I felt very peaceful. Life was good. I closed my eyes for a minute and enjoyed the feel of the sun 98 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

on my skin. When I opened them, I saw this old guy

watching me from across the pool. We were the only two people around. He kept staring at me. I ignored him and lit another cigarette and looked away.

He came toward me. He looked like a horny old fucker, out to ruin my perfect afternoon. I wished he’d go away.

“Take off your clothes,” he said.

“What!?”

An elegant middle-aged woman had come out of the

hotel and was watching us from near the door.

“You heard me,” the man said. “Take off your clothes.”

“Fuck you, you dirty old perv!” I said.

I got up and stormed off. As I was approaching the hotel, I noticed that the woman was smiling. I didn’t understand what was so goddamn amusing. When I was within earshot, she said, “Helmut can be so difficult.”

Now I was really confused. “Excuse me?” I said.

“That’s my husband, Helmut Newton.”

“Oh my God,” I said. I’d totally blown it. I turned around. Helmut was coming toward us, on his way back to the hotel. He was seething.

“Mr. Newton,” I stammered.

“You’ll never work again,” he said, and moved past us into the hotel.

I buried my face in my hands. I thought I was going to die.

The woman laughed. “Forget about him,” she said.

“Why don’t you let me photograph you instead?”

“You?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’m a photographer, too. Maybe not so famous, but not so temperamental as my husband,

either. I’m Alice Springs.”

I was in shock. “Come on,” she said. “You are so

beautiful.”

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 99

We went inside—she took me by the hand and
dragged
me into the lobby—and she stopped to make a quick call on the courtesy phone. When she got through, she started barking at someone in French.
Vite vite. Maintenant. Tout
suite.
I just stood there, dazed, numb, writing my own modeling obituary in my head.

The next thing I know I’m down at the beach with Alice and her two assistants, in a gauzy cotton shirt, my hair glistening with globs of Brylcreem. And then I’m coming out of the water looking like Jacqueline Bisset in
The Deep,
but
sans
tits, admittedly. And Alice is snapping away, laughing, loving it, telling me I’m
magnifique, incroyable, delicieuse.

I made the cover of
Elle.
It was my very first cover. I was up at the crack of dawn the morning the magazine hit the stands. I couldn’t believe it—there I was, staring back at me.

What a feeling! On the
cover.
I looked like a water leopard in that tight, wet T-shirt. And my alligator grin wouldn’t quit. It was genuinely overwhelming. I started laughing like a crazy woman. People stared. I didn’t give a shit. I bought four copies and hurried back toward the apartment, but in my excitement I stumbled near the corner and one of the magazines slipped to the sidewalk. There was a man in a dirty white apron standing a few feet away, in front of the fish market, shucking oysters. He set down his knife and leaned over and reached for the magazine. As he handed it back, he noticed me on the cover. He looked from the magazine to my face and back again.

“C’est toi, non?”
he said, smiling.

I shook my head from side to side, grinning like a madwoman.
“Non,”
I said.
“C’est pas moi.”
No. It’s not me.

“Mais oui!”
he said, laughing.
“C’est toi!”

I took the magazine from his big cracked hands and

thanked him and hurried away, still laughing.

Patrick Demarchelier called later that day. He had seen

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

the cover and heard parts of the Helmut Newton story. “Is it true you told the old man to go fuck himself?” he asked.

Those were the first words out of his mouth.

“Yes,” I said. And I gave him the short version.

“I love it,” he said, laughing. “I want to hear the whole thing. In detail. You can tell me on the way to Morocco.”

And that was my next big shoot. Fucking Morocco! We drove up to the Berber Mountains and posed with the Blue Mountain Men. Patrick was brilliant. We were out in the dunes and he would wait until the sand and wind and light and breeze were just perfect—and
boom!
—he’d get his shots. He was the Ansel Adams of fashion.

“You know who you should work with?” Patrick said

that night, over dinner. And I said, “If you say Mike Reinhardt, I’ll kill you.” And of course he said Mike Reinhardt.

When I got back to Paris, people began to notice me. I’m not just talking about people on the street, either. Reporters started calling.
Who are you? Where did you come from?

We’ve never seen anyone like you!

PATRICK DEMARCHELIER.

I LOVE PATRICK!

ªªªªªªªªªªªªªª

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 101

It was a trip. I loved the attention. I felt energized. I would leap out of bed in the morning, excited about the day ahead. And so
grateful.
The French photographers were turning me into the star the Americans had said I’d never become. Back then, there was this crazy notion of American beauty, like it was the goddamn gold standard or something. And I’d been told I didn’t have it—which was true, I guess. I wasn’t blond, and I was too exotic, and my almond-shaped eyes made me look Asian. But what the fuck is wrong with that, people?

Most models—hey, they just show up and look beautiful and they’re off. Me, I had to fight like hell to
convince
people I was beautiful in my own Polish half-breed way. The French were the first to go for it. And I love them for it.

Of course I wasn’t making much money. Editorial

shoots didn’t pay well in the States, and they paid even less in Europe. And they
still
pay shit. But I had to start somewhere, and the European magazines were easier to crack than the American ones. So I fought like hell to be seen, to get my face in their faces. Because the magazines are really no more than catalogs. Within those pages, Fashion’s Decision Makers will find the next Revlon girl, or the girl behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz, or the new face of Versace. And
that’s
where the real money is, not in magazines. Because here’s a horrible, ugly secret, people: Even Cindy Crawford gets the standard hundred and fifty dollars when she’s on the cover of
Vogue.
And she doesn’t give a shit about the money; it’s about the prestige of being on the cover, about keeping that face alive.

And that’s what I needed; that’s the dream. You take your lousy hundred bucks from
Elle
to sell tacky silk sheets, because—
Hello!
—Bloomingdale’s just called: They want you for a catalog shoot at $15,000 a day, and they’re figuring on three days.

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

So, yes—you take all the shitty, no-money gigs in the world to become The Next Big Thing—even if The Next Big Thing is fucking
Corn Flakes.

“There’s always one person who comes along and turns things around for everyone,” Dominick Silverstein told me one day. “Everything people have been saying about what a model needs to look like, well—you’re proving them

wrong. You’re redefining the whole notion of beauty.”

Dominick liked to wax lyrical. “You’re going to open doors for all sorts of interesting women.”

Did that go to my head? You fucking bet it did.

One day I walked into Christa and everyone was all aflutter. Peter Knapp wanted to meet me! This was a big deal.

Huge
. Peter Knapp wasn’t just a fantastic photographer; he was the art director for
Elle
.

I took the Metro to his studio, a copy of
People
with me, and I flipped through the pages like an addict, admiring all those beautiful faces. Fame was taking on a life of its own.

I got to Knapp’s studio and rang the bell and a sweet little gay man let me in. He asked me to wait inside, showed me the way, and disappeared. I looked around. It was a huge open space, filled with incredible art of all kinds. A pair of giant thumbs was parked in one corner of the room, looking like they were made out of cheese—which

reminded me I was hungry. I stole into the kitchen and assumed the position in front of the fridge.

A few moments later, I heard a man behind me. “Anything good in there?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, turning around to look at him. He looked lost, as if he’d stumbled into the kitchen by mistake. “Lots.”

I found some excellent Brie and attacked it with gusto.

The man smiled at me and left the kitchen. I noticed a bottle of Chateau Margaux on the counter, found an opener, N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 103

and popped the cork. The man came back. “So you’re

thirsty, too?” he said. He was grinning ear to ear. I wondered what function he filled in that busy studio; he was such a happy guy.

“It’s delicious,” I told him. “Grab a glass.”

The little gay man walked in on us.
“Excusez moi, on
vous demande a l’appareil, Monsieur Knapp.”

Monsieur Knapp!
Shit! It was Peter Knapp! This was
his
cheese I was eating,
his
vintage wine I was drinking,
his
kitchen I was invading. Knapp reached for the phone—

there was a call for him—and chatted for a few seconds. I was dying. I had a hunk of Brie in my mouth and thought I’d be wise to just choke on it and die. Knapp hung up and turned to look at me.

“So, Janice,” he said sweetly. “Anything else I can get you?”