No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (4 page)

I don’t know how I managed it; it wasn’t until years later that I heard about something called
compartmentalizing
—

the ability to close one part of life off into a separate part of N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 17

the brain, a compartment, to avoid having to live with it.

And I’m pretty sure that’s what I did. I put the horror of home in a compartment and went out and tried to live a normal life. Apparently, it’s quite common among murderers.

For obvious reasons, I spent as much time as possible away from the house. My best friend from the age of ten was Eric Salter. He lived a few blocks away, in a big place with a pool. He had very laid-back parents, stoned most of the time, and they let us neighborhood kids drift in and out of their home throughout the day. It’s not like you could talk to Eric’s parents, though; they were pretty self-absorbed, being high all the time. But they were decent and good-hearted.

And they’d
smile
when they saw me. I couldn’t believe it.

In 1966, not long after I turned eleven, Alexis ran away from home. She was only seventeen, but she’d fallen in love with a GI and decided to move to Monterey to live with him.

The day before she left, she took Debbie and me to the beach—Debbie, who was still so young—and sat us down and told us to stay away from Ray. “He’s evil,” she said.

“An evil, terrible man. Don’t let him near you, understand?”

She wanted to say more, but the words caught in her throat and she began to cry. “I’ll be right back,” she said, her lower lip quivering. She stood and walked off down the beach, trying to pull herself together, getting smaller and smaller. I looked over at little Debbie. She hadn’t understood a word.

“Do you have money for ice cream?” she asked.

The next day, Alexis was gone. I was crushed. Ray

missed her, too, of course. He wasn’t getting serviced anymore. And the man loved his blow jobs.

At night, as I lay in bed reading or trying to sleep, I would listen for his step. I heard it now. The Monster was on his way to bed. I heard him reach the landing, heard him turning toward the master bedroom, heard him stop.

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

My heart beat like a motherfucker. He turned and made his way down the hall, approaching. His footfalls stopped outside my door. I couldn’t breathe.

The door opened and I looked dead at him. He stood

there staring at me. He smiled. He was trying to make it look like a warm, friendly smile.

“What?” I said.

“Why are you so hostile?” he said.

I didn’t say anything. We stared at each other. He knew I’d kill him if he tried anything. Or die trying.

“You are an ungrateful, ugly little animal,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

He took another moment, staring, actively hating me, then shut the door and moved off, toward the master bedroom.

You’ll never amount to anything.
That’s a father’s love for you.

The next day, when I came home from school, he was

lying in wait. He sucker punched me the moment I walked through the door and kicked me when I fell to the floor.

“How’s the rabid dog?” he said. “Feeling any friendlier?”

He was standing over me. A giant. His freckled fists looked as big as baseballs.

“No,” I said. So he stood on my stomach till I peed myself.

It didn’t end there. This went on for weeks and months and years. I never knew what to expect when I came through the door, and the uncertainty was crippling. He knew it, too.

For him, it was entertainment.

One afternoon, after a particularly vicious bout, Ray disappeared into his room and came back with his favorite gun: N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 19

a .357 Magnum. In a way, I was praying he would use it.

Instead, he told me we were going hunting.

We drove out to the Everglades. Just the two of us. En route, he did most of the talking, and it was mostly about Alexis. “What do you think that little whore does with her boyfriend?” he asked, his lips curling with disgust. “You think she takes it up the ass? You think she’s a backdoor girl?”

I was eleven years old. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what he meant.

When we got out to the Everglades, I told him I didn’t want to hunt. That was fine with him. He made me climb into the trunk of the car and locked me in. I lay there in the dark and peed myself again. It was getting hot, and I had trouble breathing, and at some point I passed out.

When I regained consciousness, hours later, I found myself on the ground, next to the car, his big face hovering over mine—full of concern. It was the first time I’d seen him worried over my welfare. And the reason was obvious.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “I thought you’d gone and died on me!” He slapped me. “You crazy little punk. You ever do that again, I’ll kill you.” I am not making this up.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I was a fucking mess.

I’d go over to Eric’s house and get stoned. When we were bored, we’d go to the music stores in town. I was a great little shoplifter. Eric would wait outside, trying not to panic; then we’d run home with the stolen LPs and drink and get high and crank up the volume and dance.

Eric was a great dancer. He was gay and knew it by the time he was thirteen. Nova Junior High, in Fort Lauderdale, was crawling with cute boys, and Eric loved pointing out the ones he liked. “I’d do him,” he’d say with false bravado. He didn’t even know what “doing” someone

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

meant. Neither did I, really. Well, okay—we had a fair idea, but we were both virgins.

I liked this boy called John Burnett. He was always smiling, like he didn’t have a care in the world. I look back on it now and realize it was all about self-confidence—something I could have used in spades. Whenever I saw him, in the hallway, between classes, or in line at the cafeteria, I’d hide.

I know it sounds corny, but I felt such intense longing for him that it would bring tears to my eyes. I was starving for affection. I had
heard
all about love—it was out there somewhere—and I wanted it pretty bad.

Unfortunately, I was pathologically shy. Or maybe—

having seen what I’d seen at home—I was terrified. Every time John came over to talk to me, I’d run off in a panic. He finally gave up, of course. I was crushed, in a funk for weeks. I thought I was worth fighting for. To this day, John AT SIXTEEN WITH TWIN BOYS WHOM I LOVED THEN

BUT CAN’T REMEMBER NOW.

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 21

has no idea how much he hurt me. But of course it wasn’t him; it was me.

The following year, at the ripe old age of fourteen, Eric finally entered the world of sex. All of a sudden, he was doing all these cute guys, and every last one of them was straight. He
loved
straight guys. He once told me that one of the great tragedies of being a gay man is that you aren’t really attracted to other gay men. “It’s
real
men you’re after,” he explained. “And if you keep after them, they’ll fuck you. But they won’t stick around.”

Eric loved sex. He claimed to give the best head south of the Mason-Dixon, and he enjoyed describing his technique in detail: This is how you hold the shaft. This is how you flick your tongue. This is how you keep things nice and wet.

I would get hot just listening to him. But I was confused. I’d seen that done in my own home, and it didn’t look like fun.

One afternoon, both of us stoned and lying half-naked by his pool, I almost told Eric about my father. But I was afraid—more for him than for myself. Eric was oddly brave. He didn’t take shit from anybody. And he was very fair-minded, as if he understood morality at a very early age. He always knew the right thing to do. Which is exactly what frightened me: I could imagine him picking up a gun and going back to my house and shooting my father dead. Talk about confrontation! Suddenly, I really wanted to tell him. “Eric . . . ” I said.

“What?” he said.

I looked at him for a beat. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m glad you’re my friend.”

My two best girlfriends in high school were Maria Romano and Jill Jensen. We would drive up and down the Florida 22 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

coast, hanging out at the lesser-known surfing beaches, listening to Hendrix, the Stones, the Doors, and going through endless packs of Kools. I dropped my first

Quaalude with those two, and I was hooked instantly. I liked ’ludes a lot better than pot. I liked the way they took the edge off life, mellowed you out. Life became bearable under their influence, and I always felt a little blue when the effects began to wear off. I also did a couple of half-hits of acid with them, but I was wary. We’d all heard stories about kids who thought they could fly, or thought they were turning into orange juice, and—bad as things were—I wasn’t ready to check out.

Still, one afternoon, sitting on the beach with Maria and Jill, the three of us nursing beers, watching the surfers go by, waiting for our LSD to kick in, a strange thing happened. As I brought the beer to my lips, I saw my reflection in the can. Only it wasn’t me staring back at me. It was my mother. I know it was just the drugs, but still . . .

That’s when I decided I had to buy a car. Behind the wheel, I could put a lot of miles between me and the rat bastard. He’d never find me. I could drive clear across the country, maybe go to Monterey and hook up with Alexis and her boyfriend. I’d stop now and then to wait tables for gas money and sleep in my car if I had to. It wouldn’t be so bad. I could get to work early and wash up before my shift.

There were Laundromats everywhere. I knew I could make it. I’d be free! I’d be safe!

I got work, locally, the following week. I lied about my age—I used Alexis’s ID—and got a gig making pizza at the Orange Bowl. It didn’t take long to figure out Rule #1

of the food-service industry: the shorter the skirt, the better the tips. Needless to say, I made out like a bandit. Men!

When a guy thinks he might get lucky, he’ll put his paycheck on the table.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 23

Eric used to come in with this friend of his, Vinny Mangione. He was a poor man’s Jim Morrison. He had that swagger, that coolness. One night, when the boss was out running errands, Vinny bet me twenty bucks that I wouldn’t get up on the counter and dance. He lost. All the guys in the place started cheering and throwing money. I cranked up the music. One fat guy started yelling, “Take it off! Take it off!”

And the others took up the chant. I’ve gotta tell you, I was tempted. But then I looked over at Eric. He shook his head from side to side, almost imperceptibly.

Bobby McCarthy used to come in a lot, too. He was eighteen and had just graduated from high school, and he had his heart set on becoming an FBI agent. Don’t ask me why.

He was smart and wonderful and had beautiful blue eyes, and I think he was in love with me. He was a good kisser.

We would kiss for hours, but that’s as far as it went. Sometimes he’d try to force my hand toward his crotch, but I refused to touch him there. (I couldn’t even say the word
penis
in those days!) He’d get pretty pissed, but that didn’t change things. He wasn’t going to get lucky. Not just yet, anyway. I wasn’t giving it up at fourteen. I wasn’t thinking about sex in those days, anyway. At least not with any joy.

What I was thinking about most, to be honest, was getting the hell out of Florida. I was miserable and Bobby knew it—though of course he didn’t know why. And I

couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell anyone. At one point I remember thinking that maybe the Dickinsons were normal; that this went on up and down the streets of Every City, U.S.A.; that all fathers were
entitled.

It was right around this time that we heard the rumor about Jim Morrison. He was coming to South Florida. By the time I had scraped enough money together for a ticket, they were sold out. I was crushed.

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

A few nights later, Bobby came by on his motorcycle and gave me a ride home. I was so depressed I didn’t even feel like necking. I told him I’d had my heart set on seeing Jim Morrison, and I began to cry. I know, I know. It sounds pathetic. But of course it wasn’t really about Jim Morrison, but about what he represented.

So Bobby came through for me and we went to the concert and I had my weird out-of-body experience or whatever the hell it was, where Jim and I were the last surviving beings on Planet Earth. And I remember thinking,
The only
thing standing between Jim and me are his leather pants.

And then I emerged from my altered state to find that things had taken a nasty turn. Morrison was drunk and getting drunker. He became increasingly antagonistic. He started shouting obscenities at
us,
his fans. The people who loved him.

Then the fans began shouting back and he got
really
pissed. He pulled those leather pants down and exposed himself. Next thing I knew, the cops were on stage, dragging him away in handcuffs.