No Lifeguard on Duty
No Lifeguard on Duty
The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel
Janice Dickinson
For my children, Nathan and Savvy,
whose unflagging zest for life and humor
are a wonder and inspiration to me.
With love forever, your mom.
And
to my glorious sisters, Alexis and Debbie,
for showing me the way.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Meet the Parents
Crosstown Traffic
Freedom
Woke Up This Mornin’
The Girls in the Attic
Milano
The Good Daughter
Model Wars
Love’s a Bitch
Party Girl
Making It?
The Music Man
Rehabbing at the Rehab
The Good Nun
City of Angels
Return of the Rat Bastard
Better Living Through Chemistry
Divorce Wars
Bam Ham Slam
Hide Your Head in the Sand, Little Girl
On My Own
Clean and Sober
Family
Searchable Terms
About the Author
Praise
Copyright
About the Publisher
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To:
Mr. Simon Fields and his devoted wife, the talented Melanie Apple. Thank you, Simon, for the greatest boy that ever lived.
Mr. Michael Birnbaum and family. Michael, thank you for the most precious jewel in the entire universe.
Christian Straub, for inspiration, whimsical genius, and all the love in this and the next life.
Mr. Thomas O’Sullivan, the Rock of Gibraltar.
Mr. Liam for structuring my words on computer.
Mr. John Pearson for continuously bailing me out of trouble.
For:
Cal Morgan, my undying gratitude forever for polish and sparkle and keeping it real. Thank you. Yo! P.Lo, the artist of artists, the real writer, that goes without saying. You’re the Lord. Thank you. The entire staff at Regan-Books, especially Paul Olsewski, Cassie, Carl, Kurt, Joyce, Conor, Liz, Dan, Tom, and Evan. Last and first, to Judith Regan, the one and only. This book happened a long time ago and without your insight and vision it wouldn’t have been possible. You were there all along. Thank you.
Thanks to (in complete random order):
Mike Cestari, the greatest screenwriter. Period. Odet Bahat for just being cool. Page Jenkins for his guidance and knowledge throughout the years. Michael and Randolyn Foster. The Thacker family, especially Susan for her guidance. Ted Field. My longest and dearest friend, Eric Salter. Lionel George, The Great. Barbara Malone and Reed. Djody Situan. Aida Thiabant. Suzanne Hughes. Ron Galotti. Tony Peck, for always being there. The Naudet family, especially Jean Jacques. Peter Knapp and Odile at Elle. Kodgi Toyoda for the most amazing hair in the world. Period. Leslie Kawamura. Yuki, Goro, and Chin. My friend Chad, who also does the raddest hair in the universe.
Dr. Jon Perlman. Dr. Steven Hoeflin. Dr. John Joseph for incredible Botox. Dr. Frank Ryan, surgeon to the stars and the Bony Pony Ranch. Dr. Uzzi Reiss and his lovely wife, Yael, for the delivery of both my children. Without you I would have been nothing, except a dead racehorse. My gynecologist’s son, Jacob Reiss. Dr. Ed Kantor and Joe and Odette Sugarman. Dr. Mark Saginor; Dr. James Grotstein; Dr. Josh Trabulous; Dr. Cohen.
Howard Stern and Robin for keeping me going every morning since you’ve been on the air.
The Beverly Glen Pharmacy, especially Sue and Mark. The Beverly Glen Cleaners. The Beverly Glen Deli, especially George and Karen. Thanks for not spitting in the food. In loving memory of Rita from the Smile Skin Care Salon. Thanks for your warmth and kindness. Mr. Chris Smith at Sierra Leasing, thank you. Book Soup, especially Glen and Andrea. Robert at Solarium. L.A. Cellular phone; Alex and his spirited brother.
Azzedine Alaia. Donatella Versace. Paul Beck. Angelo. Valentino. Calvin Klein. Carlos deSouza. Diane Von Furstenerg. Michael Kors. Thierry Mugler. Jean Paul Gaulthier. Kenzo. Issey Miyake. Karl Lagerfeld. Chanel Chanel Chanel. Manolo Blahnik for my entire life’s shoe fetish.
Richard Avedon and Justin White. Stan Schaefer. Stan Malinowski. Phillip Dixon. Veronique Vial. Albert Watson. Norma Stevens. Arthur Elgort and Marianne. Paul at Flesh-tone Labs and his lovely Isabel Snyder. The Great Davis Factor. Mr. Gille Ben-Simon. Peter Beard and Najma. Bill King and Janet McClelland. Francesco Scavullo and Sean Byrnes. Hiro and Pieta at Hiro Studio. Patrick DeMarchelier. Michael Reinhardt for all your photography guidance and help with this book.
Lauren Hutton. Christine Peters. Jon Peters. Brooke Shields. Warren Beatty. Mick Jagger. Matthew Modine. Michael Fuchs. Steve Bing. He put the “R” in RICH. Mark Abell of Critical Mass. David Giler. Iman. Patti Hansen. Rosie Vela. Esme. Beverly Johnson. Cheryl Tiegs. Kevin Barry. Rene Russo. Jack Osbourne for his advice and the only Ozzfest tickets for Nathan.
Rod Stewart, thank you for Maggie May.
Muddy Waters. Way Bandy, the most incredible makeup guru ever. Suga, may you be wedging in heaven forever. Gia Carangi—a true light angel, not a dark angel as she has been depicted. John Belushi. Frank Zappa. Perry Ellis. Barry McKinley. Billy Tsutsos. Joe MacDonald. Paul Gobel. Gianni Versace, may you forever rule. Ariella. May you all rest in peace.
Harry King. Sandy Linter. George Pipisick and Santa Monica Bodybuilding. Thank you for keeping my ass off the back of my kneecaps. The Pain Management Clinic, especially Dr. Tom Marinaro. Judy Townsend. Wendy Gralnick. Monique Pillard, for her years of service. Patrice Casanova. Jacques Malignon. Guy. Dominique and Jacques Silverstein. Lorraine Bracco. Ron Levy. Jeanne Damon-Levy. Al Gersten. Jon Sahag.
Russ, Cynthia, and Shannon Berri. The Haskell Family. Grace and Matthew Morton. Linda Wells. Suzanne Schwartz at Glamour. Diana Vreeland. Grace Coddington. Anna Wintour. Andre Leon Talley. Myrna Blyth and Alanna. Phillipe from Ford Models. Lois Joy Johnson and Thea. The Elite Agency, N.Y. and L.A. Katie Herrera for not stealing my underwear. Mr. Ish Moran at Maha Yoga. Rita of Rita Flora. Pepe and Clarissa Moreno and family. Freddy Leiba. Maury Hopson. Ben Dickinson. Alec Sorkin. Adam Glassman.
Jimmy Rip, who got me sober, thank you with all my heart and life. Rick O’Shea (aka Mark Abramson) for being the most fabulous PR guru in the universe. Mr. Edward Tricomi. Steve and Michel Kerner. Mr. Harry Sloan. Miss Morgan Brown and Will. My entire Polish family. Daniella and Fabio Belotti. Dr. Francesco Colombo. Edwardo and Hilde Poli. Bill Bloch. Francesco Gamero and Eli Rivera at You-Wash Doggy. Lydia Umano. Marie Scoedeller. Chris Royer. Jon Fawcett and the guys at 76th Station. Anne Kelly for skin. Kevin Barry. Chad, for taking over where Way Bandy and Kevin Aucoin left off. Suzy Weiss. Tracy Tweed. Bruno and Winston. Dave and Raphael. David Giler. Deborah Wachine.
Thank you to Vicky Felmar, Liza Sperling, and the Warner Star Program for keeping my daughter truly balanced. Thank you to all of the aftercare at the school, the Warner Avenue teachers, and the Warner Avenue School. The Curtis School. Mont Clare Prep School. Mrs. Terada. Lori Saunders. And Mrs. Kirshner. The Ungers, Mulberry Street Pizza, and Mr. Richie Palmer for the best slice this side of the Mississippi River. Broadway gym for lending expertise and gymnastics knowledge and support to Savvy and all the kids on Saturday mornings.
Thanks to AA and everyone who ever walks through the door for allowing me the true support (notwithstanding the Wonderbra), solution, encouragement, and hope.
I want to salute every gay man that I tried to seduce. Thank you for letting me down easy. I want to thank lesbians everywhere. May the LAP LAP 500 club continue to reign.
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Last but not least, to Lina Perl, the sexiest bitch of all.
Due to the loss of brain cells left somewhere in a jar, if I’ve forgotten anyone, thank you to you.
P.S. I can’t wait for book #2! Read on…
PROLOGUE
Tried to run, Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side
Hollywood, Florida. February 28, 1969. I am going out of my head. It is ten o’clock at night and I am lying in bed and I hear my father’s footfalls on the stairs. They are getting louder, more distinct. He reaches the landing and approaches and pauses outside my door. I hold my breath. He opens the door. I pretend to be asleep. I can picture him standing there, silhouetted against the dim light in the hallway. He hates me. The hatred comes off him in waves.
He closes the door. Moves down the hallway, to Debbie’s room. He opens her door. I can hear the squeaky hinges. I hold my breath, praying he won’t go inside. Please God, please please please. A moment later, he closes her door. He comes back down the corridor and moves past my door again, toward his own room. I am so relieved I begin to shake. Then I hear him slow down. Stop. I break into a sweat and clench my fists to try to bring the shaking under control. He’s outside now. At the door. He opens it. Takes a few moments…
“I know you’re awake,” he whispers, addressing the darkness. “I know everything.” I don’t move. I don’t breathe. He closes the door, cackling to himself, and moves off. I wait for his footfalls to fade before I take a breath. I lie there trembling. I am fourteen years old and I am going out of my fucking head.
I’m up at eight o’clock the next morning, a Saturday. I am in the kitchen making breakfast for my father. He’s upstairs, getting ready for the day ahead. My mother is still asleep. She’s on the night shift at the hospital and generally doesn’t get home before seven A.M. I prepare everything just so. His plate is perfectly centered. The utensils are laid out with military precision.
At 8:45 sharp, his eggs are ready. I wait, but not for long. I hear the door to the master bedroom opening and I set the eggs on his plate and rush back to the sink and drop the frying pan into the suds. He’s on the stairs now, on his way down. I grab my stuff and rush through the living room and I’m out the front door before he reaches the kitchen.
I make my way down our street, already baking in the early morning sun. I have a ballet class to go to, then a long shift at the Orange Bowl, a local pizza parlor.
I look at the houses around me and think: One day I’ll go home to the wrong house and pretend I live there. And nobody will say anything. They might be a little surprised at first, but they’ll be nice people, and they’ll understand why I’m there. They will make room for me at the dinner table. We will have a very pleasant time over dinner, making conversation and such, and after dinner one of them will show me to my room. I will brush my teeth and slip under the covers of my new bed and sleep like I haven’t slept in years and years. In the morning, I will wake refreshed and happy, a new Janice. And after a few days it’ll be like I’ve always lived there.
Before my ballet class I stop at a pay phone and call Bobby McCarthy. He is a senior at Nova High and has promised to try to score a pair of tickets to the Doors concert. The concert is tonight. I am in love with Jim Morrison.
Bobby McCarthy doesn’t answer the phone. I feel like crying.
I make it through ballet class and hurry out to catch the bus and take it across town to west Hollywood. I am anxious. I am always anxious. I should change my name to Anxiety Dickinson. I am anxious about my little sister. My big sister. My mother. Myself. Life. I am anxious about what to wear, what to eat, what to say, how to breathe.
I get off the bus two blocks from the Orange Bowl and walk through the minimall and I’m there. I change in back, in the storage room. I can see the owner trying to get a peek at my ass as I slip my uniform over my head. I don’t say anything. I go out front. It’s early yet, but in Florida people like their pizza at all hours. You wouldn’t think so, with the heat and all. But they do.
During a lull, I try calling Bobby again. I am on anxiety overdrive. If he doesn’t get those tickets, I’ll die. I know it. I have been thinking about this concert for eleven weeks. I’ve been living for this concert. It occurs to me that I don’t have much to live for. Then I remind myself that I’m fourteen years old and that things might change. They probably won’t, but they might. And it’s all about hope, right?
Bobby is still not answering the phone. If he doesn’t get the tickets, I’ll kill him.
At four o’clock, my shift ends. Bobby hasn’t called, and we have a long way to go if we’re going—all the way to the Dinner Key Auditorium, in Coconut Grove—so I figure it’s not happening. My life sucks worse than ever.
Then suddenly, vrooooom! The windows are rattling like crazy. Everyone turns toward the parking lot. Bobby’s pulling up on his Harley. I can see him through the plate glass, which is thick with grease. He’s looking dead at me, but I can’t read his expression. He’s giving me nothing. He’s Mr. Poker Face. Then he smiles and flashes a thumbs-up.
I run to the storage room, grinning like an alligator, and put on my miniskirt and platform shoes; suede, with thick, cork soles. I look six feet tall. I am mostly legs, spindly legs and no tits. I’m in a red tube top—not that anyone would notice—and my hair’s parted down the middle, just like Cher’s. I look in the storage room mirror and I’m happy, idiotically happy. I am so happy I’m grinning and crying. I stop crying long enough to put silver glitter on my eyelids and then take another long hard look at myself and I tell my reflection, You rock, babe.
I rush outside and climb onto the back of Bobby’s chopper and off we go. He drives like a fucking maniac. I don’t care if we die. Just let it be after the concert.
The minute we get inside the auditorium, I lose him in the crush of bodies. I look around for a while, but I don’t see him. I don’t care. I am here. Then the lights flicker and the curtains part and some local band is up on stage and the lead singer asks us, “Can you feel the love in the room?” And everyone roars back in unison. Yeah! And then the band is rocking, warming us up, and people are passing joints around and taking off their clothes and communing with God or the Devil (depending on what kind of acid they’re dropping).
And I’m working my way through the crush of bodies, toward the stage. Floating, effortless, as if it were my destiny. And then there I am and there he is: Jim Morrison. Right in front of me. So close I can see the sweat on his brow, the veins on his arms. And I don’t know what happens, but suddenly everything around me goes black and deathly still. It’s as if the entire universe has fallen into some bottomless abyss, gone forever—every living creature wiped off the face of the earth, except for Jim Morrison and me. He is just so stunningly beautiful. That shoulder-length hair, that square jaw. He looks like an angel. He’s bathed in this angelic light, singing to me, looking at me, loving only me.
And suddenly I remember something I once read in a book, how there’s supposed to be this moment in childhood when a door opens and lets the future in. And I think: This is it. This is my moment. That’s what I want. No, not Jim Morrison. I want to be up there, on stage, bathed in that otherworldly light, looking like an angel. I want to be adored the way Jim Morrison is adored.
And then they’re playing “Break On Through” and I lose it. Tears just streaming down my cheeks. And I’m thinking: Please God. Help me break on through. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take another day of this.
MEET THE PARENTS
My father was a tall, slim, handsome man with a thick head of silver hair, buzzed flat, and gunmetal gray eyes. People liked Ray. He had an easy smile. A pleasant laugh. He was a good storyteller, a good listener, popular with the neighbors.
But I didn’t often see that easy smile. Or hear that pleasant laugh. I saw, instead, the way his eyes changed color when he got angry, the whites glowing red. Or the way he balled up his big, freckled fists when he came after me, like a
bull in heat. I hated him. I hated his eyes; his hair; that acrid breath; the wife-beater, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. I hated him with every fiber of my being.
I hated my mother, too; hated her because she was numbed into oblivion with the pills she’d been prescribed for an old back injury. She would come home at the end of the day, floating, and she stayed aloft with the help of those lovely pills. She would glide through the house on a cushion of air, in slow motion, unaware, unseeing, her voice soft, her mind elsewhere, always smiling this benign Hare Krishna smile—like she was At One With God or something; which she was, I guess, at least chemically.
Those were my parents. So I ask you: My two sisters and I—what fucking chance did we have?
They met, appropriately enough, in a bar. My mother, Jennie Marie Pietrzykoski, was the eldest of nine children. Her Polish-born father owned a little pub in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, right next to the railroad tracks, and I guess she felt comfortable around booze. She went to nursing school in Manhattan, and at night she’d hit the elegant nightclubs with her fellow nurses.
One night, at a Midtown watering hole, some asshole came by to harass Mom and her fellow nurses. Ray Dickinson intervened, decking the guy and tossing him into the street. My mother and her friends were so grateful they asked him to join them. He looked good in his Navy uniform. He was a radioman. Mom couldn’t stop staring at those gray eyes. Three days later they went down to City Hall and got married.