There were perhaps three hundred other girls in various rooms, in various stages of excitement and preparation. I can’t remember actually stepping onto that first runway. That fear has never gone away (full disclosure: I’ve always been relieved that I was often considered too short for runway work). I don’t recall making eye contact with the audience or the judges—I just thought about falling and not falling, and keeping my lips safely clamped down over my metal mouth. And then there were the 1980s outfits that I wore. The funniest was my “athletic look”—a one-piece electric-blue leotard with oversized white leg warmers and a white tank top tied to the side in a knot and slightly cropped. And real Reeboks, with white rolled-down socks. A Sheena Easton/Olivia Newton-John hybrid. I thought I really rocked those poses, alternately bouncing and vamping from one corner of the runway to the other. Only later, when I was a professional myself and actually judged model competitions, did I realize that a Charlie’s Angels pose did not scream high fashion.
There were three different prize categories based on height: petite, tall, and me in the middle, at five foot seven. When they called my name, I caught Candy’s eye—she was just as surprised as I was. I headed back to the stage (yet one more chance to fall down) and stood between the two winners from the other categories, holding on to my trophy like it was a newborn baby. The announcement for Model of the Year was moments away, and honestly? I couldn’t give a shit. I was so excited I’d actually won something! I had a trophy! And I knew Candy was happy, too. Plus there were Girl Scout cookies waiting back in the room.
The judges, modeling agents from many top American agencies (most of them based in New York), took their time scanning us, whispering to one another, and taking notes on their little notepads. When the emcee started to ask us questions, I started shaking—how did I not know this was part of it? For days, I’d kept my braces a secret; now, I had to open my mouth and speak. When the microphone met my lips, as if on cue, the judges all scootched closer to the little TV monitors they had on the judging table. Their double takes couldn’t have been more obvious than if I’d been wearing a big gold rapper grill.
I didn’t win, but after the judging was over, there was a sheet with agent requests posted on the wall. Nearly every agent had asked to see me. One of them was Karen Lee, a scout from Pauline’s Model Management in New York. “I want to stay in touch with you and Candy,” she told us. “I’d like to take another look at you once you’ve grown another inch or two, and after those braces come off. You’ve got…something.”
In the short time we had remaining, Candy and I walked around the city. I knew the smart thing would be to look at the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, the skyline, the White House. But I was totally inside my head, spinning a vision of what was going to happen next. Gassy city buses, government cheese, and little San Diego would be replaced with planes, money, and big cities around the world. How could it be otherwise? Hey, I had cookies, and I had a trophy.
Candy told me that Seventeen magazine held an annual teen model contest, and JC Penney was one of the sponsors. Was I interested in going for it? Yes, of course.
Ten girls were picked to participate in a back-to-school fashion show at the Chula Vista mall; I made it onto that list. I don’t remember what I wore, but I do remember that the creative concept was to show the clothes on the carousel, not on a runway. Ten lanky/awkward girls, in coordinates we’d most likely never wear, walking to the beat of Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative,” stopping to strike poses on a unicorn or a pastel-colored pony with tassels in its nose.
After the fashion show, I was selected to go on to New York City for a shot at a cover. A national magazine cover. I was told that Seventeen had more than forty thousand other “finalists” to choose from across the country, and only eight of us had been invited. I’d thought the JC Penney gift certificate was great, but this was astonishing. There were gift certificates if you won and introductions to big modeling agencies—and there was a car! A Geo Tracker. I wanted that car. And then I remembered that none of the pictures I’d submitted for the contest actually showed my braces. Should I tell somebody, or should I keep my mouth shut and just go to New York? Be serious: I was going without my mother, I was going without Candy. I would be staying in a beautiful hotel. We would see the sights, go to a real Broadway play, and be taken out to restaurants. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this.
When we arrived in New York, we were met by some staff members from Seventeen and a stretch limo. I had never seen a limo up close—now I was riding in one. We pulled up in front of the St. Regis Hotel, in the middle of Manhattan. Walking into that lobby, I was Dorothy in Oz. I dropped my pitiful suitcase at the desk (“We’ll bring it up, Miss.” Miss!) and headed for my room, which was beyond my imagination. I walked around touching everything. A TV! Fancy cashews for five dollars! I wanted to eat them. The bathroom was as big as a station wagon and had white makeup lights all around the mirror. The beds (I had a roommate, another girl from San Diego) were pure luxury, piled high with pillows and comforters that looked like silk. There was gold-embossed stationery in the little desk drawer. Now I knew why the rich were so happy. They had comfy beds, pricey snacks, special paper to writer letters on, and someone to carry their luggage. I tried desperately to sleep but could not. How could I go home with this knowledge and be content? Was it even okay to want a life that looked like this? Was there a way to actually work for it, even if I lost this contest? I started preparing for the crash. I would lose, I would be sent home. It would all become a memory, and when I was old, I’d question whether it really happened at all.
In the next few days, as the Seventeen contestants moved through the city together, our every move was captured by a photographer for the magazine. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe, we went to the musical Grand Hotel—I sat through the performance in stunned silence. I had never questioned how TV came to be, how movies came to be, or if acting was an actual job, but there it all was, right in front of me. I wanted in, I wanted access. Not as an actor (I knew even then I’d never have the chops to be an actor), but to be part of putting all this magic together—I wanted to do that. I didn’t expect anyone to hand it to me, but I was frantic to know how to ask for the job. Or what job to even ask for.
As thrilled as I was by Broadway, I was just as thrilled by the food. It was everywhere, and there was a lot of it. Salty pretzels and Italian ices from sidewalk vendors. Hot dogs with mustard and relish from flirty old guys with striped umbrellas over their carts. My favorite eating adventure was at Tavern on the Green, right in the middle of Central Park, rising up and twinkling in the darkness like something Walt Disney had created. Everyone around us was so dressed up, I just knew that people at every table were talking about fascinating things (the fact that many of them were tourists like me never entered my mind). The menu was out of a fairy tale. Baby vegetables. Fancy potatoes, sauces with cream, butter, and wine; herbs and spices I’d never heard of. How long had people been eating like this? How could I decide what to eat? What was foie gras? What was beef en croûte? What was escarole, or shiitake or mascarpone or passion fruit or Napoleons? Why would anybody voluntarily eat raw oysters or snails in a little shell? I ordered an appetizer and an entrée, then I ordered more. Some duck. Some lamb. I wanted to taste everything. I was far, far away from the free-lunch line. When the waiter asked, “May I interest any of the young ladies in dessert?” I answered yes before he even got the entire sentence out. The Seventeen staff was cracking up; this was not typical model behavior (or typical magazine editor behavior either, I’d bet).
While we were there, Kathleen Turner walked in. Jewel of the Nile, War of the Roses. The first celebrity I’d ever seen. She was regal, glamorous: it was as though light radiated all around her. In that moment, I knew I’d move to New York one day. There was so much to learn.
The next day, one of our stops was the famous Louis Licari salon for haircuts and color. I had long hair with sun-drenched highlights court
esy of Mother Nature. The Seventeen people told me to sit for a while and wait for the other girls to finish up. I’d never had a professional haircut or color, and there was no way I was leaving without a full makeover. I begged, insisted, and then fought with the hair stylist and the staff from Seventeen. They finally gave in. The sensation of having your head shampooed by someone else—scrub, rinse, repeat, condition, rinse—is unlike any other. I felt like a princess. In the studio the next morning, being photographed for our cover tries, I kept staring at myself in the mirror. That girl, braces and all, was beautiful. Not only that, they even liked my braces—they told me to keep smiling a big smile “until your cheeks hurt.” Who knew smiling could actually hurt?
On our last day in New York, we met for breakfast in the Rainbow Room, on the sixty-fifth floor of Rockefeller Center. The ride in the elevator made my ears pop; the view of the city from those windows made my eyes pop. On one side, the East River; on the other, the Hudson River. A ship on the Hudson looked tiny; the Empire State Building, twenty blocks south, looked like a toy. I kept waiting for somebody to wake me up and tell me it was a school day and if I didn’t move it, I was going to be late.
All the top agents in New York came to meet with us that day. Representatives from top agencies like Ford and Elite talked with me, and once again, I spoke with Karen Lee from Pauline’s. After Washington, she’d kept in touch with me and Candy just as she’d said she would, and now, she said, it was time—I was ready. There was a comfort level with Karen. She took an obvious personal interest in me. I knew I was wading into big waters—I’d need someone to play the same role with me that Candy did.
Ultimately, I was one of the finalists in the Seventeen contest. I didn’t make it onto the magazine cover, and I didn’t win the Geo Tracker. I told myself it was probably just as well—at that point, my mother couldn’t even afford driving lessons for me, what would we have done with a car? I won another JC Penney gift certificate (which I traded in for cash when I got home, and then went right to the Gap and spent it). Candy got me more local modeling jobs. And my Seventeen adventures made it into every publication in Southern California. This had little effect on my social status at school. Well, maybe in the boy department—the Mary in those pictures was not the Mary who sat next to them in class. If anything, it made me even more self-conscious. Modeling school, the work that came out of it, and my dreams for the future—all of that was very private, like something breakable, and I didn’t want anyone near it.
The universe plays tricks. Had I won that car, I never would have met my future husband. That little Geo Tracker would’ve significantly rerouted the course of my life.
My mother’s wild single days (which weren’t wild at all, of course) lasted barely a year. She met and fell in love with someone, and that someone fell in love with her. His name was Mark, he was a career navy guy—he worked on the flight deck of a carrier at North Island Naval Base in Coronado—and their decision to marry came (it seemed to me) very quickly. My father had remarried as well. Johnny had a bigger struggle with this than I did, since he’d been living with my dad (and had a much closer relationship to him than I had at that point), and the new stepmother came with two teenagers. My reaction to anything Mom and Dad did increasingly was, “Oh God, whatever.”
I liked Mark. He steadied my mother, he loved her, and it was obvious to anyone who saw them. He, too, had gone through a difficult childhood, with most of the responsibility for his own siblings—to this day, the man won’t eat pancakes because they were a primary food group for him growing up. There seem to be two schools of reaction if you come from that world—you either get stuck in it, or you get up and run. Going back is not an option for us runners. With Mark, I knew that we were safe and that my mother would be cherished for the rest of her life.
Soon after they were married, however, he learned that he was being transferred to Lakehurst, New Jersey (point of interest: this is where the Hindenburg went down). Predictably, I threw a fit, which lasted about half a day—Johnny threw one, too, because Mom wanted him to move east with us. The other news came not long after that: Mom and Mark were expecting a baby. That information was hard to take in at first. It was more family (although with the various aunts and uncles and cousins, there was never any shortage of family), but it felt like a different family, and it was all going to happen in a different place. My mother’s last name was different; my new baby sister, a blue-eyed blonde named Suzy, would have a different last name, too. We would be three thousand miles away from where we’d started. And then I heard the thunderclap: New Jersey was just across the river from New York City! Duh.
The new house was standard-issue military housing: two-story brick, with three bedrooms, and houses just like it up and down the block. Almost immediately after we settled in, I started plotting. I didn’t give much effort to fitting into my new school, and I got a part-time job at Burger King to put more walking-around money into my pockets. Train money, subway money, taxicab money.
Mom and I took the train into New York, where Karen Lee introduced me to Pauline Bernatchez, the agency’s French founder. She had started it in Paris, they told me. All around us, photos and blown-up magazine covers of the world’s most beautiful women graced the walls. The agents gave us a rundown of how things would work; almost immediately, I was sent out (alone) on my first shoot for a teen catalog. I did some fashion shoots for Seventeen, I did more catalog work—but the one that amazed me the most in those early days was for gloves. Just my hands in gloves. For one hundred fifty dollars an hour! This is genius, I thought.
Then came winter: dark mornings and short days and navigating my way around New York City in a coat that didn’t protect me. I was always cold, was always being weighed and measured, and was always hungry. I actually believed Fig Newtons were health food—the package said so. My romance with the city wore off quickly, and I pleaded to go back to California. My mother decided that both Johnny and I should go back (primarily, I think, because we were both a pain in the ass). Julie, then only four, and Suzy, the new baby girl, would of course stay with Mom and Mark. The plan: I would live with Grandma Rosa in suburban L.A. (where the modeling agency assured me I would have plenty of work) and go to high school there, and my brother would again live with my dad.
Mom got a cross-country itinerary from Greyhound (not for the most direct route, as we would discover) and put together a suitcase full of groceries; tearfully, we all said good-bye. I was fifteen, John was twelve. We’d both been working very hard for a couple of years to get away with something and now, it seemed, we’d finally done it. Together, we ate our combined weight in Bugles and Fig Newtons as we made our way west.
Within days of our arrival, Johnny was in San Diego at my dad’s, Candy had cleaned me up and was taking me to modeling open calls, and I finally settled on Bordeaux Model Management for L.A. representation. And I was once again plotting—this time, how to get out of the horrible high school near my grandmother’s. That dear, befuddled woman. I talked her into signing a paper that she didn’t really understand, which stated that I was transferring to another school and needed my records. I then presented the school officials with the paper, they released the records to me—in effect, they released me—and that was it. I was done. I packed my bags and took the bus to the Greyhound station without telling my grandma. Then, like a B-movie cliché, I got off at the Hollywood station and never left.
It would take me another ten years of correspondence school to get my high school degree, but before my sixteenth birthday, I was living in a models’ apartment on Hollywood Boulevard and taking care of myself. Well, sort of.
FOUR
love is the drug
A model’s apartment (most agencies have them, all over the world) is a far cry from a suite at the St. Regis, but the concept is somewhat the same—you come in from out of town, you stay there while you work, and the agency that either rents or owns the apartment (or, more accurately, rents or owns you) charges your rent
against your earnings. The apartments vary in size and quality, but at least you’re always assured of a place to sleep and a fridge to store diet soda, morning-after chilled eye packs, and leftover takeout food.
Our apartment had two bedrooms, and most of the time, I shared one with Luis, a young booker from the agency. Luis loved us girls, but not girls in general, if you know what I mean. He taught me a lot about being a woman. When I first moved into that apartment, I was wearing slip-on Vans; thanks to Luis, when I moved out I was wearing five-inch Vivienne Westwood platform heels.
There were three twin beds in the other bedroom, plus a pull-out couch. The roster of girls camping there changed every few days, and most of them were less than stellar in the housekeeping department. In my experience, there are three main reasons why models don’t make great housekeepers: (1) they usually leave home at a very young age and miss out on Mom’s homemaking tips; (2) they are constantly traveling, and when you don’t stay in one place long enough for the dust to build up, you don’t know it exists; (3) they’re fucking models and they don’t give a shit. They’d wear dirty clothes for days, never wash their bedding, use towels to remove their makeup and then leave them on the floor. Luis and I were tidy in our own corner, but maybe twice a month we’d lose it and take that apartment down. In fact, forget the St. Regis comparison: The models’ apartment was more like the Bermuda Triangle. Agents were scared to step foot in it for fear of disappearing. Some girls slept in their designer clothes, otherwise they’d never see them again. High-end cosmetics evaporated; so did expensive shoes. Food was the biggest mystery of all—you’d get up to answer the door and return to an empty plate that just a moment before had been occupied by a slice of pizza.
Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness Page 6
