Free No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel by Janice Dickinson Page A

again.
    She let someone know I was there. Didn’t exactly jump to it, either.
    I sat down to wait and tried to look pleasant and charming. But I was burning up inside. Did you see those lips?
    Twenty minutes later, a young Hispanic gay guy came out to greet me. Dealing with walk-ins wasn’t exactly a task the top brass fought over. He smiled his most professional smile and took me back to his cubicle. The poor bastard didn’t even rate an office. We squeezed into it. There was barely enough room for two chairs. Our knees touched. He looked at my book, which didn’t take long. He shut it, handed it back to me.
    Do not fucking thank me and send me on my way! I am not a loser.
    “These pictures aren’t great,” he said. There was a “but”
    in there somewhere. I knew it was coming, but it took an eternity. “But I’m intrigued. I kind of like you. I like your energy. I like the fact that you’re, well, not ordinary.
    There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about you.”
    Of course there is, you wonderful little homosexual 58 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N
    you! I smiled demurely. “Thank you,” I said. I could hardly breathe.
    “I’ll talk to Willie.”
    Willie! He was going to talk to Willie herself!
    “Good,” I said. I was so poised. So unruffled. So la-dida not-really-interested-thanks. “Let me know.”
    I smiled and waved ta-ta and sashayed my way back to the lobby, hoping I wouldn’t faint.
    I met Wilhelmina the following week. She had a neck that wouldn’t quit, and her long hair was piled on top of her head in a huge, messy tower. There was something wonderfully classy about her. I wanted to like her. I wanted her to like me. I told her my hard-luck story. She listened attentively, chain-smoking all the while. When I was done talking, she lit another cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke and studied me for a long time. “I think you’re interesting,”
    she said finally. She had a pronounced Dutch accent. “You have an unusual look.” Interesting? An unusual look? For a moment there, I went into a panic. I thought she was going to smile politely and send me on my way. But she didn’t.
    She said she would sign me—start me on the “testing board”—and see how it went. I didn’t know what the “testing board” was, but she was good enough to explain: Photographers often needed junior models to help them test their lights, say, or pose for a new type of film, or work with a revolutionary fish-eye lens, that kind of thing. “It’s not much,” she said with a pleasant smile. “But it’s a start.”
    Not much? You must be fucking kidding me. I was walking on air. If I’d been wearing a cap, I would have tossed it, Mary Tyler Moore–style. But I didn’t. I contained myself.
    Barely. “Sounds really interesting,” I said, sounding—to my insecure self, anyway—like a complete moron.
    Wilhelmina reached for her buzzer, and a moment later N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 59
    an elderly secretary came in and introduced herself and took me on a brief tour of the premises. “The bookers are your lifeblood,” she said in a dull, sad monotone. I wondered if she, too, had dreamed of being a model many years ago. We walked into a large room. The phones were ringing off the hook. Three bookers were sitting in front of what looked like a giant lazy Susan that spun like a roulette wheel.
    “No, she’s not available.”
    “She’s in Milan. She’ll be back Friday.”
    “She won’t model in sunlight. She doesn’t like what it does to her skin.”
    “You can’t afford her. Sorry.”
    “No, no lions this week. She’s having her period.”
    I could see slots for each model, but they sped by so quickly that I couldn’t make out any of the names. I tried, though. I wanted to see some famous names. The secretary reached over and plucked a clipboard from one of the slots.
    It had the name of the model across the top: Deirdre Nobody, with all her vital statistics in a neat row below that. Further