He also told me not to tan my skin, because the Japanese like their girls to have light pale skin. That was tough for me because besides having natural brown skin from my Thai mother, I was also a sun goddess who would catch rays with baby oil, Hawaiian Tropic, or Ban de Soleil over my skin like I was a basting turkey!
After the shoot, I really had no idea what was going to happen. The whole thing seemed like a lark to me, but I was so excited that my dream of becoming a model might actually come true. John told us the pictures came out great and he went ahead and sent them to different modeling agencies all over the world: Paris, New York, Milan, and Tokyo.
The biggest response came from Tokyo. They were so interested that they sent scouts to come see my dad in Napa Valley, where we were living at the time. They were surprised that I hadn’t modeled before and told my dad they wanted to take me back to Tokyo with them. A few weeks later, I signed with the Morning Sun modeling agency in Tokyo, signed with a model manager named Myuki, and was booked to move to Tokyo by myself.
Sure, Dad was hesitant at first. After spending a lot of time apart when Debby and I were younger, Dad and I were finally spending some time together. But I was open to the idea, and eventually so was he, especially after the scout told him that the runway and photo work in Tokyo would easily pay for my college tuition. He knew how much I wanted to model and how much I was enjoying my time at Barbizon, so he saw it as a great opportunity for me. And he did his homework. The agency went through Barbizon. It wasn’t just some random, unknown company swooping in to send me off. Barbizon vouched for the company and the agency and helped ease any fears my father might have had. And he trusted me. I don’t think the thought crossed his mind that I would get into trouble over there.
In my mind, I was off to be a supermodel and take over the world. In my dad’s mind, he was losing his daughter, but gaining college money for me. Dad dropped me off at the airport and said, “This is your big chance. Make the best of it, and call me if you have any issues and I will come there.”
Thirteen and a half hours later, I stepped off the plane and there I was in my new home, Tokyo, Japan. I was fourteen years old. And I felt powerful.
I was so young, but it was a very adult experience. I lived in a huge apartment with Joe, the owner of Morning Sun, but he was never around. I had a full-time tutor for school and another tutor to teach me Japanese, which I didn’t exactly pick up very well. Luckily, most people in the industry spoke English. We lived in the Omotesando area of Tokyo, which was a trendy neighborhood. He had one half of the apartment. I had the other. I was pretty much on my own. When I wasn’t at a casting call or booked for a modeling job, I’d spend hours shopping in the market and going into fashion boutiques, blowing my $500 weekly allowance on nonessentials like lip gloss and trendy shoes. Five hundred dollars is not a lot of spending money when you consider the fact that two oranges cost $9 in Tokyo markets at that time.
I was able to make friends right away with a lot of the other girls who worked at the agency. Most of them were much older, in their twenties. It was quite an experience, running around in a foreign country with all these models from all over the world. They were adults and I was a young kid. Even the few girls who were near my age seemed more worldly than me because they had already been in the business a few years. The ones who were sixteen had started when they were twelve. They already knew the ropes, but I didn’t.
My best friend among the models was Thea Kulick. She became my big sister. She was British, tall, and very beautiful, with short blond hair and a tight body. She reminded me then of Annie Lennox and now of model Agyness Deyn. I would follow her around and mimic everything that she did. She was very smart and well spoken and I loved her posh English accent. I think part of the reason that I felt so comfortable around her is because my dad’s family is English. I had spent some time in England with family, and I really gravitated to Thea.
I loved my new friends, and I was happy when they were around. But when we’d go our separate ways at the end of the day, I’d get really lonely by myself. Nighttime would roll around, and I would be alone in my empty apartment in Tokyo thinking about what my family and friends were doing back home. It was an odd feeling to be so excited to be living out my dream in this exotic place, but at the same time miss the comforts of home, like my dad’s cooking or my sister being there to gossip with. It didn’t help matters that I was having a hard time trying to learn my way around Tokyo. I had a tutor who was teaching me Japanese every day, but I was failing miserably. But just when I was feeling my lowest, I’d remember that it was still daytime in America. I would pick up the phone and call somebody, anybody, but usually my sister Debby or my best friend, Ally. My phone bill averaged more than $2,500 a month—money that was supposed to go to my college fund. And I would tell Debby and Ally all about whatever was happening. They were particularly interested in my experiences in the clubs in Tokyo because they had never been to a club at all, let alone one in Tokyo. And I was going out every night.
My favorite club was the Lexington Queen in Roppongi, which is where all the rock stars would hang out. We would use our zed cards to get in. A zed card is a modeling calling card. On the front, there was a head shot, and then on the back there were four or five small pictures of you in different modeling poses. They were supposed to be for your cattle calls. And they called them cattle calls because they would literally pile all the models in a van like cattle and take us from booking to booking. If you got booked for a job, you would go back and do it the next day. But when you weren’t working, you just kept getting sent out on cattle calls. The door guys at the clubs knew about the zed cards and when they saw one, they would just let you go on in. Models are good for business.
And since we were all models, we would get everything for free: free admission, free food, and free champagne. A lot of the models smoked pot and took pills, especially Valium, and I did too. I had smoked pot for the first time right before I left for Tokyo. My dad’s always grown marijuana and has been a big pot smoker, and back in the U.S. I’d stolen some pot out of his hiking backpack and smoked it out of his pipe. It kind of hurt, but I liked the way it made me feel. I had to lay off smoking when I got to Tokyo because I was having a little too much fun. I would go over to friends’ houses to listen to music and drink a little bit of champagne. We would smoke a joint and the next thing I knew it was four in the morning and I would realize, “I’ve got to be up at seven in the morning and I look like shit!”
But even totally sober, I was very outgoing—a stark contrast to my early childhood years. I was the first one to introduce myself and the first to volunteer for karaoke, which was, of course, a huge thing in Japan. This was the beginning of feeling good about myself and not being the shy girl who dreamed of being wanted. Instead, I was coming out of my shell and into my sexuality and loving it. I finally got out of my rut and into another environment and found a place where people found me sexy. No one was calling me Spider in Tokyo. I was really feeling the power of my sexuality and the power of being attractive to the opposite sex.