“Here’s what you do—practice on a popsicle. Get your mouth nice and wet and start by opening up wide and putting your lips out over the popsicle, then slowly slide the popsicle as far down your throat as you can go while making a sucking motion with your mouth. Alternate between sucking hard and fast and teasing it slowly with the tip of your tongue. Whatever you do, don’t do the same motion the entire time. You have to change it up!”
Instead of going home with one of the guys in the band, though, I went home with two models, Alberto and Cole. Alberto was tall and skinny with thick black wavy hair and a black beard he kept neatly trimmed. He had a really sharp nose and square jaw and piercing ice blue eyes. Like many models, he was a chain smoker, and I found it sexy. Cole had thick brown wavy hair and had more of a husky, football-player build with a great broad chest.
They got me drunk on a drink called Cookies & Cream, which was a sickly sweet concoction containing lots of Bailey’s Irish Cream.
I was feeling like a sex kitten and it made me feel in control. I wanted to wrap my arms and legs around every hot guy I saw and just rub my body on them. I just loved men and even though that first experience wasn’t great, I wanted sex again. It made me feel powerful. It still does. So the guys took me back to their apartment in Tokyo and I couldn’t wait to put the Guns N’ Roses’ groupies’ advice to use. There was no time to practice on a popsicle; the real deal was happening right then and there. I remember putting Alberto’s dick in my mouth for the first time and being excited to drive him crazy. The groupie girl’s words echoed in my head: “Whatever you do, don’t do the same motion the entire time.” With that in mind, I was all over his cock. I went from taking it deep in my throat to flicking the head with my tongue to sucking him hard and fast to taking his hard cock in and out of my mouth as he begged for more. It was easy because he didn’t have a big dick, so I was able to really go to town on it. I’m sure it was the worst blowjob ever, but he seemed to like it. We had sex after that while Cole jerked off and watched.
At the time, I couldn’t figure out why I was doing what I was doing. I was so immature. Just a little kid. All the other girl models were like, “What the fuck is her problem?” I think it was obvious to everyone that I was drinking and slutting around more than the other girls, especially girls my age. It wasn’t that bad, though. I only slept with two guys. But I fooled around with three others. For a girl my age it was a little out of control.
A week later, I couldn’t sleep and Galit gave me Valium. I’d taken it before, but taking it this time set me on a bad path. At first I took it just to sleep, but pretty soon I was taking it all the time.
I was fourteen years old, living on my own in a foreign country, and sleeping with guys twice my age. How much could a few pills hurt?
CHAPTER 3
The Party’s Over
When I wasn’t working, I would take a handful of Valium, pass out, not eat for two days, and aimlessly walk around Tokyo spending the majority of the money I was supposed to save for college. I was earning money hand over fist every week and would blow it on expensive designer clothes (and lots of boots) at ritzy boutiques in town. Looking back, maybe they shouldn’t have paid a young girl directly. Maybe it should’ve gone through my dad so he could put more away for college and just give me what I needed to live on.
I took Valium every day and I was full-on addicted. I took it mostly so that I could sleep, but I was always sleeping, up to twelve hours a day. And I wasn’t exactly Sleeping Beauty. I was looking pale and thin. My hair was falling out and my nails were getting brittle. I wasn’t going to castings because I’d oversleep. And when I did get up in time, I would look like such shit that I’d end up blowing off a job.
I was a not-so-beautiful mess. From ages fourteen to sixteen, I was living in Tokyo by myself with no structure, no family, no rules, and lots of money. It’s what I thought I wanted, but it was lonely. I was really missing home. Some days I was on top of the world and I was so happy to shoot and work. And other days, I couldn’t drag myself out of bed. I didn’t understand what was going on with me. I didn’t realize that I needed help, because no one was there to tell me. I was on my own.
I was calling my best friend back home, Ally, and my sister a lot. But my sister was younger than me and Ally was my age, so they didn’t exactly have any words of wisdom for me. Besides, they were wrapped up in their own lives. Life was going on without me, and it was starting to get to me.
My worst night was the night Ally told me she lost her virginity.
“Who did you do it with?” I anxiously asked her.
“Seth,” she replied.
Seth?! I was shocked.
Seth was a guy who’d had a crush on me before I left for Tokyo. We were actually kind of boyfriend/girlfriend. And when I left, he moved on to her. It hurt badly. I was jealous. Because she lost her virginity to a guy she really liked and my first time was shitty.
I didn’t have a mother or even a mother figure to help me deal with these new feelings and emotions. So, I did the only thing I knew would make me feel good: I took three Valium, went to bed, and cried and cried and cried. Sometimes I’d sleep for twenty-four hours straight.
The days were getting rougher. I was becoming more of a mess. I had no friends anymore. The models I had befriended now thought of me as this stupid little drug-addled slut. Mean, but true.
I knew my dream was crashing down on me, but I was ready to go home anyway. I was so tired of being sick all day from the pills and champagne. Work stopped coming my way. I wanted to get away from the guys I’d had sex with. I didn’t save nearly as much for college as I had planned or my father had hoped for. I was ready to leave, but not brave enough to do it. The decision ended up being my dad’s. He caught wind of what my life was like in Tokyo and called up my agency and warned, “She’s underage. She’s drinking. You’re going to get in trouble for this. And I know she’s having sex. She’s only sixteen.” I know I spilled to my sister Debby that I’d had sex and it was supposed to be our little secret, but then she went and told my dad. I felt so betrayed. Next thing I knew I was on a plane back to America, my dreams of becoming a famous supermodel gone forever.
CHAPTER 4
Homecoming Scream
I was sixteen years old and already a washed-up model. Lovely. My father was so pissed that he didn’t even pick me up at San Francisco Airport when I returned home from Tokyo. My agent, Yumi, picked me up instead, and I detoxed from the Valium at her house. A few days later, I had to face my father.
He sat me down for a serious talk. “What do you want to do when you grow up?” he asked.
“I want to be a fucking model!” I cried.
“Well, you had two years to do that and you fucked it up. It’s time to grow up and be part of the real world,” he replied sternly, very fatherly.
“Fuck you” was all I could say. I was pissed too. Pissed that I wasted this great opportunity. Pissed that I was forced to come home. Pissed that deep down I actually missed home and brought this on myself. Pissed that I disappointed my father. Pissed at my father for making me come home. I was so pissed, in fact, that I asked to stay with my mother in Merced, California, near Modesto. Yes, the mother I hadn’t talked to or seen since our horrible fight when I was ten.