Thing of Beauty (46 page)

Gia was not set on modeling as her only way out of drug dependency. She was looking into schools in Philadelphia for filmmaking and was considering enlisting in the armed forces, most likely in the Air Force. “She wanted to do something she could be proud of,” recalled Rochelle. “We looked in career books and I said, ‘How would you like to be a paramedic?’ She was real into wearing a uniform and driving an ambulance. She’d say, ‘Gia Carangi, Emergency Medical Technician,
yeah
… they won’t laugh at me
then,
will they?’”

And there were times when she could be very sensible about what had to be done: making checklists, even doing simple written biofeedback exercises given to her at the clinic to try to identify her true feelings. “Detached,” she wrote one day, “I feel detached misunderstood confused & scared. Agitation will find relief in the exercise of
simple
memories. Look not around, nor forward—but back (speculative philosophy of the day)?” She also maintained her dream of someday becoming a musician and incessantly wrote song lyrics, with explanations at the top of the page of the meter and instrumentation.

But then something would happen, and she would need heroin again. She would check every counter and drawer for
loose money, empty every pocket of every garment in the house, make a few calls to see if anyone else would loan her a few bucks to fix her car or some other such lie, scan the room to see what might be left to pawn at the upscale Society Hill Loan or the grungier place at Twelfth and Bainbridge, a block from the projects. If all else failed she could go shoplift something on South Street and sell it to one of the neighborhood’s twenty-four-hour-a-day denizens. Then she would go out to cop: hop in the car and make the quick drive over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden or head up Broad Street for the laborious nightmare of driving into North Philadelphia. If she was really desperate, she could buy retail from one of the other junkies in the neighborhood, who had already invested the time and energy to go to Camden or North Philly or even New York.

After she copped, she came home and took out her works. She cooked the heroin down in a spoon, tied off her arm above the elbow, and shot, “booting” the drug mixed with her own blood in and out of the syringe until the danger gave way to euphoria. Sometimes when she was high, she would write, and all that flowed into the stream of her consciousness was diverted into her journal. Personal pep talks had a way of degenerating into Miss America acceptance speeches gone awry.

Gia began writing in her Fiorucci journal, a note to herself to call her Elite booker:

Call Patty tomorrow and tell her that your very or so sorry that I haven’t been calling in and I haven’t made my appointements. But I have a problem, which I was try to figure out a solution for. I always try to get rid of a problem on my own, any problem I have I probably caused myself, usually by not being itellingent. I never tell anybody my problems, they’re my problems and everybody seems to have their own, but I remember Monique telling me that should let the I work with at the agency know even if nobody solved my problems for me. You would at least now how I was feeling and what I was doing or what was going on in my life … hopefully if I can fill in all those Blank Charts.
Monquie gave me the idea … it finally snuck in. So going to have a wole new concept of handling my business. The problem trying to straighten out I came up with an ingeneous idel that I don’t know any model who has conceptual plan to try to increase any business. I already have try to have a pleasant disposition, which I usually am. But I going try always to to thinking it’s going to be a wonderful job. And isn’t life great. Because if I am bad mood I know just the working makes me crink. These some of my worst as working person and lot of trouble it makes late which usually hour at least which really disturbs and embarasses me which think people realize how bad I feel, even friend at Elite I did dumb things, I think late is dum. Not showing up all it always my fault I was Vogue.

I never told anybody the truth about why I just wouldn’t show up some days. Which some think was funny. But I didn’t it was fun at all. It was impossible for me to cancel at the last minute and try to bow out gracefully. I couldn’t, I tried to be courteous which I should, any client you’re hired or confirmed (as oppose cancel) This is a model point of no return …

… While is the life unfair? Because people make it that and I haven’t which People been dead 100 yrs laws I really off the track, I want get my plan attaction on paper and finishes So I can get to rebuilding Roman Empire … Let I Like fall I think besides pains teenage are going through the most important in Life I felt lost with my idinti And didn’t understand anyone else. I really thought I was sucure and indenpent Which make me aceptible in Society eyes and my only link with Society But otherwise I look down on Society It lyed I hate any lies It really make me think people have turn into rats and Government want do cause people run U.S.A. people have to change moral majority for America We are proud successful plain people or we try to be and most so do people forget is honest I know I feel bad if have lie about things. because if everyone would lieing if the US could exterminate lies and people
would be lies there out of are read and contaminating the hontess way. When everyone know that everyone is honest people start trusting each other I know it would peace and a sence of triquility from that people could not help but be happy. People could friends anybody …

But it A Good Dreams for American to set Goal for it and do. I have enough faith Americans have special for country America the pround and Beautiful Most America are prod to so everyone is taking advantage of country we doing to own home. I know God American straight country Please start at begining …

this is cry someone can understand that we all live on this plot of Earth but you can’t survival on Bad America’s soil Horrable the thowth Maybe know in Govement of such horrable because country is important it is are bread and butter And America At least I have & butter. I am will help preserve my Greatest Nation I would sweat hours work on Land if I knew what do. I sure Americans we aren’t what Earth the most Land of Beatiful I believe in my country I don’t believe the Government People are the heart & soul of coutry Its out country we the people of U.S. We must different of Sevice Pubic Health Sevice, Review CIA More then we want to Amit you would
have
to be brainless or live in a cave no relize that present way we run is Eternity …

We are powerful but we allways we never let U.S. weak It rate very high … some hate tha and people. Weid tourstist funny people out U.S. don’t care who you they look down not visit evenually return to their country Lets US ALIVE CARE FOR LAND WE LOVED MOVE.

If you are the type a guy gal who down getting dirty okay I have job investigate junk waste factory Envorment Mandatory safety you know are the people lot own places the air are we breathe and water that a little color will remian blue clear fresh clean All as american’s cleanness is next to Godlyness and to be close is an honor why because if only as that could touch him
look right into his eyes and strife and work to close them you would feel ashamed and that worth cause to touch our God without Man I would very mean not the Guy you would mother Religion the humane race resoures its power of peace and love is holding right now & has many kept people killing made the love turn evil into good Our Gave us everyone a priceless Beside being and trying to warn men mustin man & abong our father of unervise. See it is so silly for people to go war for reason god says thou salt not no people aren’t suppos kill or go war—is ALot killing for nothing war is meanless Wjay was do for country Americans won againest Nazi’s & Hitler and it finish Veisiam but the Had some Idea wanted so think German Back Hitler that he could war …

On the facing page, most likely on another day, she wrote: “Friday Night Videos, Gia Carangi Sweepstakes, PO Box 4502, Blair Nebraska.”

In the fall of 1983, Gia decided to move to the Jersey Shore—in part because her mother still wouldn’t let her come back home. Atlantic City was a far different scene than New York or Philadelphia. Its traditional position as a seasonal party town with a year-round seamy underbelly had mutated, with the coming of legalized gambling, into something far more formidable. Amid the increasingly visible poverty of the resident have-nots and the steady flow of tourists unburdening themselves of their cash, a new, young, big-living middle class had emerged.

Fueled by high-paying, low-training jobs in the casinos—and the companies servicing the casinos’ customers—the now-endless summer had developed its own fast lane, rivaling the
dolce vita
in the world’s major cities in some ways, and mocking it in others. Atlantic City had become, in a few short years, a sort of Manhattan stripped of its cultural pretensions, its high commerce and its media-fueled sense of time and space. It was just one big Times Square. What most major cities considered their garish underside was Atlantic City’s
only
side. Unlike New York, where people worked hard and played hard, the whole of Atlantic City
society was devoted to playing hard. Fantasy, hedonism and depravity were not trendy subject matter for fashion photographs or club themes in Atlantic City. They were the bulwark of the economy, the region’s only natural resources.

Gia’s father, who she still referred to as “Daddy,” had successfully relocated near the Boardwalk. Joe ran the second Hoagie City; his son Joey ran a pizza parlor on the Boardwalk itself. Between the two of them, Gia’s brother Michael and her uncle Dan, the family was still managing the original shop near Resorts and looking into others.

The Atlantic City side of Gia’s family had been spared most of the first few years of her drug problems—they saw her only on holidays and during infrequent visits. Only Michael, with whom she had grown even closer since his own rehab experience, had really seen the depths to which Gia was now capable of sinking. They had once even traveled together. After he got out of the hospital, she took him away to St. Barts, to see the island paradise she had found. “She wanted me to experience that,” Michael recalled. “She had some Valiums and stuff, but no arm work—I would look for it by this time. She got fucked up, started drinking, you party when you’re away. She went out a couple nights with this girl from France. I never saw any needles around, but she was fucked up. And she was no fun when she was fucked up. She got pretty nasty if things didn’t go her way. She fell—we had rented mopeds and she had an accident on one, cut her hip up. We went in town to the medical center and she demanded more Valium because she was in pain. They gave her a bunch. It was pretty much like that.”

When Gia came to Atlantic City, she moved in with her father and Michael, taking a bedroom in the apartment they shared near Hoagie City—at Tennessee and Pacific, just above Caesar’s. She then set out to convince Rochelle to join her. By this time Rochelle’s court case had been settled. “I never told, I never turned evidence,” she recalled. “My parents wanted me to tell and I wouldn’t do it. I got five years’ probation because I had an excellent lawyer, lots of thousands of dollars later. They got my X-ray technician’s license revoked and got me thrown out of the hospital.

“My parents wanted me to stay with them after that. For a while I did. I got a job in Short Hills working in this real
exclusive skin salon. I would go see Gia on the weekends. But she wanted me to move down there, and I finally did.”

Gia’s plan was that she and Rochelle would have the kind of stable, homey life that she had wanted with many women, but had never been able to experience. “Gia was like an Italian guy from the old school,” Rochelle recalled. “For a while she really even dressed like a guy, even wearing boxer shorts. And she wanted a sort of old-fashioned relationship. She wanted to make me a ‘nice girl’—and I
wasn’t.
I never knew what love was, or good sex was. Gia was a great lover. And she wanted to live together in a husband and wife type of thing. I was the wife. She was the dominant one. She was the man. I mean, it was really, just pretend. I mean, I was pretending. Maybe she was serious.

“But she was also just like a child. She called me ‘Doodiekins,’ I was Mrs. Doodiekins, she was Mr. Doodiekins. I’d boss her around and she’d say, ‘Yes, King Doo-doo.’ ‘Gia, go get me some tea, get me a coke.’ Any hour of the morning, she’d go. She’d just wait on me, she was good like that. But, like a child. She’d get all excited about things like Dairy Queen. I’d say, ‘You want some ice cream?’ and she got all excited. ‘Can we really go to Dairy Queen, really?’”

But the chemistry between Gia and Rochelle wasn’t conducive to a quiet home off the range. Gia wanted the kind of emotionally ambitious relationship that only the stablest people were able to pull off. But she had no idea how far she was from being mature enough to rudder such a commitment, nor how unlikely a choice Rochelle was for such a union.

“That’s very typical of the way Gia was,” Kathleen said. “She was the same way about children. When she was modeling she would say she wanted to buy a farm and have all these animals and all these children. She could picture herself there playing with the kids and reading them stories and doing all the things that a little kid does. But never once did it cross her mind all the work she’d have to do, what it was really about. It’s just like when she was in high school, she could never understand why people didn’t ask her to baby-sit. But you just
knew.”

To the surprise of no one, Gia’s relationship with Rochelle, based on so many unspoken, unshared assumptions,
was an emotional three-ring circus. “She was always accusing me of being involved with other people,” Rochelle recalled. “She always thought I was cheating on her. And I wasn’t cheating on her, at first. I think part of it was that she was more comfortable being gay and out than me. She never cared. She liked being gay. She loved women and cars, that’s what she told me. ‘Blondes,’ she would say, ‘I love blondes.’ She used to say she never really thought a woman was a woman unless she was a blonde.