Bill Cosby’s name appears at least 25 times in Janice Dickinson’s 2008 memoir called “No Lifeguard on Duty.” He pursues her, helps her, grooms her, invites her to a meeting to see if she can sing– she can’t. He knows it. It’s a ruse. This is a married family man. Her friend says, “He wants to sleep with you.”
In a hotel, he tries to close the deal. He says, “After all I’ve done for you?” In the book, Cosby gets angry when Dickinson backs off. Now in 2014 Dickinson says what followed was rape. She was told by her publisher not to mention it. Cosby’s lawyers threatened her. But what she left in does make sense.
Cosby answered the door in nothing but a white towel. He was fresh from the shower, too; his black skin was glistening. He hugged me, a little too enthusiastically; told me how much he’d missed me, and how nice it was to see me. I believed him. Liquor does that to a girl. “God, you’re beautiful.”
He kissed me, full on the lips, then went off to dress and we went downstairs, to dinner, where Cosby spent the next two hours talking about himself. It was An Evening with Bill Cosby. A Tribute to Bill Cosby. And suddenly I remembered something Andy Warhol once told me. It was his definition of an actor. He said, “An actor is a person whose eyes glaze over when the conversation is no longer about them.” And I thought, Well, then, Bill Cosby is an actor’s actor.
After dinner he asked me back to his room, and I went. But I stopped myself at the door. “I’m exhausted,” I said, begging off. His eyebrows went a little funny. “Exhausted?” he asked, and it was clear he was trying hard to keep his temper in check. “After all I’ve done for you, that’s what I get? I’m exhausted.” “Well, gee, Bill,” I stammered. “If I had known it was going to be like this—” He waved both hands in front of my face, silencing me. Then he gave me the dirtiest, meanest look in the world, stepped into his suite, and slammed the door in my face. Men.
