"He kissed me, full on the lips": Janice Dickinson's creepy account of meeting Bill Cosby

The model's memoir contains allegations of predatory behavior -- and came out before Cosby was accused of rape

Published November 18, 2014 9:49PM (EST)

 Janice Dickinson      (<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-564025p1.html?cr=00&pl=edit-00">Helga Esteb</a> / <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/editorial?cr=00&pl=edit-00">Shutterstock.com</a>)
Janice Dickinson (Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com)

As women continue to come forward with rape allegations leveled at comedian Bill Cosby, others have begun to look back over the star's career in a new light -- were the jokes he once told about drugging women's drinks really so innocent? Have other alleged victims' stories gone unnoticed? How many people were aware of Cosby's reported predatory behavior before the first charges of sexual assault became public, in 2004?

It's possible that anyone who read model Janice Dickinson's 2002 memoir, "No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel," might have foreseen the accusations against Cosby, though her account of the comedian didn't gain much traction when her book was first released. As Vice's Tracie Egan Morrissey finds, the supermodel-turned-reality TV star's book includes several descriptions of a sexually forward (and sometimes aggressive) Cosby, as well as allegations of predatory behavior similar to that which several of the comedian's accusers describe:

It starts with Cosby reaching out to the young model through her modeling agency sometime in 1981 or 1982, under the auspice that he had some ideas for television and had been following her career. This is similar to how Cosby allegedly contacted at least ​two other women, both models, who have accused him of sexual assault. The comedian invited Dickinson to meet him for lunch at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue, where he was staying. [...]

Cosby asked Dickinson -- who would've been in her mid-20s at the time -- about her acting experience and whether or not she could sing. He poised himself as being her mentor.

Morrissey includes several selections from Dickinson's book, including one anecdote of Cosby purportedly attempting to guilt the young model into having sex with him after flying her to meet him in Lake Tahoe:

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. [...]

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.

Dickinson never came forward with allegations of sexual assault, but she also never backed down from her written account of her encounters with Cosby. In 2006, she called the comedian "a 'bad guy' who preys on vulnerable women" in an interview with Howard Stern. A Cosby representative later responded by reportedly telling MSNBC that the star didn't "want to discuss it" -- just as his lawyer told the public over the weekend.


By Jenny Kutner

MORE FROM Jenny Kutner


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Bill Cosby Janice Dickinson Rape Sexual Assault Tracie Egan Morrissey Vice