Gia is my darling - old, young, decadent, innocent, volatile, vulnerable, and more tough - spirited than she looks. She is all nuance and suggestion, like a series of images by Bertolucci ... I never think of her as a model, though she's one of the best. It's that she doesn't behave like a model; she doesn't give you the Hot Look, the Cool Look, the Cute Look; she strikes sparks, not poses. Out of doors, especially, I have never known anyone so excitingly free and spontaneous, constantly changing, moving (which drove me crazy until I got smart and learned to focus the camera faster) - she's like photographing a stream of consciousness.

Gia - her last name is Carangi - is twenty-one ("going on eighty-four"). She came to New York three years ago from a small town in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and landed like the Marines. Everyone was nuts about her - editors, photographers. "It was fun. A lot of models have a rough time, but things started happening pretty quickly for me." Maybe too quickly: By the end of her first year, she'd been to Europe "at least 10 times" and could say matter-of-factly, "I'm able to buy whatever I want ... if I see something, I can buy it." Well, why not? She was booked to the eyeballs. Only it wasn't always so much fun. "When you're in demand, and people are saying, 'I want you, I want you,' it isn't easy to say no. I don't like to disappoint people; I'm basically a satisfier. So you find yourself working a lot - a lot. And if you want to take a day off, because you need a day to rest or to get yourself together so you can be there and together and have your energy for the next day, it's hard. Models are never supposed to be down or be tired or have a headache. They've go to be up all the time."

Gia wasn't. And sometimes she turned up late, or she didn't show at all, or she showed and then vanished from the set. The talk was, Gia was into drugs. And the truth is, she was. The more important truth is that she isn't; as I said, there's more toughness here than meets the eye. "It wasn't just a matter of stopping. It was a matter of wanting to live in the world that I live in, and making it work for me instead of against me. .... "If anything, I'm high on being straight because now I can feel my body, I can feel my head. Before, I was like numb. It's really just selfish .... a selfish way to live."

"The world seems based on money and sex ... I'm looking for better things than that, like happiness and love and caring." "You have to try to discipline yourself, because after a certain age nobody is going to do it for you."

"You know, I thank God that I'm good-looking, or that people think I'm good looking. But there's a lot more to it than makeup and prettiness and all that stuff ... there's a lot more to being a woman than that. When I look in the mirror, I just want to like myself, that's all. And if I like myself, than I look good"... >

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