PAINTED LIPS - BOQUITAS PINTADAS

PAINTED LIPS - BOQUITAS PINTADAS

Bill was a US Navy pilot - a career that ended when he took nasty
shrapnel wound in the leg over Iraq in 'Desert Storm'. His creed was
simple: "Don't be afraid....Taste everything,....Sometimes I think we
only half live over here. I would like to live all the way." As he
sought to "taste everything' and to "live all the way" for more
adventurous years. He competed in triathlons, he ran guns to Sierra
Leone and survived two plane crashes in South America. And of course he
told stories in a simple, brutally honest voice, which captivated his
friends. He operated an executive Lear jet service for wealthy clients.
One of his "tastes" was his on-and-off love affair with Lina.

Bill recalled Lina's first words, "I'm not impressed by somebody who's
got a Lear jet and who's going to take me to Florida every weekend. I
just want a body, like a nice hot body and some big lips. Forget
everything else."

Olga was a Russian Air Force fighter pilot and fought in Afghanistan.
She was a deserter and immigrated to America to work for Bill as
co-pilot. She and Bill were lovers. Olga recalled her overture onboard
the flight, "Girls have always been a problem for me. I really don't
know why I bother with them. I am such a sucker for a pretty girl that
I like. I like you!" She found Lina to be 'electric and hot'.

Olga told Bill, "If you want to see a beautiful erotic woman, this is
it."

Lina was a supermodel. She earned $ 3 million a year. She was a member
of an exclusive club, where sun always shone and the parties glowed. A
land where dreams came true and everyone was certified beautiful. She
gave a new meaning to the industry catch phrase "girl of the moment".
Her signature was the dark painted lips.

Miami was the rest and recreation stop after the photo shoot in the
Bahamas. Later that night in "Bim Bam Boom" decadent club, constructed
from an abandoned church, which was pulsating with the ear-splitting
beat of Latin dance music, Bill caught a glimpse of Olga dancing with
another woman. He followed her through a sea of bodies into the MEN's
room, where both men and women were popping pills and smoking crack.
Olga walked into a toilet stall where Lina was seated and sniffing a
powdery substance with a black man. Olga straddled her on the toilet
just as Lina looked up and saw Bill watching. To hide his view, Lina
closed the toilet stall door with her foot cased in black high heel
shoe decorated with rhinestones.

Wearing a completely back-less black satin dress, Lina first danced
with Olga and the black man, as Bill watched her sensual body movements
and the way she kissed Olga. With a beguiling look, Lina turned with
her back towards Olga, permitting her female lover to touch her
breasts. In an instant, Lina left Olga, presumably to provoke and
enflame the jealousy of her female lover. Lina's lover of the night
Olga resorted to dancing with a black man.

Lina returned and pushed aside Olga and became his dance partner. The
black man rubbed her butt against his crotch. He turned her, suddenly
grabbed Lina's ass, pressed her toward himself, and then started to
kiss her on her neck and lips. Feverishly, they consumed each other in
the middle of the writhing, turning bodies of other dancers.

Olga remembered the infamous, intimate, graphic, roughhouse sex scene
between Bill and Lina in her New York duplex overlooking Central Park.
Lina's face, in full frame, was gently reclining on a bed beneath his.
Atop her, he removed both his pants and shirt and then extended his
entire naked body down onto her. First, he kissed and cupped his hand
around one of her breasts and then moved down her body. He didn't know
whether he was being set up for the next orgy and will be the next to
die in Lina's arms. In the same bed where Olga and Lina had made love,
Bill enthusiastically performed oral sex on her -she arched her back
with pleasure.

They switched positions - she was atop him, kissed him and reciprocated
with full body kisses. Bill looked up during their lovemaking and saw
their reflection in the ceiling mirror. Their sex grew rougher as he
turned her over and their bodies are pressed together - Lina moved her
legs apart. As their sexual tension mounted, their groaning increased
and she grabbed the brass frame of the bed behind her, and then dug her
nails into his back - blood smear oozed from the deep scratch
marks.

Later, Lina was asleep next to Bill, naked, and he smoked a post-coital
cigarette. He got up and strolled butt-naked into the bathroom. There,
he ran the faucet, cupping his hand to drink and to douse his face. As
he came back up from the sink, there was Olga fully dressed in the
mirror behind him - he is startled to encounter her. She is
expressionless, but insanely jealous. Speaking to her "man to man," he
boldly bragged about his recent sexual conquest. Olga confronted
Bill.

Olga: If you don't leave her alone, I'll kill you, Bill.
Bill: Let me ask you something, Olga. Man-to-man. I think she's the
f--k of the century. (Long pause) What do you think? (Olga looked like
she might spring and attack) How long have you been here? You like
watching, don't you?
Olga: Lina likes me to watch.
Olga turned and left the room.

Bill's weak bravado and fragile nakedness surfaced when her retort
revealed that Olga, a lesbian lover, was encouraged to watch Lina's
heterosexual couplings with men.

Bill returned to the bedroom and slipped into bed next to Lina. She
kissed his hand and murmured softly: "Bill". In the morning, sunshine
flooded the room as he jerked awake, but Lina was not there. She had
left a note on her side of the bed: "Gone to the studio."

Fausto's studio on East Fifty-Sixth Street had in the reception area,
decades of Elle, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar covers shot by
the precious, prolific photographer hung high on the white walls. The
girl, Lina, whose face and "busto" - as Fausto would say - appeared on
some of his more recent covers was in the small dressing room being
prepared for a demonstration photo session being staged for the TV
cameras.

Seated in front of a large makeup mirror, Lina didn't squirm a bit as
her face was painstakingly primed, painted and powdered for nearly two
hours. She had learned to hold still while her naturally beautiful face
and hair are made unnaturally beautiful so that the camera - which saw
things somewhat differently than the human eye - would capture her as
preternaturally beautiful.

The last photo shoot in Milano went well with megastar photographer
Fausto for Vogue. Lina was coaxed by Fausto, "Make me chase you,
carissima! Tease, tease. Look at me like you are naked&;#8230;That's
it! Che bella! Fantastico!" Lina was in a rush to get to the airport to
catch a flight to New York. She was to do a photo shoot for Christian
Dior and later a bikini photo-shoot in St.Barthelemy for Sports
Illustrated.

Lina, with dark painted lips, was found dead in a men's toilet in
Milano airport, with a thin syringe implanted inside her arm. She was
only 26.

After Lina's tragic death Bill sent an e-mail to the people who knew
Lina: "I felt very close to Lina, it was a great loss for me ... she
was just a great person to have in my life ... her death was a terrible
loss to me."

The replies came back from the people who knew her best - most were
beautiful, some were ugly and too painful from those who "consumed"
her.

Fausto (Photographer) - "I was mad about her&;#8230;. There was
something she had&;#8230;.no other girl had it. I've never met a
girl who had it. She had the perfect body&;#8230;.And to me, the
perfect attitude: 'I don't give a damn.'"

Sylvana (Mother) - "I knew how beautiful she was, and how fragile. And
I had this vision of her becoming Marilyn Monroe type and becoming a
sex symbol and dying a very tragic death young."

Julie (Creative Director) - "Lina was very vulnerable, it was a part of
the beauty of her photographs. &;#8230;.And she was just at the
right time. She had the boy/girl thing, and it was sexy - it was
everything. She was absolutely dynamite."

Richard (Photographer) -"I did not know she was lesbian until the St.
Tropez trip. And it was a problem. She couldn't satisfy
herself&;#8230;..and she was very very aggressive&;#8230;And you
couldn't room her with another girl. You had to watch her carefully if
she went out at night - if you were going to see her again the next
day."

Maureen (Friend) -"She always called from where she was. She met an
Italian prince at Costa Esmeralda. He loved her; he wanted a photo of
her. Lina just ripped the picture out of Vogue and wrote on it, 'Mi
amor! Eat your heart out, Lina'."

Manolo (Friend) -"Our sex lives were so bizarre. I remember this huge
orgy in a church. We are all at Frantic doing 'Afghan' coke, and one
guy announced he had the keys to the church nearby. We put cushions on
the floor and had this party. Girls made love to girls, and boys to
boys - and then grand finale frenzy of copulations of all kinds."

Erika (Designer) - "She was very sweet and I wanted to help her. I
spent a weekend with her and a friend at Gianni's house in Bimini. I
recall going into her room and finding her sitting in a closet, looking
into her bag. Much later, when I realized she was shooting up, I knew
what she was doing."

Dr. Gutfreund (Drug Counselor) - "In modeling - well they were all
using her. When&;#8230;. someone provides drugs for you knowing how
bad off you are, or had them available to make sure you fulfilled a
service&;#8230;.that's being used."

Carolina (Friend) - "She stole from me. I didn't care&;#8230;. I
always knew that she had a really good heart. Even when she was
ruthless, she had a kind innocence about her."

Bettina (Supermodel) -"I was the 'bambina Lina', but more wholesome.
She was wild. Completely opposite to me. She'd leave a booking in the
clothes to buy cigarettes and not come back for
hours.&;#8230;..She's not living anymore."

Olga (Lover) - "So when you see Lina with painted lips so bright
Don't be too quick to judge her a lady of the night
Her smiles too often cover the sudden tears that start
Behind her painted lips you'll find a woman's broken heart."

Lina's last e-mail to Bill - "For me, a good fashion photograph makes a
promise it can never keep. By the sheer fact of being printed it
appears to be an attainable truth, when, in fact, it is an individual
projection of a photographer&;#8230;..Fashion photographs are
ephemeral. Some have great timeliness and draws the viewer in, but do
not hold up as photographs&;#8230;.I can make a page-stopper for a
magazine, let's say by turning myself upside down when all the others
are upright. But it's meaningless. I say 'wow', but when I look
closely, I realize its nonsense. It's a page-stopper, but after a
moment my mind throws it away. On such meaninglessness my great
modeling career was made. Ciao!"

But Lina was legendary in her industry for other reasons, only a few of
which could even be mentioned on network television. Her celebrated
androgyny was not provocative put-on: the female makeup artist who was
brushing Lina's lips shiny red was the recurring object of her
affections - painted lips - boquitas pintadas

Cause of death: Heroin overdose.

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