SEX, LOVE, AND FASHION

The “male Lauren Hutton” spills all.

It will be the rare reader of supermodel Hulse’s memoir who doesn’t envy at least some aspects of the life splashed across these shallow, sunny pages. Growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, he had an all-American glow. A football star, then lifeguard, surfer and jobbing carpenter with a wide-ranging band of buddies at his side, he rode the decade’s buoyant waves to easy good times. At a girlfriend’s suggestion, the sleekly muscled Hulse, whose gleaming visage and pecs dot this book in a mix of ad reproductions and snapshots, moved into modeling as a way of making easier money than hammering nails. The work was slow at first but built steadily. By the ’80s, he was one of the earliest male supermodels, thriving under the tutelage of Bruce Weber and reveling in exotic photo shoots and constant adulation. Although the work slowed down once he hit silver-haired middle age, Hulse kept a solid modeling career going into his second half-century; he was recently a judge on a modeling reality show. In what is sure to be one of the book’s major selling points, he gossips about the steady supply of bedmates he found among female models, detailing steamy encounters with Paulina Porizkova (“it was like a professional wrestling match”) and a pre-Hollywood Andie MacDowell (“we made love all night long”). Reality-TV fans will be disappointed, however, to find out Hulse didn’t bed Janice Dickinson; he was turned off by her “negative aura.” The author isn’t just a serial womanizer, he tells us; he’s also into meditation and Eastern philosophies and is more than happy to sprinkle his thoughts on such matters throughout the book.

A few juicy insider stories, but in general a flatly delivered recital of events, all seen through the narrow prism of naked self-regard.