Remembering Janis

The fall of ‘66 and I was attending Douglass, the women’s college of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, wearing Bass Wejuuns penny loafers, preppy v-neck tennis sweaters and ironing my hair in preparation for my regular dates with Rick—getting drunk at the never-ending parties at his fraternity house.

Well into the semester, my older brother, who was living in a second floor flat on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, returned home for a visit and turned me on to pot; soon after, he suggested I come join him in San Francisco. (Not sure that my parents ever forgave him for that…)

I asked my parents if I could go and, of course, they said, No. So I took a leave of absence from school, withdrew the money I had saved from waitressing at Grossingers the previous summer and made plans to leave. (To their credit, when I got cold feet prior to my departure, they encouraged me to go.)

I rented a room in a flat on Oak Street across from Golden Gate panhandle and, one day, while my new boyfriend John and I were sitting by the curb at Safeway on Haight and Stanyan, Janis Joplin walked by with her dog. I didn’t know who she was but John recognized her and asked if she was Janis. She said, Yes, and we had a very short unmemorable conversation.

Some time later I was up at Mt. Tam partying and there she was, the center of attention, with a gallon jug of Red Mountain slung over her arm slugging it down; I was awestruck.

From then on, that was the only way I drank my Red Mountain, folded on my outstretched arm, straight out of a bottle.

However, seeing her crack a whip on stage at the Fillmore West released something in me. I figured if she could do that, I could do anything because I could never be that outrageous.

It was just like Chet Helms said, “…her greatest value is as a role model for women. She said to women, ‘You can wear pants, it’s okay. You can talk any way you like, it’s okay. You can sing loud if you want. You don’t have to sing sweet. You can sing rough if you like. You can talk dirty if you like. You can throw away your bra if you like. I think every woman presently living owes Janis a lot. It’s just a whole lot freer for women because Janis did the things she did’.”

I survived the Summer of Love and returned to school in the fall wearing John Lennon glasses, smelling of patchouli oil and with 7 lids of grass in my suitcase that my mother found and promptly sent down the incinerator from the 33rd floor in their apartment building in lower Manhattan.

In the summer of ‘68, I lived in a large flat in the West Village with five other classmates and saw Janis perform at the Fillmore East.

One evening, while out walking, I saw her on the street, furs around her neck cascading down her back, surrounded by a coterie of friends, cackling her well-known laugh.

I ran home, breathless, and gasped, “Oh my god. Janis is out there on the street!”

Then she died—from an overdose— 27 years old—a sensitive soul, who attempted to hide her pain with drugs and adulation; in hindsight, her early demise was inevitable.

Although I didn’t really know her, her death affected me deeply, and from time to time, it still does.