I Dated Janis...

...and I'd do it again, but she's deceased now

Many people are skeptical about my having dated the tragic blues-rock singer Janis Joplin, but how can one be surprised by skepticism in the troubled times in which we live?

I’m not proud to say that we met because for around 15 months there, beginning at the dawn of the Summer of Love, I was the dealer from whom the top San Francisco bands — your Dead, your Airplane, your Quicksilver Messenger Service — bought their diphenhydramine and dextromethorphan, and yohimbine. One of Big Brother & The Holding Company’s guitarists was majorly strung out on the latter, and it was in that group’s dingy Fillmore Auditorium dressing room, not coincidentally — she was the group’s singer, for pity’s sake! — that Jan and I were introduced. She offered me a sip of her Southern Comfort, the vile fruit-flavored, whiskey liqueur of which she was inexplicably fond, and I gave her a hit of synephrine “on the house”, hoping she might become addicted to it, which would have been money in my pocket.

I’m not going to pretend we were an “item” for long. Indeed, we went on only two dates, the first to Attacabottoni’s in North Beach, whose tagliatelle Jan loved, and then over to the Matrix, launching pad of Jefferson Airplane, to see and hear the Beatle Twins, who were said to sing remarkable three-part harmonies even though there were only two of them, thanks to Ernawati, the female half, being adept at polyphonic overtone singing, whereby a fundamental note is produced alongside a harmonic overtone, creating multiple simultaneous pitches. I very much enjoyed their version of “This Boy”, but the entertainers didn’t appear to be twins at all. Ernawati looked Indonesian, while Chip was as white as aioli, and twice as delicious.

Afterward, Jan suggested we repair to Big Brothers’ communal “crash pad” in the Haight-Ashbury district and have premarital intercourse, but I was uncomfortable with the idea, believing then, as I believe now, Christopher Hitchens be damned, that there is an omniscient, omnipotent God who’s offended by sex outside the marriage covenant.

On our second date, we drove up in my VW microbus (Jan’s 1964 Porsche 356 C 1600 SC Cabriolet was in the shop) to Corte Madera, the sleepy Marin County suburb that two decades later would give us Huey Lewis & The Nudes, for dinner at the home of her friends Rob and Cyndy. Rob and I smoked cigars and talked about the stock market, football, and other things that chicks don’t understand while Jan helped Cyndy make dinner. It emerged while we were eating that Rob had had an affair with the secretary he shared at the insurance brokerage where he worked, “but who in his right mind would leave a gal who can cook this good?” Even in those days, not long out of college, I was socially fluent enough to agree even though I’d much rather have paid a second visit to Attacabottoni’s.

It emerged that our hosts had been thinking in terms of our “swapping” partners after dessert. Cyndy made no secret of her disappointment when Jan informed her of my celibacy. She sang a few bars of the ancient ragtime and Broadway favorite “Pretty Baby”, substituting “Every party needs a pooper that’s why we invited you” for “Everybody loves a baby that’s why I’m in love with you”.

I found that hurtful, and drove home to San Francisco Janislessly. Not tickled pink about having to get an Über home, she declined to see me again. “Piece of My Heart” became a big hit, and she had steamy premarital affairs with Columbia Records boss Clive Davis, Kris Kristofferson, and three-quarters of what remained of the Dave Clark 5 before dying too young of something or other.

You should hire me to make a snazzy little video for you.