2000-07-12 - 19:20:24

Good grief, what is going on here?

In the last 48 hours my hit count has been exploding. Two days ago I was slowly edging up to 1,000 hits but probably by the time I post this I will almost certainly be past 1,100.

I really don't know what is causing this directly. Maybe it's a quirk of Sitemeter which has been acting oddly lately.

Or maybe it's my nice new layout, courtesy of the beautiful and gracious Sinnamon.

And then there is the guestbook, which I am enjoying very much. I always like to hear from my readers, and I always follow the links there back to see what their journals look like. I nearly always find some good reading at the end of these links. Recent discoveries are Lis, Frantic, Waterbelle and Shiitake.

Also, I heard from my old friends there, Schmez, Cosmic Amanda and the inimitable Madame Entropia.

Excuse me, I now have to go get a drink. All this name-dropping makes me thirsty.

Last time I started to tell the story of my sister, Janis. That is not her real name, but the name I am giving her here.

As she was growing up, Janis would get these obsessions. She would be intense and passionate about them for a few months or a year, and then she would move on to something new. This mania would greatly amuse my brother and myself, but in retrospect, I can see more clearly that this was an attempt by a troubled girl to find an identity for herself.

Let me see if I can remember some of them.

First I think it was Snow White, from the Disney movie. Then it was Raggedy Ann and Andy. Janis literally had dozens of the Raggedy Ann dolls in all sizes ranging from ones that would fit into the palm of a hand to others that were bigger than she was.

My father always indulged these whims of hers rather extravagantly. A workaholic, he had discovered that it was much easier to spend money on your children than it was spend time with them.

Next I think it was Archie and Archie Comic books. She had an immense number of Archie and Richie Rich comics. The floor of her room was several inches deep with them. I mean that literally - you could not see what color the carpet was in her room.

One time my mother put her foot down. Janis had to clean up her room and get rid of at least some of the comics. After much painful cleaning and soul-searching, a big pile of comics appeared in the hall outside her room. These were supposed to be taken down to the trash.

However, days and weeks went by and the comics never got taken down to the garage. Instead, the piles gradually got smaller and smaller as comics slowly began to make their way back inside her room again. In the end, I don�t think a single one was thrown out.

Frankly, as a comic store owner, I consider that a triumph on my sister's part! However, it also illustrates the somewhat inconsistent parenting Janis received: ultimatums were issued, but never enforced.

Her next obsession was with Shaun Cassidy, a teen idol that was popular in the very late 1970s. He is probably better known these days as the younger brother of David Cassidy of the Partridge Family fame.

Janis was totally ga-ga over the handsome young singer and completely papered the walls and even the ceiling of her room with smiling photos of him. At one point I think I counted over 130 photos cut from the pages of "Tiger Beat" and "16" Magazine in her room.

My brother and I thought this was hilarious, although now I recognize that it was a very typical way for a 12-year-old girl to behave.

One time my college girlfriend Anne and I took Janis and a friend to see Shaun Cassidy in concert. THAT was certainly an experience. Dad managed to pull some strings and get us seats in the front row. However, that is probably a story for another day.

Her next, and most important, obsession was with the singer Janis Joplin, ergo the name I have chosen for her.

By this time it was apparent that she was having a miserable time in school, and she strongly identified with Ms. Joplin, who had been dead about 10 years when discovered by my younger sister.

Joplin also had a rather miserable life. One of the humiliations I remember hearing about was that at her Texas high school she won an "award" for "Ugliest Boy In Class." Ah, the kindness of youth.

At one point I remember finding a slip of paper with the lyrics to the song "Down On Me" written on it in my sister's scrawly block printing. Many exclamation points were added for emphasis: "Why is everybody so down on me!!!!!!!!" Obviously this was not just a song to her, it was a statement of her own personal hellish world view.

My father, as always, indulged her in everything. With his money she bought everything on Janis Joplin she could find. She also got quite into the hippie trappings and lifestyle of the late 1960s. Of course in the Reagan Era of the early 1980s this was probably about as out of step as it was possible to be.

And then, she found that book. The one that changed everything.

I remember the name, but I do not remember the author. It was called "Going Down With Janis," and its author purported to be the lesbian lover of Janis Joplin.

To be frank, I did not read much of the book. It was not well written, and many of the facts in it were dubious. One thing was clear, though: the author of the book was scum. To give you an idea: after Joplin managed to kick heroin, this woman managed to get her hooked again, and was therefore indirectly responsible when Joplin died of an overdose.

I have talked with people that actually met Janis Joplin, and they have given me anecdotal evidence that she was not gay at all. So the real point of that dreary, self-obsessed book was that you'll sleep with anyone when you are out of your head on heroin. Not exactly front-page news.

However, to my sister, this book was a revelation: since Joplin was gay, she must be, too!

I remember when she "came out" to me. She came into my room and nervously unburdened herself to me while sitting on my bed.

The two of us were getting along pretty well at that point, so she felt she could trust me.

In spite of the fact that I thought she was rather young to come to a decision like that, I supported her completely. At the time, my best friend in the world was gay, and I admired him tremendously.

However, if I had known then what I know now, my support would have been tempered with a little caution. I would have pointed out to Janis that just deciding that you are gay from a standing stop was a somewhat artificial decision to make. I would also mention that being gay essentially meant that she would be isolated from mainstream American life, and probably always would be. Finally, I would add that it would also mean having to endure jokes, insults and even violence from unthinking flatheads on perhaps a daily basis.

In short, it is not a decision to be made so lightly.

But Janis embraced this new identity with the same clumsy enthusiasm that she embraced all her previous manias. After she told me, I mentioned to her that she was not the only gay person in the family - one of our cousins was, too.

To my total mortification Janis excitedly hopped up from my bed, went into our parents bedroom, and called that cousin on the phone to tell him the news! Luckily, the cousin was a rather cool guy, and the two of them happily chattered with each other for over an hour.

However, not too long after this, our relationship was all but shattered due to the interference of a third party.

At the time, Janis had a "friend" named Mary, who would talk with her on the phone. You'll see why the word "friend" is in quotes on a minute.

I'm not sure how this happened, but I got talking to Mary. I got the impression that she was interested in dating me. I talked with her for hours on end and inevitably the subject of the conversation turned to Janis.

Mary told me, in confidence of course, about some of the things Janis was doing in high school. The friends she was hanging around with were scummy, and she was into some dubious things, like drugs and casual sex. Some of this alarmed me.

Mary also reported that Janis had clumsily tried to seduce her best friend (the girl that had gone with us to see Shaun Cassidy) and the girl had left our house in tears, never to return.

This, and other stories, came close to freaking me out. I didn't know what to do. My parents were worse than useless at anything important like this, so I talked about it with my younger brother Harry. He, also, was alarmed by the things I told him.

In retrospect, this was a very bad idea. Harry and Janis didn't get along well anyway, and telling him all this stuff only lowered her in his opinion even more. The two of us then made an even bigger mistake: we decided to sit down with Janis and confront her about what we knew.

Bad, bad move.

When we sat her down and told her about the stuff Mary had told me, she gasped in surprise and then fixed me with a look of betrayal and utter hatred. She then sat and sullenly listened to what we had to say, and then left. That was the last serious discussion I had with Janis for quite some time.

No doubt she felt that the two of us had ganged up on her AGAIN, and seriously invaded her privacy. She was very angry with us, and the next entry will show how she displayed her displeasure.

And what about Mary? She and I went out on exactly one date, and I was totally puzzled by her utter indifference toward me. If she didn't really like me, why had she spent all that time talking to me on the phone?

Not too long after that, I put two and two together and figured Mary out. She was an evil-minded little gossip, who liked to feel powerful by manipulating people with information. It probably made her feel really superior to wrap someone six years older than her around her finger and then use me to hurt someone else.

I never saw her or heard from her again after our one date. She now had no reason to communicate with me because Janis and I were no longer speaking to each other. Mission accomplished!

Continued, tomorrow