THIS IS AN ADAPTATION OF A STORY I PERFORMED FOR THE SERIES FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC AT CHIEF IKE’S IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

“…

I was Janis Joplin in college. Not in a student film, or a drag show: I am the reincarnation of Janis Joplin.

You want proof? She died October 4, 1970. I was born October 27, 1970. Any spiritualist will tell you that’s how long it takes for a soul to grab its beads and its Southern Comfort and transmigrate into another body. So, that’s indisputable. Then, look at these similarities:

• She had a younger sister, I have a younger brother
• We both have twin initials (JJ and SS)
• I’ve always had her laugh, a raucous cackle. I call mine the Shrackle

I rest my case.

So I got to Michigan State University and was free to be who I was, finally. Janis Joplin.

I was a student now: Of Janis Joplin history. Mostly I watched the documentary Janis: The Way She Was over and over again until I had her personality “down.” (I have Asperger’s. It’s not funny! It’s annoying. I can and will recite an entire movie script to you in lieu of conversation.)

Janis gave me a louder, more interesting voice then the one I naturally have. I come from a musical family and can imitate things well. By sophomore year I talked and acted like her. Of course, she herself had changed how she talked once she got famous. From a plain Texas girl to kind of like a mix of Mae West and W.C. Fields. She needed a shell, too.

We both had hated high school. Dick Cavett asks her, “Were you not surrounded by friends in high school?” “They laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of the state, man.” So she went to her high school reunion and held a press conference there. Wouldn’t you?

In her brief college stint, she was voted Ugliest Man on Campus. So she moved to San Francisco and reinvented herself as the queen of the hippies, a rock goddess, a sex symbol! Through sheer force of will, and energy: It took guts to get out there with acne, an  imperfect body, and a big scar on her lip from a bar fight. I could relate.

By junior year I had morphed into her outwardly too. I had freaked in, now I freaked OUT. I went from a high-school nothing, who felt ugly and called myself “asexual,” to this:

People were interested in me now. Frat boys? They’d say, “Hey, what are you? A hippie faggot! You’ve got something caught in your hair. Haw haw.” See, I would tie bandannas, beads, feathers and other stuff in it so there’d be surprises when I turned my head.

The only thing I couldn’t get right was the singing. I would try at parties, and my friends would start getting extra stoned, and those who were sober would disassociate and go into their safe place. Why didn’t you bring your singing ability with you into my body, Janis? I tried and tried. “Please! Please! Auwahuauaua!” Oh, man.

By senior year, I had been Janis long enough that I was drinking a bottle of Southern Comfort a day and getting really maudlin. I’ve always wanted to be a dead legend. “I’ll never see 30, man,” I said to my brother, using one of Janis’s lines as my own. He said, “Um, Scott: I think you are an expert on Janis Joplin, and you can imitate her, and we all know you like her a lot, but…” “What? Are you ashamed to have a rock star who died of a heroin overdose in the family?”

Janis was an alchemist. She turned ugly into sexy, shyness into showbiz, and made wastedness into the new professionalism. Even with her addictions, she still adhered to the highest professional standards. It would have killed her to be late for or miss a concert. She also extorted a free fur coat out of the Southern Comfort company for all the “free advertising” she gave them onstage. “Whoo-ee, what a hustle!” she said. “Imagine getting a lynx coat just for passing out every night for two years.”

She missed her last studio session, though, when she was supposed to record the song “Buried Alive in the Blues”… because she died in a hotel room.

Just before graduation, I saw the news came that the Joplins — my real family — were planning a Broadway play about her called “Love, Janis.” I picked up the biography her sister had written, and the book jacket said, “The author lives in Denver.” So I just went to the public library, got a Denver phone book, found her number, xeroxed the page, went over to my parents’ house and called her.

I have never been shy about such things. I prefer talking to famous people, they’re more interesting.

There was a beeping fax tone at first, but then a woman picked up. “Hello?” “Laura?” “Yes.” “Is this the Laura Joplin who is Janis Joplin’s sister?” The guarded, suspicious way she responded with “Who is this, please?” answered my question for me.

I did some fast talking: “I just read your book and loved it, so I wanted to call and tell you that. Your sister was really one of a kind.”

“Well thank you! It’s nice to know people still care,” Laura said sweetly.

“Oh, people still care,” I said. “They care a lot… So is it true you’re working on a play about Janis?”

“Yeah, we’re tryin’,” she chuckled.

“Have you found anyone to play Janis yet?” I squeezed my eyes shut really hard.

“No, we’re still working on that.”

I was talking to Janis Joplin’s sister. The closest you could get to talking to Janis herself without using a medium, or talking to me.

Hearing Laura’s intact Texas accent, which Janis had tried so hard to lose, must have jarred me into a realization. Even with my chronically unstable identity, I might have an authentic voice deep down there somewhere.

Just at that moment I also faced reality: I couldn’t play Janis in the play… because I still couldn’t sing like her.

“Have you thought of Edie Brickell?”

I mentally put away my beads and cut my hair. I still wanted to die when I was 27… but I didn’t die. I’m still here, obviously, having been too chicken to do heroin… Janis must have gotten bored and flown up to Rock ’n’ Roll Heaven. She left me here to face it all alone. With nothing but an encyclopedic knowledge of Janis Joplin history and a serious drinking problem to deal with.

Tags: Asperger's Syndrome, Broadway, Chief Ike's Mambo Room, Denver, Detroit, Dick Cavett, Edie Brickell, Fan-Freaking-Tastic, heroin, Janis Joplin, Laura Joplin, Mae West, Michigan State University, Port Arthur, San Francisco, Southern Comfort, Texas, W.C. Fields, Washington DC