My use of her nickname is presumptuous. I did not know her. I knew OF her. I could have secured an introduction had I wanted, but I didn’t.
She was not really famous as a student at the University of Texas… it was more like she was notorious, or at least so implies Google AI Overview. It notes that she was widely mocked on campus and even won a fraternity contest as the “Ugliest Man on Campus”… news to me at this late date, but then I was a good student, not involved in Greek life and oblivious to most campus gossip.
She hung out with a small group of disheveled students that seemed to always travel as a group. One of their members was a quiet young girl who lived in the same Co-op House as me. Periodically, the group would take over the living room at the Co-op House, and the rest of us would resentfully grab our books and scatter elsewhere.
Group members were different from house residents. We put our hair up every night in curlers and ironed our clothes and wore a little makeup. They didn’t. We considered them hippies… the great unwashed. I supposed they believed in free love and rejected mainstream norms and values, but I never asked.
I don’t know if they lived together. They seemed to do everything together.
While I didn’t witness it, I believed the housemate who reported that one of the boys in the group digitally penetrated one of the girls in the group, not Janis, in front of the other group members and anyone who happened to be watching. I don’t know if it was consensual. It never occurred to me to ask. Needless to say, my strait-laced friends and I were shocked. I assumed it was over quickly, but I don’t know that for sure. To my knowledge, no one reported it to authorities or even asked the young girl if she was okay.
In short, I formed a negative opinion of the group and its members and avoided them.
Imagine my astonishment when Janis became famous and then died all too soon of a heroin overdose. In March, 1971, the year following her death, her hit single, ME AND BOBBIE MCGEE, written by Kris Kristofferson, reached No. 1.
Janis Joplin was only 27 years old when she died. Her music has given and continues to give the world immeasurable joy and passion. Who woulda thunk it? Certainly not me.